I do not doubt that the four Republican New York state senators who voted for same-sex marriage are convinced of the rightness of their votes. I would, however, look askance at any suggestion that they are the courageous new heroes of our time, with motives wholly principled and pure. As the New York Times reports, they have a big payday coming:
All four Republicans who voted for same-sex marriage sharply increased their fund-raising in the six months after the marriage bill passed, in many cases raising money from people they had never met. And Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who forcefully pushed the legislation, raised $6 million in six months helped by fund-raisers that highlighted his support for same-sex marriage.
The same-sex marriage lobby seems to operate by flat-footed progressive bullying (“get on the right side of history”) followed by gigantic payouts to those who fall in line. It’s a fine way to win a political fight, there’s no gainsaying that, but it has hardly created a hall of heroes.
Whether or not they actually come out ahead remains to be seen: the National Organization for Marriage has launched its own formidable effort to raise the price of voting against marriage.
January 18th, 2012 | 2:23 pm
the National Organization for Marriage has launched its own formidable effort to raise the price of voting against marriage.
I think many people, perhaps a majority, would disagree that voting for same-sex marriage is “voting against marriage.”
The implication here seems to be that political methods used by supporters of same-sex marriage are illegitimate, whereas the same methods used by opponents of same-sex marriage are perfectly fine. Politics is politics.
January 18th, 2012 | 2:42 pm
Perhaps the problem is that against same-sex (civil) marriage is actually voting against marriage, tortured-logic political slogans notwithstanding.
People wonder why the push – in the public realm – to exclude certain people from an institution in which the church itself believes so strongly, and which it argues is good for society and the individuals who choose it.
All the evidence – including facts gathered so far about same-sex marriage – suggests that marriage IS, in fact, very good for the people involved; the church is quite right about that. Same-sex marriage, in fact, supports what the church says about marriage.
The simple truth is that people have changed their minds about this on the basis of logic and the evidence they themselves have seen; it has nothing to do with “big paydays” or “progressive bullying.”
The church is welcome to disagree in its own sphere, of course – just as the Catholic Church refuses to re-marry people on the basis of its own doctrine, so it can refuse to marry same-sex couples on the basis of its own doctrine. But Catholic Doctrine is not equivalent to the law of the land. (And in this case it’s wrong anyway! But, the church is entitled to be wrong also….)
January 18th, 2012 | 2:48 pm
NOM has done a good job itself of touting $ as a relevant measure of heroic success. Paydays appear to know no ideological boundary. Nor does any other political game.
January 18th, 2012 | 11:37 pm
The same-sex marriage lobby seems to operate by flat-footed progressive bullying (“get on the right side of history”) followed by gigantic payouts to those who fall in line.
Let’s see, the Mormon Church didn’t spend any money supporting California’s anti-SSM prop? Haven’t anti-SSM been screaming for years now that pro-SSM measures were going to destroy marriage, harm children, and corrupt all of society? Amazing how anti-SSM seem to not even be able to comprehend that people who disagree with them, are going to act like they disagree with them!
January 19th, 2012 | 12:01 am
I think many people, perhaps a majority, would disagree that voting for same-sex marriage is “voting against marriage.”
Yes, there is a considerable push to believe that words can mean anything that anyone wants them to mean, and that changing a word can change reality.
Fortunately for us all, we are all starting to hit the outer limits of this infantile game – though, so far, people on both sides of the political aisle tend to only recognize “reality” and “truth” as important qualities when it’s the other side pretending that such things don’t exist/don’t matter.
“Gay marriage” relies entirely on comparisons to interracial marriage. This analogy only works if you don’t examine it too closely; it is not an analogy that holds up well under scrutiny.
It demands multiple comparisons that are not actually logical – for instance, confusing passive states (‘to be’) with active states (‘to do’) (as in, “it is wrong to condemn them for what they are, so therefore it is wrong to condemn me for what I do”)
Or – another example – it demands confusing individuals with couples (gays are not discriminated against as individuals, but are discriminated against as couples – gay couples are not treated as equal to hetero couples. If their situation were truly like to interracial marriage, individual gays would be required by law to only marry their own kind, genetically. But no man – gay, straight, black or white – enjoys the right to marry whatever he wants, because marriage has never before been defined as being primarily about providing sexual pleasure to the adults who enter into it.
It is, of course, this definition which is the problem. Same sex marriage is about redefining marriage as being about sexual pleasure. This requires that two things happen – both of which involve stripping people of their rights.
The first is that we must be forced by law to accept the humanist belief that sexual pleasure is an important value, more important than the health and well-being of families or of children or of society, and that sexual pleasure is a sufficient and correct basis for a marriage. The problem is, it’s not true – which is reason number 1 why I think gay marriage is going to end up being a lot more like the abortion debate than the civil rights movement: because whereas the civil rights movement took us closer to truth, the “sexual freedom” movements require taking us farther away from truth. At first it sounds appealing: we all like the idea of sexual freedom, until we become aware of the costs. After the costs start to become apparent, however, it’s hard to hold support: there is something unnatural about a society that sacrifices its children so that the adults may enjoy sexual pleasures.
Ultimately, sexual pleasure is not an adequate basis for a marriage because, aside from the fact that marriage does serve purposes that are more important than that, the over-valuing sexual pleasure is not compatible with long-term monogamous commitment. Marriages based on sexual pleasure are naturally going to be riddled with drama, promiscuity, adultery, and lots of divorce.
The other thing that “same sex marriage” needs to do is not only force people to embrace its values, but also detach people from their existing values. Marriage needs to be stripped of its procreative value, its support for the act of making and raising a family. No gay union is capable of making a healthy family. Even the best “gay marriage” is built on the back of a child who is forced to go without a mother or a father, and forced to minimize, justify, defend, maybe even deny the magnitude of this loss. If gays wanted to be good parents, the rightful model would be that of coparenting – a model whereby society is forced to recognize the child’s other real parent as coparent even as it recognizes the parent’s lover as life partner. Benefits would be split accordingly. But gays are not interested in healthy families; they are interested in detaching us from our current models and institutions – a move that just coincidentally takes power away from the biological unit and gives that power to Big Government – who will ultimately be the entity that decides who is related to who, and ultimately will be the teat upon which all the broken families will be forced to depend – because strong families = THE single biggest factor determining who is independent, who is strong, who is wealthy, who is secure, and who is in poverty. And for people who want to enact their social agenda using an all-powerful government as the instrument of “HopenChange”, strong families are not a desired outcome.
Republicans who vote for same sex marriage probably don’t recognize that marital structure has anything to do with the strength and independence of families, or the power of the government.
January 19th, 2012 | 8:43 am
Blake –
The three questions you never answer:
1. Why is one risk factor determinative?
2. What’s the proportion of ‘gay parents’ who labor to sever all ties with the other biological parent?
3. How do you demonstrate that harm is actually being done?
January 19th, 2012 | 9:40 am
Yes, there is a considerable push to believe that words can mean anything that anyone wants them to mean, and that changing a word can change reality.
I have never heard this used as an argument for SSM. It is entirely a pure fiction of the anti-SSM crowd. On the left, most who take the position that meaning is mythical have little or no interest in SSM, in fact they tend to beleive that marriage itself is a questionable institution so have little interest in seeing it expanded in any way.
“Gay marriage” relies entirely on comparisons to interracial marriage. This analogy only works if you don’t examine it too closely;
‘Relies entirely’ is, of course, a lie. But it is fair to point out that reasoning by analogy is always a minefield. Nonetheless, one has to actually demonstrate the analogy is flawed in some non-trivial way.
It demands multiple comparisons that are not actually logical – for instance, confusing passive states (‘to be’) with active states (‘to do’) (as in, “it is wrong to condemn them for what they are, so therefore it is wrong to condemn me for what I do”)
I have never heard any defender of gay rights or SSM argue this. Certainly just because you do something that’s motivated by who you are doesn’t make it right. A heterosexual man who rapes a woman, for example, is not wrong for being heterosexual but is wrong for using rape to get sex.
(gays are not discriminated against as individuals, but are discriminated against as couples
Factually false.
But no man – gay, straight, black or white – enjoys the right to marry whatever he wants, because marriage has never before been defined as being primarily about providing sexual pleasure to the adults who enter into it.
Nor has this been a line of defense for SSM. Achieving sexual pleasure is certainly a nice thing to have in marriage, and its probably nearly essential as marriages with absolutely no sexual pleasure for the members are not likely to succeed, but its hardly the purpose of marriage for anyone. Anyone who just wants to achieve sexual pleasure can easily do so without ever considering marriage. In fact, marriage often asks the members to compromise on the goal of ‘achieving sexual pleasure’ for the sake of other values.
The first is that we must be forced by law to accept the humanist belief that sexual pleasure is an important value, more important than the health and well-being of families or of children or of society, and that sexual pleasure is a sufficient and correct basis for a marriage.
Your side has been asked numerous times to defend this assertion and every time has failed to do so. No one is forced to believe sexual pleasure is the most important value in marriage under SSM anymore than under non-SSM people who did believe that were somehow oppressed or forced to renounce their beliefs. Anyone, in say 1950, could have gotten married fully believing the instituation was just about getting good sex without the law doing anything to force them to believe otherwise. Likewise you or anyone else can get married in a state that has SSM believing sexual pleasure is a marginal or even non-existant value of marriage and you are not denied anything.
The other thing that “same sex marriage” needs to do is not only force people to embrace its values, but also detach people from their existing values. Marriage needs to be stripped of its procreative value, its support for the act of making and raising a family.
You have never been able to address the odd fact that whether or not a city has SSM seems to have no effect on what portion of gay couples are raising kids. Nor has any relationship or effect on heterosexual married couples with kids been detected. At some point your side has to account for the fact that their predictions have failed and having racked up a track record of failures, which merits really asking what credibility you think you’re still entitled too.
On the flip side, supporters of SSM have a much easier task in terms of prediction. All that simply needs to be shown is that no serious harm results. Just as with interracial marriage, it doesn’t really matter if 40 years from now 99% of gays opt not to get married and those that do have a very high rate of divorce and failure. That wouldn’t matter anymore than the fact that in 1980 there were relatively few interracial marriages relative to non-interracial ones.
January 19th, 2012 | 10:17 am
“All that simply needs to be shown is that no serious harm results. ”
That does rather depend on one’s definition of harm.
January 19th, 2012 | 10:35 am
That does rather depend on one’s definition of harm
Fortunately anti-SSM have provided us with numerous definitions of harm in their warnings and predictions. Family breakdown, neglect of children, increased divorce and rates of non-marriage among heterosexuals….all these things were warned about and have failed to show any sign of being influenced at all by whether or not a jurisdiction has SSM.
January 19th, 2012 | 8:29 pm
1. Why is one risk factor determinative?
2. What’s the proportion of ‘gay parents’ who labor to sever all ties with the other biological parent?
3. How do you demonstrate that harm is actually being done?
1. If the parents are good parents, except for the fact that they abuse their child, does that make them good parents, or abusive parents?
2. I do not condemn gays who honor their child’s other parent, and who preserve the child’s link with that other parent. I don’t condemn gays who would honor that link, but can’t for reasons that are outside of their control – if those parents allow the child to mourn openly, and recognize that the lack of a same-sex or opposite-sex parent is a loss.
But the gay rights movement is calling for us as a culture to pretend – and cooperate in the effort to force children to pretend – that having two fathers or two mothers is just as good as having a healthy, intact family.
People who think their own sexual pleasure is so important that it justifies hurting children are their own special class of nasty, and need to be recognized as such. And shunned.
3. I demonstrate that harm is being done by applying the gays’ own standards to their children.
Gays say it is a violation of human rights to be treated as a second class citizen. Of course, they meant for themselves – they justify treating their children like second class citizens quite easily. But if being treated like a second class citizen is “bad”, then the children of gays should have the same rights as “wanted” children – they should be treated to the same high standards that are applied to beloved children born of parents who want them – including but not limited to:
- the right to have a relationship with both biological parents
- the right to be supported by both biological parents
- the right to only have that relationship severed by a judge
- the right to have the judge that severs the relationship be acting in full accordance with the child’s best interest
These rights are fundamentally incompatible with gay marriage, which relies on the fantasy that a stepfather is as good as a real mother.
Gays say it is a violation of human rights to be barred from participating in relationships recognized by our society as important. Or, at least, they say this when the important relationship is “marriage”. But society recognizes mothers and fathers as “important”, too – so why don’t gays?
If men and women are absolutely not interchangeable, why do gays suddenly argue that they’re absolutely interchangeable? Which is it? Is gender crucially important or is it irrelevant?
Gays say it is morally wrong to “force” someone to “live a lie”. So what gives them the right to force a child to live his entire self with an identity built out of statements that are factually untrue?
The reason I can say that harm is done is because children are human beings, and all human beings have a right to be free from exploitation. The right to be free from exploitation – to have one’s custody determined based on one’s own best interest rather than having custody decisions determined according to the desires of a buyer, purchaser, owner, or master however benevolent – is a more fundamental right than any real or imagined “right” to sexual pleasure.
Adoption is legitimate only to the extent that it is guided by the child’s best interest. Therefore, the existence of an inevitable, impossible-to-resolve conflict between what is best for the child vs. what is desired by the gay couple is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
Because gay couples do not have to do this to their child. There is nothing at all – except their own ego, their own selfishness – to stop them from doing what is right by the child. Coparenting with members of the opposite sex is an option available to them, and so there is no reason why the existence of homosexual tendencies should ever be a justification for deliberately depriving a child of both equally valuable, equally important, not-interchangeable parental experiences.
Same-sex and opposite-sex parent relationships are not the same, and there is ample evidence suggesting that these differences are not irrelevant. So there’s really no reason why anyone genuinely acting in any child’s best interest should be buying into the fantasy. Those who would deny the child both parenting experiences and justify the act of doing so as reasonable are not “loving” because they lack the emotional maturity that is a precondition of parental love.
January 19th, 2012 | 8:34 pm
“All that simply needs to be shown is that no serious harm results. ”
That does rather depend on one’s definition of harm.
It’s not true, anyway.
Children are not belongings. They are not pets. It has already been established legally that children have the right to a relationship with both parents, and that exceptions to this rule are supposed to be governed entirely by the child’s best interests.
So, while it may be true that legally a parent may have a great deal of freedom in what he or she chooses to do to his or her child, it is also equally true that every child has the right to not be “given” to anyone other than their own biological parents to raise unless the prospective adoptive parents meet the “child’s best interest” burden of proof.
Existing families headed by gay couples only exist because of a loophole in the law.
This is why it is so crucial that “gay marriage” be restricted, so that any recognition of gay unions does not automatically grant the rights given to procreative parents. This would legitimize the fraud that gays have been practicing upon their children – a fraud that is technically not illegal, but is highly unethical.
January 19th, 2012 | 8:39 pm
This would legitimize the fraud that gays have been practicing upon their children – a fraud that is technically not illegal, but is highly unethical.
I should say, the fraud practiced upon the children and upon the family trees involved.
As we increasingly recognize that genealogy plays an important part in identity formation – that genealogy is as important in its own way to an individual as history is to a nation, it will be increasingly recognized that the fraud perpetuated by gay fantasies are a fraud perpetrated not only against an individual child, but against entire family trees.
It is ironic that even as legitimate adoption is becoming more comfortable with the recognition that adopted and IVF kids do in fact need and desire their genealogical truth, we are at the same time making it easier than ever for parents and baby-sellers to destroy the evidence an adopted child would someday need to find that genealogical truth.
January 20th, 2012 | 12:30 am
Blake,
“I do not condemn gays who honor their child’s other parent, and who preserve the child’s link with that other parent. I don’t condemn gays who would honor that link, but can’t for reasons that are outside of their control – if those parents allow the child to mourn openly, and recognize that the lack of a same-sex or opposite-sex parent is a loss.”
Ok, I get it. You don’t object to gay marriage itself. You only object to those gay parents who don’t honor their children’s birth parents or allow them to grieve those birth parents.
So why not just force all gay parents to preserve biological links and inculcate grieving rituals? Would that satisfy you?
January 20th, 2012 | 9:06 am
Ok, I get it. You don’t object to gay marriage itself. You only object to those gay parents who don’t honor their children’s birth parents or allow them to grieve those birth parents.
I wouldn’t mind gay unions if they’d stop trying to pass them off as the same as marriage.
It’s not the same as marriage, because marriage as a procreative aspect, that aspect is a significant part of marriage, and that is very central to the act of making a family.
Gays try to pass themselves off as procreative, but in so doing, they don’t care what lies they tell or what harm they do.
I watched some youtube videos where the kids were taped “witnessing” for their parents’ ideology, and all I could think of was, wow, I wonder what these same people would say if Jehovah’s Witnesses made their kids pretend they were happy to not celebrate Christmas, that not celebrating Christmas is a wonderful way to live, and they’re not deprived of anything. Because of course we all have our own beliefs, and we all teach our kids our beliefs. But there’s a certain line that gets crossed when we know what we are doing is controversial and so instead of dealing honestly with the controversy, someone just misuses a child.
And, yes, I get the same way whenever I see kids being used as pawns in ugly divorces.
I get that way whenever I see people treating their kids like dirt. Stop treating your kids like dirt and let them experience their own real family, instead of living out your fantasies for you.
January 20th, 2012 | 10:19 am
Bertrand Russell made a good point, when he observed that ““But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex. it is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.”
January 20th, 2012 | 12:20 pm
Blake –
Only a valid comparison if all gay parents were abusive. You admit this is not the case, so it’s void.
Interestingly, you don’t actually answer question #2. You don’t provide any indication whatsoever about “the proportion of ‘gay parents’ who labor to sever all ties with the other biological parent”. No numbers, not even a guess, not even ‘the majority’ or ‘a minority’. No answer whatsoever. Instead, you talk about:
I know, just like people are forced to pretend that women are just as worthy of respect as men, even though they’re different. (And many people think women are icky, too.)
Note: I’m not necessarily claiming that a gay relationship is ‘different but equal’. I’m pointing to a case where that obtains, to prove that such cases are possible. You, however, are actively claiming that gay parents are not fit, but never providing any evidence for this.
Note, I asked you about how common this was, and you declined to answer. Now you appear to make a claim about ‘gays’ in general. Seriously, how common is this, and how do you know?
My questions were intended to help you establish a case for that ‘existence’, though… and you haven’t done so. All you’ve done is restate your opinion, without showing your work.
January 20th, 2012 | 12:24 pm
Blake –
Because every child is abused when they don’t get to celebrate Christmas! It is logically impossible for child to be happy without celebrating Christmas!
January 20th, 2012 | 1:34 pm
“But no man – gay, straight, black or white – enjoys the right to marry whatever he wants…”
However, under a definition of marriage that benefits heterosexual people exclusively, every straight man and woman enjoys the right to marry *someone* they want, or *someone* they love.
Gay and lesbian Americans do not enjoy that right in 44 states.
You cannot defend bans on same-sex marriage simply ignoring this disparity.
January 20th, 2012 | 2:42 pm
Actually Blake, the analogy of same-gender marriage to interracial marriage holds up quite well. Of course, you don’t need to take my word for it, you can take the word of the preeminent Civil Rights organizations, African American Civil Rights organizations, and African American Civil Rights leaders who concur that it is an apt analogy.
Bans against interracial marriage were based on keeping people from marrying based on who they are. Bans against same-gender marriage are also based on keeping people from marrying based on who they are (their gender and their sexual-orientation).
Now maybe you Blake, define who you are based on what is between your legs, but MOST people define who they are based on what is between their ears.
While sexual intimacy is an important part of any relationship between two people who share a deep abiding and intimate love for one another, it is FAR from the most important. This is no more true for same-gender couples than it is for opposite-gender couples. The amount of sexual intimacy in a loving bonded relationship is an extremely small portion of the relationship as a whole, which is built upon living an entirely realized life together (and where applicable with any children they may raise).
It is patently absurd, and destroys your argument, to suggest that gay couples desire to be legally married is about their ‘sexual pleasure’, and that giving gay couples (same-gender couples) their due Constitutional right to equal treatment of the law somehow redefines marriage to being about sexual pleasure.
Gay couples want nothing more than the SAME legal respect, rights, privileges, benefits, protections, responsibilities, and obligations for their committed unions (and their families) that come with the legal contract of civil marriage. The same that are available to ANY opposite-gender couple regardless of that couples intent, willingness, desire, or capacity to have children.
For one thing, marriage has NEVER been just about children. While there are marriage related laws that revolve around a married couples children, the bulk of marriage related laws deal with the couple and the couple alone as legally wed spouses and being each others immediate next-of-kin.
Marriage has value to our society outside of raising children. It is in the best interest of our society to encourage couples (typically those who share an intimate bond with one another) to make a legal commitment to one another. Evidence shows that marriage (on average) results in people who are happier, healthier, more secure, more stable, more capable, more productive, and less likely to ever need to rely on the State.
Furthermore, gay couples DO raise children, regardless of how you feel about that. Your ‘notions’ about what children most need are not being borne out by the evidence when it comes to comparing the children raised by straight couples and those children raised by gay couples. Existing and on-going studies are indicating that there are no differences in the physical or psychological health and well-being, between the two groups. The kids are, in fact, all right. AND, they are deserving of and in need of the same legal protections that come with having parents who are legally married to one another.
There is absolutely no rational justification for denying that to same-gender couples OR their children.
January 20th, 2012 | 4:46 pm
Gay couples want nothing more than the SAME legal respect, rights, privileges, benefits, protections, responsibilities, and obligations for their committed unions (and their families) that come with the legal contract of civil marriage
See? This is important – tax breaks for “the same families” (that aren’t even “the same”, and aren’t even their real families) is an “important” issue for you.
But letting other people be discriminated to death is okay.
Because gay people are so special they get more than just mere equality – they get rights that heteros don’t get. They get to argue that because they don’t enjoy the obligations of making a family, that gives them the right to pick and choose which obligations they have to honor, even when it causes harm to others and violates the rights of others.
But disabled people don’t get equality. They’re less than equal.
Tax breaks are crucially important; death is no big deal.
January 20th, 2012 | 4:47 pm
Sorry if mixing threads is not allowed.
But I have a seriously hard time with this notion that same sex marriage is life or death – while letting a disabled girl die for want of care is no big deal.
January 20th, 2012 | 4:51 pm
Actually Blake, the analogy of same-gender marriage to interracial marriage holds up quite well.
Sure, as long as you look only at the emotions and feelings of the people who want to marry, and ignore all the ways in which the two situations are not analogous.
Which is what your argument relies on. As usual.
Maybe if you just ignore all the facts that refute your claims, they’ll go away.
January 20th, 2012 | 5:28 pm
their due Constitutional right to equal treatment of the law somehow redefines marriage to being about sexual pleasure.
Gay couples want nothing more than the SAME legal respect, rights, privileges, benefits, protections, responsibilities, and obligations for their committed unions (and their families)
There is no Constitutional right to make a family any way you want.
There are only two legitimate ways of making a family.
The best method – the one that should be preferred – is for the mother, father, and child to stay together in a single unit. This is best for the child, best for the community, best for society, and best for the family. It might not be best for individual mothers and fathers who wish to rearrange the family according to their own desires and convenience (which is what is at dispute here: just how far an individual parent is allowed to break and rearrange a family, at the expense of the family’s other members.)
Because a family is three people – not one, not two, but three. The problem with your vision of “gays and their families” is that it’s a lie – it is based on a vision that children and other family parts may be dug up and replanted at will, when in fact “family” is a biological unit.
The second legitimate way of making a family is adoption. You want this to be without limits, but there are limits: adoption is only legitimate when every single decision made in the process is governed by the “child’s best interest” standard, because adoption is a legitimate process only so far as it is about finding the best possible home for an orphaned or abandoned child.
The minute you cross the line from “child’s best interest” to “parent’s desires (at the expense of what is best from the child)” – as gays must do to create what they call “families” – then you have crossed out of legitimate adoption, and are now firmly in the realm of trafficking, baby-buying.
There is no Constitutional right to do that.
You want to frame this as being about individuals being discriminated against, but this argument relies on miscategorizing: gays are not deprived of anything except what everyone is deprived of. There is no Constitutional right to any guarantee that you can marry anyone you love, just because you love them. There is no Constitutional right to expect that your particular sexual desires, however atypical or deviant, will be satisfied in a legal marriage. You would like for these to be recognized as rights, but whether they will be rights in the future, they aren’t rights now. The only time these issues have come up before SCOTUS, the SCOTUS has ruled against your argument.
One flaw in your argument is that you fail to distinguish between individuals vs. units individuals are not being discriminated against, only “couples” are – and there is no precedent for “couples” as couples having any right to “equality under the law”. We do recognize married men-women units as different in kind from other couplings, and entitled to subsidies and benefits that other couplings are not eligible for.
Another flaw is that you fail to recognize that it isn’t discrimination to outlaw processes. There is a right and a wrong way to build a family. You are doing it the wrong way. You are hoping to keep everyone distracted with emotional appeals designed to focus attention on how it feels to love, but even if you are correct in that you have the right to love your lover, your conclusions do not follow logically. It does not follow that you therefore have the right to have that relationship recognized as equal to other kinds of relationships, and it certainly does not follow that you therefore have the right to make your own, unique ways of creating families (at the expense of honesty, reality, biology, and the rights and interests of other family members who may be overtly exploited for your benefit).
I am not saying anything about whether you can or can’t love whatever you want to love, except that your right to love, even if it exists, does not change my right to hold Christian beliefs about what it does and does not, should and should not mean to love. Your rights coexist with mine, but you have not established any reason why they should precede or co-opt mine.
And I am not even saying anything about whether you can demand that love be recognized by the state, except that I do ask that you stop trying to skip due process, using authority in abusive ways to try to force your morality above people.
But whether you are entitled to have your love recognized or not, that does not give you the right to invent your own procedures for “making a family”, because your argument relies on misrepresenting three crucial truths about making a family:
1) the nature of a family – what it is and what it isn’t. A family is biological: you do not change that by forcing everyone to lie.
2) the people involved in making a family – it is not just you, solo unit, “making” a family. The entire family is involved, the entire family is affected, and therefore your needs, wants, and desires have to be balanced against them. Your argument falls apart if you stop denying their existence.
3) one difference – of many, but maybe the most important difference – between gay marriage vs. interracial marriage is that interracial marriage is the same process of making a family that every other human beings use. Gay marriage, unlike interracial marriage, is not solely a question of access to the same activity that everyone else is doing. It involves relevant destructive changes to the activity itself. It requires not only permission to engage in the family making process, but also permission to change the process itself. And that is a relevant difference. You don’t just want to engage in the activity yourself, same as other people. You have that right now. What you want is to apply new ways of doing things into the activity – changing the definitions, norms, and procedures involved in the activity in ways utterly unlike anything comparable to racial minorities.
January 20th, 2012 | 5:48 pm
What are you talking about Blake?
Marriage equality means exactly that EQUALITY. There are no ‘special’ tax breaks being given to gay couples.
First off, any two same-gender people could get married under such equality. They don’t NEED to be gay, though obviously the bulk of those who do get married to a same-gender partner would, in fact, be gay.
There are no orientation restrictions. Just as a gay person could marry someone of the opposite-gender today. Though realistically that is not something a gay person wants or a straight opposite-gender spouse would want either. Are YOU willing to marry your daughter off to a gay man?
Under marriage law, the State provides benefits to encourage couples to get married. As previously mentioned married couples become better people, who are better, more stable, more secure citizens, which is beneficial to society at large. Those benefits which are meant to encourage and reward marriage, are just as important and enticing to same-gender couples as they are opposite-gender couples, as they should be.
Benefits that revolve around child raising only apply to couples who raise children, straight or gay.
What are also important to couples who are legally married are the legal rights, privileges, and protections that come along with being each others legal spouses and next-of-kin. These are also very important to those raising children, straight or gay.
And finally there are various legal obligations and responsibilities that come along with civil marriage. These not only protect the individuals in the marriage, but also any children they raise, them as a couple, and the State’s own interests in granting people the various rights, benefits, and privileges that come with marriage.
Keep in mind, laws that protect and grant equality to people based on their sexual-orientation, do so EQUALLY for straight people as they do for gay people. ‘Straight’ (heterosexual) is one of the legally defined sexual-orientations that such laws cover. Of course it is true that gay people are much more often in need of those protections and demands for equality simply by virtue of them suffering discrimination more often.
January 20th, 2012 | 6:32 pm
Blake the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 Loving vs. Virginia made clear that the right to marry someone of one’s own choosing (assuming that other person consents and meets other eligibility criteria – such as age), is a fundamental right.
While, at the time, the court, science, and society at large did not yet understand the nature of sexual-orientation (and homosexuality), today we have a MUCH more in-depth understanding of the innate, inherent, unchosen, and unchangeable nature of one’s sexual-orientation.
In light of this greater understanding and knowledge, it requires that we re-evaluate the notion of denying same-gender (gay) couples from enjoying their full due equality of marriage law.
Marriage law which is of as much importance, benefit, and value to same-gender couples and their families, as it is to opposite-gender couples and their families.
You can deny the realities of the world around us, and think we should only show deference and respect to some fanciful utopian ideal that has never really existed, however that is not only going to harm and do a disservice to gay people and their families, but it is also harming and doing a disservice to us, to our society.
January 21st, 2012 | 1:27 am
Blake, all your arguments have been tried before in various courts of law. A growing number of them are finding those arguments to be fallacious; most recently in the ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker ruling in a Federal District Court of the 9th Circuit, on Proposition 8. Soon to likely be upheld by the 9th Circuit court of appeals, and ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court.
I would strongly urge you to read his ruling in that case. You can even read the trial transcripts or watch some re-enactments produced from those transcripts. To date, the anti equality crowd have been fighting tooth-and-nail to keep the video tape of the trial from being made available to the public.
The Constitutional right in question is every American citizen’s right to equal treatment of (access to, protection of) the law. Laws cannot discriminate against, disadvantage, or apply unequal treatment to any citizen, based on any characteristics of an individual or group, unless there are valid rational justifications for doing so.
Furthermore, laws cannot have a strictly religious basis. They must contain a rational secular basis to be valid.
What this all means, is that so long as laws are written that provide legal civil marriage to certain people, then without a valid rational secular basis to deny it, they must give it to all people that meet other Constitutionally permissible criteria (such as restrictions on age, not having an existing marriage, not already sharing a close familial relationship, etc…)
Gender and sexual-orientation are NOT valid reasons to deny someone equality of marriage law. You may think the claim that because a man and a woman are permitted to be married, then there is no gender discrimination, but that is incorrect. For example, given a woman, if only a man is allowed to marry her, then that is discriminating against any woman that might want to marry her, based strictly on her gender.
Various other attempted justifications revolve around the same issues you’ve tried to bring up, like procreation and family. However, the courts are finding that all the anti-equality justifications fall into one of two categories.
Either they are justifications that apply equally well to same-gender couples (for instance all the benefits of marriage for a couple apply equally well to same-gender couples, also gay couples can and do raise children).
OR, they are justifications that are not universally applied to all opposite-gender couples (for instance any opposite-gender couple can get married for ANY reason at all, and they neither have to prove any intention, willingness, desire, or even capacity to procreate or raise children).
Your attempts at defining what are ‘legitimate’ families, is an insult to millions of Americans who are living in a wide variety of family structures. And your ideas are considered illegitimate by the State and most people. The American people know what a family looks like, in all its diversity, and they do not, for the most part, subscribe to your narrow views on what a family is (being based strictly on biology or the latest interpretation du jour of your particular religion).
By-the-way, one’s spouse is considered one’s family, one’s immediate next-of-kin. For someone who is part of a married couple with no children, when for instance asked “who is your closest family-member to contact in case of an emergency”, will name their spouse. They aren’t told, “No, sorry your spouse isn’t a ‘family’ member unless you also have children.” One’s spouse IS family.
Also a same-gender couple, living as spouses, raising one or more children together, ARE a family. And the vast majority of Americans, if asked, “is this a family” would say YES, and they would also say YES, if asked “Is this a legitimate family”. Even those who might not approve of it, generally will acknowledge that they are a family, and a legitimate one.
It’s clear why the anti-equality side IS inevitably destined to lose this debate. You can’t insult, diminish, and denigrate same-gender couples and their families without also insulting the whole idea of what Americans understand ‘family’ to be. You can’t insult the profound transcendent motivation of a gay couple to raise, protect, support, love, and nurture an adopted child in need of a loving home and loving parents, without insulting opposite-gender adopters and their adopted children.
The evidence is flowing in. Children raised by gay couples are just as well-adjusted and physically and emotionally healthy as their straight-couple raised peers. And they are DRAMATICALLY better off than being raised in an orphanage or bounced around from foster home to foster home.
You’ve already admitted now that you have a religious motivation for your opposition to same-gender marriage and adoption (usually such people try hard not to expose that hand). You seem to think that gay couples having the right to legal civil State marriage, impinges on your religious beliefs on what marriage and family is. That is incorrect. Unless your religion gets its ‘beliefs’ from what the State tells them they are.
Of course, in America we don’t base our laws on what any particular (even the majority) religious belief happens to be. Our government was purposely set up to be secular, with laws based on reasoned, rational, justifications. This IS the way to protect people as individuals who can hold a wide variety of beliefs, or no religious belief at all.
Nothing the State says can dictate what any religion believes. If a church says marriage is one thing, then they are welcome to that belief. So long as they are not conducting for profit commerce with the general public, then they are immune from anti-discrimination laws, and only their general public commerce is subject to such laws.
As far as what is legally considered marriage based on civil law, THAT is the State’s domain, and that is subject to the U.S. Constitution which lays forth citizens right to equal treatment of the law.
January 21st, 2012 | 3:22 am
I do not doubt that the four Republican New York state senators who voted for same-sex marriage are convinced of the rightness of their votes.
I do.
January 21st, 2012 | 6:20 am
Blake the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 Loving vs. Virginia made clear that the right to marry someone of one’s own choosing (assuming that other person consents and meets other eligibility criteria – such as age), is a fundamental right.
Yes, but gays don’t meet reasonable eligibility criteria.
The eligibility criteria that prevents fraud is a legitimate form of eligibility criteria. Since there is no way for a gay couple to claim the procreative benefits of marriage (such as presumption of paternity) without fraud being involved, it is reasonable to deny gays the procreative benefits of marriage.
Gays like to compare themselves to infertile couples, but they’re not infertile as individuals, they’re infertile as couples. We cannot bar infertile individuals from marriage because that would be unconstitutional. But a man who isn’t infertile, but claims special rights because he wishes to make a child with an inappropriate partner, is not the same – and his argument does not provide sufficient justification for why he needs accommodations: he does not “need” accommodations, he just wants them – and for frivolous reasons.
Marriage is not about providing a satisfying sex life – as Boonton so helpfully pointed out, you don’t need to marry to have sex. The only thing you do need to marry to do is found a family, and gay couples can’t do this without engaging in parasitism and fraud. Therefore, there is no reason why we ought to give them society’s blessings, benefits, and subsidies. Parasitism and fraud are not Constitutional rights.
January 21st, 2012 | 6:25 am
Note that if we allowed gays to marry, we’d have more cases like the Miller custody trial – where a woman who rightfully should be classed as a stepparent is being treated as a parent, even though she is in no sense a parent and it is not in the child’s best interest to treat this woman as a parent.
The entire case demonstrates how the child’s best interest is sacrificed to the “right” of this woman to have a relationship with “her child”, even though her claim to parenthood is based on a fraudulent use of the presumption of paternity.
One of the obligations of marriage is fidelity. That is why marriage is able to grant a presumption of paternity – it is directly linked to the corresponding obligation, which is to not go around making babies with anyone other than your spouse. Gays are not willing to accept the limits and restrictions of marriage, so they have no basis to claim their relationship is “the same as” marriage.
If they were willing to accept the limits and restrictions that come with family law as it currently stands, they would have to accept that their “family” is doomed to be barren – because they cannot make a baby together and they cannot provide a healthy relationship for a family. The conflict here is that what the parents want and what is good and healthy for a family don’t match. It is not at all clear why the rights of the gay man are worth so much more than the rights of the other family members – starting with the child, who is to be denied legal rights (including explicit legal protections) that other children enjoy.
January 21st, 2012 | 9:27 am
. . . the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 Loving vs. Virginia made clear that the right to marry someone of one’s own choosing (assuming that other person consents and meets other eligibility criteria – such as age), is a fundamental right.
Rather Loving vs. Virginia challenged the Racial Integrity Act which made it illegal for a females and males of different races to breed and bring forth offspring. The right to marry, as mentioned in the ruling, is the right to procreate.
January 21st, 2012 | 9:29 am
It was surprising that the OWS moment did not address the NY Legislature; after all it does seem that it is truly representative in its “cash-flow-for-conscience” stance.
January 21st, 2012 | 11:35 am
Again Blake, your insults to gay people, gay couples, and their families (though seemingly unintentional) are not going to win you many converts. But it seems those insults are fundamental to your argument, so I don’t think you can so easily refine your message.
You should keep in mind that more and more people in our society are learning who gay people are, and they are not the caricature that the anti-gay crowd likes to portray; the flaming scantily-clad bejeweled parade-float dancing crotch grinding hedonist (which as we all know share straight counterparts at Spring-Break, Mardi Gras, etc..)
No, instead more and more people are beginning to realize that gay people are quite generally your average everyday person, in every possible diversity that we known straight people to be. They are our friends, our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, our associates, our athletes, our entertainers, our soldiers, our heroes, our teachers, our mentors, our role-models, our leaders, and our fellow countrymen and women. Like most of us, they lead average everyday normal lives with the same ups, downs, and mundaneness that we all live with; the only difference being that who they are attracted to, and the person to whom they may share a deep abiding and intimate love with happens to be of the same gender.
We don’t live in your sterile vanilla utopia of a world where everyone follows the same rote humanity-denying rules and expectations set forth by your religion.
There are over a hundred thousand orphaned, abandoned, parentless children in the United States alone, over 150 million around the world, and it is clear that heterosexual couples (most of whom can have their own children) are not lining up around the block to adopt these kids and give them loving nurturing homes.
Gay couples are there to help fill that void, and as previously stated, children raised by gay couples do JUST as well as those raised by straight couples, and markedly better than those who are never adopted into a loving home.
There is absolutely NO good reason to deny these children loving homes with loving parents who are legally married for the most secure and stable position from which to maintain and support a family.
Do me (and yourself) a favor. Google “Phoenix gay dads adopt, raise 12 happy kids”. Read all six pages of that article.
January 21st, 2012 | 2:32 pm
“Note that if we allowed gays to marry, we’d have more cases like the Miller custody trial”
Further note the rise in interracial custody trials after the acceptance of interracial marriage and the rise in Roman Catholics getting involved in custody trials after the rise in interfaith marriage.
“Gays are not willing to accept the limits and restrictions of marriage, so they have no basis to claim their relationship is “the same as” marriage”
Some gays accept the limits and restrictions, some do not. It is a lie to pretend that all gays don’t or that all haven’t.
“they cannot provide a healthy relationship for a family”
Of course, they can provide a healthy relationship for a family. It is a lie to pretend they cannot.
“the child, who is to be denied legal rights (including explicit legal protections) that other children enjoy”
This claim is preposterous. Children of gay parents enjoy the exact same legal rights as every other child.
January 21st, 2012 | 5:29 pm
This claim is preposterous. Children of gay parents enjoy the exact same legal rights as every other child.
No, they don’t.
All fifty states have recognized that children have the following rights (all of which are incompatible with the basic premises upon which gay marriage relies):
- the right to a relationship with both biological parents
- the right to be supported by both biological parents
- the right to have the above relationships severed only when it is in the child’s best interest to do so
- the right to have a judge oversee the process whereby a child’s parental ties are severed
By allowing gay people to “marry” – without actually expecting them to honor the obligations of marriage – we are taking those rights away from a child.
This would not be an issue if gays were expected to honor the marriage contract – that is, the obligations part instead of just the collecting benefits part. If gays are to be granted marriage rights, we need to re-establish adultery laws, and create stiff penalties for fraudulently claiming a child you know to not be your own child.
Not only is it adultery and fraud, it also needs to be recognized as child abuse.
The Miller custody case would not be happening right now if the child’s best interest had been protected. In fact, most “gay families” today would not exist if the child’s interests were granted the same weight as the gays with the loud agenda and the “identity politics”.
Children can’t protest on their own behalf. They rely on us grownups to protect them from exploitation. What gays are doing to them is exploitation.
January 21st, 2012 | 5:35 pm
Of course, they can provide a healthy relationship for a family. It is a lie to pretend they cannot.
No they can’t.
They have to force the child into pretending that motherlessness and fatherlessness are not traumatic.
Motherlessness and fatherlessness cause major issues with grief, identity issues, relationships, and trust issues.
Repressed grief is harmful. Not being allowed to feel the things that are normal to a situation is harmful. Having to repress normal, healthy feelings because your “second daddy” might lock himself in the dressing room and pop Pirin tablets is not healthy. The fantasy that a stepfather is “just as good as” a mother is not healthy. It is harmful.
There is already a name and means of judging this particular form of child abuse. It is called parentification.
January 21st, 2012 | 5:38 pm
There is absolutely NO good reason to deny these children loving homes with loving parents who are legally married for the most secure and stable position from which to maintain and support a family.
If they were loving parents, they would want what is best for their child – a mother and a father, because both relationships are valuable, and are valued.
But that is not what gays do. They justify depriving their kids of something precious, and they say it’s okay because “There are over a hundred thousand orphaned, abandoned, parentless children in the United States alone, over 150 million around the world” – there are orphans in the world, so that makes it okay to give your child less instead of giving your child everything he deserves.
Loving parents don’t talk that way. Loving parents put their kids’ needs before silly political agendas.
January 21st, 2012 | 5:40 pm
Some gays accept the limits and restrictions, some do not. It is a lie to pretend that all gays don’t or that all haven’t.
The gays who are arranging for “coparenting” contracts with members of the opposite sex are obviously willing to accept the limits and restrictions.
The gays who want to pretend that a child “can have two mommies” are not.
Children don’t have “two mommies”. Two mommies is not as good as an intact family, and neither parent is expendable.
If you think gender “doesn’t matter”, then YOU make the sacrifice and marry someone who is not your preferred gender. But of course if gender really “doesn’t matter”, then gay marriage wouldn’t be necessary, would it? As long as your spouse is “loving” it wouldn’t matter if it were a man or a woman.
January 22nd, 2012 | 12:12 am
Blake
Note that if we allowed gays to marry, we’d have more cases like the Miller custody trial – where a woman who rightfully should be classed as a stepparent is being treated as a parent, even though she is in no sense a parent and it is not in the child’s best interest to treat this woman as a parent.
You seem to continue to ignore a rather big problem, the Miller custody trial did not involve a gay couple that was even married! Note in that case, though, there was no ‘fraudulent’ use of parenthood as a presumption of paternity. The ruling found that the child had bonded with the woman and breaking that bond would be harmful to the child. There was no ‘presumption of paternity’. If the child had not bonded with the woman, there would be no case.
I’ve warned people over and over again Blake is the type of relativist who would seek to destroy what he claims he wants to save. Note how in his analysis of this case, he puts the child dead last. All that really counts is the bioparents and if the bioparent wants to disrupt the child because her lifestyle changes, well that trumps the child’s well being.
It would be fine if he just said this but he won’t. He will instead pretend to be fighting for children when the truth is they are little more than means to an end for him.
SteveP
Rather Loving vs. Virginia challenged the Racial Integrity Act which made it illegal for a females and males of different races to breed and bring forth offspring. The right to marry, as mentioned in the ruling, is the right to procreate.
Prisoners serving life sentences who are not even allowed to have sex with their spouses are allowed to marry. Those with histories of child abuse who would never be allowed to have a custody of a child, even a biological one they create, are not barred from marriage. The facts do not support your assertion.
January 22nd, 2012 | 11:48 am
I’ve warned people over and over again Blake is the type of relativist who would seek to destroy what he claims he wants to save.
Maybe you should spend less time concocting ad hominem arguments and actually turn your serious attention to the points in my argument that you currently have not managed to rebut.
Hysterics and name-calling won’t change the validity of the objections I raise. You need to do a better job addressing those objections, instead of focusing your attention on marginalizing me. I am easily marginalized, but the truth isn’t so easy to shunt off – it has a funny way of refusing to be ignored, at least in the long run.
January 22nd, 2012 | 11:50 am
Are YOU willing to marry your daughter off to a gay man?
I would rather have my daughter be married to a gay man who is honest about who he is and what he wants, if the alternative would be to have my daughter used by that same gay man – used and exploited and discarded, so that he can take my grandchild and “give” it to someone else.
January 22nd, 2012 | 12:33 pm
The more Blake speaks, the more he helps make the case that those who oppose same-gender marriage equality are NOT actually concerned about the best interests of children.
Since he likes to characterize what gay couples are seeking (mischaracterize that is), let me take a crack at characterizing what Blake and the anti-equality crowd are all about.
There is no doubt that the driving force behind the anti-marriage-equality pushback and road blocks are fundamentalist Christians and other fundamentalist religions. If you look at all of the organizations which are financing and spewing rhetoric against same-gender marriage equality you find that they ALL have a fundamentalist evangelical agenda, which not only includes significant anti-marriage-equality platforms, but broad anti-gay platforms as well.
(This is unlike those who are advocating for and pushing for same-gender marriage equality, which not only includes gay rights organizations, but civil rights organizations, the major mainstream legal, medical, psychological, sociological, pediatric, and adoption organizations, major businesses, 80+ mayors from America’s largest towns and cities, and numerous moderate to liberal religious groups.)
So given that anti-marriage-equality is exclusively a fundamentalist religious cause (which takes advantage of past societal indoctrination against gay people and old ignorances and fears – which are fortunately waning), and given that fundamentalist religions have consistently tried to legislatively impose their religious beliefs, doctrine, tenets, and values onto the whole of the American people (where they reasonably had a chance to do so), and given that those who hold fundamentalist religious views tend to be the most insecure in their beliefs, where anything that contradicts them is seen as a threat to their beliefs, it is not difficult to conclude that their fight against same-gender marriage equality is ALL about societal and State propping up of, and endorsement of, their religious beliefs.
They would LIKE for science, sociology, and real world experience to validate their beliefs, but they simply don’t. And, in a way that makes it even MORE important that the State impose their religious view, because it would demonstrate that the State shows deference to their religious beliefs (their god) regardless of what reasoned, rational, sociological science has to say on the matter. It is important to obey God, no matter what. Just like Abraham KNEW it was terribly wrong to kill his son, but was willing to go through with it anyhow because it was what God commanded (despite his hand being stayed later).
So… there ya go. That is MY analysis of what is actually going on with the anti-marriage-equality crowd, despite all their protestations (and even some who truly believe) that it is all about the best interest of children.
This considering much of the time there are not even children involved, and when there are, all indications are that their anti-equality efforts are HARMFUL to children (the children of gay couples, children that could be adopted by gay couples, children who realize they are gay, and children whose homophobia causes them to do terrible things – see the McInerney/King case.)
I am thankful though that our society really IS smart enough to catch on that the anti-equality side is in fact wrong, and are the one’s who are causing real demonstrable harm in the lives of people, in the lives of children, and to our society. Slowly but surely things are changing for the better.
January 22nd, 2012 | 1:00 pm
I totally agree with you Blake. Also, The arguments being presented here are the same tired arguments that the gay enablers always use. Fact is, men having sex with men leads to AIDS, period. Two men having sex is called sodomy, not marriage. If we allow them to keep indoctrinating our children with the idea that they can marry their same sex friend when they grow up, that sounds like genocide. My favorite uncle died at the age of 33 but he looked more like 63 because of AIDS. My cousin was gay but because he wanted children, he got married to a woman but kept having gay sex on the side and now he has to wear a colostomy bag due to anal cancer, which by the way is one of the 15 cancers specific to gay men because of the type of sex that they have. America better wake up to this threat/
January 22nd, 2012 | 3:15 pm
Glen,
“Do me (and yourself) a favor. Google “Phoenix gay dads adopt, raise 12 happy kids”. Read all six pages of that article”
Thanks for the suggestion. The article was a great thing to read after service today. Very inspiring. I wish the article said more about the Hams’ support group. It mentioned some friends, but I wonder whether the Hams are religious and whether they’ve ever visited a reconciling congregation. Our congregation has one gay couple and I know another in another congregation that have adopted children from foster care. Both have been excellent parents and are to be much admired. The couple in our congregation have helped my wife and I as we have navigated both child rearing and raising adopted children.
The stereotypes about what gay individuals are like, what gay couples are like, and what gay parents are like, are just that—stereotypes.
January 22nd, 2012 | 3:32 pm
“All fifty states have recognized that children have the following rights (all of which are incompatible with the basic premises upon which gay marriage relies”
You said, “legal rights.” There is no “legal right” to a “relationship with both biological parents.” Try to keep your terms straight. Definitions matter.
“They have to force the child into pretending that motherlessness and fatherlessness are not traumatic”
No, they don’t. Can you tell the difference between the lie you made “They have to force the child” and the truth that “Some parents decide to force their child”?
“If they were loving parents, they would want what is best for their child – a mother and a father, because both relationships are valuable, and are valued”
Read the article that Glen referred to. It reveals most of your claims to be lies. The Hams adopted an entire biologically-related family that straight parents were willing to break up into pieces. You accuse gays of not being loving parents, but listen to this quote from the article: “In a system in which siblings are split up because someone wants a little girl but not a preteen boy, or a baby but not a third-grader, Steven and Roger knew they had to at least try to bring these children together.” While straight parents were trying to create the perfect little family and were willing to divide a family, the Hams were willing to do what was best for the children.
Here’s a link to the article: http://www.azcentral.com/news/azliving/articles/2011/05/02/20110502gay-dads-ham-family-12-adopted-kids.html?page=1
“The gays who are arranging for “coparenting” contracts with members of the opposite sex are obviously willing to accept the limits and restrictions”
I’m glad to hear you admit the truth for a change. If you know this to be true, why do you insist on smearing the entire group for the actions of some?
January 22nd, 2012 | 4:19 pm
Glen,
“So given that anti-marriage-equality is exclusively a fundamentalist religious cause (which takes advantage of past societal indoctrination against gay people and old ignorances and fears – which are fortunately waning)”
I think your account is one dimensional and gathers under one word “fundamentalism” much that isn’t at all fundamentalist.
It is impossible to read the Bible and come away believing that Jews and Christians ever valued homosexuality in any way. And it’s impossible to come away from any study of early Church history and not be impressed by the emphasis Christians placed on morality, especially sexual morality and family. The West’s concern with human rights grows directly out of this history.
While gay rights seem obvious to anyone who has embraced human rights, gay rights are not obvious to any thinking, serious Christian. It’s not merely a matter of jettisoning what you call “old ignorances and fears”; it’s a matter of understanding the meaning of centuries of Christian teaching and wisdom. Much of that wisdom was tossed overboard in the last century, and Christians and the West in general are slowly recapturing that wisdom.
For example, many Christians who embraced women’s rights went too far in accepting casual sex and abortion. Read sometime about the struggles within the Quaker Church as they realized that they—who had provided one of the strongest Christian witnesses to peace—now found themselves supporting the slaughter of children. Groups like Catholics for the Common Good are doing some of the most important work there is as they chart a path between the inane standoff between pro-life and pro-choice groups. To do so, they are drawing on the ancient wisdom of the Church.
Those churches that are feeling their way toward the acceptance of homosexuality need to make sure they don’t repeat mistakes like those made around abortion. Strict sexual fidelity remains key to any Christian understanding of gay marriage, and the rejection of donorship and surrogacy remain important values.
January 22nd, 2012 | 4:43 pm
Noelle,
“Fact is, men having sex with men leads to AIDS, period.”
I’m in my fifties, and I’ve had gay friends my whole life. Because I only associate with people who are wholesome, I have no friends who have contracted HIV. Not one. The same is true about anal cancer.
AIDS is not a homosexual disease; it is a disease of promiscuity. Those who are not promiscuous will not contract it. In accepting homosexuality, Christians must not accept promiscuity. Some of the ancient wisdom remains wise.
“Two men having sex is called sodomy, not marriage.”
Marriage is not about sex. It is about commitment and creating a new family outside of the family you were born into. Genesis 2:4 is clear that the union that brings two people together is based in the feeling that you found a part of you that was missing. The consequence of finding that missing part is that you are willing to leave your birth family behind and create a new family.
“My cousin was gay but because he wanted children, he got married to a woman but kept having gay sex on the side and now he has to wear a colostomy bag due to anal cancer”
It would have been so much better if you cousin had found the right man and adopted. What closed off that choice for him? Was he afraid that you and the rest of your family would reject him? Does your family thus carry some responsibility for his fate?
Anal sex, by the way, is indeed a dangerous practice. The NIH reports that one third of gay men don’t practice it at all.
Of course, lesbian sex doesn’t carry any of these dangers, but somehow the anti-homosexuality movement never wants to talk about them.
January 22nd, 2012 | 5:54 pm
Michael is correct.
Many of the problems that gay people suffer from are not only due to societal stigmatization, prejudice, bigotry, discrimination (which cause depression and its associated problems), but also due to not being incorporated into society’s normalizing and civilizing institutions, like marriage.
The fact of the matter is, gay people are not going away, and we have learned that sexual-orientation is something that is an innate part of a person, that is unchosen, and not generally changeable. It is in the BEST interest of our society to encourage gay people, like straight people, to pair up and form (hopefully) life-long committed monogamous unions.
Marriage has been found to make people, on average, happier, healthier, more stable, more secure, more capable, more productive, and less likely to ever become a burden on the State. These things apply whether the couple be same-gender or opposite-gender.
Marriage also creates a more stable and secure platform from which to raise children. And it’s of great value to our society to have loving committed couples who are willing to pick up the slack to raise, protect, love, and nurture those children who would otherwise not have such parents due to various circumstances.
Not only is it believed, but evidence is starting to come in, that shows that the more gay people are accepted and treated with dignity and respect, and the more they are then expected to abide by the same rules of civilization that straight people are expected to live by (such as monogamy and marriage), the better THEY become as individuals, couples, and families, and the better our society becomes.
The fact of the matter is, those who TRULY believe in marriage, should be doing everything to encourage more people to choose marriage (straight or gay).
January 22nd, 2012 | 8:26 pm
Boonton: Again, thank you for the response and, again, I am not interested in your tangent.
January 22nd, 2012 | 9:36 pm
Many of the problems that gay people suffer from are not only due to societal stigmatization, prejudice, bigotry, discrimination (which cause depression and its associated problems), but also due to not being incorporated into society’s normalizing and civilizing institutions, like marriage.
They bring it on by their own actions – specifically, denying reality, and attempting to bully others into denying reality.
If gays want acceptance, they have accept that they must abide by the same limits that other religious zealots are expected to abide by. I will defend their right to hold whatever weird beliefs they want, but they go too far when they claim unreasonable rights such as the right to force others to embrace their beliefs even when that means forcing people to lie. Or the the right to mistreat children.
Stop trying to use being gay as a blank check. Accept that you have exactly as much right to your beliefs as everyone else – no more. Accept that rights are linked to responsibilities, and stop trying to have one but not the other. If you want to complain about bigotry, you ought to stop practicing it yourself first.
January 22nd, 2012 | 9:41 pm
“The gays who are arranging for “coparenting” contracts with members of the opposite sex are obviously willing to accept the limits and restrictions”
I’m glad to hear you admit the truth for a change. If you know this to be true, why do you insist on smearing the entire group for the actions of some?
It is the “gay rights” community that causes this effect – by pretending to speak for the whole community, even though they don’t, they make it impossible linguistically to separate “gay people” (meaning people who experience homosexual impulses) from “the gay community” (that is, people who share a radical humanist agenda and wish to push their views on others in abusive ways).
If you don’t like the conflation, then please start challenging the so-called “gay rights community”, and insist that they use less dishonest language, as their attempted manipulation is interfering with the ability to have a dialogue.
January 23rd, 2012 | 10:51 am
“They bring it on by their own actions – specifically, denying reality, and attempting to bully others into denying reality”
Are you saying that before the gay rights movement, gays were not stigmatized, discriminated against, or bullied? That claim is preposterous.
“It is the “gay rights” community that causes this effect – by pretending to speak for the whole community”
But you wrote the sentence that claimed that “Gays are not willing to accept the limits and restrictions of marriage.” The gay rights community didn’t write that sentence. You did. You need to take responsibility for that.
January 23rd, 2012 | 9:53 pm
Are you saying that before the gay rights movement, gays were not stigmatized, discriminated against, or bullied?
If you are trying to whip out the victim card to construct an argumentum ad misericordium (since whether gays are bullied has nothing to do with the argument at hand), you need to stick with today, not some mythical timeless pool of victimhood.
I read in USA Today a year or so ago that we’d reached a landmark: more Mormons than gays were experiencing harassment. Congratulations; “Bash Back!” and other gay “rights” organizations have done their job.
January 23rd, 2012 | 10:01 pm
But you wrote the sentence that claimed that “Gays are not willing to accept the limits and restrictions of marriage.”
They’re not.
If they were, they would understand that by choosing to marry someone inappropriate for having children with, their “marriage” is doomed to be barren.
“Gay Rights” in this context is not about the right to not get beaten up, but about the “right” to pick and choose which obligations gays feel like honoring.
Now it may be true that gays genuinely derive less pleasure from the usual obligations that are part of founding a family. They aren’t going to enjoy making the baby – or honoring their child’s other parent – nearly as much as a hetero would.
But it does not necessarily follow that because they don’t feel what other people feel in similar circumstances, that they are automatically entitled to rearrange anything and everything until their feelings are accommodated.
The only way this can be made to seem logical is by zooming in on how gays “feel”, with intense focus on the “feeling” of wanting something and not being able to have it – while, at the same time, using a camera blur to disconnect everyone else’s feelings, so as to create the impression that only the feelings of these gay people are involved, and nobody else is affected.
Really, once you see past the trick, it’s hard to understand how you ever fell for something so cheap and blatant and openly dishonest.
January 23rd, 2012 | 10:53 pm
“If you are trying to whip out the victim card”
I’m not. You are.
You responded to Glen’s comment that “gay people suffer from societal stigmatization, prejudice, bigotry, discrimination” by saying that “They bring it [meaning societal stigmatization, prejudice, bigotry, discrimination] on by their own actions.”
I’m merely asking whether you are seriously claiming that gays are stigmatized and discriminated against today because they are asking for their rights. You seem to be suggesting that if they were not asking for these rights, they would be living in peace and harmony. Such a claim is ridiculous.
January 23rd, 2012 | 11:04 pm
“They’re not.”
Following out your train of logic seems to tax even you.
You said that “gays who are arranging for “coparenting” contracts with members of the opposite sex are obviously willing to accept the limits and restrictions.”
But now you’re repeating an earlier claim that “gays are not willing to accept the limits and restrictions of marriage.” So which is it? Are you going to persist in an obvious falsehood about how ALL gays behave, or are you going to return to your previous brief moment of honesty and admit that some gays do respect those limits?
January 24th, 2012 | 9:33 am
The evidence is flowing in. Children raised by gay couples are just as well-adjusted and physically and emotionally healthy as their straight-couple raised peers.
That’s not what the evidence says – even though the tests are overwhelmingly run by partisans, focuses entirely on irrelevant questions, and uses highly suspect methods.
Interviews with the kids and the opinions of psychologists are not in any way adjusted for motive, for instance, and what exactly does it tell us about gay parents when tests avoid looking for things like grief and “taboo” problems, issues with same- and opposite-sex identity, relationships, bonding, and trust issues, etc. and focus entirely on questions that aren’t even known to be correlated with good parenting?
What does it really tell us about the overall health of the family if it proves that kids raised by lesbians score well on traits that just happened to be valued by lesbians, but not by conservatives? It tells us who wrote the test, not what it means. And even things that seem neutral really aren’t, upon closer inspection: studies have found liberal kids have an advantage in GPA contests over conservative kids, because their values and priorities are in harmony with their liberal teachers (of course, the people who do these studies don’t describe it this way – they say that the evidence proves that left wing family structures “are better at cultivating academic achievement”, which just further proves what’s wrong with these studies masquerading as objective while pushing a blatantly partisan agenda).
Not to mention, of course, that these kids are all raised by parents who are self-selected, who know not only that they’re being watched but also what they’re being watched for. Another thing these studies conspicuously fail to account for: “teaching to the test”.
And yet, even so, the evidence does not suggest these kids are the same. There are in fact differences.
One difference that gays love to crow about is that these kids are “more mature”. This is one of the reasons I claim that we’ve already demonstrated that the children of gays suffer from a known form of child abuse called “parentification”.
Parentification where the child is forced to “grow up” too fast, to “take care of” their parents either physically or emotionally – an inversion of roles. I presented the fictional example from the film “Birdcage”, if you recall – Val having to grow up fast because he has to learn how to dodge his infantile stepfather’s emotional neediness, and has to learn how to do things like lying to his teachers so as to protect his parents from situations they find uncomfortable. In fact, the whole plot of this film revolved around this dilemma – the crisis that triggers the film’s plot is not that Val lied about his family (he’s been doing that all his life, apparently) but that for the first time, he lied for his own sake rather than theirs – he prioritized his OWN comfort level (and expected his parents to do for him what he’d been doing for them since first grade).
Of course that’s just a film and I would hope that real-life gay parents aren’t so blatantly abusive toward their child. But I have seen the same problem in real-world gay families. The children are taught from birth to prioritize their parents’ political agenda – enforced with insinuations that if their parents’ political agenda fails, the evil religious people will come persecute the whole family, Nazi-style (which is itself not exactly a healthy parenting style, deliberately instilling anxieties in your child to make said child easier to manipulate).
But, yes, any test that shows that the children of gays are “more mature” or “more well-adjusted” also flag those children as probably being “parentified” – that maturity comes at a cost: by being forced to accept inappropriate responsibilities at too young an age, the child’s growth is stunted in other ways (just as you’d expect from feeding steroids to make a chicken grow fast, fast growth does not equal healthy growth). Parentified children are prone to all sorts of problems in later life, so I look forward to the day when researchers tackle this particular question – hopefully using the same kids from the earlier studies.
Another way in which kids differ: they are more likely to experiment with homosexuality themselves.
But even if the claim that the kids are not shown to be harmed is true it does not change the fact that rights are not contingent upon proof of harm, but on the recognition of things people have reason to value. Even if you could prove that these kids are not harmed – and you still have a few million variables left, and even then you’d need at least three generations to really get data of the sort required to meet a “child’s best interest” standard – even if you could prove all of this, it doesn’t change the fact that you are deliberately and unnecessarily depriving them of something they have reason to value.
So even if your case were proven (and it’s not), you still need to explain how it is that the right to have a recognized spouse is not only important, but so important that we need to make major accommodations so that you can have exactly the sort of spouse you want – but having a mother isn’t important at all?
January 24th, 2012 | 9:34 am
all indications are that their anti-equality efforts are HARMFUL to children (the children of gay couples, children that could be adopted by gay couples, children who realize they are gay, and children whose homophobia causes them to do terrible things – see the McInerney/King case.)
If you stopped trying to use your kids as meat shields, they wouldn’t get hurt.
January 24th, 2012 | 9:37 am
“If you are trying to whip out the victim card”
I’m not. You are.
Was a response to the attempted red herring, above (that gays are bullied and therefore we have to give them whatever they want).
Gays shouldn’t be bullied. Nobody should be bullied. Whether or not people who deliberately flout social norms and laws have a right to expect not to face consequences is another story – but whether or not Oscar Wilde was in fact an innocent victim who did nothing at all (!) to bring his own downfall onto himself, the fact that they are bullied does not grant them the right to make all manner of unrelated claims. Gays are trying to write themselves a blank check.
As far as me playing the victim card, yes, I am claiming victimhood (though not for myself): these kids ARE victims. They are victims of exploitation.
January 24th, 2012 | 9:45 am
Marriage has been found to make people, on average, happier, healthier, more stable, more secure, more capable, more productive, and less likely to ever become a burden on the State. These things apply whether the couple be same-gender or opposite-gender.
Actually, no.
To the extent that we have evidence, the evidence suggests that gays and lesbians are WAY more likely to divorce and have unstable families than heteros.
And even among heteros, marriages are not all equal. (Interesting to note that Unitarian Universalist ministers appear to be especially prone to divorce.)
Your vision of “marriage” – the “liberated” one (do people ever stop to really consider what exactly the sexual revolution “liberated” people from?) – is all about letting go of exactly those aspects of marriage that confer the benefits.
Based on the values expressed in justification for the union, one would expect gay marriages to be far more prone to promiscuity, drama, fickleness, and all the instability that putting your faith in unstable constructs like “choice” brings. And this is exactly what we have seen so far.
Compare the statistics yourself: look at gay marriage in northern European states as opposed to gays who marry lesbians in Israel, and tell me which families are more solid and sound.
Marriage leads to stability, health, and happiness precisely because it is not founded on the fickle, hedonistic values, materialistic selfishness, and unrealistic beliefs “gay marriage” is founded on.
January 24th, 2012 | 2:31 pm
“That’s not what the evidence says – even though the tests are overwhelmingly run by partisans, focuses entirely on irrelevant questions, and uses highly suspect methods”
It’s impossible to figure out what’s being said here. To say, “That’s not what the evidence says” implies that you have some better source of evidence, but to say, “the tests are overwhelmingly run by partisans,” etc., suggests that all you have to rebut the evidence is doubt. You have no evidence at all.
“that gays are bullied and therefore we have to give them whatever they want”
I never made that argument. You might try responding to what I actually said.
“yes, I am claiming victimhood (though not for myself):”
Untrue. You routinely claim that you are being “forced” to do one thing or another. You claim all the time that you are a victim of gay rights, liberalism, Unitarians, science. And you want our sympathy.
“one would expect gay marriages to be far more prone to promiscuity, drama, fickleness, and all the instability that putting your faith in unstable constructs like “choice” brings.”
And yet none of the long-term gay relationships in my church congregation have demonstrated any of the things you mention. Couples have been together without promiscuity or drama for ten, fifteen, twenty, and even thirty-five years. Children have been raised, and the parents are still together. Before I joined the congregation, I know that one couple got together and then parted soon afterward, but that’s the only story I know. Being part of a small, intentional Christian community makes a difference, and that difference is part of the good news the faith teaches.
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