“for instance, they’d have to stop engaging in the tactic of switching back and forth to avoid questions they can’t answer.”

Your comment here goes to the heart of what is wrong with your style of argument. It is not gays who are switching back and forth; it is you. You take arguments made by one group of people and arguments made by another group, and then, because they support the same cause, you argue that they “switch back and forth” when it is really your lack of carefulness. It’s a little like arguing against Christianity because Catholics don’t agree with Baptists about the pope.

Take, for example, your claim about monogamy. Some gays believe in it and some do not, but you sling around sentences like “Gays are claiming now that their marriage will be just as monogamous as any hetero union” as if there were only one group who represents all gays.

Your arguments will make more sense the day you stop generalizing and confusing different groups of people.

I have repeatedly referred to the Touchstone Magazine article by Prof. Douglas Farrow of McGill University because it contains information neither widely known or understood by many people of good will on both sides of the question relating to marriage.

Prof. Farrow writes: Six years ago, when same-sex marriage became law in Canada, the new legislation quietly acknowledged this. In its consequential amendments section, Bill C-38 struck out the language of “natural parent,” “blood relationship,” etc. from all Canadian laws. Wherever they were found, these expressions were replaced with “legal parent,” “legal relationship,” and so forth.

That was strictly necessary. “Marriage” was now a legal fiction, a tool of the state, not a natural and pre-political institution recognized and in certain respects (age, consanguinity, consent, exclusivity) regulated by the state.

… same sex marriage does away with the very institution – the only institution we have – that exists precisely in order to support the natural family and to affirm its independence from the state. In doing so, it effectively makes every citizen a ward of the state, by turning his or her most fundamental human connections into legal constructs at the state’s gift and disposal.”

It is not possible to receive this new information lightly. I do not believe that most people of good will who desire fairness or civil rights for deep, exclusive friendships between two men or two women understand the possible consequences for the “most fundamental human connections” that we can share, those which descend from human mothers and fathers to their children and for which until now, have also conferred the most solemn responsibilities on the men and women from whose bodily union the children were born.

Perhaps this provides another perspective; another way of “seeing” this issue.

Blake,

Why in the world should one not bring up high (and increasing) out-of-wedlock birth rates when the topic is marriage and every child being raised by his or her biological parents? If the point of opposing same-sex marriage is to save traditional marriage from destruction, then surely the state of traditional marriage is of major concern. And if there are graver threats than same-sex marriage to traditional marriage, those who are trying to save traditional marriage would be wise to focus on the graver threats. This, it seems to me, is what David Blankenhorn is saying. If the fight against same-sex marriage isn’t actually doing anything that helps traditional marriage, then it is a waste of resources.

Now, of course, if you believe that the acceptance of same-sex marriage is not merely a threat to traditional marriage, but by its very nature the end of traditional marriage, then opposing same-sex marriage is the last-ditch battle to preserve traditional marriage. But I find it difficult to believe no one can enter into a traditional marriage if same-sex marriage is accepted. This would mean that there are no longer any traditional marriages in Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Argentina, and the other countries and localities that have legalized same-sex marriage.

It is a matter of battles versus the war. It seems to me perfectly possible to win the battle against same-sex marriage and lose the war to preserve traditional marriage.

You write as if you had deep-cover spies feeding you information about what goes on privately in gay circles.

I don’t know where you think I am “spying” on anyone. I am referring only to things said out in the open, and rather loudly.

The public debate on gay rights – like too many left wing debates these days – relies on the sense that you can get what you want through shortcuts: through lying, through manipulating, through dirty tricks and “end justifies the means” logic. I hate that logic, and I hate the tactics produced by that logic.

If gay rights activists were to pursue their end goals fairly and ethically, I’d support them – but then they’d have to be open to the legitimacy of my concerns about what they want (for instance, they’d have to stop engaging in the tactic of switching back and forth to avoid questions they can’t answer. They’d have to take a single position on questions like “Is marriage procreative?” and “Are genders interchangeable?”

Has anyone here taken that position? Certainly I have not.

There have been appeals to high divorce and/or illegitimacy rates on this blog, which is a variation of the same argument.

I think it likely that Prof. Farrow (McGill University, Montreal) would respond to your concerns if so requested by letter.

My guess is that there were space limitations placed on the original article.

Blake,

You write as if you had deep-cover spies feeding you information about what goes on privately in gay circles.

My opinion is he may consider marriage between a man and a woman as the linchpin of sexual ethics as they have previously been understood – and that removal of this unifying principle may cause the entire structure to collapse.

Right, that does seem to be his position. What struck me is that he seems to be at least peripherally aware of possible counterarguments, but (deliberately or not) doesn’t pursue them.

The idea that a “family” headed by two men (a father and a stepfather, in most cases) or two women (a mother and a stepmother, in most cases) is “just as good as” or “just the same as” or “equal to” a real biological family is problematic for both of these reasons.

Gays insist that gender is so important (when we are talking about what they claim they need) and yet gender doesn’t matter at all; it is spo totally irrelevant that men and women are literally interchangeable (when it’s about what they claim their kids don’t need).

In the same way, they insist that marriage is “not procreative” (when they are responding to claims that they are not appropriately procreative for marriage), yet they take offense at the idea that they should be treated differently just because they’re not procreative – surely they are entitled to acquire a child and be treated as any other couple. (Or, conversely, of course the “point” of marriage is about sexual pleasure – but how dare you say it’s about sexual pleasure?)

Gays are claiming now that their marriage will be just as monogamous as any hetero union. But privately, many are already asking why gays should have to live like heteros?

The arguments flip back and forth. They will argue one thing and then when circumstances change, they will argue its exact opposite.