Gay Marriage, Part Deux

Wow. Friday’s Gay Marriage post only got a few comments the day of, but it certainly took off over the weekend. I read many of your comments with interest, and rather than respond to them over there, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and give the Official Moist Blog response as today’s post.

So let’s begin.

Papa d wrote:

Anti-homosexuality religionists… now lose the *legal* argument all over again the minute they claim things like ‘every child deserves to be raised by a mother and a father’ - since they are unwilling to take that statement to its natural conclusion and remove children from single, heterosexual parents.

That’s not my argument, although that may be because I am not an “anti-homosexuality religionist.” If you reread my initial post, you will search in vain for a religious justification for any part of my position. In fact, I think the LDS Church has been somewhat scattered over the years in its approach to homosexuality. That’s another discussion altogether, and I’m not interested in being diverted from the issue at hand.

I contend that the nuclear family, led by a mother and a father, is the ideal circumstance in which to raise children, and society at large has a vested interest in promoting that ideal by recognizing traditional marriage.

That does not mean that when we fall short of the ideal, children should be removed from gay parents, single parents, or the like. It also doesn’t mean that there aren’t outstanding gay parents or lousy heterosexual ones. At one time or another, all of us fall short of fail to live up ideals in every aspect of our lives, but that does not mean that we should abandon the ideals to make everyone feel good about themselves.

Even the most outstanding single parents, many of whom are single through no fault of their own, would be the first to admit that raising children with a spouse would be better for all concerned. Yet most gay couples insist that they’re the equivalent of a heterosexual couple in terms of child rearing, thereby reducing the difference between a mother and a father to nothing more than genitalia.

Jjrakman begins this way:

If gay folks want to get married, why in a nation that should prize Liberty above all else, is it an issue?

It isn’t. That’s my point. Gay folks can already get married, anyplace, anytime, anywhere. What they can’t do is redefine what marriage is.

Then jj gets more colorful:

So they want to call it marriage. Will calling it marriage make your penis shrivel into oblivion? Will it make your vagina vomit forth buckets of pea soup?

If not, then why would you give a s--t?

Lovely imagery, but it misses the point. Those who want to redefine marriage aren’t taking aim at my penis, which will survive the ordeal without incident. They’re taking aim at the institution of marriage itself, which is being diluted in a spirit of well-intentioned egalitarianism, thereby defeating the purpose for which it was established in the first place.

Whiteyebrows writes:

IMHO, the only compelling argument the pro-family faction has left is the "if we allow this then we have to allow bestiality, polygamy, et al." I think this is the only argument that will get enough heterosexuals concerned enough to be anti gay marriage.

That may be true, and it’s unfortunate. The state’s interest in preserving the traditional family should be self-evident. Those who think that marriage between two men is fine but marriage between a man and two women is beyond the pale are logically inconsistent. They’ve demonstrated a willingness to sell out marriage; they’re just haggling over the price.

The Wiz writes:

I see absolutely no reason to vote. Judges will do whatever they want regardless of what the voters say, so I don't even know why I bother anymore.

And I wish I had made that clearer in my initial post. Because if the state of California had, either by referendum or through their elected representatives, ratified this decision, I would be far less angry. My fury is twofold – I’m enraged by the abandonment of traditional marriage, but I’m even more disgusted by the fact that this was enacted by tyrannical despots masquerading as judges. They had no authority to do what they did, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Dawg chimes in to disagree:

Thomas Jefferson once said that democracy was nothing more than 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49.

So our founding fathers established a legal framework to insure checks and balances against mob rule. It's called "The Constitution". It is invoked when a law is passed that someone feels is discriminatory; the provisions of that new law are held up against the standards set by The Constitution and prior high-court decisions and, if it passes those tests, the law is upheld - and if it is found lacking the law is struck down.

Jefferson also thought the judiciary would likely be the weakest of the three branches, and he couldn’t have been more wrong. There are no checks and balances in place to reverse a judiciary that abides no limits to its authority. Even passing an amendment to the Constitution cannot constrain judges that ignore amendments they consider archaic or inconvenient. Reread the Tenth Amendment, for instance, and tell me the last time anyone on the Supreme Court bothered to pay attention to it.

This decision, by the way, uses lofty language to avoid finding a constitutionally reasoned justification for its overreaching, while the dissent cites the fact that there is no basis for the decision in either the state or federal constitutions. It may be that three dissenting justices agree with the policy implications of the decision but were bound by the constraints of law to enforce a statute they didn’t like. Which is exactly the way it was supposed to work.

This has nothing to do with what a person “feels is discriminatory.” Feelings should stay as far out of the equation as possible. A state constitution should mean what the plain language says it means, not what makes some dillweed in a black robe feel good about himself.

Dawg later writes:

"Change the Constitution". In other words, codify the discrimination and make it legal. The very idea should infuriate anyone interested in preserving the freedoms we all enjoy.

This is how distorted the debate has become. The fact that gays don’t want to get married under the current definition does not mean they are prevented from getting married. In any case, the nature of the institution is, to some degree, inherently discriminatory. Are those heterosexuals who are too hideously ugly to get a spouse being discriminated against, too?

Each of has equal rights and opportunities under the law. But blind people will never be airline pilots; deaf people will never be jazz clarinetists, and I will never have a Schwarzeneggerian physique. Life’s not fair. Deal with it.

Dawg adds:

Let's be honest. "Marriage" is already in trouble, and gays had nothing to do with it. It's meaning has already been diluted and made less potent - more than half of all marriages end in divorce - so you think allowing "gay marriage" will harm it further? Get real.

This is apples and oranges. The fact that there are lots of bad marriages does not argue for abandoning marriage as a societal ideal. Indeed, it demonstrates that the ideal still has power, because people can still recognize the difference between a good marriage and a bad one.

Oh, and then James gets into the act:

Our nation's identity is an emotionally charged topic right now. We are feeling the eruptive pains of puberty. Perhaps we cannot say now, as I could not say then in my adolescence, what foundational principle upon which we would want to base our evolving identity.

Sadly, I have no idea what this means. But - as Foodleking has announced on so many occasions - I have shared a bed with both James and Foodleking at the same time, so I probably shouldn’t be raising issues like this in the first place.

Welcome, James! Good to hear from you! How did you find me?