In all the sound and fury spewed forth about the 'evils' of gay marriage and how it will 'weaken and destroy' 'regular' marriage, is how, exactly, would that work?
I want to ask every married heterosexual person who opposes gay marriage if they will love their spouse one iota less if Bob and Steve down the street are also married. I want to ask them if their marriage is so weak and based on so little that it would break apart if Lisa and Anna up the block got married. Beacuse I simply don't understand. If you are married to someone and committed to them, how is that committment affected AT ALL by what someone else in some other marriage is doing?
Even further, how is allowing more marriages to happen going to weaken marriage?
I really don't care who else is married or what they are doing. Such things have zero effect on my marriage. So that makes me think that those people loudly protesting are just doing so out of hatred and nothing else. But I'd like to ask all of the questions above to those who oppose gay marriage - and I think those questions should be brought up every time the topic is discussed. I think those critics need to be challened, point blank: Will your marriage break up as a result of allowing gay marriage, and if so, is your spouse aware of how little you value your committment to him or her that you'd allow such a thing to come between you?
Reminder
12 years ago
8 comments:
As far as I can tell, there's a major element of social control in this – I've lost the URIs for the blog posts to the mists of time (or to computer failure, take your pick), but I'll try to convey it as best as I can.
Wait, no – found it again. Cultural coercion. It's like everyone in the fraternities hazing the new guys, because they were hazed so it must be necessary, only there are new frathouses that aren't doing it, and people are joining those instead, and it's destroying fraternities.
Of course, that's the interpretation from a group of people who specifically don't like the system they're describing, so a bit of salt might be called for.
That's an interesting take on it, though not quite the same fit since people don't need to marry heterosexually first to then qualify to marry homosexually.
Or is it that people will feel less coerced to marry if more people can be married? Or like its a secret club that only heterosexuals get to join - but then it is bigotry.
Hmm, I'm going to have to check that link out and see if I can wrap my brain around it.
Please forgive the sloppiness of the analogy – in the frat metaphor, the traditional (authoritarian?) marriage/family is the old-fashioned hazing frat, while the more egalitarian marriages, including the homosexual marriages, are the new frats. The objection is that people will be less likely to 'rush' traditional-marriage if they see all these other people 'pledging' more enjoyable frats, and getting away with it.
It's not really a great metaphor. The link-in-the-link is more authoritative.
Ah, ok, I understand. Though again, the logic escapes me in that I don't see myself going to marry a man just because it is a new option. But then I suppose those that oppose gay marriage seem to think homosexuality can be "cured" so I guess that means they think it can be "caught" as well.
The rationalization for this argument that I have heard and read is that gay marriage will lead to 3 and 4 person marriages (slippery slope?) and that gay marriage somehow removes parenting from it's (supposedly) central function in the meaning of marriage. Still doesn't make sense to me, but if you want to read a bigot going on about it here's a link:
http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200405040841.asp
here's a quote from that article:
" The real point is that the public arguments for gay marriage detach marriage from parenthood. The debate over gay marriage, and the ongoing social symbolism of the change, turn marriage into a pure celebration of the love of two adults, rather than something intrinsically tied to parenthood."
I still think it's a lot of elaborate justification for what amounts to hatred and bigotry.
As an aside, I wonder if this means no one caught my big feminism article amidst my flurry of postings today...
But I've heard that argument before - about love between adults versus being for children, and that is really plainly false on its face. Infertile people can readily get married, be they young and infertile by medical problems or just too old (two 70 year olds get married). Since there is no such fertility requirement, that belies any claims that it is about children.
As far as slippery slopes (polygamy or marriage to animals) that is just a smokescreen - no one is really asking for that. And there would be all sorts of strange legal issues with polygamy. But just allowing gay marriage is easy - you have two adults and the only difference in the paperwork is that you can check off a box for gender for both parties instead of just one gender for each. Nothing else needs to change legally. It plugs right into the existing legal framework of marriage.
Very excellent point(s) you bring up here.
I guess it's my liberal leanings but I just don't understand why everyone in the moral majority feels the need to be the "moral police" for the entire nation. Why do they want to be in the bedrooms of everyone on the block?
Silly question, I know...it's about power and control.
But great post. Thanks!
I'm going to go out on a limb and say people suck at thinking.
Every time I have ever heard anyone publicly debate this issue, the conservatives have positively failed to score a single logical point with me.
HJ
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