Gay Marriage is Wrong, Right?
ByI got into a minor blog altercation last week over the issue of attitudes towards homosexuality among the Religious Right.
It’s not worth revisiting except to say that I was trying to point out that statements made by a senior Hamas leader that homosexuals were “a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick” was probably not far removed from the opinions of many on the Religious Right.
Needless to say, my comment did not go down too well.
Then I came across this on the Best of Craigslist:
Ten Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong
01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.
07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.
My sentiments exactly.
13 Comments
October 10th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
No, this current sick generation will never support gay marriage.. they’re still too blinded with hate. Like the generation before them, they couldn’t deal with Americans of another color. Give the US another 20-30 years and we will have gay marriage. Personally, I’m totally disgusted with most right wingnuts, there are plenty in my own family.
October 11th, 2005 at 8:19 am
You’re not very nice are you Dennis. Maybe they’re digusted with you too. It’d be quite understandable.
In other news:
Good list Paul.
There is one thing though. I don’t think this applies to the US, but when parliament were discussing the Civil Partnerships Bill the Conservatives wanted other non-gay long term partnerships, sisters who’ve lived together their whole lives for instance, to have the same legal recognition. A sensible idea I’d have thought. Not the for the Peter Tatchell type crowd though. (Perhaps not PT himself, I’m not sure.) It rather exposed a lot of the campaigners as actually demanding special treatment rather than the equality that they claim.
October 11th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Pavlik, I agree with every point on the list, obv (especially no. 5). Mark, if I may address you at someone else’s home – hope you don’t mind, EINY – I have to stick up for Peter Tatchell. I don’t agree with a lot of what he says, but I think he is fiercely fair (and comes out with the odd corker quote. I think he called the legislation you refer to ‘heterophobic’) and definitely utterly sincere. Yes, we may sneer at some of his views, which he wouldn’t mind in the least, of course, but anyone who tries PERSONALLY to arrest Mugabe, twice, has got to be considered brave.
I can’t see why people get so feverishly worked up about opposing gay marriage. OK, I can understand the people who just straightforwardly think gays are wicked are opposed. That goes without saying. But the people who somehow think gays being able to marry will destroy the sanctity of matrimony? What’s the logic? Is this merely a question of semantics? I don’t care particularly if we need another word for gay marriage – civil partnerships, civil union, Homoehe (as we say here in Deutschland), whatever – but that surely isn’t the reason. I think it is just an unnecessary and irrational fear that gays are another (perhaps one of the main) threats to everything that our socity is based on. Yes, of course gays ARE different in this sense, but to claim this difference is enough to rock the collective boat is nonsense. Gays just want to plod on with their lives like anyone else – left in peace and unlegislated against for existing.
October 11th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
Quite frankly, Mark, I’m sick of being nice while I’ve watched my country turn to shit over the last few years. Honestly, I could care less if anyone likes me or not. I deal with some racist, hateful stuff coming from members of my own family. In the past I kept my mouth shut. Lately, I challenge those opinions and end up being the outsider. Do I really care about being an outsider to them? Not at all, this side of the family tends to be unhappy and unproductive most of the time anyway.
I’m married and have never homosexual feeling in my entire life. I do have a lot of gay friends and I know them to be very good people. I’m angry that they can’t enjoy some of the same basic rights I have in my hetero marriage.
Straight folks made a mockery of marriage with the high divorce rates in the last few decades.
October 12th, 2005 at 8:10 am
Dezik,
I agree with you about Peter Tatchell’s fairness. He seems like a very honourable chap. His suppport for Harry Hammond’s right to free speech did him a great deal of credit. Plus the Mugabe arrests, I didn’t realise he’d tried twice. Wow.
I don’t agree with his publicly outing people who for whatever reason don’t wish to be outed. That seems like a gross violation of privacy to me. But still…
Dennis,
Sorry if I flew off the handle but frankly I object to your assertions that objections to homosexual rights or whatever come exclusively from the right. The left may spout feel good inclusivness towards gays but I have little doubt this is barely more than lip service which many lefty movers and shakers are ready to drop the moment someone “more deserving” comes along. Witness Ken Livingstone’s buddying up with gay hating Immams.
However even little political battles can be enough to throw out years of retoric.
Take my wife’s uncle for example. It’s a bit personal to be honest but as it’s a matter of public record I’ll press on:
XX is a Health Policy analyst and author. X is a nurse by background and has held appointments including Senior Officer, Royal College of Nursing; Director of Nursing Services, The Royal Marsden Hospital; Director, IHSM; Chief Executive, West Lambeth Community and Mental Health NHS Trust and as a Senior Civil Servant in the NHS Executive, overseeing forensic mental health services. He has also served as a member of a number of DOH task forces under different Secretaries of State.
He’s also, for his sins, been a card carrying member of the Labour party his whole life. Not that it made the slightest bit of difference when they shat on him from a great height.
He was working as Director of Special Hospitals, basically prisons for phsycotic murderers (think Moors Murderers) which are run by the national health service rather than Her Majesty’s Prison Service, and reported directly to the then Conservative Minister of Health. At the time the Conservatives were trying to implement some sort of “internal market” into the health service and this was opposed by the New Labour opposition. My wife’s uncle said on record that he supported the moves. Heresy as far as The Labour Party were concerned. The murky spinmeisters made their move. I dare say those dark artists Alistair Campbell and, ironically, Peter Mandelson were behind digging up and leaking details of my wife’s uncle’s unusual home life to The Daily Mirror. Basically he left his wife to move in with another man. I believe the split was as amicable as these things can get, in fact one of his daughters moved in with him.
So what have we learnt? That the left might trot out the inclusive equality cant, but they are only too happy to eject it the moment it becomes expedient.
And you know what’s really ironic? Labour in government not only wish to have the internal market within the NHS they intend to go further that that, as detailed in this post here.
October 12th, 2005 at 11:20 am
Dezik, that is what the comments are for!
Mark and Dennis, thank you for your input.
The comments sections have become a very interesting place of late.
October 12th, 2005 at 3:55 pm
I think the Hamas chap has a perfect right to hold those beliefs and to express them, justas I have a right to believe Hamas to be a bunch of child murderers.
PS – Hamas, Al Quaeda etc ARE the religious right in their countries. They believe in killing foreigners and infidels, hanging or stoning homosexuals.
Whereas the religious right in the UK (such as there is) and US merely want to defend our borders, and think kids shouldn’t be taught about uphill gardening at taxpayer funded schools.
While I may consider some people’s sexual practices to be vile perversions (they’re always the best, I say) and against Christian teaching, that doesn’t mean I want the perpetrators to be crushed to death.
Ostracism is quite sufficient.
October 12th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Is uphill gardening now in the national curriculum? In what way is uphill gardening taught in taxpayer-funded schools? Taught? Like French? Two hours a week of uphill gardening? Quite unreasonable, I fully agree, of uphill gardeners, who are tax exempt, to expect their wicked ways to be not just taught, but actively promulgated, to the population at large. End this outrage.
October 12th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Pardon my ignorance.
What IS uphill gardening?
October 12th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
Have you ever tried uphill gardening? There is an increased risk of soil erosion and land slides compared to ‘flat-land’ gardening and anything over sixteen degrees away from the vertical and you can’t use a tractor. It’s all well and good that Americans, with their vast, rolling plains, resent it being taught in schools but what do you say to the New Guinean who lives almost exclusively on marginal, sloping highlands: fail to teach them uphill gardening and a whole generation might starve. There’s a racist, Euro-centric policy if ever I heard one!
October 12th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
MIchael, uphill gardening is an incredibly babyish British slang expression for buggery as practised by homosexuals. (I’ve got a feeling the uphill gardening now covered, at taxpayers’ expense, in British schools doesn’t cover anal sex as performed between a gentleman and a lady.) (Presumably other homosexual acts don’t meet with such opprobrium.) EINY, I apologise that your site has become a forum for the description of the ins-and-outs – boom boom! – of anal sex. Hope you don’t mind awfully.
October 12th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
Wait . . . homosexual acts? I thought this was the John Deere forum! Am *I* embarassed!
I am classifed (in this ever-increasing classification world) as straight, with homosexual friends. I’ve got no problem with them, nor they with me. If they want to get legally married I’ll be annoyed, as I suck at shopping for such occasions, but beyond that I’ll have no problem with it except that I won’t be able to attend because it will have to be in a different state than the one in which I reside.
Having said that, I am sick of the faulty reasoning coming from so much of the pro-gay marriage side of the debate (the faulty reasoning coming from the anti-gay marriage side is just as bad, but they’re not the ones who are attempting the inroads, no pun intended).
For instance, some opponents of gay marriage say that gays marrying would make a mockery of the instituion. A poor argument due to its shallowness and casualness of thought, true, but the counter argument should not be that straights have made a mockery of the institution what with Britney Spears, et al. The fact that straights have themselves made a mockery of the institution faults the straights but not the institution. A better response would be to point out the laudable points of the institution and how gays would be able to support those.
Another example, this from the list above just baffles me, shows gays setting up the question just to provide the poor logic in the answer: Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. While a few have no doubt said this, I doubt highly that most opponents of gay marriage believe that children can “never” succeed when raised by gay parents — more are concerned (perhaps erroneously) about the child’s being brought up in a household different from societal norms and how that will affect the child’s outlook and development. I would imagine most gay couples feel the same way, which makes them redouble their efforts to provide a loving home. If we look at it intelligently and honestly, most gay couples (at least the ones I know) do in fact take on “traditional” male and female characteristics and roles in their relationship.
The answer to that question, however, “That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children” is patently ridiculous in that single-parent mothers and fathers ARE ostracized (sp?) financially and otherwise, and their children, statistically, DO often have increased difficulties in outlook and development.
It seems to me that there are no easy answers here, and both the pro- and anti- gay marriage people would do well to realize this and stop pretending that the answer is simple.
I know that some European nations consider marriage a civil union, and the religious part is either allowed or forbidden based on the beliefs of the particular religion involved, if any . . . this seems sensible to me.
I am reminded of a perhaps apocryphal quote from an old British soldier when interviewed regarding the UK making homosexuality legal some years back: “I don’t mind them making it legal as long as they don’t make it mandatory.”
That probably doesn’t help this discussion much, but at least we’re not talking about farming anymore.
I
October 14th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
This is fascinating. Well, let me jump in: I’m conservative, religious and have absolutely no objection to gay marriage. This is because (1) I think once ‘civil unions’ were adopted, gay marriage becomes a civil rights issue (no “separate but equal” schools or marriage unions) and (2) probably because I live in the San Francisco area, which has a large gay population. Having lived here all my life, I find that we are in far less danger from gay unions than we are from traffic fatalities, sky-rocketing divorce and single-parent poverty, drug-addicted homeless and gang shootings. SF has undergone a renaissance in crummy housing areas because gay couples have bought derelict properties and fixed them up. Knowing many gays here, and having talked to them about the pain of growing up differently than the heterosexual norm, I have concluded two things: being gay is NOT a lifestyle choice (who would choose pain and rejection and social ostracization?), and God made them this way so it is up to us to accept them as they are.