A Challenge to My True-Blue SoCon Readers.

by Little Miss Attila on March 4, 2009

Read Cynthia’s post about gay marriage and her relationship with her life partner, and tell me honestly if it changes your perspective on gay marriage at all.

I know that most of you are concerned primarily with one of two issues: (1) if gay marriage is legalized—rather, if the states all recognize it—then it will be impossible to discriminate against them in adoption. [I’m not so certain about this, since in adoption the person who always makes the final decision is the birthmother, and she is free to discriminate on any basis she chooses; this is appropriate, as she is selecting a household for her child to grow up in. She may prefer couples over single parents; she likely has preferences about religion. She may even prefer that they own dogs rather than cats, or vice versa. If she prefers to pass over same-sex couples in favor of mixed-sex couples, then it will take them that much longer to adopt. The “market” regarding what people feel to be the ideal setup for children will continue to determine the rate at which gay adoptions occur.]

The other concern is (2) that the word “marriage” will cease to lose its holiness—its connotation of being not simply a contract, but a covenant between two people and the Higher Power of their choosing. [And my response is that if that is what the word “marriage” means, the State has no business in that whatsoever. All the State can do is provide civil unions; it is up to a couple’s church and community of choice to designate whether that union constitutes a marriage. So people whose faiths forbid the use of that word for homosexual unions are not obligated to apply that word to these couples. They needn’t adopt that language. But that, once again, is my perspective.]

But I would like to hear some sober responses to Cynthia’s essay; it is a very personal one, and worth reading.

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

caltechgirl March 4, 2009 at 10:59 pm

I have two objections to the gay marriage movement. The movement mind you, rather than gay marriage itself.

The first is that I wish these people would shut up already. I don’t throw my “straightness” in people’s faces, and I don’t need to be reminded over and over and over again that tolerant people should be ok with someone who is gay. Of course we’re ok with it, and we CAN disagree with you about “gay marriage” without being bigots. There are LEGITIMATE points of concern other than gay vs. straight. If the crowd behind anti-prop 8 et al would get past THEIR OWN issues about gay vs straight, maybe they could see that.

My second objection is the second point you raise, Joy. What the hell is the state doing in the marriage business anyway? The state’s interest should only be in the contract aspects of a legal union, not who is making the contract.

Thanks for pointing us to Cynthia’s blog. Thought provoking.

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Doc Rampage March 4, 2009 at 11:30 pm

It’s not the holiness of marriage that is effected, it’s the purpose of marriage. The only reason for the government to recognize marriage at all is the great stake that society as a whole has in how children are raised. The government recognition of marriage is a consequence of its recognition that when a man and a women live together in a sexual relationship, children are a likely result. If gay marriage is allowed, then marriage is no longer about families, it’s about sex. The government is giving some official recognition to the fact that two people are living together and engaging in some form of mutual sexual gratification. Why in the world is that worthy of any governmental recognition?

As to the adoption thing, you are missing two important points. First, not all adoptions are approved by the mother. Sometimes the mother is dead, sometimes the government has taken the baby away from the mother, and sometimes the mother just doesn’t want to know. Furthermore, it’s not just about adoption. The whole purpose of gay marriage is to give gays a big stick to use to pound on people who disapprove of their behavior. Any church that refuses to perform gay weddings will be sued out of existence. Any wedding singer or wedding photographer who doesn’t want to do gay weddings will be sued out of business. Mothers who don’t want their kids going over to the house of the gay couple to play with their kids will be sued for something too. Please don’t tell me that these things won’t happen because you’ve seen similar things happen already.

Gay marriage is a civil-rights issue all right. It is all about taking civil rights away from people who don’t approve of homosexuality. It’s all about using the government to force social conservatives into conformance with progressive values.

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David March 5, 2009 at 6:20 am

The big problem is the “law of unintended consequences”. Read

Banned in Boston to see what some of the possible conflicts between gay rights and freedom of religion entail. I am LDS, and you can already see some of the jackbooted thuggery in action. There are people who are attempting to get the LDS Church’s tax-free exemption pulled. This is just a tiny first step. The real zealots in this cause are not just about their own happy relationships, they are about ramming their status down everyone’s throat, and making them accept it. People like that will invariably use anti-discrimination laws as a cudgel to enforce their world-views on everyone else. Here is another informative article on the subject:

NPR Link

I will just leave you with a really chilling quote from one of the more moderate gay-rights advocates, this from that first article. “When push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, [Chai Feldblum] admits, ‘I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.'”

David

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Cynthia Yockey March 5, 2009 at 9:04 am

I can assure you from bitter personal experience that Chai Feldblum is quite the double-standard kind of gal when it comes to inconveniencing herself to uphold ideals she wants enforced at any cost at the expense of anyone but herself.

Look for my post explaining how Margaret and I got kicked out of the lesbian community for our six-year battle with a group LED BY LESBIAN DISABLED RIGHTS ACTIVISTS in Washington, D.C., because they kept choosing annual meeting sites that did not meet federal access regulations, but advertising that they had. Chai Feldblum could have intervened to create a win-win outcome, but did not, and I believe the reason is that the women perpetrating these outrages were her BFFs. By 1996 we were so famous and so demonized for trying to cash in one of the gay and lesbian community’s fundamental promises that we were no longer physically safe in the gay community and stopped participating in it.

There are misconceptions and false dichotomies on both sides of pretty much every issue to do with equal rights for lesbians and gays. I appreciate everyone’s candor. Thank you. I see I have my work cut out for me. I hope some of you will look in on my blog from time to time and continue the conversation.

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Cynthia Yockey March 5, 2009 at 9:06 am

And I am infinitely grateful to Joy for raising these issues with her readers and suggesting that y’all read my blog for a different take on them.

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David March 5, 2009 at 10:25 am

Cynthia, perhaps I didn’t make one point clear. I am certain that you and your SO are exactly as you represent yourselves, unassuming, hardworking, normal Americans who just want to get on with your lives and receive equal recognition of your relationship. Were every member of the SSM movement just like you, I would be much more likely to support you. The problem is that all the people are NOT like you. As much as you may oppose them, it only takes one person to bring a lawsuit challenging various religious practices under the guise of “sexual discrimination”, and the issue then becomes how restrained our black-robed masters are feeling that week.

I have absolutely zero-faith in the integrity of the court system to properly (in my view) balance the freedom of religion with the rights under various sexual discrimination regulations. In an ironic way, much of the success of the SSM movement is the very reason that I oppose it so strongly. The history of SSM is almost exclusively a series of victories in the courts, and not so much in the legislative arena. Had the SSM folks achieved their victories through legislative means, I would be much more likely to believe that they would be willing to continue on in that manner. In the legislative arena, things have a tendency to get hammered out, and something comes out that is everything to nobody, but something to everybody. In that case, I can believe that there would be notice taken of the concerns of the religiously minded, and appropriate protections set in place.

However, given the past behavior of the SSM movement, it is more likely, to my mind, that they will simply take anyone who disagrees with them to court instead of attempting to come to some sort of accommodation with them. Again, I point to the New Mexico case. The photographer declined to photograph the wedding, as she opposed SSM. She directed the lesbian couple to another photographer who did the photographing they wanted. Problem solved, right? No, it was not enough that this couple get their ceremony photographed, they had to punish the woman who didn’t want to do it in the first place. Now that woman is out $6000 dollars, plus whatever she might have paid to defend herself legally for exercising her right to practice her religion. I am afraid that we will be seeing an ongoing series of these sorts of actions should SSM become law.

David

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