Fri. July 27
Skinning Chick-fil-A
About a week ago, I donated $200 to the cause of gay rights. I didn’t donate the money directly, but rather through businesses at a beach resort that I visited. And I’m a Catholic who does not support gay marriage. In there is a lesson about prudence, genuine tolerance, and the current flap over the Chick-fil-A restaurants.
But let me back up. Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy recently got in trouble for saying that he is a proud Christian and that his company is run “based on Biblical principles.” He also supports traditional marriage. Of course, for the bullyboy left in America, this could not be allowed to stand. Politicians in Chicago and and Boston are attempting to block Chick-fil-A from opening stores in their cities. It’s become redundant to point it out, but the modern left is anything but tolerant. As the brilliant scholar Robert George recently observed, liberals love to talk about tolerance, civility, and achieving a “grand bargain” between disputing parties–and then they inform you that part of the grand bargain involves you changing your mind about a fundamental belief. Of course Chick-fil-A is a business that is free to believe what it wants. Until it isn’t.
It’s all so totalitarian, so chest-thumping in that faux-virtuous way that is a hallmark of the left, so absurd. Which brings us to my donation to the cause of gay rights. Every summer since I was a kid I’ve spent time on the Delmarva Peninsula, a beautiful piece of land on the eastern shore of the mid atlantic region. Delmarva is the home of three wonderful beaches–Ocean City, in Maryland, and Rehoboth and Bethany, both in Delaware.
Rehoboth is known as a gay beach. It’s also the place where I spent some of my time in the summer as a kid; several of my high school friends’ families had places there. I remember there was a small portion of the beach itself that was known as gay (“Poodle Beach”), and being teenage boys from Catholic schools, we thought this was hilarious (one of those friends came out a few years ago and we had a laugh about our former adolescent selves). There were always a lot of girls in Rehoboth when I was a teen-ager, and there still are, but these days the gay population in Rehoboth has grown even more. There are now countless businesses run by gay people.
Last week, on one of my trips to Delmarva, I spent some time in Rehoboth. I went to restaurants, bought books, hung out on the beach. It’s a guess, but I’d say there is little doubt that some of my money went to gay business owners. And although I am a Catholic who believes in my church’s teaching about sexual ethics, it’s OK that my money went to people who may have in turn sent some of it to Barack Obama.
Because this is the difference between the left and sensible America. To the left, particularly the secular left, there is no corner of life that is untouched by politics. There is no quiet moment when it is just you and God, or place when you can lay down your sword and breath easy for a few moments. The world needs perfecting, after all. And people with self-esteem problems need validation. So everything you do, everyplace you go, is part of the struggle. There is no moment of true understanding when you say: yes, I disagree with this person, but they are made in the image and likeness of God, and I honor that before our different views (even as I fight for the rightness of my views). Besides, I’m feeling peaceful, I’m at the beach, I want some fries, and pretty much the last thing on my mind is that I am giving my $4.50 to someone who wants to marry his boyfriend.
There can be no such respite for the left. Because any challenge to the orthodoxy of absolute platonic tolerance–which actually amounts to validation and celebration–and creating heaven on earth is an assault on the fragile psyches of the people who are demanding that Chick-fil-A must fall. It amounts to saying they have no virtue, because the only virtue the left recognizes is the virtue of tolerance, which in their hands has become the epitome of intolerance.
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Hi, I’m part of the secular left, and I also happen to be queer, and I am taking a moment to say that I disagree with you, but you are a fellow human being, and I honor our different views. I just don’t think your religious views should be allowed to make laws that affect my life, and I am going to do anything I can to stop people from doing that to me.
So do you object to religious views informing any laws at all, including laws against rape, theft and murder?
Religion isnt what informs laws against rape, theft and murder – common sense and human decency does. Try again.
I think it’s funny that you guys are so angry about gays, liberals, moderates and fiscal conservatives who actually understand the meaning of the 1st and 14th amendments being intolerant of institutionalized discrimination. “We want to deny people equal rights under the law and they don’t want to let us! WAAAAAAAA”
John Abbott, thanks for personifying the point. The only angry person here is *you*, bub – and no one, including the Chick-Fil-A president, has supported denying anyone equal rights. Nice try, but that you’re unable to make your point without distorting and mischaracterizing the position/comments of others demonstrates quite about about the relative merit (or lack thereof) of your argument.
“Religion isnt what informs laws against rape, theft and murder – common sense and human decency does.”
The existence of legal codes and constitutions, both written and unwritten, is rather obvious testimony to the fact that cultures do not easily agree on what sense is held in common, and what acts are decent. One man’s crime against nature, is another man’s glorious expression of freedom. Hence- from age to age , the mediating code to lay out the societal boundaries. Many of the codes have been explicitly religious; all have sought a claim of moral rectitude. But for those who disagree with lex terrae, the code is always a set of values imposed unjustly by some “religion” foreign to the plaintiff’s sense of scruples and values.
When two sides are evenly matched and lex terrae is in transit, charges of unjust imposition are de rigueur, since both sides feel put upon by the ” foreign religion” of the other. Thin appeals to human decency will not form a cultural consensus, since competing sides to issues du jour believe their view already decent and fit for all society. What is really needed is a sprawling and robust conversation as to what is humanly decent and why. Such a conversation would be the antithesis to the “will to power” (Identify, Isolate, Villify, Destroy) tenor that holds sway today. I dare say, it might even be religious.
Sorry John but you’re dead wrong on your assertion that laws regarding murder and such are purely due to common sense (something that is all too rare these days) and human decency (also very rare anymore).
Does “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbors Wife” and the rest of those annoying 10 lines ring any bells?
Quote “Religion isnt what informs laws against rape, theft and murder – common sense and human decency does. Try again.
I think it’s funny that you guys are so angry about gays”
Fact is that Religion defines morality which formulates our concept of right and wrong, good and bad, and thereby dictates our common sense. Common sense is nothing unless it is based on some absolute constructs of moral right and wrong.
And it isn’t “us” who are angry, challenging other people’s beliefs with protests and violence is coming from your side of the disagreement. In this the only intolerance being shown is coming from you. There is absolutely no evidence that Chick-fil-A has ever discriminated against anyone, yet that is the straw-man argument you are making in order to justify your attacks against them.
That makes sense. But honestly whenever we Christians do have a belief, then sometimes we’re not even allowed to believe in that because it always affects someone. The laws that they make to make your life great, make our life suck too. Get the picture?
I appreciate your right to have beliefs of all kinds. I appreciate your right to worship as you choose – most of the left, I believe, would also defend these rights.
To be honest, however, I fail to see how a law to make secular gay marriage available would make your life “suck”. I’m not trying to be sarcastic or argumentative – I’d really love to hear a clear explanation of how granting marriage rights to the LGBT community would interfere with your lifestyle.
A gay friend of mine is terminally ill. His partner of twenty years has no hospital visitation rights, will get no spousal benefits of the state upon his loved one’s passing…his role in my friend’s life is not recognized by many Americans as legitimate, mostly because of restrictive Christian beliefs. What makes your life “suck” as much as that?
Sarah, sorry to hear about your friend. What state are you in? Most states have provisions for domestic partnerships that include much if not all of what you describe, it’s just not called “marriage”. Functionally, little (if anything, depends on where you are) is different.
Hey Sarah,
You’re lying. Your friend does not exist.
Every hospital in America that takes federal funds–which is nearly every hospital in America–must allow visitation rights by same-sex partners. That’s according to an executive order by Obama. Not that there was a slew of hospitals that didn’t allow it before Obama’s EO, but there are none now.
Also, your friend can name anyone he wants in his will to inherit his property. He can leave his property to his boyfriend, the mailman, or the meteorologist on Chanel 7.
The reason he hasn’t done this is because your friend is a figment of your imagination.
Sarah, if your gay friend can not visit his terminally ill partner, that’s a hospital policy, not a law. You should take that up with the hospital.
Additionally, spousal benefits were originally intended to take care of housewives who spent their prime working years at home raising a family, after their husbands passed away. They were not intended for a spouse that could work.
The fact is that many Americans support civil unions, which would provide the legal remedies you say gays seek. However, large portions of the gay community reject the notion of civil unions. Instead they demand the definition of the word marriage to be changed instead.
So civil rights does not seem to be the true goal of many gays. Instead the goal is to force others who deem gay relations as immoral, to have to, as you say, “recognize as legitimate” their lifestyle.
So please explain why civil unions which provide the same legal rights, is not good enough.
Sarah: “To be honest, however, I fail to see how a law to make secular gay marriage available would make your life “suck”. I’m not trying to be sarcastic or argumentative – I’d really love to hear a clear explanation of how granting marriage rights to the LGBT community would interfere with your lifestyle.”
Nobody from “the right” is saying that it will make our lives suck. Another strawman argument from the left. This is also NOT about same sex couples being legally joined similar to heterosexual couples. The issue IS about the attempt to redefine Marriage as something other than it is, and the further efforts same-sex proponents are making to force communities and churches to marry same-sex couples when they don’t want to.
Thing is, most regions would support legalizing some manner of same-sex legal arrangement as long as it doesn’t also require the changing of the definition of Marriage between a man and a woman.
Which, btw, any gay man can marry any lesbian woman, so the laws and definitions of Marriage don’t discriminate. The discriminating aspects are that gay-gay or lesbian-lesbian couples don’t respect or care for the sensitivities of those who disagree with them in redefining marriage.
“You want to deny equal rights” is a sad fallacy made to legitimize gay marriage – a logical ouroboros, and absurdly easy to disprove.
1. Is it a civil or a human right? Well, as marriage itself is a human-made institution, it cannot be a human right. It is by definition a civil right if it is any sort of right at all. So,
2. Is it a civil right? A civil right is a concept protected and guaranteed by the governing party of the nation. As no such protection has been made, it is clearly not a civil right being taken away. In fact, the whole point of the debate is to MAKE it a civil right – it is not one at present.
3. “But shouldn’t it be? After all, isn’t keeping marriage heterogeneous a way of locking out people who should be allowed in?” Thing is, marriage has been since its inception a male-female thing. While relationships have existed between people of the same gender since ancient times, they have never been considered “marriages” or anything of the sort. Gay marriage is not a matter of keeping people from being locked out – it is a matter of letting people in.
Thus it is clear that gay marriage is not, in fact, a right. You may make a case that it should be one, certainly, and that can be debated and discussed. But until such time as you prove the merit of your argument, you have no claim to the “right” label.
Then whose values do we use? And when your “rights” cross with mine, what then? Listen, I don’t care what you do. Gay people are human beings and desrve all the human rights of other human beings. Civil unions should cover that. But when gays make a “right” to marry do they get to sue my church for discrimination because it won’t marry them? These are important considerations in the debate. And this debate is deeper than the superficial fluff from the left. People can have sincerely held religious beliefs and not be ignorant fools. Thanks for not treating us that way.
And yet, Babel, you want your beliefs imposed on others and will demonize those who voice disagreement. That’s effectively what you are saying you are going to do.
In my experience, those on the left are always denigrating religious conservatives as wanting to impose their beliefs on others; yet those on the left hold a series of beliefs of their own based either on their own faith in those beliefs or on their “feelings” and they feel no qualms about wanting to impose them on others. You are free to assert that there is a “right” to gay marriage, but asserting it doesn’t make it true. You accept it as a “right” by matter of your faith in the concept. In the language of philosophy, you are responding to the “truth claims” of Christian conservatives with a competing “truth claim” of your own, yet both views are based primarily on faith. You cannot prove there is a “right” to gay marriage, and so you’re not likely to persuade anyone who isn’t already inclined to agree with you.
Many Christian conservatives would argue that there is no such thing as a “right” to marriage, and that marriage is a special type of contractual relationship created to serve certain social purposes. Now it can be argued that there could be benefits to gay marriage which would benefit society at large, but that’s not what most proponents of gay marriage do: instead, they assert that rights are being violated, thereby seeking to silence any dissenting opinions.
It;s interesting but you made a clear mistake here
what law is affecting your life? Marriage law? its not about you, the way that criminal law is not about you if your not a criminal. what this is about is wanting perks from the government. wasn’t getting more than equal status by the supreme court enough? after all, i can refuse to rent to a equal person, but i cant refuse to rent to you as your more than equal.
and thanks for being the first to illustrate the example of intolerance
sad thing is, the only places in the world where you get to mouth off and attack people, twist things around, have your own beaches, special status, state perks, and parades is in the christian west.
go do me a favor, go back to the old country and line up and give your parade and see what happens… meanwhile thats the state you support, over the religion that defined the morals that you hate.
funny, bit you and others think that these things are ‘common sense’ when they arent at all. they come from a long line of religious philosophy by some of the greatest minds and artists, and are what developed the common sense.
secular states as my family came from, are murderous, amoral, and after they are done using militant angry gay people to smash their own people in a civil war in exchange for control, they are not going to be nice to you any more than they were nice to the others they used.
you may THINK this is about marraige, but if it was you could make up a word for your own word, and fight for equivalent status for that, not destroy the other word and offer no replacement.
your the sad person… and you shouldn’t have attacked the other person for having ideas you don’t like. eventually you and others are going to give a greater power the power to impose ITS ideas, and historically speaking, you and others end up back int he worst can in history (and funny funny, Christians think that is bad because despite not agreeing with you, they think its a better world with you than without you).
But you want laws made that are defined according to your sociological choices (which could change anytime or any number of times)?
http://www.twincities.com/ci_20941544/general-mills-boycott-urged-over-marriage-amendment-stance
A citizen boycott is different from the state telling a business what it’s owners are allowed to think.
Hello, “totalitarian” bisexual leftist here, and just an FYI that many of “us” agree with you. I will personally boycott Chick-Fil-A, but until they start being openly discriminatory of gay employees or patrons (which it doesn’t look like they have been) then, in my book, they are legally welcome to operate as a business and serve those that choose to go there, regardless of the owner’s beliefs.
I don’t think Christians or conservatives are arguing against gay people having similar rights to straights; what many of us have a problem with the the redefinition of the word marriage. There is a complimentary nature between male and female rooted in biology and (if you’re religious) the soul. To claim that there is no difference between this and gay couples is to deny reality. Again: all the same rights, sure. But to change the meaning of words is to demean rationality and culture.
Let me second that. I have no qualms with civil unions, but don’t redefine the definition of marriage. Marriage has a specific meaning. But the LGBT community has an agenda not just to have those same rights, but want us to believe that same sex unions are no different than traditional marriage. That is where I draw the line.
Well said.
Gays and Lesbians should declare victory and lose the countercultural attitude. Civil unions work well and have huge support among most all Americans.
This is kind of what I’ve been saying all along. Christians aren’t denying any rights to gay/lesbian couples. It’s our government that is. Oh, how that has been twisted!! Government decided at some point to give rights to married couples, where the term “marriage” originated from the church and the Bible. (Separation of Church and State my leg!) And the government has completely ignored all other couples. If there was some way to recognize gay/lesbian couples and give them the same rights by law without redefining what the Bible has already defined, then great! I’m all for it. No one should be denied rights from our government.
Maybe we ought to ask the libertarian question: What business is it of the State to sanction or prefer anyone’s living arrangement or family situation?
Sadly, you are atypical when we examine real-world results.
* Pastors arrested for preaching from the “wrong” passages of the Bible. (Canada)
* That same Bible classified as hate speech. (Canada again)
* Constant cries of “bigot” and “hater.” (everywhere)
* Couple in England forbidden from adopting because they would not teach the child the “right” answers about homosexuality.
* Wedding photographer sued because she would not photograph a lesbian wedding. (While one may easily argue discrimination, one may also argue conscientious objection)
* Chick Fil A attempted bannings in several cities
* The rampant and quite obvious media propaganda wave in favor of gay marriage
* Various efforts to make “tolerance classes” (read: I tell you gay marriage is OK, you can’t talk back) and pro-gay-rights material part of school curricula (thus teaching things we do not agree with to our children)
It’s certainly not the goal of (most of) the gay rights movement, but it is a consequence thereof. It is also the reason why, at best, you will only ever see gay marriage implemented in a manner similar to abortion: allowed, but not supported; an option for a political party to support to gain followers, but not the only option that works. Because while there may not be much opposition, strictly in itself, to letting you feel equal on your own time, there’s a heckuva lot of opposition to letting you marginalize us in return.
Sarah, again, thanks for your considered comment and open-mindedness. While your clearly more tolerant of diverse opinion than many on “your side”, it still seems odd to me that you find it alright to boycott CFA because of their owner’s beliefs. If I met you on the street and you heard me say that I refused to shop at Amazon.com simply because Jeff B. supported gay marriage… honestly now… you wouldn’t think that was even slightly hateful, bigoted, homophobic, etc? Because you know that 99.9% of the LGBT community would think precisely that…
… and isn’t the whole ‘boycott CFA’ thing – including your comment – precisely the same thing?
Just a legal point: gay isn’t a protected class in federal law, state law, or local ordinances (in most places). So if Chick-Fil-A wanted to discriminate against gay employees or patrons, they could, legally. I say that, not agreeing with it–and having fought for some justice for some gay employees who had experienced harassment in my organization. So you know what I did? Worked with a group advocating employee interests when we were being reorganized (statutorily) and included it in the bill. There are now hard and soft benefits for gay employees. (Hard is financial, soft is non-financial like leave time policies etc.) No one else even brought this up in our group (which had some gay people participating). It was me. And the harassment of my gay colleagues stopped. You know what? I do not support SSM and I eat Freedom Chicken. You know what else? So do my gay friends. Strange world we live in, eh? Not as clear-cut as the shrill ones would have you believe.
I’m a Catholic who loves and believes all her teachings. I also love Broadway musicals and spend way too much money on theater tickets. I know that money from these tickets go to fight to change the definition of marriage. I weigh that against this great country where incredibly talented people work hard to produce a product I enjoy greatly. If I’m enjoying it, I should pay for it. They deserve to be paid for their talent and work.
I also support the rights of people to not purchase any product.
Hi Mark:
Seems to me that the responses you are receiving from the folks on the left support the nexus of your article. They cannot see the point that we make about the definition of marriage between one man and one woman. It IS the natural way of things, as well as the globally accepted norm of the institution. Most of us conservatives, even some of us evangelicals have no issue with legal partnerships that grant all the benefits of marriage to same sex couples. But to force us to accept the notion of same sex “marriage” is requiring us to forsake our faith. I am not, nor will I ever be willing to do that. Seems pretty simple, yet the left just wants so much to force us all to celebrate and accept homosexuality.
I’m gay, and I agree with you, Mark. The secular left has become the standard bearer of double standards and intolerance.
Let me remind you all that it was ultimately in truly tolerant Western Christianity-based democracies that civil rights for gays and many others flourished. You won’t see any Gay Pride parades in Mecca. Point being, many gays face torture and horrific death in other parts of the world, and American gays are acting like Chick-Fil-A is persecuting them in the same way. How about some perspective, people? Don’t like the fact Chick-Fil-A’s owner is a Christian right-winger whose beliefs don’t jibe with yours? DON’T EAT THERE! I will also add, as a strict secularist, that it is just wrong to force Catholics to pay for contraception or abortions, any more than it would be to force gays to pay for churches.
That may considered an extreme view by leftists. What isn’t? But remember when the ObamaCare bill was being stuffed down our throats we were told that it was ridiculous to think churches would be forced to pay for abortions? Big show of an Obama executive order barring funding of abortions? Now we’re ridiculous for thinking churches shouldn’t pay for them. And that is how the lemming left pushes us ever closer to the totalitarian abyss, people. Ask yourself: would the gays engaging in the Two Minutes Chick-Fil-A Hate fully support the owner’s arrest and trial for hate crime? Thoughtcrime? Wrongthink? All of the above? Why do I think yes? And how sad a statement is that?
I don’t understand the big fuss about gay marriage, let them get married. Men marrying men, women marrying women. On the bright side , in a few generations there will be no Democrats.
Cathy did not make a statement against gay marriage, and he did not violate anyone’s rights by saying he believes in the Biblical concept of marriage. He could have as easily said that he believes in the Kuranic concept of marriage and wouldn’t have violated anyone’s rights, either. There is no “right” for gays to marry, so Cathy could have easily said he supports the traditional, secular view of marriage. Cathy is a business owner and is free to have his own opinions, and he’s free to spend money supporting any cause he believes in. Don’t forget that as a taxpayer, you are supporting the killing of many people, including Americans, because your money goes to support war. It would be wrong to say that you agree with killing people simply because you pay taxes. The LGBT community needs to remember how many gay marriage bills were killed by voters all over the nation last year. Personally, I think that LGBT people should have the same rights as anyone else – as far as having a significant other make medical decisions, hospital visitation and estate planning, but I know that you can have legal documents drawn up for those reasons. When it comes to family medical and health insurance, remember that it is not Cathy trying to keep you from being insured, it is insurance companies. Really, though, when it comes right down to it, no one can stop you from loving who you want to love, or living with that person. And isn’t that the most important thing?
I can’t speak for others…I’m neither gay nor Christian nor care who sleeps with/ love who but, what interests and confuses me is why gays wish to marry.
Marriage is a providence of the church you say doesn’t define you and that does not wish to include you…having already done the hard work of diverging from the norm why do you feel you need to take on the tenets of the church?
Is it a vestige of the norm that you can’t give up?
The only reason the government ever got involved in marriage at all was to collect fees and exercise control over the process so why isn’t a civil union recognized by government and the people that accords whomever to form a public bond with another enough?
Marriage is between a man and a woman…why do you want it?
Will it make your union feel more valid? Justified?
I understand wanting the same rights from a system you pay into…that makes sense but, marriage instead of civil union…why?
If so why can the government declare all unions civil unions…will that make you feel better about your relationship?
Gays and Lesbians should declare victory and lose the countercultural attitude. Most Americans support civil unions, but draw the line at marriage, which is a political construct crafted by a small but powerful minority.
“Religion isnt what informs laws against rape, theft and murder – common sense and human decency does. Try again.”
I think “common sense ” doesn’t mean what you think it means. Before the advent of Christianity, for example, common sense meant that it was okay to enslave other people; the Jews themselves were slaves for centuries. (It took almost 2,000 years, but mankind in the west finally, of its own free will, destroyed the institution; it still exists in Asia, though.) Do you realize that radical Muslims, for example, believe that it is common sense for them to summarily hang homosexuals or throw them off the roofs of tall buildings? They do so all the time. It’s also common sense for them to throw acid in their womens’ faces or pour it down their throats if they dress too ‘western’, and to decapitate without remorse anyone who does not submit to Allah—that’s common sense to them.
What you define as common sence is the result of a 2,000 year-old process of Judeo-Christian acculturation that has become so ingrained in western civilzation that it is now regarded as “common sense.”
Try again, as you say.
Just a note: The last time the government boycotted businesses because it disagreed with the religion of the citizens who owned them was in 1933. The country was Germany; the men guys who did it were called Brownshirts; and the system they espoused was called Fascism:
The demonstration on August 1 was not about gays; it was about pushing back aginst a government that is rapidly becoming so totalitarian that freedom of thought is no longer a protected value. At the moment, we’re lucky enough to live in America, where disagreement on one issue does not necessarily preclude agreement on another and where a wide variety of people have coexisted in peace for 234 years. Come November, that America may be a page in the history books.
That one group or another would use the levers of state authority to advance their agenda is understandable, albeit at the (supposed) expense of their (supposed) adversaries. The only lasting solution is to dissolve, or at least diminish, the levers of state authority. Live and Let Live. If one group feels so passionately about the derangement of a word, why not let them keep it and create a new word for new times. Similarly, if another group feels so strongly about being “married,” stand aside and let them choose their own path – they will find, as so many others have through the ages, that marriage is not always such a picnic! Why do the disparate paths before us have to be so mutually exclusive? So all or nothing? Why would any rational, “accepting” person accept an inferior chicken sandwich in service of some political end?
Time to get real…
You make some excellent points Mark. However the Homosexual activist will not be happy until they get all they want even if they have to limit free speech and religious freedom.
I would add to this article since the author got it so spot on. Where is the idea of a civil society anymore. One that leaves you alone to pursue what you wish. It can be a good book when sitting in the park. Used to it was sanctioned as the place where most creative efforts flourished. No more. The park is full of drugs and pedophiles, so it must be watched and full of police.
My question is watched for what purpose? I would just one day love to be left alone to my thoughts, not wondering if the thought police are gonna pounce on me next. What happened to my right to be left alone?
I get tired of gays zeroing in on Christians as the only ones who are opposed to gay marriage. I’m not religious, but I am opposed to gay marriage. I know many people who fall into this category, even here in California, which, for all its liberalness, still voted against gay marriage.
It’s also part of the Left’s strategy to ignore that Muslims and other faiths oppose gay marriage. It’s part of their Orwellian strategy to pick a villain, in this case, Christians, while not naming aloud others who oppose them.
The Left dare not speak aloud that Muslims or blacks pretty much can’t stand them.
For all of recorded history, marriage, whether monogamous or polygamous, has been a society’s way of providing for the problems that present themselves whenever reproduction leads to children.
Since a gay union, unlike a heterosexual one, cannot produce children, those problems are not addressed by a union between them; thus, I don’t believe that for a very small group of people who cannot reproduce an entire society should un-institutionalize an important cultural entity.
Then, too, gay unions are rarely monogamous. Gay men rarely go into such a partnership or union with the explicit or implicit understanding that they will be monogamous, and anyone who’s been around gays knows this although a lot of libs who haven’t been around them have fallen for the explanation that gay unions are no different than hetero ones. They are not. Because gays are often laissez faire in their sexual lives, the institutionalizing of gay marriage will legally change straight marriage, with the courts ultimately dropping the expectation of sexual monogamy in marriage. This will have dire effects in custody battles, relationships between men and women, etc. It’s disingenous to say that gay marriage will have no effect on straight marriage.
No fault divorce has had dire effects on marriage in general and thus, on kids, and gay marriage, with its very different understandings between partners, will have the same effect on all marriages, something not good for kids or society in general since stable families (and stable always involves sexual behavior) are the bedrock of a stable society.
“For all of recorded history, marriage, whether monogamous or polygamous, has been a society’s way of providing for the problems that present themselves whenever reproduction leads to children.”
Correction: should read, “marriage…has been society’s way of providing a solution to the problems that present themselves whenever mating leads to children.”
You might also recall that Mr. Candy was just as “judgemental” of heteros who get divorced. Of course, the media (the Left, as they are synonymous) ignored that.
I do not participate in boycotts, and plenty of gay-owned businesses receive my business and dollars. However, I wonder if the tipping point will arrive for me someday, if and when the tolerance nazis are so aggressive, that in good conscience I will feel compelled to boycott gay owned businesses and companies who advocate SSM. The strategy SSM advocates use can be used against them. They don’t seem to be anticipating the logical working out of things. Anyway, I haven’t reached that point yet, and hope not to.
“His partner of twenty years has no hospital visitation rights”
Sorry, I call bs. I have nothing to go on but your anonymous (and in my opinion slanderous of this country) claim. The person checks into the hospital, gives his partners name as his next of kin and that’s it. Why do liberals have to lie to support thier positions? Why don’t liberals see the irony and absudity of having to lie to support thier positions?
If we were all to operate like the left does (in making a big self-righteous deal about their opposition to Chick Fil A because of its owner’s religious beliefs) I guess all conservatives will stop going to all the movies produced by the Hollywood left. And TV and music as well. Imagine the hit their pocketbooks would take without conservative’s money?
To those here suggesting that marriage is a must for your happiness or further that you have a right to it I say the following…No, it isn’t and no, it is not a right. I do not have the RIGHT to get married. The state has made a definition and I had to meet that. Yes, I get it, you want to have your relationship included in this definition, but where will the groups end this? I mean a person could just as well, using your logic, say that he or she MUST be allowed to marry their 4 other partners on the basis of “I am seeking happiness” too. There can be no disagreement to that…it will make them “happy.” Additionally, why can’t a pedophile make the same arguments…such as “I always knew since I was young that I was attracted to and wanted to have a loving relationship with a child!” Do not say its different! If you do you then have to say that your relationship is too. After all, gays represent less than 3% of our population and even if you take the fictional number of 10% as promoted by the magazine of the same name it is strikingly less than the average. Why then, should an institution, sanctified by both religions of all kinds and the state with the express purpose of supporting the nuclear family for the raising of children in a stable society SHARE this definition with you? Simple…the real goal of GOVERNMENT ENFORCED LEGITIMIZATION. There has been no other cause so misleading except man-made global warming.
Well, you may have a point. Actually you do make a good point. But where you lose it is when you suggest that this is problem that the Left owns. Not long ago Don Wildman and his loud, yet ineffective, American Family Association feverishly took on large corporations like Ford for promoting sensitivity to others in the workplace, some of those others having to be gay. And I seriously doubt the likes of Coulter, Beck and Limbaugh ever say: “yes, I disagree with this person, but they are made in the image and likeness of God, and I honor that before our different views (even as I fight for the rightness of my views).” And I wonder if their millions of devotees ever feel that way.
True story: I was walking my dog and met another person walking hers. She said she was married and I asked what her husband does, and then she jumped all over me for assuming that she was married to a man.
So when a gay person says they are married, without current spouse present, or without any other indicator, what is a person to do. Should my second question have been, “What is your sexual orientation?”
I do not believe that a same sex relationship between a man and a man is the same as between a woman and a woman is the same as between a man and a woman. Oh, they can be equivalent, no doubt, but they are not the same.
I you support same sex marriage, why do you not want a word to overtly describe it? A word that makes no bones about your sexual orientation right from the start. Using the word “marriage” for a same sex relationship is another way of staying in the closet.
Bonded, pledged, joined, crap, I don’t know what word you want, but why oh why must you use a word that does not identify you as to actually what you are?
This isn’t an argument about semantics, it is an argument about information that is conveyed when you make a statement about your commitment to a relationship and whether you are willing to also convey, or hide, your sexual orientation without either further declarative statements or the other person subjecting you to further questioning.
By insisting on a word that has had a well understood meaning for thousands of years (ie: marriage) you create a world of abiguity that effects all those who have gone before.
Native Americans had same sex relationships between men (at least that is what “Little Big Man” taught me, and they had a separate, clealy understood word for that relationship.
That’s a great point Jack! Couldn’t have said it better myself. I guess to guys committed to each other could call it a matrimonial manlationship.
Sorry, Mark Judge. You’re either with them or you’re against them. You can’t lie in the middle and say I’m against gay marriage and then give $200 to gay causes. You say you’re a Christian. Well, from what I’ve been taught (as a Christian myself), our policy is hate the sin, love the sinner. So land somewhere and practice what you’re preaching.
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