Posted on 02/27/2004 2:30:26 PM PST by JohnHuang2
'Gay marriage' is not about 'rights'
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Proponents of traditional values are making a tactical error in allowing the homosexual lobby to frame the issue of same-sex marriage merely as one of equal rights for gays. Much more is at stake.
Let me raise a few questions. Do you believe that marriage is properly an institution between a man and a woman? Do you believe marriage, so defined, is an indispensable building block of our society? If you answered yes to these questions, do you believe that there is something wrong with you for wanting to preserve an institution that you believe is essential for society? Are you a homophobe? Are you full of hate?
The gay lobby, in its tireless determination, has succeeded in framing the same-sex marriage issue as one of equal rights instead of the right of a society to preserve its foundational institutions. They have painted those who nobly want to preserve these institutions as hateful, homophobic bigots.
But opposition to same-sex marriage not about "rights," and it's not about hate or bigotry. No one is preventing homosexuals from living with one another. All homosexuals have a "right" to get married and to have that marriage sanctioned by the state. But in order to do that they must marry someone of the opposite sex – that's what marriage means and has always meant. When they insist that society be forced to redefine marriage to sanction same-sex unions, they are attempting to establish new and special rights.
What's worse is that if we view this from the narrow perspective of "gay rights," we are overlooking that these "rights" will not be created in a vacuum, without consequences to our society. It's not as simple as saying that homosexuals will have the right to live together and receive the "legal incidents" of marriage.
If they coerce society into placing its imprimatur on same-sex marriage, they will have eroded one of the fundamental supports of our society. But in our postmodern licentious, amoral culture, we are so hung up on radical individualism, we no longer seem to comprehend that society has a vital interest in establishing rules grounded in morality and enforced by law.
This is the larger issue underlying the marriage turf battle. Does our society even have a mandate anymore to base its laws on moral absolutes? Or does our myopic zeal for pluralism, "tolerance," "multiculturalism," "secularism" and moral relativism require that we abandon the moral pillars upon which our system is built?
I know it is chic to subscribe to the mindless notion that we can't legislate morality or that we can't even base our laws on our moral and religious beliefs, but that thinking is as destructive as it is nonsensical. We have always based our laws on our moral beliefs and must continue to for them to have any legitimacy.
It is completely possible to base a nation's constitutional system on specific religious beliefs and simultaneously guarantee the rights of its citizens to exercise other religious beliefs. That's precisely what our predominantly Christian Framers did. They built a system on Judeo-Christian roots, which they believed would guarantee, not threaten, political and religious freedom. America's history conclusively vindicates them.
They designed a governmental system grounded in the laws of nature established by the God they believe created them in His image and Who was therefore the source of their inalienable rights. A society so founded has an interest in preserving the moral foundation established by this God and observing His laws of nature. And the protection of this interest is wholly consistent with, indeed essential to, guaranteeing an ordered society with maximum political and religious liberties.
We are so spoiled with our freedoms that we never stop to think that they are based on a moral foundation, which, if uprooted, will uproot our liberties as well. You don't have to be an ardent churchgoer to grasp that we cannot continue in our rebellious and narcissistic quest for unrestrained liberty with impunity. If we persist in demanding freedom without responsibility; if we recklessly reject self-control and moral parameters; if we defy the laws of nature established by an omniscient God, we can expect chaos and the eventual erosion of liberty.
It is chilling that those who want to preserve our unique system and the unparalleled freedom it guarantees are viewed as a threat to that freedom, when, in fact, they are its sacred guardians.
This writer has a Biblical take on morality and homosexuality, and uses the "unrestrained liberty being bad" argument to deny liberty to homosexuals.
Our nation was principally founded on ethics based in reality, and any attempt to impose Biblical "morality" means a return to Dark Age thinking.
Among other things, women would be totally subservient to men, women dress codes would require covering from neck to toes, and all family income would be the property of the male in charge. It would take us back to "The good old days" of a Patriarch age.
By having the "liberty" to make their own laws, the "people" could create the society that they favored, based on whatever values they deem appropriate. The Constitution of 1787 constrains such a society by asserting certain rights, and refers to others "reserved to the states, or to the people".
The "liberty" you refer to - acquiescence to certain sexual behavior - is nowhere enumerated, or even obliquely referred to. Such behaviors would rightly be seen as being constrained by the larger society, expressed through laws. To assert that any behavior is a right is merely to assert an anarachist viewpoint, which has nothing to do with the notion of a Constitutional Republic at Liberty to rule itself.
As far as "ethics based in reality", what reality would you assert that would give rise to such ethics? Natural law, for instance? If so, provide an example of human reproduction by androgeny or parthenogenesis. The social interest in ritualizing heterosexual relationships is to establish a framework for the perpetuation of the society - not merely to provide a legal vehicle for cohabiting adults. As such, the ritualized version - heterosexual marriage - has more basis in "reality" than the notion of trying to legitimate homosexual relations by claiming some sort of naturality for them. Homosexuality is an anomaly observed in some species, and all species have anomalies. Anomalies typically are not a very good basis for asserting an "ethic based in reality".
And conversely, to assert that a human behavior condemned by religion is wrong is merely to assert a religious viewpoint, and that too has nothing to do with the notion of a Constitutional Republic at Liberty to rule itself.
What this issue has everything to do with is individual liberty.
The First Amendment has in it that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ..." And that tells me that no religious code, not even the Ten Commandments, can be forced upon Americans through legislation.
Crimes involving human beings such as murder, rape, robbery, etc. are well covered in American law using a reality based -- common sense -- code of ethics.
When common sense tells people that something is "wrong" -- without regard to some one or another religion code -- then common sense law will cover it.
I agree that the writer has used the wrong reason to arrive at the correct conclusion.
"Gay Marriage" is not about rights. It is about money. If you look at the original push by Gay Rights activists, it was all bout being able to cash in on the benefits that married couples have, but single people don't All those innumerable things that our great nanny state put into law to encourage people to become married. Insurance benefits, military housing benefits, tax benefits, Socialist Insecurity benefits, medical benefits, membership benefits, and all the other innumerable things that THE STATE used to help lure people into marriage.
The one thing that made any sense of all this was the oft stated purpose to insure that "the children" were cared for and raised to maturity.
Now Gay couples want in on the money tree. They already can make all the civil contracts they want for protection of their significant other and to transfer property after death, but they are not satisfied with that. They insist that they loot the public treasury of the resources that were meant to protect children.
What we should have is separation of marriage and State. Let the Churches marry anyone they choose, but have the state only enforce civil contracts between consenting adults with full knowledge or what they are signing beforehand.
Will the Ex-Husband get the kids in 50% of divorce cases?..That would be "fair".Will the court mandate that the ex-wife also pay him alimony? That would be "fair". We can't do things the old unfair way any more you know.Tradition used to say give the mom the kids, but we can't do that anymore.
Will the courts mandate that 50% of all line combat units be female? Only that number would make things "fair and equal." Will women be held back from voting in national elections until this quota is met?
Remember Congress and the President make decissions on war , and it would not be "fair or equal" to allow women a voice in electing these folks when women risk none of the danger in combat units.
I know we used to do things based on time honored tradition but judicial activists have changed things. The Pigs have climbed the ladder at night and painted new rules on the barn.
Will the courts mandate that 50% of the people who drive up on the truck that takes my trash away be women? I'm talking about actually lifting bags and tossing them here..not just driving.Will sanitation departments be mandated to fill these quotas?
Will the courts mandate that any male who wants an abortion be able to get one at state expense? I realize that most men are not capable of carrying child but since we are ignoring physical realities to placate a 2% minority what the heck....
If gay marrige passes in Mass. or Calif. are other states mandated to recognize them? Does the State Constitution prevail or the Federal Constitution? Since my state constitution says the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be questioned, does that mean Mass. Calif. N.Y. et al now must allow me to carry a fire arm in their state? Only that option would be "Fair and Equal"....
How many Angels can dance on the lid of an opened can of worms rolling down a slippery slope?
And:
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
That's funny. Why not? Your subsequent argument invokes the establishment clause in the First, which says only that a state religion may not be established.
Religion as it evolved is itself a compendium of observed realities, and the social codes espoused by religion usually assert social optimality by empirical observation of their success. In other words, religion itself is "ethics based on reality". Religion merely ascribes to such realities an underlying causality, namely an abstraction known as "god".
The Constitution poses no obstruction to laws based on religious morality; it is, in fact, a document based on religious morality. The exclusion clause merely provides that the religious basis cannot be monotone.
The Enlightenment never asserted that religion was "wrong"; merely that it had been ossified and diverted from seeking natural truths. Areligious empiricism may be acceptable, and even create stable societies. But who is to say that such empiricism has not simply discovered "God's laws"?
| What We Can Do To Help Defeat the "Gay" Agenda |
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| Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Version 1.1) |
| The Stamp of Normality |
Your Dennis Praeger link about Judaism’s Sexual Revolution is impressive in that it show's Praeger's religious obsession with sex.
Where sex is a natural human drive, religions are invented products of man and, consequently, unnatural.
Thanks to common sense, we have the United States of America.
Thanks to religion, however, humanity is hugely divided over matters such as sexual ethics.
In many regards -- food, sex, morality, etc. -- common sense and religions have come to be natural enemies. As a matter of fact, that might explain why there are so many different religions.
Were the laws of nature violated when Luther Burbank, inspired by Darwin's work, invented new varieties of potatoes, plums, prunes, apples, cherries, peaches, quinces, nectarines, tomatoes, corn, asparagus, squash, peas, and various flowers?
The dictionary, for instance, classifies the peach as "Prunus persica" and the nectarine as "Prunus persica var. nectarina," indicating commonality with some differences.
Given that, doesn't it make sense to speculate in human terms such as Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens, var. homosexual?
When you remove all non-reality based -- mystical elements-- from a religion, what would remain in that religion's philosohy?
It would be a swiss cheese philosophy full of holes.
The institution of marriage is legally a state matter, and religious customs -- such as marriage restricted to male and female only -- should not prevail over individual freedom in a secular and multicultural state.
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