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Gay marriage 'rights'
www.townhall.com ^ | December 31, 2004 | Thomas Sowell

Posted on 12/31/2004 12:46:20 PM PST by DirtyHarryY2K

In all the states where gay marriage was on the ballot this year, the voters voted against it -- as they should have.

Of all the phony arguments for gay marriage, the phoniest is the argument that it is a matter of equal rights. Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have.

People who are simply living together can make whatever arrangements they want, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. They can divide up their worldly belongings 50-50 or 90-10 or whatever other way they want. They can make their union temporary or permanent or subject to cancellation at any time.

Marriage is a restriction. If my wife buys an automobile with her own money, under California marriage laws I automatically own half of it, whether or not my name is on the title. Whether that law is good, bad, or indifferent, it is a limitation of our freedom to arrange such things as we ourselves might choose. This is just one of many decisions that marriage laws take out of our hands.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the life of the law is not logic but experience. Marriage laws have evolved through centuries of experience with couples of opposite sexes -- and the children that result from such unions. Society asserts its stake in the decisions made by restricting the couples' options.

Society has no such stake in the outcome of a union between two people of the same sex. Transferring all those laws to same-sex couples would make no more sense than transferring the rules of baseball to football.

Why then do gay activists want their options restricted by marriage laws, when they can make their own contracts with their own provisions and hold whatever kinds of ceremony they want to celebrate it?

The issue is not individual rights. What the activists are seeking is official social approval of their lifestyle. But this is the antithesis of equal rights.

If you have a right to someone else's approval, then they do not have a right to their own opinions and values. You cannot say that what "consenting adults" do in private is nobody else's business and then turn around and say that others are bound to put their seal of approval on it.

The rhetoric of "equal rights" has become the road to special privilege for all sorts of groups, so perhaps it was inevitable that gay activists would take that road as well. It has worked. They have already succeeded in getting far more government money for AIDS than for other diseases that kill far more people.

The time is long overdue to stop word games about equal rights from leading to special privileges -- for anybody -- and gay marriage is as good an issue on which to do so as anything else.

Incidentally, it is not even clear how many homosexuals actually want marriage, even though gay activists are pushing it.

What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.

They have already succeeded to a remarkable degree in our public schools, where so-called "AIDS education" or other pious titles are put on programs that promote homosexuality. In some cases, gay activists actually come to the schools, not only to promote homosexuality as an idea but even to pass out the addresses of local gay hangouts to the kids.

There is no limit to what people will do if you let them get away with it. That our schools, which are painfully failing to educate our children to the standards in other countries, have time for promoting homosexuality is truly staggering.

Every special interest group has an incentive to take something away from society as a whole. Some will be content just to siphon off a share of the taxpayers' money for themselves. Others, however, want to dismantle a part of the structure of values that make a society viable.

They may not want to bring down the whole structure, just get rid of the part that cramps their style. But when innumerable groups start dismantling pieces of the structure that they don't like, we can be headed for the kinds of social collapses seen both in history and in other parts of the world in our own times.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: freeparella; homosexualagenda; thomassowell; trolllogic
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Comment #21 Removed by Moderator

Comment #22 Removed by Moderator

Comment #23 Removed by Moderator

Comment #24 Removed by Moderator

Comment #25 Removed by Moderator

To: freeparella

Bye!


26 posted on 12/31/2004 1:20:46 PM PST by Admin Moderator
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To: freeparella

Here comes the ZOT!


27 posted on 12/31/2004 1:21:23 PM PST by broadsword (The difference between Charles Manson and Mohamed is... exactly... WHAT?)
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To: freeparella

What a moron!


28 posted on 12/31/2004 1:21:47 PM PST by broadsword (The difference between Charles Manson and Mohamed is... exactly... WHAT?)
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To: freeparella
You need to "stick with dick," I think.

It suits you.

29 posted on 12/31/2004 1:22:23 PM PST by Reactionary
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To: gidget7

This all is true too. A person must perpetuate the lifestyle on their own. The tendency is there due to the imbalance, but it won't solely make a person lean toward homosexuality.


30 posted on 12/31/2004 1:22:49 PM PST by infidel29 (America is GREAT because she is GOOD, the moment she ceases to be GOOD, she ceases to be GREAT - B.F)
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To: Admin Moderator

Leave ONE post up to remind everyone of the pus-filled "enlightenment" of the libs.


31 posted on 12/31/2004 1:23:18 PM PST by F16Fighter
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To: freeparella
"Hi! I just stumbled in from the DU. Watch me as I:
32 posted on 12/31/2004 1:28:41 PM PST by broadsword (The difference between Charles Manson and Mohamed is... exactly... WHAT?)
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To: freeparella

Geeze you musta been lost in some bathouse when the Network news interviewd the druggies who did Matthew Shephard.Was NOT homophobia--nor Dr.James Dobson ,nor them evil Christian Right got the poor confused cruiser killed--it was Drugs. Know enough crack heads, and speed freaks who
would do the same under those same conditions. IT is not wise to act queer and think you can trade sicko sex for drugs-that lifestyle is as the Apostle Paul wrote to the
Believers at Rome -- "unnatural" -"Unconvienent" and the
product of a REPROBATE mind. The "Already captured Liberal
establishment and the freaking Press " just want to force
America to be as godless and evil as the queer nation.


33 posted on 12/31/2004 1:29:36 PM PST by StonyBurk
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To: F16Fighter
Leave ONE post up to remind everyone of the pus-filled "enlightenment" of the libs.

I'm tempted to leave that whole mess for its monument.

34 posted on 12/31/2004 1:31:53 PM PST by Admin Moderator
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To: F16Fighter; Admin Moderator
I agree with F16

What a shining example "freeparella" makes for them.

35 posted on 12/31/2004 1:33:16 PM PST by DirtyHarryY2K (''Go though life with a Bible in one hand and a Newspaper in the other" -- Billy Graham)
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To: scripter; little jeremiah; Clint N. Suhks; Grampa Dave; MeekOneGOP

Check out #21-25


36 posted on 12/31/2004 1:37:25 PM PST by DirtyHarryY2K (''Go though life with a Bible in one hand and a Newspaper in the other" -- Billy Graham)
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To: Admin Moderator
Might be interesting to have one great archival thread of "Monumental ZOTS and the Idiots Who Earned Them!"
37 posted on 12/31/2004 1:42:57 PM PST by broadsword (The difference between Charles Manson and Mohamed is... exactly... WHAT?)
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To: DirtyHarryY2K

Sigh. I guess somebody had to vent. Too bad they only made their side look really ignorant.


38 posted on 12/31/2004 1:46:30 PM PST by scripter (Tens of thousands have left the homosexual lifestyle)
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To: scripter
Too bad they only made their side look really ignorant.

Uhm... That's because their side... really... IS... ignorant!
39 posted on 12/31/2004 1:47:50 PM PST by broadsword (The difference between Charles Manson and Mohamed is... exactly... WHAT?)
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To: broadsword
Sometimes I try to be diplomatic, sometimes I don't. J
40 posted on 12/31/2004 1:50:44 PM PST by scripter (Tens of thousands have left the homosexual lifestyle)
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