Posted on 12/08/2003 7:12:17 PM PST by Kay Soze
How legalizing gay marriage undermines society's morals
By Alan Charles Raul
WASHINGTON - The promotion of gay marriage is not the most devastating aspect of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's recent decision. The more destructive impact of the decision for society is the court's insidious denial of morality itself as a rational basis for legislation.
This observation is not hyperbole or a mere rhetorical characterization of the Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health decision. The Massachusetts justices actually quoted two opinions of the US Supreme Court (the recent anti-anti-sodomy ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas and an older anti-antiabortion ruling, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey) to support the proposition that the legislature may not "mandate (a) moral code" for society at large. The courts, it would seem, have read a fundamental political choice into the Constitution that is not apparent from the face of the document itself - that is, that individual desires must necessarily trump community interests whenever important issues are at stake.
These judicial pronouncements, therefore, constitute an appalling abnegation of popular sovereignty. In a republican form of government, which the Constitution guarantees for the United States, elected officials are meant to set social policy for the country. They do so by embodying their view of America's moral choices in law. (This is a particularly crucial manner for propagating morality in our republic because the Constitution rightly forbids the establishment of religion, the other major social vehicle for advancing morality across society.) In reality, legislatures discharge their moral mandates all the time, and not just in controversial areas such as abortion, gay rights, pornography, and the like.
Animal rights, protection of endangered species, many zoning laws, and a great deal of environmental protection - especially wilderness conservation - are based on moral imperatives (as well as related aesthetic preferences). Though utilitarian arguments can be offered to salvage these kinds of laws, those arguments in truth amount to mere rationalizations. The fact is that a majority of society wants its elected representatives to preserve, protect, and promote these values independent of traditional cost-benefit, "what have you done for me lately" kind of analysis. Indeed, some of these choices can and do infringe individual liberty considerably: For example, protecting spotted owl habitat over jobs puts a lot of loggers out of work and their families in extremis. Likewise, zoning restrictions can deprive individuals of their ability to use their property and live their lives as they might otherwise prefer. Frequently, the socially constrained individuals will sue the state, claiming that such legal restrictions "take" property or deprive them of "liberty" in violation of the Fifth Amendment, or constitute arbitrary and capricious governmental action. And while such plaintiffs sometimes do - and should - prevail in advancing their individual interests over those of the broader community, no one contends that the government does not have the legitimate power to promote the general welfare as popularly defined (subject, of course, to the specific constitutional rights of individuals and due regard for the protection of discrete and insular minorities bereft of meaningful political influence).
Even the much maligned tax code is a congeries of collective moral preferences. Favoring home ownership over renting has, to be sure, certain utilitarian justifications. But the fact is that we collectively believe that the country benefits from the moral strength growing out of families owning and investing in their own homes. Likewise, the tax deduction for charitable contributions is fundamentally grounded in the social desire to support good deeds. Our society, moreover, puts its money (and lives) where its heart is: We have gone to war on more than one occasion because it was the morally correct thing to do.
So courts that deny morality as a rational basis for legislation are not only undermining the moral fabric of society, they run directly counter to actual legislative practice in innumerable important areas of society. We must recognize that what the Massachusetts court has done is not preserve liberty but merely substitute its own moral code for that of the people. This damage is not merely inflicted on government, trampling as it does the so-called "separation of powers." It does much worse, for when judges erode the power of the people's representatives to set society's moral compass, they likewise undercut the authority of parents, schools, and other community groups to set the standards they would like to see their children and fellow citizens live by. Indeed, it is a frontal assault on community values writ large.
It is thus no wonder that many feel our culture's values are going to hell in a handbasket. Yet, neither the federal nor Massachusetts constitutions truly compel such a pernicious outcome. Indeed, to this day the Massachusetts Constitution precisely recognizes that "instructions in piety, religion and morality promote the happiness and prosperity of a people and the security of a republican government." It cannot be stated better than George Washington did in his first inaugural address: "The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the pre-eminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world."
• Alan Charles Raul is a lawyer in Washington. This commentary originally appeared in The Washington Post. ©2003 The Washington Post.
Our physiology defines the default. We are made so that a male fits into a female. Everything else is maladaption. Heterosexuality is the default.
Now assuming that there is another default called 'homosexuality' where is the genetic marker for it? Where is the biological proof? Where is the resistance to certain feces born diseases that should be present in those 'defaulted' to that behavior? IT DOESN'T EXIST! because there is no other default. Mentally healthy people are heterosexual, only when damaged do they become something else.
Now, if homosexuality is a choice, then you need to convince me that you can make yourself chose to be attracted to other men (I am assuming you to be a male based on your FR name)...I can't, but apparently, you think that you can.
No man can 'make himself choose' however others can make that choice for you. That's why NAMBLA and other homosexual recruiting agencies are so keen on molesting the children when they are young. Molestation is the most common cause of SAD. As stated before, 'identifying with your attacker' is a common psychological defense mechanism that can be, and has been used in brainwashing.
When the child is molested the first response is "what did I do wrong to deserve this?" The second response is to find some way to relieve the guilt (even though you have nothing to be guilty of you instinctively know that you did something unnatural). This is normally done by rationalizing the behavior "Well maybe what we did wasn't really wrong? maybe I'm supposed to act this way. After all (my attacker) likes boys maybe I'm supposed to also". Bingo! recruitment accomplished.
I've been there and this is exactly what happens. I've also seen this in lots of other molestation victims and interviews of people in 'brainwash' type situations.
Now I know you'll state that no one could make you that way. And right now you are correct, you're too old and set in your ways. But take a young impressionable child, who's still determining who they are and what they really believe, and subject them to pschological torture such as molestation and you can warp their entire being to be whatever you want them to be. If done correctly you can manufacture almost anything you want.
Look at the palistinian children. These kids have been twisted to hate with a hatred far beyond their years or understanding. Children are naturally accepting and don't hate unless taught it. But Pali kids hate jews. Most of them have probably never even met a Jew. but they hate them. They've been brainwashed
That's an incredibly ignorant statement, you obviously again believe that a heterosexual can make the choice of having sex with a member of the same sex without first being a homosexual.
I wasn't. I was molested by a friend of my brother. I had only interest in girls up to that point (as much as any 10 year old does that is.) I never knew or even imagined the types of things that were done to me and if I had I would have thought they were gross. I never would have chosen to do those things. But that choice wasn't mine. Those things were forced upon me.
It is only by the grace of God that I was delivered from what would have been. And it took years of struggle to finally understand and heal and forgive. Everyone who is practicing homosexual behavior is mentally ill, they have been damaged somehow. No one chooses to be 'homosexual' but most have swallowed the "you were born that way" lie and choose to remain ill rather than seek help.
If that man had sex with "Mr. X", then obviously he was a homosexual.
Elian was obviously a big Fidel Castro supporter as he returned to Cuba.
Both statements are equally stupid. Elian was FORCED to go to Cuba. Most 'homosexuals' were FORCED for their first 'homosexual' experience. (Note that I include seduction and manipulation of children as being forced. The kids don't have the maturity to resist these things)
I have asked that question, and the answer has always been, "I have always known that I was a homosexual".
With enough searching you can always find some damage that was done to these people. Either molested as very small children or having an absent/insufficent/abnormal relationship with their father or being relentlessly teased by their peers during the early years. Tell a 6 year old he's gay enough times and he'll believe you. They may not remember it, the mind has a way of blocking out traumas that are too much to bear, but it happened.
No one is born 'gay', they are recruited or damaged into that disease.
In my world little boys don't become 'homosexual' until after they've been molested.
Man...what's wrong with you?
I know the truth and keep my eyes open to learn more each day.
What's wrong with you that you can't believe the huge amount of evidence that exists (and has been posted here and linked via scripter's database) that this is a mental disease and not a characteristic. Do you have a 'gay' child that you are trying to avoid taking responsibility for? Open your eyes and see the truth. 'Homosexuality' is now and always has been a mental disease caused by trauma.
(And while I'm thinking of it, Dick Cheney is a great VP but a rotten father. He failed his daughter and now she is living the result of his failure)
Now extend this just slightly. Babies in the womb have the right to life. They need to be protected from those that would do them harm. Right?
Children have the right to live free from the threat of molestation. Right?
If there was a group of people who chose to murder babies (abortionists) you would be outraged at them. right?
Why are you not outraged at the group that chooses to practice a behavior that leads far, far too many of them to molest. The evidence leads to an inescapable conclusion that 'homosexuality' is a chosen behavior. Everyone who is trapped in that lifestyle can leave it if they choose to.
The data proves that the practice of homosexual behavior is deadly both to those who practice it and to those who come in contact with it.
I cannot say that 'homosexuals' have killed more than abortionists have. But I can say that they have damaged far more than abortionists have. An abortionist's victims don't go on to victimize others while a 'homosexual's' victims usually do. Its a deady cycle of molestation and perversion and it is contrary to the general welfare of these United States.
(It is a proven fact that those who were abused as children will abuse their own children in the lack of outside intervention. Likewise the sexually molested will become molesters in the lack of outside intervention)
Aaaahh!!!
So, in your world all homosexuals were molested as children!
Bullsh%^t!
show me figures to prove that.
Hint: you won't because there is no such "proof" of that in the world the rest of us live in.
"And while I'm thinking of it, Dick Cheney is a great VP but a rotten father. He failed his daughter and now she is living the result of his failure."
Was she molested as a little boy as well?
You forgot one possibility: your figure is wrong.
Add that possibility to the equation and do a Google on the words "Occam's Razor".
Of course it does. Your stated position is that anything two consenting adults wish to do in private is none of the government's business.
Two consenting adults decided to have one eat the other and record the event for the one's future memory. And you must believe that nobody should care.
Shalom.
Not all but surely most. Read the links in Scripter's database. The proof is there. Molestation is one of the three leading causes of SAD. An absent or insufficient relationship with one's father is the second and being relentlessly teased by one's peers during the early years is the third.
Was she molested as a little boy as well?
I realize that English is probably not your first language but I thought you'd realize that girls are not boys. She was probably molested (somewhere) as a little girl. Her father is at fault for not protecting her. Of course it may be another cause since I haven't studied her case.
You'll have to address your concerns about 73% of 'gay' males admitting they had sex with boys to the authors of the subject study. (Who also happen to be 'gay')
I've not seen anywhere where the study is disproven.
Quoted from the article:
"A controversial study has demonstrated that homosexuality is not necessarily a fixed sexual orientation, but that "gay" men and lesbians can change.
The research was conducted by Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, who in 1973 was one of the driving forces behind the psychiatric community's removal of homosexuality from its manual of mental disorders. The study was published in the October Archives of Sexual Behavior."
Note that Spitzer was the one who got the disease delisted in the first place. Even he now recognizes it as a changeable (curable) behavior choice
The point is, what provides for a stable family is what is best for society.
Divorce is rampant and way too easy. I'd like to see that changed. But for right now, we are talking about allowing gays to legally marry (no matter what PC name you stick on it). Not good for society. I can't support it.
Now I understand your personal crusade. I'm sorry for your personal traumas, but I know 5 homosexuals as friends, neighbors or co-wqorkers and none of this crap fits them. Your excoriation of homosexuals because of your personal experience, your willingness to use unscientific research, and your inability to see what you are doing, is a scourge on you and your fellow travellers and for my money, this site.
Lastly, it's unamerican to paint a whole group with a negative brush when we're in a country based upon individual rights and responsibilities.
I leave you to your misery. Good-bye, until the next time.
That's odd, I know at least as many that it fits to the last decimal point. Every 'homosexual' I've ever met falls into one of the trauma categories.
your willingness to use unscientific research,
I think it's humorous for you to call it unscientific when you've apparently never read it. In our discussion I have provided facts and studies and you have provided "molestations are under reported" with no backing data or studies. Who's unscientific?
and your inability to see what you are doing,
I have my eyes far wider open than most. I know exactly what is going on and have the data and the studies to support my views.
I've asked you to provide proof of your claims and none is forthcoming. Convince me you are right. Show me hard evidence that 'homosexuality' is genetic or inborn. You can't because it doesn't exist. I've got my eyes open. Apparently you do not. There is none so blind as he who will not see. There is a stack of evidence before you miles high proving what I've been saying and you simply shut your eyes and walk past with your fingers in your ears "nyah nyah nyah nyah I can't hear you nyah nyah". Open your eyes and see and you'll be converted (or is that what you're afraid of?)
Lastly, it's unamerican to paint a whole group with a negative brush when we're in a country based upon individual rights and responsibilities.
I never painted a group of people as bad. I painted a behavior as bad. If those who practice homosexual behavior choose to remain in that lifestyle then they are choosing to commit evil. I don't have to paint what's already painted. The only thing they have in common is their choice to remain sick.
The 'gays' self identified themselves as being 73% molesters. Their own researchers and their own words convict them
Post my quote, and provide a link to it.
With enough searching you can always find some damage that was done to every single individual on this planet. You will also find myriads of children who were molested and did not become homosexuals, destroying your theory that homosexuality is the by product of molestation, because in order for that to hold true, the reverse would have to hold true as well, and all molested children would have to become homosexuals.
But this discussion has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is whether same sex marriages should be allowed or not, unless of course, you want to raise the argument that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry because homosexuality is a mental disorder.
Is that your point?
Or is your point that citizens who were traumatized during childhood should not be allowed to marry because they are "damaged"?
Well said. Understood and agreed. I can find no fault with this. I would add:
1. we can never identify all prejudices in ourselves or others
2. prejudices can be to the good.
Now, on the subject of my own positions on gay marriage. (Please take this as not coming on too strong, if possible.)
I had no earthly reason to become a social conservative except by studying people and books. I have not believed in God since the age of 8. I was a libertarian and a libertine.
I now know that social reality is the most telling for human beings. I now know that live and let live is a virtue but not the most crucial virtue. Things matter. The disapproval that you sometimes feel from another human being at something you have done is a fundamentally crucial event in the functioning of tribe, culture, civilization. In every case, for the good and sometimes bad, that is morality at work.
Attitudes, practices, even prejudices must be passed across generations, or obviously, they will disappear. Public policy can interfere with the efficiency of this process. There is no guaranteed course of action, but we do use our intellects to guide us in our choices.
I believe live and let live is a good virtue applied to our comportment toward our gay brothers and sisters. Our culture can be damaged by turmoil, but gay issues is not an area that will be a death blow by any stretch. There are a whole host of gay issues on which I have opinions and they are not always consistent. For example, I think it must be admitted that the visceral discomfort folks feel on the subject of gay marriage may have an important value to the continued health of our civilization.
The special legal status of marriage, inherited from and connected to the traditional kind, owes its existence to its salutary effects. One aspect of this is exalting the paradigm of a man and a woman uniting for life and hopefully bearing children.
The logic of the existence of the institution of marriage is not tied up in the provision of approval and satisfaction to every individual. The satisfaction and benefits provided to those who marry is a way society, as a complex adaptive process, shifts resources to individuals who are performing a key function. What could be more key than raising children in a stable family? This is a critical, critical pattern because it supports the very process of causing other valuable patterns to persist across generations.
Gay couples as a class do not fit the paradigm in a fundamental way which is recognizable to all. This is different from individual heterosexual couples who happen to be infertile, are older, do not want children, etc. The public conveyance of equal status to gay couples would cause a small but significant loss of clarity in the paradigm.
That said, I think there is room in the public wealth to aid in the adaptations of a class of individuals (gays) who are making normative life choices. But I am vehemently opposed to instituting these legalities on an equal basis to marriage. I am vehemently opposed to a blanket political correctness which requires us to act as if gay coupling as on a par with marriage.
Individuals are individuals, and they have equal rights in their pursuit of happiness. The provisions of government are not rights. Pretending they are muddies the issue of civilization survival that should be always in our minds.
That is part of my point (as I stated numerous times above). Also homosexual behavior is deadly to those involved in it and those around it. The behvaior itself should not be tolerated, let alone encouraged by giving it special rights.
That's not true, LG. You're too smart and should know better that to use such bad logic - there's so much more behind the major factors causing homosexuality. Please consider reading up on this issue. One place that I consider a good summary of the issue follows:
How Might Homosexuality Develop? Putting the Pieces TogetherThe above is supported by the fact that thousands have left the homosexual lifestyle. And as John O pointed out earlier, even Spitzer (who helped remove homosexuality as a mental disorder) now states homosexuals can change. Others have said the same.
True, you don't say anything two consenting adults wish to do in private is none of the government's business on this thread. And you know as well as I do that I would have to have an insane desire to read through whatever you have posted on FR to find the quote to which I allude.
Rather than play that game with you (of misdirection) I'll ask you on what basis the government should be involved in a man eating his lover with his lover's consent. Or, if you'd wish to be more general, how does the government distinguish when limiting the behavior of two consenting adults is a violation of their rights and when it is not.
Shalom.
Not necessarily true. While molestation is one of the major causes of SAD I never said that it always causes SAD. Since SAD can be cured through reparative therapy and counseling, someone who is counseled immediately after the attack will probably never develop the disease.
Kids from loving homes with good trusting relationships with their parents will normally turn out healthy. The parents will be able to help the child overcome the molestation and get their head on straight again.
Signing away our freedoms
Ellen Goodman
BOSTON -- This is a tale of two signatures, each bearing the Bush penmanship. It's a tale of two bills that allow legislatures to trump a family, a doctor, a patient, a court. And it's a tale of what it means, when push comes to shove, to lose the right to make complicated decisions about life and death.
The first of these signatures, Jeb Bush, is on a law rushed through the Florida House and Senate with all the speed and none of the expertise of a trauma team in an emergency room.
The object of their attention was Terri Schiavo, a young woman who suffered a heart attack 13 years ago that left her in a condition doctors describe, in a terrible dehumanized phrase, as a persistent vegetative state. At 26, Terri had no living will. Without any written words, her husband and parents gradually became enemies, bitter opponents in a struggle over her fate.
On one side, the devastated parents believed that she could, would, should live -- even with a feeding tube. They took videos of their daughter apparently smiling, grunting, moaning, and showed them to the country, pleading her case.
On the other side, Terri's husband, Michael, believed that his wife didn't want to live in this state. Indeed, the doctors said her smiles were reflexes, not conscious emotions. Michael believed he was following his wife's desire -- not his own -- to end life. The courts, one after another, affirmed his view of her wishes.
But when the feeding tube was removed, when the death scene became a national spectacle, the Florida Legislature did something unprecedented. It gave a politician the power to override Terri Schiavo's own wishes, as the courts saw them, and have the tube reinserted.
Now imagine, if you will, having a state official control the fate of your wife or yourself? Even the state Senate president who voted to give this right to Jeb Bush had second thoughts. "I keep on thinking," he said, "what if Terri didn't want this to happen at all?" What indeed?
Meanwhile in Washington, in some odd synchrony, a bill banning the so-called "partial-birth" abortion finally passed Congress. It will be signed with great fanfare and political hoopla by Brother George when he gets back to the White House.
A ban that took eight years to crawl its way through the Capitol is the great PR victory for the right-to-life movement. From the beginning, it was a deliberate effort to change the terms of the abortion debate.
By the early 1990s, the abortion rights movement had successfully shaped the political argument on abortion around the question: Who Decides? To this day, when pollsters ask whether a woman and her doctor should make this hard choice, or the government should, 80 percent of all Americans -- including half of those who call themselves pro-life -- side with the woman.
So the right-to-lifers regeared the debate to an ambivalent middle uneasy with later abortions. With gruesome details and inflammatory language, they began a bald effort to ban abortion one procedure at a time.
The ban of one small procedure might not sound alarming. But the telling moment in this long debate was when the anti-abortion lobby refused to permit an exemption to protect the health of the woman. So now we have a law telling doctors for the first time that they cannot pick the procedure they regard as safest for the patient. Congress, not the doctor, will say which treatment is legal and which is a prescription for jail.
Stories like these, stories about the end of life and the beginning of life, raise grave moral questions. Both of these debates, over pregnant women and comatose patients, take place in the touchy gray areas: What is consciousness? What is a woman required to sacrifice for a fetus?
These two tales also remind us of life experiences we hope never to face. The gasp of a woman who finds that her pregnancy has gone terribly awry. The pain of a family with a parent, child, stuck in that horrific space between life and death.
Will these signature bills pass constitutional muster? Maybe not. Not yet. Indeed, Congress knowingly passed a law similar to a Nebraska law that the Supreme Court had already declared too broad, too vague.
But they remind us that the "right to decide" is not some political slogan, not some second-tier ethical concern. It's at the center of personal freedom.
It is deeply troubling moment when a stranger, a governor, a legislator, a president is given the power to write the end of our ethical, medical, family tales. Yes, this is how we lose our freedoms: One signature at a time.
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
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