Posted on 04/20/2004 2:23:24 PM PDT by It's me
The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Tri-sexual, Undecided, Asexual and Multi-sexual Community has been clamoring lately for their "right" to marriage. Envisioning themselves as wounded civil rights activists, fighting the bitter fight against bigots, church-bombers, and fire hoses to a new springtime of equality in the eyes of the law, they have launched an all-out attack on any person or group who infringes their imagined Constitutional right to marriage.
The attempt made by many in the gay and lesbian community to form a link between today's queer activism and the battle for civil rights of the Sixties has angered many, especially those who were actually involved in the fight for desegregation in the South. They are rightly indignant, for a fight to marry a member of your same sex has nothing of the validity of the fight to attend the same public schools as your fellow man and equal brother. Yet, the gays et al. would portray themselves as noble freedom fighters and abused sufferers of discrimination to win the sympathy of onlookers while ignoring the fact that marriage is not a civil right, and certainly not in the same sense as legal equality regardless of skin pigmentation.
Marriage, in fact, should not be considered a civil right at all. A civil right is a "nonpolitical right of a citizen", as defined by Merriam-Webster. The dictionary notes that this especially includes the rights enumerated in the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments. In this sense, all persons have a right to due process of law and equal protection under the law, which covers things like equal accommodation in public places, as there is not legal distinction between citizens of the state.
Likewise, there is no legal distinction between straight men and gay men, or straight women and lesbian women. There are no laws made specifically against members of a group, such as homosexuals, as there were against blacks in days past. There is no law that prohibits a gay man, or a lesbian woman, or whatever other combination you can come up with from getting married. Gays and lesbians have equal protection in this sense. There are, however, laws and the common law precedent that a man cannot marry a man. A gay man is not specifically prevented by law from being married, as such; he is, however, prevented from marrying another man.
Of course, gay men want the law to allow them to marry other gay men. But marriage, in the eyes of the law, is a contract between two individuals recognized by law and granted certain protections in the best interests of both the individuals and the state. The state is not obligated to recognize every contract of relationship between its citizens that happens to be formed, nor are they obligated to bestow extra rights on every couple who wants special treatment. Marriage confers upon the man and woman entering the contract certain rights in relation to each other, as well as certain legal protections and different tax statuses, among other things, because it benefits the state to encourage marriage for the production of new citizens and the proper, stable rearing of these little citizens. Marriage, as currently recognized by the state, benefits the state in ways that marriage between members of the same sex would not.
The arguments made by gays for same-sex marriage often claim that they want the legal right to share their economic resources for their mutual benefit. But the law grants special economic status and tax break to married couples because it encourages them to have a family, and makes it easier to bear the financial burdens of supporting children. There's no legal precedent that the state must recognize any pair who wishes to improve their economic status through mutual living arrangements. The government of the fifty states should not be compelled to sanction same-sex marriages simply for the economic well being of certain couples. That is not the purpose of marriage.
Nor is marriage merely a public declaration of love for one another. Gay couples can make private vows to one another, or be united in religious ceremonies in any way they choose. There is no reason to bring the government into it.
Same-sex couples have not provided compelling reasons why they should marry. They cite reasons of "equality" and "democracy," without showing a shred of legal precedent. What is the benefit to the state if two women or two men are married? Why do they deserve special protection - because they love each other? The state does not care! Love is not a condition for legal benefits. It is because they want children? They cannot have children, at least not between them naturally, so protecting them for the sake of their offspring sake is pointless. Do they deserve benefits because 'others get them'? Not every couple in every random relationship deserves benefits; marriage is a specific relationship with specific conditions and requirements for precise reasons. We may form relationships for our own advantage, but the state does not have to recognize each one or provide different benefits for every alliance between any two people. My aunt and I may pool our resources and share the cost of living together, but that does not mean we should receive protections from the state or tax benefits for doing so. And there is no legal precedent to recognize as a married couple, as the heads of a new family, a couple who will never or can never form families. The point of the legal benefits of marriage is to facilitate the formation of a family; gay couples can never do this.
Those who would argue that the adoption of children by same-sex couples is such a legitimate kind of familial bond as to be protected by legal status are dreadfully out of step with reality and atrociously misinformed. Men and women are very different; that is blatantly obvious. No society up until now has thought it normal or acceptable to allow children to be raised by two "fathers" or two "mothers." Simply watching the enormous public-service campaign of ads and billboards encouraging men to stick around and raise their children should show us that the absence of a parent - especially one of a particular sex - is a terrible contemporary social problem.
Another sorry argument for marriage comes from those who cite problems within the current state of marriage, such as a high divorce rate or evidence that shows the focus of marriage is shifting away from children and onto merely the husband and wife who may not ever bear children. But these are problematic symptoms of an ailing current state of marriage; these cannot be construed to be reasons why we should further distort marriage by including couples that perennially typify such problems as childlessness. The current state of marriage needs to be held accountable to higher standards. The statistics all prove that divorce hurts children. Divorce laws have got to be stiffened so that couple suffering problems must strive to solve their problems rather than simply escape. But unstable marriages among heterosexuals are no reason to grant same-sex marriages to homosexuals.
Homosexuals should be granted equal protection under the current laws regarding accommodations in public places, or equal treatment from public officials. But no public law should be misconstrued to allow homosexuals to have their same-sex marriages recognized and legally protected by the government. Let them do what they will in private, but leave that out of the public arena. The measure of a society is not what transpires in the shadows, but what is paraded in the commons. Leave our commons be.
What happened to the ninth amendment?
"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others, retained by the people."
The people have the "retained" right to marry the gender of their choice without government interference to the contrary.
"Marriage" definitionally happens between a man and a woman. Argue this as you may, but this construction has millenia of tradition behind it. To say that individuals can "marry" other individuals of the same sex is to change what the term "marriage" means.
To put it another way, "hysterectomy" is a term that means surgical removal of the uterus. The government has never decreed that I am forbidden from getting a hysterectomy, and, being male, it's pointless for me to sue the government for the right to get a hysterectomy. If I were to file such a suit and win, what will I have won? Any surgery I experience based on that ruling will patently not be a hysterectomy, no matter that I and the surgeons agree to call it that.
And the fact that the government sometimes pays for hysterectomies for women does not in the least detract from my constitutional rights, even though I can never experience the procedure.
ROTFLMAO!!!
Good shot at the homosexual community trying to include every sexual variation to give themselves an artificial following.
The 1913 edition doesn't even have the word. I think this definition is of strong interest:
2. That to which one has a just claim. Specifically: (a)
That which one has a natural claim to exact.
There are no rights whatever, without corresponding
duties. Coleridge.
(b) That which one has a legal or social claim to do or to
exact; legal power; authority; as, a sheriff has a right to
arrest a criminal. (c) That which justly belongs to one;
that which one has a claim to possess or own; the interest
or share which anyone has in a piece of property; title;
claim; interest; ownership.
Born free, he sought his right. Dryden.
Hast thou not right to all created things? Milton.
Men have no right to what is not reasonable. Burke.
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