I posted the following on The Charging Elephantin response to a general post on conservatism. It's a very interesting topic to me and I thought I'd put it out on my blog to get some responses:
Here's a conservative argument I sincerely don't understand, with regard to gay marriage. I completely understand why people don't want gays marrying in their church. That is totally up to them. But legal marriage, as it is today, is a governmental institution, not a religious one. My marriage ceremony took place inside a courthouse in the office of the judge who performed the ceremony. Why would it make marriage "something it is not" to allow two people of the same gender to take part in that same exercise?
I am even more preplexed by the people who say that "real" marriages will be degraded if gays are allowed to marry. I strongly believe that, if people *really* want to "defend" marriage, they should be going after people who marry, say, five times, or people who, ala Brittney Spears, get married sort of as a joke and get an anullment or divorce right away. Why is gay marriage more threatening to straight marriage than that?
Looking forward to your comments...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Hi Kathy! Interesting post. I have to differ with you though. I don't think that marriage should be government's jurisdiction at all. I don't believe in affording special rights to people based on the getting together in one conjugal way or the other. The whole gay marriage issue IS an issue because government has intruded where it doesn't belong. Marriage should strictly be a belief-based institution based on common thought. The government should stay out of marriage, religion, sexuality and anything else that it doesn't belong in. This renders the whole argument moot.
(p.s. The historical justification for government's involvement in marriage is based on the English contract law. I don't think that contract law should apply to anyone unless they honestly want to contract to another person. The travesty of what the state forces upon people in a divorce proceeding is --i feel -- unconstitutional.)
Oh, and another thing, I think the whole opposition to the gay marriage thing is hyped up by the media moreso than reality. But, any reaction there is to it is simply that...reaction. It wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't being shoved down everyone's throat by activists and activists judges.
Now, this makes sense! Good post, Pete!
So the object of marriage as a legal contract is to keep families intact so that children won't grow up in broken homes. Well, that's pretty much out the window, isn't it? It ain't workin'. We, the heteros, broke it. Which was my point to begin with. So why do the gays want it so bad?
Anyone want to tackle the question of why gay marriage is a bigger target for the conservative right than the hetero divorce rate?
Peter, you're right about Focus on the Family. They definitely do some good stuff; but the media doesn't care about that, they want to report on the crazy stuff people do! (I'm guilty of that myself; I've been known to gloat when getting some official to say something stupid on the record.)
I'm not sure, though, that anyone is arguing that gay marriage should be legal *because* of the high hetero divorce rate; I think it's a sort of "why comment on the speck in my eye when there's a plank in yours" kind of thing. Imagine if all the time and effort spent fighting gay marriage when toward helping straight people make better decisions about their marriages?
Post a Comment