More on gay marriage...Feeling threatened?

The Radical Evangelical Right Wing are still aggressively pushing for a Constitutional amendment explicitly restricting marriage to only the union of a man and a woman. That is, they are when they're not aggressively fighting to keep Terry Schiavo alive in spite of 19 seperate court rulings to the contrary and at the same time aggressively fighting to cap the kind of medical malpractice payouts and reduce or eliminate the medicare coverage that have paid for her medical care the last 15 years....but I digress.

The Radical Evangelical Right Wing feel that a constitutional ammendment is necessary to “protect” marriage. On one level, I guess I agree with them. It's just as necessary to create this ammendment to protect marriage as the flag burning ammendment they want is necessary to protect America.

You often hear the amendment's backers use the word “protect,” but I've never yet heard them specify the threat this marriage amendment would “protect” against.

Would heterosexual couples stop marrying if homosexual couples could also marry? Of course not. What, then? What exactly would happen that “threatens” marriage?

When asked this question, instead of coming up with a legitimate threat to heterosexual marriage, they usually sputter and trot out the lunatic arguments of Rick Santorum, who called the Sanctity of Marriage Act the "Ulitmate Homeland Security."

Wow. That sort of lays plain their agenda, doesn't it?

Sit someone down and ask them if they think that stopping gay marriage is at least as important as stopping another terrorist attack like 9-11, and I think that is a good litmus test for sanity. Unfortunately, a significant portion of America...my guess is the exact same portion that thinks Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11...still agree with Jerry Falwell when he said 9-11 happened because God lifted his "veil of protection" from America on September 11th because he was sick of all the Gay Love, Abortion, and Pagan Nature Worship goin' on.

These people still believe this....they just realized when Falwell apologized they can't talk about it openly....yet.

As these people sputter their objections to two people of the same gender legally binding themselves in a life-long monogomous relationship, they reveal that their real concern actually isn't that marriage would be threatened, but that recognizing the legitimacy of same-sex life partners would lead inexorably to a legal “right” for anybody to do anything.

Ironically, the example many of them use is polygamy. Ironic because, being a “Biblical form of marriage,” polygamy has precisely the same ancient pedigree that amendment supporters claim for heterosexual monogamy. Many of the most revered figures in the Bible are polygamists – and yet, I don't think that most people would hesitate to say that polygamy shouldn't be legalized.

That’s because – despite Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon, and so on – sound public policy arguments can be raised against polygamy. Statistical examinations of polygamous communities in several Western states seem to indicate an increased incidence of demonstrable social ills such as poverty, violence, and statutory rape.

On the other hand, the public policy arguments most often offered in support of two-person marriages equally support heterosexual or homosexual couples. Statistical studies of both kinds of couple show advantages over single persons in economic and social stability, life span, etc. Children raised by same-sex couples or different-sex couples exhibit identical statistical advantages with regard to health, education, and delinquency when compared to children from single-parent households.

So, recognizing same-sex unions wouldn't force us to legalize polygamy any more than recognizing different-sex unions does, or any more than letting sixteen-year-olds drive forces us to let eight-year-olds drive.

I'm married, and to a woman. I don't feel threatened by letting two people of the same sex get married. I've known a number of straight, gay, and lesbian couples, and my personal observation is that they are pretty much the same. The most significant difference is that, like interracial couples (also illegal in the not-so-distant past), same-sex couples face the additional burden of prejudice.

I think that burden is unjust. Don't you?

Sources:
Falwell apologizes to gays, feminists, lesbians, CNN, September 14, 2001 Posted: 2:55 AM EDT (0655 GMT)

Thansk also to James Thorn and his letter to the editor on this subject.