In Defense of "Gay" Marriage....
Bill, from Integral Options Café, rebukes one of my favorite Orange meme writers, Thomas Sowell, for ‘religious bias’.
Gay "marriage"By Thomas SowellTuesday, August 15, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/jmusx
Bill says:
“More importantly, and having nothing to do with Sowell's article, any and all bans on gay marriage violate the "separation clause" of the Consitution. All bans on gay marriage are founded on religious objections, not on any form of rational or provable reasons that gay people should not be married. There are none. This is a clear violation of the Constitutional separation of church and state.I continue to be surprised that no one has challenged these dumbass laws within this context.”
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I disagree…..
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Bill:
I think you are mistaken about Sowell here. I’ve usually found him to be far more Orange meme than blue. There are two groups who oppose gay marriage. One is the Blue Fundamentalists, Christian, Jewish and Islamic, on religious reasons.
Sowell seems to not belong to this group. Note that he said:
“Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that the law had no business interfering with relations between consenting adults.”
Few Blue meme Bible/Torah/Koran thumpers would agree with that….
The other group, and I think this includes Sowell, are the Orange conservatives who feel that if you mess with the basic organizational nature of society, you will most likely damage it. That’s why they are called conservatives, of course, they are trying to “conserve” what has proven to work.
Stable marriages are one of the building blocks of a stable society. On this I absolutely agree with them.
That is the reason, though, that I am in favor of gay marriage. Exactly because stable marriages are one of the building blocks of a stable society, and since gays aren’t going away anytime soon, it is better for society to have stable gay marriages than not to have them.
Not only will it benefit the gays themselves, but where it is legal many committed gay couples adopt “unadoptable” orphans, giving them a stable loving home to grow up in. Which is another benefit to the straight society.
I think that Orange conservatives like Sowell just haven’t thought this through. And YES, unconscious social bias may be a factor in that. But I don’t think it’s “Scriptural” bias…
Others like Mark Steyn, who as a long term theatre critic has been immersed in the gay culture thru his profession, has what may be a more rational worry. Steyn says that once the law is changed to allow gay marriage, there is no reasonable way to outlaw polygamy.
Which CAN be shown to have deleterious effects on society. Just one of which is that when rich and powerful men have multiple wives, the poorer and less powerful are disen-wived, if you will. And the result of that is to take away the social bond that keeps red meme males from running amok.
Not to mention questions about inheritance, the balance of power between the sexes, and women’s rights in general.
I think he is right about polygamy, but wrong about the law. I think if we can legislate marriage as only heterosexual, we can legislate monogamy. Given a sane legislative and judicial system, that is. Which is always an open question lately…….
This being an issue we are going to end up fighting over anyway, as Moslems begin to demand their “religious rights”…
.
So while Religious Fundamentalists ARE against Gay Marriage, not everyone who is against Gay Marriage is necessarily a Religious Fundamentalist. Some conservatives are just so used to being attacked by Liberal ideologues, for reasons that are utterly absurd, that sometimes they fail to stop and ask, could my critics be right THIS TIME?
And yep, THIS TIME they are…..
Gay "marriage"By Thomas SowellTuesday, August 15, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/jmusx
Bill says:
“More importantly, and having nothing to do with Sowell's article, any and all bans on gay marriage violate the "separation clause" of the Consitution. All bans on gay marriage are founded on religious objections, not on any form of rational or provable reasons that gay people should not be married. There are none. This is a clear violation of the Constitutional separation of church and state.I continue to be surprised that no one has challenged these dumbass laws within this context.”
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I disagree…..
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Bill:
I think you are mistaken about Sowell here. I’ve usually found him to be far more Orange meme than blue. There are two groups who oppose gay marriage. One is the Blue Fundamentalists, Christian, Jewish and Islamic, on religious reasons.
Sowell seems to not belong to this group. Note that he said:
“Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that the law had no business interfering with relations between consenting adults.”
Few Blue meme Bible/Torah/Koran thumpers would agree with that….
The other group, and I think this includes Sowell, are the Orange conservatives who feel that if you mess with the basic organizational nature of society, you will most likely damage it. That’s why they are called conservatives, of course, they are trying to “conserve” what has proven to work.
Stable marriages are one of the building blocks of a stable society. On this I absolutely agree with them.
That is the reason, though, that I am in favor of gay marriage. Exactly because stable marriages are one of the building blocks of a stable society, and since gays aren’t going away anytime soon, it is better for society to have stable gay marriages than not to have them.
Not only will it benefit the gays themselves, but where it is legal many committed gay couples adopt “unadoptable” orphans, giving them a stable loving home to grow up in. Which is another benefit to the straight society.
I think that Orange conservatives like Sowell just haven’t thought this through. And YES, unconscious social bias may be a factor in that. But I don’t think it’s “Scriptural” bias…
Others like Mark Steyn, who as a long term theatre critic has been immersed in the gay culture thru his profession, has what may be a more rational worry. Steyn says that once the law is changed to allow gay marriage, there is no reasonable way to outlaw polygamy.
Which CAN be shown to have deleterious effects on society. Just one of which is that when rich and powerful men have multiple wives, the poorer and less powerful are disen-wived, if you will. And the result of that is to take away the social bond that keeps red meme males from running amok.
Not to mention questions about inheritance, the balance of power between the sexes, and women’s rights in general.
I think he is right about polygamy, but wrong about the law. I think if we can legislate marriage as only heterosexual, we can legislate monogamy. Given a sane legislative and judicial system, that is. Which is always an open question lately…….
This being an issue we are going to end up fighting over anyway, as Moslems begin to demand their “religious rights”…
.
So while Religious Fundamentalists ARE against Gay Marriage, not everyone who is against Gay Marriage is necessarily a Religious Fundamentalist. Some conservatives are just so used to being attacked by Liberal ideologues, for reasons that are utterly absurd, that sometimes they fail to stop and ask, could my critics be right THIS TIME?
And yep, THIS TIME they are…..
posted by Colmar at 1:38 AM
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