Gay Marriage is a huge issue right now, especially in California where an obviously biased judge has twisted the law into a pretzel to rule that Proposition 8, an amendment to the California Constitution that limits marriage to a man and a woman, is unconstitutional. I will leave it to Hugh Hewitt to explain the legal malpractice that took place. Having said all that, my concerns about gay marriage are limited to one aspect of the issue. It’s interesting that Glenn Beck shares my opinion.
This is from a recent Bill O’Reilly program
O’REILLY: But let’s take the gay marriage deal. Big ruling in California. You really didn’t cover that much, right?
BECK: Nope.
O’REILLY: Why?
BECK: Because honestly I think we have bigger fish to fry. You can argue about abortion or gay marriage or whatever –
(…)
O’REILLY: Do you believe — do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?
BECK: A threat to the country?
O’REILLY: Yeah, it going to harm the country?
BECK: No, I don’t. Will the gays come and get us?
O’REILLY: OK. Is it going to harm the country in any way?
BECK: I believe — I believe what Thomas Jefferson said. If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?
O’REILLY: OK, so you don’t. That’s interesting. Because I don’t think a lot of people understand that about you.
BECK: As long as we — as long as we are not going down the road of Canada, where it now is a problem for churches to have free speech. If they can still say, hey, we –
O’REILLY: Oppose it –
BECK: — we oppose it –
O’REILLY: Right.
BECK: — but we’re not trying to kill anybody or trying to –
O’REILLY: In Sweden they have that too. OK, so gay marriage to you, not a big a threat to the nation.
This is exactly my opinion. I think the drive for marriage, as marriage, not civil unions has two possible motives behind it. One is simply to assert that gays have the right to every single social structure that straights have. That’s OK with me although I think this great obsession with marriage began with the AIDS epidemic as many gay men became concerned about promiscuity as a threat. The interest in marriage as a vow of sexual fidelity is understandable. Back in the early days of the epidemic, when there was no effective therapy, it was my very difficult duty to tell a very nice engineer that he had the disease. He protested that it couldn’t be because he had been in a committed relationship for ten years. At a moment like that, what can you say ?
I should add that such ethical dilemmas are not limited to the gay population as my partner once had a personal friend come to him asking about painful urination. As expected, my partner found that his friend had gonorrhea. He started to joke about being more careful who he favored with his attention but stopped when the friend vigorously denied any extramarital sex. He was smart enough to shut up and then, later, called the wife in. She had been bar hopping when her husband was away and had given him the STD. Of course, gonorrhea is not fatal.
The other possible motive behind this drive, which reaches the level of obsession in people like Andrew Sullivan, is an attempt to force the major religions to accept homosexuality and to retract thousands of years of doctrine that it is sinful. Andrew Sullivan professes devout Catholicism. The gay activists, like ACT UP in previous years, have targeted the Catholic Church. I can see the next step after acceptance when gay activists demand that churches perform these weddings and sue when they are refused. This is my sole real concern and it is interesting to see that Beck shares this opinion.
That’s exactly why I’m pro civil unions and not gay marriage.
I think it’s wrong to prevent someone’s long time lover to be at their bedside at death, so I’m pro civil unions.
What I deeply oppose is being forced to allow gay weddings at my church.
How about the government just getting out of the marriage business altogether, and leaving marriage to the churches? The government doesn’t give any religious sanction to marriages anyway. It’s all about a civil contract.
Churches can decide for themselves if they support gay marriage or not. I’m sure the Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, and other conservative religions would not allow it in their churches. But others would.
Hey, Vivian Louise. Good to see you around. Really sad about allan, no? Can you confirm that he is no longer with us?
I think it may come to this. The ugly attacks on the Mormon Church and on supporters of Prop 8, even those who only contributed a few dollars, do not bode well for the future. These people define the term “intolerant.”
norcal, it appears the state became interested in marriage for the sake of encouraging procreation and childraising. That used to be considered by vigorous societies as a good thing. That it is is regarded indifferently by white Americans and Europeans is more a sign of decadence than enlightenment. And it wasn’t that long ago, only a few decades, that singleness and childlessness were viewed with suspicion and pity.
Well said Cassandra. Couples committing to one another, raising children in families w/ male and female role models as parents improve society. The government has an interest in encouraging such behavior if they actually care about the human condition.
cassandra,
I don’t think there is a conflict between gay marriage and childraising. When I lived in S.F. I witnessed a lesbian couple doing a terrific job raising a daughter.
I’m not certain that a child needs opposite-sex parents in the home in order to properly develop. Look at all the great people that were raised by a single parent. They had to learn about the other sex somewhere.