Reasons Why Legalization of Gay Marriage is Right
You say: Gay marriage will overturn the idea of traditional marriage.
You first will have to define to me what traditional marriage is. Between a man and a woman? Is that the extent of the definition? There has been periods in history where different classes, different religions, and different ethnicities couldn’t marry based on “tradition” (and is still the case in many instances.) Just fifty years ago, a white man and a black woman would have had a difficult time convincing our society that their marriage was traditional (or even acceptable.) Does that mean that it’s wrong? There were days when traditional marriages were arranged by parents based on social alliances, so that a prepubescent fourteen year old girl would be wed to a forty year old man. Is the simple fact that he is a male and she is a female all it takes to make this right? Women, if viewed in the light of what entails traditional marriage, have been nothing but property for the majority of human history. That’s been the case traditionally – should we go back to that?
Has tradition always been what we would now consider appropriate? Of course not. The fact is, the status of marriage changes, just as our society changes.
But if homosexuals are allowed to marry, you say, the “sanctity” of marriage will be threatened. We’ve perfected the marital system so that only responsible men and women now enter into legal marital contracts, and that form of marriage is now a sacred institution that protects the morality of our citizens.
I agree: the sanctity of marriage is in trouble. In fact, it could very well be argued that the sanctity of marriage no longer exists. This has nothing to do with gays (they can’t marry, remember?) It has to do with citizens that already have the legal right to marry, and don’t take it seriously, or do it for any other reason that mutual love.
What is threatening the sanctity of marriage today? It is the 60% (and increasing) divorce rate. It is the people who get married while they are drunk in Vegas, and can laugh the next day while they file for an annulment and nurse their hangover. It is the people who marry for looks or money, instead of compatibility, and find their interest waning almost immediately. It is the people that don’t have the balls to end their marriage, and still take on other sexual partners.
For the record, I don’t believe that divorce is bad. I believe that a marriage that makes both parties unhappy also falls into the “unsacred” category. I do, however, believe that those of us that do have the legal right to marry whoever we are attracted to do not always appreciate the privileges that we have. We abuse them, and quite frankly, often don’t deserve them. But this right is not questioned, because no matter how badly straight people behave in a marriage, we will continue to have access to that right.
In this day and age, when infidelity, marriage for self promotion, and obvious irreconcilable differences are such common characteristics of partnerships, who are we to even wax on about there being a threat to the sanctity of marriage? If two people love each other- man and woman, man and man, woman and woman- and want to marry, we should celebrate the fact that they are taking this institution seriously. That they are, in fact, contributing to the sanctity of marriage.
You say: First, gay marriage will teach our children that it’s okay to be gay; Soon, it will “turn” our society gay.
Let me be the first to assure you that this isn’t true- First of all, did someone teach you how to be straight? Did you watch your dad having sex with your mom to nail down the specifics? Of course not. If you are a straight male or woman, you are just naturally inclined toward certain members of the opposite sex. There is nothing “learned” about it. You can try and argue that these feelings are taken in through osmosis during the early years of child development, but that simply isn’t true. This is a normal, natural question of god-given orientation.
And our youth is well aware that gay members of society exist. Do you think that by not allowing gays to marry, you can wipe out homosexuality? Of course you don’t. What, then, is not allowing homosexuals to have legal marital standing teaching our kids? Not how to “not be gay”- that can’t be taught. It teaches them that it’s legally okay to be prejudiced against a certain social group. That it’s just fine to use derogatory words and homophobic actions in a subtle, under the radar manner, because that is what the laws of our country are- quietly homophobic. Despite laws created against hate crimes, this one law exists as a kind fine print modification: okay, so it’s not okay to beat the crap out of someone for being a homosexual, but it is okay to keep them from living a life that any law abiding American citizen should have access to.
All this law teaches children is how to be homophobic in a way that won’t get you arrested.
For the record, the gay people that are offset by the homophobia in our country that choose to remain closeted are not “straightened” because of such laws – they are simply gay people, living in the closet. This is the kind of secret that will handicap their lives, as well as others around them, should they try and marry a member of the opposite sex in order to please our society (and how does this affect the “sanctity of marriage?”) Supposing you, a straight person, had been born in a “heterophobic” world. How would it feel to repress natural feelings in order to adhere to social norms? One can only hide something that inherent for so long.
You say: Gay marriage is bad for the country because such liaisons will not produce viable offspring – and that is what marriages are intended to do.
Never mind all the statistics of babies born out of wedlock, and the amount of single parents trying to make it work today, and all the straight couples that make a conscious choice to raise dogs instead of children – I think that this is a fair point to address. Despite all the romantic connotations, marriage has often been about producing children- heirs. Now if this were 1400 or so, and we were discussing a royal family with one son, and the fate of England depended on it, this point might hold more water – -for that royal family.
As it is, finding heirs for our often mediocre fortunes is not imperative. And sustaining the human race with procreation isn’t a powerful argument, either- there are plenty of us to go around. Population grows every year, not declines. And there is no shortage of children in this country. There are also plenty of children not taken care of in this country: just look at the state of foster care, where abuse and runaways are more common than not. Plenty of American children born to straight parents have already slipped through the cracks (to say nothing of all the children worldwide that could use loving parents of any gender orientation.) I am not saying that a married gay couple will make better or worse parents: I am saying that a loving couple of any orientation would make good parents, and that is what children need.
No, two men cannot produce a child directly. But if that is the real issue, then let’s adapt our laws so that women that have experienced menopause can’t marry. Also, let’s make it illegal for impotent men, or ones with too low a sperm count to marry. And women that have had hysterectomies. And all the normal men and women that just make the conscious decision not to have babies. If marriages are only a childbearing mechanism, there are a lot of people out there we need to be round up for a ceremonial Mass Divorcing.
But Gay parents will almost certainly produce gay children – that’s just asking for more trouble.
Do straight parents always have straight children? No.
What do parents really teach their children? 90% of what we need to know to live is in inherent (including orientation.) Parents are thus given the pivotal role as guides to help children build from that inherent knowledge. Parents teach us the kinds of things that biology cannot, such as how to have respect and love for ourselves, for the world, and for other members of the human race.
Gay women and men that want to raise children in need of loving parents should be allowed the option of teaching their kids about loyalty and commitment to their partner. Whether that child’s partner ends up being a man or a woman depends on the biology that he or she has been born with.
Just like straight parents hopefully do not spend most of their time pounding into their children “Straight-is-Great” propaganda, gay parents will likely not sit around only teaching their kids about becoming gay. There are more important things in the world to teach kids than hopeless lessons on manipulating orientation. Such as, how to be a good person.
But the Bible tells us that homosexuality is wrong.
The Bible also tells us that it’s okay to stone people, including our children.
Furthermore, not all members of this society subscribe to the lessons taught in the Bible, nor do laws say that they have to (not in so many words, anyway.)
Many look to the Bible for essential spiritual and life guidance. But rare are the people that go by its guidelines exactly. There are so many sinful activities listed in the bible that rare are the people that aren’t going to Hell today, even the devout ones that think they are safe. The lessons of the Bible have to adapt with time. They must, in order to continue to have a strong and positive influence on followers. The Bible’s most important lesson, the thing that has kept it relevant for so long, and important to so many people, is to “love thy neighbor.”
If we allow gay marriage, it’ll all go to hell. People will start wanting to marry pets, trees, corpses. Pedophiles will claim that their “love” for their 10 year old victim is grounds for marriage. It will be the breaking of the levees.
First of all, you must stop thinking of homosexuality as some kind of bizarre fetish- gays may be a minority, but they are by no means an uncommon one. If we are to see gender orientation as a fetish, then we must also lump heterosexuality in that category. Does that make it less radical sounding to you?
This wouldn’t be a major overhaul of everything we know. This would simply be an extension of laws to allow willing, adult persons with legal standing to wed one another. A willow tree, a fox terrier, and a corpse have no legal standing in our nation. They don’t even qualify for a vote in our country, let alone marital status. A tree has no brain with which to make an agreement, a dog is not of a suitable state of mind to form such an alliance, and a corpse is dead. These shot in the dark arguments reflect more hysteria than reason.
A relationship between a pedophiliac and a child negates what we consider to be a mutual bond: by our laws, a juvenile is not mentally or physically ready for marriage. A marriage between a sexual predator and his/her victim is not a healthy, two sided relationship. There was a time in our history when children could marry adults. Our laws were adapted because it was noted that this wasn’t in the best interest of either party, but in particular, of the younger party. These laws serve to prevent the sexual exploitation of our youth. Thus, Mary Kay Lateurono goes to prison for sleeping with her twelve year old student. Later, when he is eighteen and an adult, and she gets done serving time for statutory rape for exploiting him when he was a minor, they are able, by our legal system, to wed.
These are the child protection laws of our country. They have nothing to do with relationships between two adults. They will not be erased or even affected because we allow adult homosexuals to marry: how, in any way, are the two related?
This is all some big conspiracy to take control – either by liberal democrats, or the gays themselves.
I ask you: what have the democrats done for gays lately?
As for it being a “gay conspiracy,” well, you’re right. It is a gay conspiracy. Not to infiltrate your home, and destroy your family, and “homo-fy” your children: it is the outlandish, crazy pursuit to be treated like a real citizen of this country, and to be recognized and accepted as a person by our legal system and our society. It is the conspiracy to get the legal benefits that come from being in a loving, committed relationship. It is a conspiracy to get the America people to stop being so close minded anf afraid.
