@OCHF
I made an error a few posts back. In that post I expressed the damage done to society by divorce. I know you disagree but that is besides the point. I think the serial formation of family units, the common destruction of this unit by choice rather then by real hardship, and the inattentiveness to the larger family is damaging to society. It is why we are undereducated, no matter how much money is thrown at the school system. It is why we are so crime ridden, no matter how many criminals we put away and money we spend on keeping them jailed. It is why our children are seeking peer approval through trivial and self-destructive means. It is why immigrants who maintain their traditional care-taking methods (their children work in the mom and pop store, they know the people who their children associate with, they keep pressuring their children to do well in school etc…) raise much more successful progeny then those who take up the generation-centered version of popular family culture. The family which maintains the marriage vows and stays together no matter how bored, no matter how poor, no matter how ill, no matter how much better you think you can do, is the more substantial form of family. This is no religion. It is pragmatism. As Ron Burgandy would say, “Its science”.
I brought this up with the intention of connecting it the fact that homosexual couplings can contribute virtually nothing to make to marriage work. I failed to follow through with my argument then, but intend to do so now.
A gay couple cannot raise a child that is equally linked to both unless it is not genetically linked to either. One of the aspects to family life is that we recognize our grandparents and parents in our children and grandchildren. We see ourselves in our progeny and we can impart lessons which the general culture cannot. We have specific experiences with various innate qualities of our personality and physical form which we help cultivate in our children. Again, this is coming from someone who sees more good then harm in tradition. A gay couple will only have one simpatico parent, at best. No matter how attached the other parent is to that child, they are raising someone else’s child. That is a disadvantage but this is not enough to disqualify gay marriage from being an accepted norm. Frankly, any family, be they homosexual or straight, will have this problem if one parent is infertile and doubly so if they have decided to adopt.
You meet someone, her hair launches pheromones in the sun. You find a matching smile. There are late nights of moving lips, heavy lids, sometimes dreaming of common grandchildren, barely awake, realizing it was spoken. Many days, many nights, little sleep and lots of plans. Then the plans become your friend. Her hair changes. Different parallels, same sunbeam, different angels. She’s not the smell I remember. Thank G-d there were no kids.
Most of the people I know have had many sexual partners. Most of these couplings were for the pleasure of the act and to stave off boredom and/or loneliness. Eventually most found partners they wanted to start a family with. It is only at the point that one feels they want a family that they begin to interact within the relationship differently then they had until then. Marriage is not a function of loving the partner but rather the function of loving the family you become. You commit, not the individual, but to the unit. The most compelling reason that gay marriage is damaging to society is that homosexual relationships are not rooted in the task of family rearing. Most gay couples are not looking to have children, even those who are seeking marriage. Those that do aught to have avenues by which they can contribute to society in the same way most other married couples do, by children who need a family. Gay couples who are getting married because of a commitment to an individual, which you admit is fleeting, have confused the meaning of marriage and the meaning of the family unit with what is commonly known as Romantic love. Many heterosexual couples are confused in the same manner. This is why we have so many divorces and this is why even a small percentage of people (gays included) see any sense in gay marriage. Seeing that most gay couples who want to marry are confused in this manner, considering the damage done to society (as I expressed in my discussion of divorce vs traditional family units) by these kinds of marriages there is no sense in allowing this amendment to the definition of marriage which only serves to affirm the self serving family. Just because we have become a society so preoccupied with getting what we want does not mean that we should continue down that line if the fulfillment of those desires hurt society. I think divorce should be much more challenging then it is and reasons much more compelling then those used today should be given. You go so far as to say that divorce aught to be granted for the sake of freedom to choose whether you want to be married at that moment. This is why gay marriage makes sense to you. To you marriage is simply a fulfilled desire or, in your case, something not to desire.
There are many points at which our opinions differ. I don’t expect you to see the sense in my reasoning as you have already, many times, denigrating my reasoning. Thats the bitch of diversity. You think you are a champion of freedom. I think you are prejudiced towards certain kinds of freedom. I think you are short sighted. I think you are inexperienced. When ideology is based on idealism it is indistinguishable from faith. It is bigotry to dislike what you do not understand and you do not understand Conservatism.
“Huh? You want your son to become a bigot? Why would you want that? You’re not a bigot, are you?”
— I fully expect my son to be idealistic and foolish. One hopes he will be less so then I was as I will help him see reality at a much higher degree and more rapidly then I did. If idealists like you have their way I fear he won’t have a chance to be even a little idealistic as reality will be much harsher and his opportunities more limited by mistakes made in the name of Leftism.
I don’t expect to make a patriot of you. I just find it funny that you would want to pay for my healthcare seeing as you could just as well pay for the healthcare of some Chinese person, or a Latvian. It seems strange that you would pay to have my children educated rather then pay for a Mexican child in Tecate learn his three R’s. Why not just pay your taxes directly to the UN and then you can have some aid for Africa siphoned off by a bureaucrat from Ghana. I understand that there is a clique or type of person you relate to and this type can be from anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, the many types that make up any population are difficult to accept as compatriots. They are a vague hillbilly oddity or maybe a corporate type. To be fair, I don’t know the exact sort which makes you feel at home and which type is your foreigner. Myself, my first loyalty is to my family. Then I have the friends I am bless to know. From there I am committed to my community, my city and more specifically the Jews of my community and city. After that I am loyal to the US and Israel and if there is any way to meet in partnership or friendship with folk from other places, then I will love people for their humanity. You think of this sort of tribalism as primitive and leads to fascism (which with your attachment of militarism tells me you do not understand fascism but only Hitler). You error on many counts in this instance.
Okay, its late, I don’t have time to go back and see if I addressed every issue I thought of interest. I need to head home to my wife and not yet indoctrinated son. Its hard to be indoctrinated at 2 years old. It will begin with the letter P and the numeral 4. Before you know it he will see the stupidity of Al Gore.
