Gay Marriage as a Distraction
Unlike Barack Obama, I have been an unwavering public supporter of gay marriage since first writing on the subject on my blog almost ten years ago. I remain so today. It is a clear human rights issue to me.
That said, I think same-sex marriage is being shamelessly exploited by the president whose constant vacillations on the topic are the stuff of farce — first supporting it, then not, then “evolving” a policy, then being absolutely against it (only a year ago, according to a spokesperson) and finally, May 9, 2012, claiming to have sufficiently “evolved” to be for it.
Liar.
Barack Obama has been for same-sex marriage (to the extent he is for anything other than himself) since he declared himself a supporter back in the nineties in Chicago. He just changed his mind publicly for electoral expediency. Now he is changing his mind back for the same reason, but it’s amped up. He wants to put Mitt Romney – who polls are showing to be a formidable presidential opponent – on the spot on an issue the governor would rather not talk about (and probably shouldn’t).
Obama and his people are seeking to change the subject of this election from the dreadful financial condition of our country to same-sex marriage or anything else that sticks.
Don’t fall for the bait.
In Romney’s words: “It’s the economy — and we’re not stupid.” (We better not be!)
Keeping the focus, however, won’t be easy. You can bet the media will be beating the drum constantly on this one, gay marriage being a far more emotionally potent issue than the trivial nonsense they’ve been flogging of late, dogs on car roofs, etc.
Moreover, our gay friends and relations are going to be angry about being asked to have their rights put on the back burner again. It may be of little use to remind them that they too are suffering from the unending economic meltdown whose greatest indicator is the similarly unending decline in the Labor Particiption Rate. More and more people of all sexual orientations have simply given up on finding a job. Even the high 8.1% unemployment rate is a fake. The real numbers are staggering.
I hate identity politics but I have a special place in my heart for gay Republicans — perhaps because I applaud gays who forgo the luxury of being single-issue voters.
It’s pathetic that some gays are wildly celebrating Obama’s supposed advancement to Dick Cheney’s longstanding opinion about gay marriage, which provides for protection only at the state level, not the federal level. Time for _them_ to evolve.
Bravo.
Obama is finally, reluctantly, at long last adopting the most tepid possible approach to gay marriage (a position that defies his usual views on states’ prerogatives but conveniently entails no action on his part. Gay republicans are right to chuckle.
Have you ever seen what happens to the public when a country goes into an economic death spiral? If our country goes off the budgetary cliff, and we’re teetering on the brink already, the first thing that gets chucked out the window is tolerance of vulnerable minorities. The search for scapegoats would be terrifying, and politicians of both stripes would be leading the hunt, desperate to avoid being blamed themselves. Witness the rampant antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street.
If I were plotting to destroy gay rights, and it that was the only thing in the world I cared about, I couldn’t think of a better way to drum up mass hate in a hurry than to push the budget off the cliff.
The debate over “gay marriage” assumes government has a valid role in defining marriages.
Government has an interest in recognizing “civil unions” for purposes of deciding inheritance in the absence of a will, and various other contract right implications, but has no legitimate interest in defining the institution of marriage.
If government recognition of “gay marriage” is a human right, then so is government recognition of “incest marriage”, and “polygamous marriage”. If marriage is an absolute human right, it would be unfair for government to discriminate between social taboos and different cultural norms.
Also, why should the government be allowed to discriminate between citizens who are single (perhaps shacking up, and parenting children) and citizens who are “married”? Constitutionally, shouldn’t all citizens should have equal rights, both singles and marrieds?
Government should get out of the marriage business.
BARACK OBAMA: A PROPHILACTIC IN COURAGE
After Obama summoned the courage to kill bin Laden in the greatest military enterprise in half a millennium what bold and daring thing was left for him to do but to come out of the closet on same sex marriage? Undoubtedly this unprecedented, history making move by the President will send the economy soaring, win over the undecideds (change even some Republican votes) and carry him across the electoral finish line miles ahead of homophobic bigoted Mitt-that is, only if Ohio and Florida secede from the Union before November 6th.
Click my name to continue reading this piece
CORRECTION: PROPHYLACTIC
Well slap me silly and call me a geezer since I’m a signatory to the petition to referendum the new Maryland law allowing same sex marriage. Civil unions are all well and good but you cannot perpetuate the species with gay marriage .
Shell game is right. Obama is pure conman.
The whole hubbub over “gay marriage” is a distraction that has been been blown up to ridiculous proportions. It is nothing but an argument on semantics, and the gays/lesbians have to take the blame for insisting on the word “marriage.”
The law should state that any two individuals, of whatever sex, who have a legal contract of union, should have identical rights under the law. Religious sanction is irrelevant and not required.
A union of a male and female should be termed a” marriage relationship”, with the time-honored husband and wife.
A union of individuals of the same sex should be termed a “covenanted relationship”, with no explicit role definition.
Prior to formal union, all parties would be “pledged”.
Any rites or celebration should be at the discretion of the those making the covenant, however ridiculous they might appear to others.
Big deal. It is just that simple, and would move into law everywhere if so defined. And now it’s a matter of concern in a national election!!
stuart williamson – Spot-on!!
Agree.
Government should stay out of it except when fulfilling its duty to enforce contracts, and to ensure parental obligations are met.
And the word “marriage” continues to mean one man, one woman.
Republicans do it too though, and by that I mean the base. They’re the ones that spent all that time flirting with Santorum, who is as much a social conservative there is. That was the only thing he had – economically he was basically GWB.
Let’s be honest – this country is never going to stop spending money. We’re never going to be serious about balancing the budget. That french guy whose name I can’t spell was right about our country only lasting until the politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
We’re another Greece. Whoever is in charge, we’re going to keep spending until we completely devaluate the currency or are forced to enact a VAT.
Headlines should be ” Obama adopts extremist position on marriage”!
I’m sorry, Roger. I like you a lot and admire the work you do here at PJM. We agree on many things, perhaps especially on our disdain for the agenda of this current administration. But on this issue we part company; in fact, this “human rights” issue as you term it (to assuage your conscience?) is anything but a matter of human rights. You have bought the lie the left sells about radical individualism, tolerance, and equality — in short, liberalism. I cannot say more on that but direct your attention to the work of James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism (although I do part ways with him on his solution [the Catholic Church] he has meticulously identified the errors and dangers of liberalism).
What I will say is this. You must make a choice. Do you respect, align yourself with, and adhere to the Constitution and our First Amendment Rights of free exercise of religion and freedom of speech? Because if you answer yes, you cannot endorse a so-called human right — homosexual (and counterfeit) marriage — without simultaneously DENYING our First Amendment rights. Surely you know that even as I write, all around the country school districts are implementing curricula that require students to disregard, even rebel against, their parents authority and family traditions while systematically inculcating a celebration of deviancy.
Even as I write, lawsuits are perpetrated against Americans because their consciences won’t permit them to perform homosexual marriage, won’t permit them to photograph weddings, won’t permit them to hire — in their religious-oriented businesses — people who FLAUNT their deviancy. Tolerance has morphed from live and let live, to you must respect me. This is wrong. And in your heart you know it is. Homosexual “marriage” and freedom of religion cannot co-exist. To have the first means the sacrifice of the latter. Western Civilization is built on freedom of religion; your human rights argument is nothing more than sophistry, sold by an ideology that welcomes the demise of the West and the rise of the super-state. Is that what you really want?
You have also implicitly denied that our rights come from God, not from the state. You have opened a whole can of worms, a pandora’s box, that once opened leads only to destruction, not the health of humanity that your “human rights” argument would suggest.
“…I am writing this article to urge you not to engage.”
Right you are. And Obama won’t either. He won’t take any executive action on gay marriage. It is just talk.
I hope you’re right.
A large number of my under-35 acquaintances are GLBT (mostly Trans, actually), and they’re absolutely convinced (and want) that Obama will make an executive decree making it law as soon as they re-elect him.
ALL of the so called “social issues” are distractions, not addressed in the Constitution, and none of the federal government’s business.
“It is a clear human rights issue to me.”
Roger, no one is preventing gay people from living together. There’s no oppression. This is about the institution of marriage — and why it was instituted. It has everything to do with procreation and child-rearing. Gay sex does not.
A gay couple can live together, hopefully past retirement age. But unlike a married couple, if one of them passes away, the other had no claim on his Social Security benefits.
Unlike a married couple, if one of them is hospitalized and unable to make decisions for himself, his partner couldn’t legally make critical end-of-life decisions for him.
That’s just not fair.
Obama had to patch both of those by executive order.
There are over a hundred Federal laws that confer such benefits on straight married couples but not on gay couples. The most obvious being the ability to file a joint tax return.
Don’t misunderstand me. II think homosexuals should have the same legal rights as you described. But leave “marriage” alone. It is a heterosexual institution — the one that procreates. If a legal designation is necessary for the rights you mentioned, then let it be “civil union.”
I call strawman. They have all those right under civil unions. This is not good enough for them.
They want marriage for one – and ONLY one – reason. So they can sue and bankrupt every church in America. They are not shy about this and have been saying so for over forty years.
This is about punishing the institutions that called their lifestyle an abomination.
The big problem in this kerfuffle has always been that one of the main tenets of American society has always been separation of church and state (specifically as to the establishment of a state religion). But the institution of marriage is one both of the church and the state, where the latter tends to be far more malable based on where current public opinion is on the subject.
Right now, societal trends are towards eventual legislative or voter approval of gay marriage in the near future, but recent history has shown that court edicts that bypass the legislative or referendum process actually decrease support for the issue, based mainly on people not wanting unelected judges to make new laws from the bench. And I have no doubt that a re-elected Barack Obama would try to pay off his high-bucks donors who support gay rights with a federal edict turning what’s now a state-by-state debate into a national issue, even though it was that sort of federalization of state issues that has made Roe v. Wade in large part the ongoing battle it is today (and as a corollary, if a presidential or federal court ruling comes down before U.S. society deals with the matter on a state-by-state basis, someone needs to start a pool to predict the day the first lawsuit will be filed against the Catholic Church or other religious institutions demanding the Church perform same-sex weddings or face loss of its tax-exempt status).
“Right now, societal trends are towards eventual legislative or voter approval of gay marriage”
Biggest lie ever!
So far we have had 32 states in a row defeat/ban gay marriage. In fact, the only states that allow it are those where the will of the people was by-passed (or, as in the case of California, overturned by one gay judge) by legislative fiat.
I would say that shows a trend. The American people – who are fair at heart – accept civil unions to legally protect gay people in matters of property, inheritance, hospital visits, etc., – but they do NOT support redefining traditional marriage.
Follow the money.
Politico.com did–and they found that the Obama re-election campaign is heavily dependent on gay money. 1 out of 6 of Obama’s bundlers is gay. Many of his wealthy contributors from Hollywood and Silicon Valley are gay too.
Obama needs their support. But the twin events this past week–Biden’s statement and the North Carolina vote against same-sex marriage–meant that his waffling on the issue was no longer sustainable with his own base of contributors.
It’s not a distraction and within a news cycle it won’t even be a blip on the radar. Yesterday’s elections are proof positive that the electorate is awake, energized and itching for next November. Team SCOAMF is desperate and everyone knows it.
North Carolina gave Obama the Democrat nomination over Hillary.
Now we trip him up over the gay marriage controversy.
Makes me feel good to be from the ‘Old North State’ NC.
My life will be complete when we win the ‘tar heel’ National Basketball Championship..
Speaking only politically, Pres. Obama may have just lost the election. I know what the polls say about acceptance of gay marriage; I know where the media stands. I also know what the votes say when it is put up to a vote in most places. He may also have just alienated a large swath of his base in the minority community. People in urban communities may underestimate the strength of opposition outside their circle of friends. So this is not as much of a slam dunk as the president and his circle might think. One in six of his money bundlers may be gay, but five in six are not. When you are alone in that voting booth……….. Frankly, it just shows more political desperation to talk about anything except the economy.
The Re-Definition of Marriage has been handled by Legislatures and Judges in 7 states and the District of Columbia.
In all 8 instances Marriage has been Re-Defined.
.
The Re-Definition of Marriage has been put to a vote of the people 32 times and Once as a Referendum in one of the Seven States where the Legislature Re-Defined Marriage. (That would be Maine.)
.
In the 32 States that asked for a vote of the people Not to Redefine Marriage, the Traditional Marriage Definition has been upheld every time. In the One State that it was up for Referendum after being Re-Defined by the Legislature the Traditional Definition also won.
.
So the Score stands;
Judges and Legislatures: 8 – 0
The People: 0 – 33
“Unlike Barack Obama, I have been an unwavering public supporter of gay marriage since first writing on the subject on my blog almost ten years ago. I remain so today. It is a clear human rights issue to me.”
Well, I hope you feel the same way when polygamists start demanding their “human rights,” or men who feel that it is their right to marry 10-year-old girls (as in Saudi Arabia) feel that their “human rights” are being violated for not being allowed to marry children. Or, worse, how about a gay man demanding that it’s his right to marry a young 10-year-old boy? We have a word for people like that. Hmmm, what is it? Oh yes, that’s right, they’re called PEDOPHILES.
This isn’t just a slippery slope that you’re on, it’s a jump off of a cliff. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Just look at what’s happened in Europe, which has gay marriage and very, very, loose restrictions on marriage and divorce. You have skyrocketing numbers of single-family households which put an even greater burden on the state welfare agencies. You have a deterioration of marriage as an institution and all of the social problems (such as higher crime rates) that go with it. In short, if you open up marriage to gays, you are going to have to open up marriage to everybody else. How could you stop it? What legal argument are you going to make to a polygamist that he or she can’t do what they want after allowing gays to marry? Why are gay rights any better than a polygamist’s rights? You see, there will be no end to it. And I’m sure the far left and the people in Hollywood will simply demand that everybody, no matter what sexual preference and at what age, should be allowed to do whatever they want. And then that will be the end of marriage, because why opt into an institution that has been so cheapened by having every deviant basically do whatever they want?
No, as a nation and as a culture we need to draw the line somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. We should not have to change thousands of years of common law just to accommodate a small minority. We also have to show at some point that we should not change our society simply because certain people think it’s the politically correct thing to do, rather than having the nation’s best interests at heart. Because remember, if you give every small minority what it wants, then you’re no longer a republic where voting on these issues matter, but merely a collection of political panderers who will follower whatever a wealthy and politically motivated group of malcontents want, stamping their little feet until the adults are forced to humor them and give into their demands. The children will have taken over the government while the adults are forced to stand by, watching helplessly, and wondering where their culture, their heritage, and their country went. And that’s not a good place to be.
To Liberty: Agree with your post except the part about under 18 year old marriage being a possibility. There are many examples where minors cannot form legal contracts.
Anyway, I wish Roger would be honest and come out in favor of polygamy, polyamory, brother and sister marriage, etc. Cause if “gay marriage” is a human rights issue, then logically, so are the other forms of unions between consenting adults.
There is no way that a person can be in favor of gay marriage and then have a logical leg to stand on in terms of “discriminating” against 1 man marrying 3 women.
You’re wrong. Leftists have already stated they want to decriminalize and destygmafy pedophilia.
Personally, I thought they’d go for polygamy first, but nope. They are going after the legalization of child-rape.
I suppose I should have see it coming, what, with the sexualization of children in the last few decades and now teaching children under the age of 5 about sex and homosexuality in an effort to desensitize them.
Societal traditions, mores, folkways, etc. are not necessarily based on “logic.”
Actually, the slippery slope could be even worse than that.
What’s to prevent two straight friends from getting married in order to game the system of governmental benefits?
Polygamy will be legalized because why should anyone be able to prevent what three loving adults want to do with their own lives? But what then is going to stop groups of people from entering overlapping marriages to maximized their benefits?
I do think that the current marriage set up is unfair to gay couples in a few specific ways that could be addressed through civil union legislation and the recognition of that by the federal government. But changing the definition of a millenia old institution like marriage is going to have a lot of unintended consequences that proponents ignore completely or hand wave away.
It’s not as difficult an issue as you seem to think. Two consenting adults. Period. End. Of. Sentence.
The slippery-slope argument has been forged many, many times. I have yet to see any overwhelming evidence that what you describe above is going down. As Roger so accurately states in this piece, gay marriage is a human rights issue. Limiting it to the terminology “civil union” is analogous to the famous “separate but equal” approach seen back in the civil rights era.
Minors entering into contracts will no doubt keep some group like NAMBLA from hoisting the civil rights batter for adult-child relationships (plus people can always keep replaying that old South Park episode to remind people how creepy it is. On the other hand, a continued ban on polygamy between consenting adults becomes harder to justify once you’ve expanded the legal definition of marriage past a man and a woman — if they’re all over 18, what’s the problem?
NAMBLA is a really fringe group that most people find abhorrent, including most in the gay community. I welcome evidence that points to the contrary. I have yet to see any calls emanating from the gay community for the support of any other arrangements than the traditional 2-person union. Albeit the pattern of promiscuity in the gay community is the stuff of legend, anyone who thinks that it’s any less rampant among straight people is simply deluded. Gays have made it abundantly clear that they want legitimacy & parity with regard to the relationships they share with their partners; it’s not too much to ask any more than it was back when black people had to struggle to attain access to all the basic human rights everyone else enjoys. Saying that having gay marriage will destroy the institution is just a paranoid of a display as it was back when people said that miscegenation would obliterate the white race.
Black people don’t like when you compare gays (a life-style choice) with to them.
In this case why can’t it be separate but equal. Equal in everything legally except name? Why can’t hetero’s keep their union (it’s a straight thing) and gays get civil unions (it’s a gay thing)? It’s.Just.A.Word.
Actually, there are those in the gay community who would be happy with the “civil union” definition, as what matters is access to all the rights that straight married couples enjoy. Others, however, don’t see the difference (marriage is marriage) & do associate a refusal to recognize it as such as a symbol of bigotry. They do have a point there.
As for the black community, the majority of them do not approve of gay marriage whatsoever, so no surprise they don’t like the analogy…….
Libertyship, with all due respect, and I enjoy your posts here, I find the slippery slope argument a head scratcher. While it makes some sense on paper, in the real world, the gay marriage movement has been extremely bourgeois and monogamous in its impulse. Gays want to be recognized as good family people just like you. In fact, what they are seeking is the opposite of polygamy and polyandry. I certainly understand the religious and cultural arguments against gay marriage, but the slippery slope one seems like a straw horse, What the gays I know want is a house in the burbs, kids, a dog and a picket fence. You may not want to call that marriage. I understand that. But slippery slope? It’s the reverse.
The problem is that any argument for redefining marriage to include same-sex couples is equally valid for polygamous marriage. If anything, polygamy has a longer tradition throughout the world than same-sex marriage.
Polygamy is not a predominant tradition in our society; two-person unions are. This is key, IMO. The move to legalize gay marriage has now been going on in this country for years; again, no evidence to speak of has sprung up from any quadrant (that I know of) demanding that some legislature draft up a law to legalize marriage arrangements for multiple numbers of people. Same goes for unions involving adults & minors.
The slippery slope argument in this case is that other groups will use the same arguments than gays have used to legalize their status. Not that married gay people will agitate for those groups.
There already is a small and vocal polygamist movement so that is not entirely theoretical.
And it also doesn’t address non sexual partners getting married to game the system and extract benefits from governments and employers. Laugh at the thought, but the only thing preventing people from doing so is stigma and that won’t last long at all.
Mr. Simon: First off thank you for entering the fray.
With all due respect, I don’t understand why you think the “…slippery slope argument a head scratcher.” You are not explaining (or I am not understanding) why the slipperly slope is invalid.
If ANY two consenting adults getting married is a “human rights issue”, then why wouldn’t any 3 (or 4 or 5) consenting adults getting married be a human rights issue? How can you, a gay marriage proponent, limit this human rights issue to any person who would argue for 3 people getting married?
Your info on gay friends who want a house, friends, kids, and a dog; well they can get that now. How is that any kind of rebuttal?
Similar to the government having the right to force you to buy broccoli if Obamacare is constitutional or that the government’s argument is that they could ban books in the Citizen United case, where does the legal logic take you with any two consenting adults can form a marriage?
Roger,
For all your talents, I would remind you it is not us social/religious conservatives that have evolved towards your stances, but your stances have evolved towards ours. It is you that has admitted here many times you were politically wrong in an earlier day.
Why are you so sure concerning gay marriage that you are not wrong now? There are some legitimate questions being asked that you advocates are avoiding. But I’ve got an even bigger concern than gaming the system or legitimizing polygamy.
Surely you must realize, then even if “gay marriage” becomes legal, many of us will refuse to recognize its legitimacy. And that message is not going to be tolerated by the zealots. They don’t want our tolerance – they demand our acceptance.
How long before our speech monitored in the pulpits and the pews? You think I’m buying trouble or blowing smoke? Well that very crime of hate speech from the pulpit has already happened in Europe.
You cannot assure us there is no slippery slope. The slide is already in motion.
First it was women, then it was dogs, then it was polygamy, now it’s ‘gay marriage’ (which when I was a kid was a joyous relationship between a man and woman), tomorrow who knows. Talk about anything but nothing of substance. What a campaign plan.
BTW Someone else has pointed out the O’s evolution on this matter (which was actually two flip-flops) can be used against him: Whatever he says today can evolve into the opposite tomorrow. Romney campaign: Are you listening?
I bet Roger has also been an unwavering supporter of kosher pork. A homosexual relationship isn’t, and can’t be, marriage. The drive for marriage recognition is a misguided attempt at a salve for the conscience. It wouldn’t work anyway. Can the term “marriage”, go with civil unions, and be done with it.
Absolutely right about everything, Roger !
Distraction is the only tactic left to the Dems; unfortunately, it seems to be working.
Sure; Gays want to be “married”. Next muslims will want to be called Jews; Liberals Conservatives; Whites Blacks; etc, etc, etc.
PJM is becoming a very liberal blog.
Who needs more of these?
So what’s next after “gay” “marriage”? Wouldn’t perverts want to assert a right to a church wedding? If a church denied them this “right”, wouldn’t they be able to sue for discrimination? After Fluke, why not? Mental health isn’t much of a stretch from physical health, despite the best efforts of Thomas Szasz to propagate reason. Aren’t there already far too many children growing up without a male presence? Can children with “gay” “parents” truly said to be benefiting from the presence of a male or a female role model? Isn’t this all really just an attack on gender itself, and on religion, and on reason and experience? How can this be seen as anything other than an extension of state control over children’s lives and a denial of the importance of mothers and fathers in a rational society?
One suggestion for Romney to counter this:
“Barack Obama thinks you should have the right to marry. That’s fine, but he also thinks he has a right to your paycheck. I’ll leave it up to the states to decide who can marry, but, regardless of your sexual orientation, I want you to keep as much of your hard-earned dollars to spend as you see fit.”
Game.Set.Match.
Roger:
Consider the ‘Limited Government Case against Gay Marriage’ (see: http://porkopolis.blogspot.com/2012/05/whats-in-it-for-us-limited-government.html).
From the post:
“…Before considering the question of gay marriage, a more fundamental question should be considered: Why marriage at all? In the United States, marriage is a tri-party legal agreement. The first two parties, husband and wife, are obvious. The third party is the state/community that acknowledges a marriage. Male and female couples petition the state –and more generally, their community– to recognize their marriage. If it was just a simple relationship amongst consenting adults, the community would have no need –and more importantly no business– acknowledging the relationship…”
Please, please, please: Romney READ THIS.
Do. Not. Engage. Exactly right. Respond and then get back to the real subject, the economy and the out-of-control growth of government. Great reminder. Thank You!
It is just another diversion from what is really important. We need to be focused on our debt,military,economy, is what the real focus should be on. All of the talk about the gay marriage issue, war on women, and all the other issues are nothing but smoke and mirrors to keep the real issues off the table. We have a debt that is out of control and nothing is being done about that, we have a justice department out of control and very little is being done there, we have a president and his wife who treat the U.S. like it is their personal cash register for all the trips, and the American people paying for his campaign trips. I am so tired of our mainstream media treating this man like he is a god and that everything he says is wonderful. He is a typical liberal lots of hot air, never had a real job in his life, and the only person he cares about is himself. He doesn’t care about the American people or whether they have jobs or not and the only voice he hears is his own and of is extremely radical friends.
This embrace of gay marriage is not, as some here have declared, a liberal evolution in PJM. It’s a libertarian thing. Above all else libertarianism embraces rational thinking. They reject emotional argument.
So why is it not starkly clear to the libertarian crowd that accepting gay marriage is indeed the slippery slope that ends up in a complete destruction of the concept of marriage? Polygamy … how can it not be also accepted? Pedophilia … that too. Incest? Who are you to stop it? Animal sodomy? None of my business.
Now maybe Mr. Simon is willing to accept the absurdity of his argument extended, but most will not. I don’t.
“So why is it not starkly clear to the libertarian crowd that accepting gay marriage is indeed the slippery slope that ends up in a complete destruction of the concept of marriage?”
Depends on how one wishes to look at it. I see gay marriage as a means to forge a pattern in the gay community to settle & formulate stable family units, as marriage is designed to promote & maintain committed relationships between couples. No-fault divorce & the welfare state have done much more to destroy the institution of marriage than a minority group’s pledge to tweak the definition of marriage just to the point that recognizes the legitimacy of same-sex relationships.
Again, I have yet to see evidence that the pattern of growing acceptance of gay marriage has led to a demand for accepting polygamy, adult-child unions or unions of any other sort. To my mind, these things stray too far out of the bounds of societal traditions to which we are well accustomed.
Polygamy is too far outside the bounds, but gay marriage isn’t? Until 1961, homosexual sex was a CRIME in every state. Talk about being outside the bounds.
Marriage in Western Civilization has been a bit of a sham ever since it was co-opted by government licensing in Geveva under Calvin. It may seem strange that it happened under a “Christian” totalitarian regime, but with the abolition of ecclesiastical courts, there was no institution other than government, or so it seemed, to take on the responsibility of family law. What we are left with now is a government-sanctioned social convention that no one seems to remember what it is for. As long as the family remains divorced from marriage, Western Civilization will continue a long decline. Like the gods of the copybook headings, you can only spit in the face of nature for so long before she finally decides to put you in your place.
Yep.
Promoting homosexual relationships isnt good for the tribes survival and prosperity.
But these policies make us feel good about how caring and tolerant we are, as we swirl the civilizational toilet bowl.
Embrace suicideal policies en masse, act surprised when your civilization collapses.
But Mr. Rubin assures us that empowering minorities was a good thing, so that they could vote for the Left and wealth redistribution and Gay Marriage.
But hey, those Third World cultures we are now promoting and celebrating are really vibrant….along with the riots and looting and violence against the racist xenophobic white man. Women in Oslo are now fearful of stranger rape, where it was nearly non-existant a few years ago. Oslo is now a vibrant city, where the indigenous women are enjoying the predations of hostile foreign men.
Good Times!
I am against gay marriage but, I agree, that this and every other thing that Obama & Co. can think of will be used as a distraction–the magician’s one hand waving to focus our attention on it, while we hardly see the other hand i.e. the economy, energy, and jobs
If I were Romney and his campaign I would be hammering on the economy, energy, and jobs 24/7, and on things like Solyndra and the failure of Obama’s “green economy” scams, on the Labor Participation Rate, what it means, and on the actual total unemployment rate, on our flat-lining economy, on no actual Budget being produced by the Democrats in Congress for the last three years, on unsustainable entitlement spending, and on the direct relationship between Obama’s tremendous, economy-killing, out of control spending, decisions, programs and regulations, and these problems.
Gay marriage and the economy are two symptoms of the same moral failings of this country. This episode just proves the Biblical verse “..the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil” (1 Tim 10:6).
I laugh when someone mentions homosexuals wanting Soc. Security benefits. Like that Ponzi scheme is going to be around in 10 years for anyone to draw upon. It’s all related folks and the sooner you realize it the sooner we can get back to a government that is run by a moral people. If history is any guide you must realize there will be great suffering before that will happen. Prepare.
“It is good to see that after intense political pressure that President Obama has finally come around to the Dick Cheney position on marriage equality.” Unknown commentator
I am gay (100%, sorry guys…) and was finally able to marry last year in NY state. I am a Libertarian. I have voted Republican in the past.
I see the reasoning of this article. However, the comments here are putting
me over the edge. I have a gay conservative friend who has already decided to vote *Democrat* until our marriages our recognized by the feds. While I am not ready to vote Democrat – leaning toward Gary Johnson – each of these crass comments drives me toward that possibility.
1) If you don’t like the term “marriage” for gays, take it out of government language for everyone; and if “marriage” is so bad, “funerals” (death rites) should not be used for atheists…maybe “disposal procedure” is better for them
2) We are fortunate that when blacks and whites were allowed to marry, there was not a movement to marry dogs or cats (of the opposite sex)
3) You say economics are more important. So do I. Our national economic projections may or may not happen. But my situation is crystal clear:
my spouse and I paid $2000 more in taxes to the feds than we would have; we pay a hideous amount into SS as sole proprietors, but won’t inherit benefits from each other; etc.
4) Libertarians and Republicans dumped a lot of money into NY to get the issue off the table – they were very smart
So what I hear is, you guys can’t put yourselves in my shoes. Fine. I will start operating like you and just think of myself. The country may fall apart, but I will probably be dead. And I don’t have kids to worry about.
It is about peeling off the Ron Paul supporters who the conservatives don’t want anyway.
Now what if for an October surprise he moots an end to Drug Prohibition?
I have some further thoughts:
http://classicalvalues.com/2012/05/does-obama-have-a-plan-for-victory/
There’s still over 175 days left before the election, which is a long, long time to keep having to trot out a new side issue every 2-3 days to avoid having to talk about the health of the economy, the price of gasoline or the federal deficit. And since the loudest special interest liberals tend to also be immediate gratification junkies, any pushing-a-contentious-issue-out-of-the-way as Obama tried to do on Wednesday likely isn’t going to have the desired effect of taking the issue off the table under Nov. 7.
It will be hard for Team Obama to permanently avoid the issues they don’t want to talk about, while at the same time it’s going to be hard for them to keep their most passionate activists from pushing issues to the forefront the president might want to talk about five months and 27 days from now, but don’t want swing voters to be thinking about until then.
Mormons were persecuted by the US government for 125 years because of Polygamy.
You could kill a Mormon ‘on sight’ in Missouri up until 1998 because of their assumed Polygamous beliefs.
But now the ‘nod and wink’ semi-black president says he thinks it OK for gays to be married if their state agrees,
(putting the blame on someone else.)
I Hope we can offer him a little Change come November.
Obama-0
Romney-1
Distraction though it may be, the fact of the matter is that the family–composed of a male and female and their children–has been the norm, and the successful, stable social arrangement in the vast majority of civilizations throughout history.
Thus, the Left’s Gramscian attack against the bourgeois societies of the West has been focused on subverting/destroying the keystone of society, the family, on souring the relationship between the sexes, on poisoning the idea of and the relationships within family life, and on subverting and destroying, as well, the chief institutions supporting the family—the Church and the School. Impair, subvert, disrupt, poison, sour, destroy these major building blocks of bourgeois societies and the institutions, values and relationships that sustain them, and these societies will weaken, disintegrate and, eventually, fall.
I suggest—surveying the wreckage all around us—that to date this Gramscian campaign of attack has been very successful.
Mr. Simon, once again – like the vast majority of his PJM editorial cohorts (and readership), thinks he knows the ultimate answer to America’s (and Europe’s, and Japan’s, and everyone else’s) woes. “Focus on economic course corrections,” he tells us, “and all other truths – including moral truths (because they are secondary truths) – will either fall into place or they can be ignored.”
The preaching of that worldview, of course, was why Mr. Simon’s (and most of PJM’s editorial staff’s, and much of its readership’s) ancestors in First Temple Israel were exiled from the land they were originally given, and promised to be allowed keep forever, IF they would simply place the MORAL truths they were also given (as well as the Giver of those truths) as the primary element(s) of their worldview. Like Mr. Simon today, however, his ancestors preferred to believe the lie that economic truths (rather than “the fear of YaHWeH”) were the beginning of reason, and the (also promised) consequences of such willful ignorance became what is now known as ancient history, which has repeated itself – several times over – ever since.
What eluded Mr. Simon’s ancestors is the very same thing that eludes Mr. Simon (and his cobelligerents) today (Ecclesiastes 1:9). His (their) myopic focus on economics as primary misses the originally-given, REAL primary point completely. That real primary point always has been, still is, and always will be that the MORAL depravity of their (and all of our) own hearts is the first and most important problem to solve (liberals, btw, are no different than conservatives in this regard; they ignore their moral depravity for the very same reasons the rest of us do: No one wants to observe oneself CLEARLY in a mirror).
No thinking conservative has ever argued that economics are irrelevant (only liberals do that), but only conservatives (and, believe it or not, some liberals as well) who have been given eyes to see (which we didn’t request, btw, since our depravity is far more advanced than we want to believe) recognize the REAL primary issue with humanity: Our moral depravity separates us from the one and only, infinitely holy creator God, YaHWeH. Until we submit to YaHWeH’s originally-given command to deal FIRST with our moral depravity, we will simply never, ever, EVER be able to correct our economic misjudgments because all economic misjudgments (like political misjudgments) are ultimately moral misjudgments.
No matter how many times we repeat our failures, because we refuse to put the moral horse in front of the economic/political cart we will forever (and ever and ever…) find ourselves in the proverbial ditch.
Readers wishing to familiarize themselves with how YaHWeH first promised Mr. Simon’s ancestors that (and how) He would actually deal with our moral depravity for us – then fulfilled those promises perfectly – are invited to browse the various branches on Another Slow News Day’s “Religion” menu tree. Everyone else can continue to bark up the economic tree until they are blue in the face and hoarse as a horse.
Total distraction. Pathetic actually. Once again, Obama’s tin ear for politics is going to backfire.
For the record, I’m in favor of civil unions and full rights for consenting adults. Stable loving relationships are good for couples and society as a whole and should be supported. I’m against the co-opting of the term marriage for gay unions though. Words have meaning and the word marriage has a specific meaning in our society, at least today. It may ‘evolve’ in 100 years though.
First of all how is this a ‘simple human rights’ issue? What human rights are being denied? Marriage by definition is a committed union between one man and one woman. How can you extend this definition to something other than that? A human right violation would be to not allow same sex cohabitation between parties intending to have sex with each other. To my knowledge no one is being barred from this.
Secondly, I’m sick and tired of hearing and seeing and being preached to from and for a segment of the population that’s less than 5%. Just go live your life and shut the hell up. I’m sick of being subjected to the public debauchery that is gay pride day, I’m sick of sexual orientation discussions being continuously shoved in my and my kid’s faces on TV, in the schools, in the news, etc. Get over yourselves already. Your gay, no one really cares. Just shut up and live your life.
I can see no societal benefits for redefining the definition of ‘marriage’.