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Every day there is another diatribe on gay marriage from opponents of the idea. They think they can unravel it, show how it is just simply wrong and should not even be considered. Most of these pieces are just conservative writers flailing around, weeping and gnashing their teeth as the country more and more grows to understand gays and lesbians and give them the same rights heterosexuals have.
So along comes this current piece, which starts off interestingly, claiming the use of reason:
If you’re actually reading this article, I’ll be surprised. Because it’s about homosexuality, and when it comes to arguing about homosexuality, the ground rules are different for conservatives and liberals. Strangely enough, we’ve gotten to a point where liberals are allowed to use reason, and conservatives are not — even in conservative publications.
Okay, so you’re going to use reason. I dig it—though I’m skeptical of how reason will lead anyone to conclude that same-sex marriage should be banned. But let’s take this one step at a time:
Here’s how it works. When gay activists go after Christians and a place like Chick-fil-A, which supports traditional marriage, they make an argument that strikes right at the heart of the Bible. They argue, as Noah Michelson recently did in The Huffington Post, that,
For some reason this country still thinks that it’s OK to treat [homosexuals] like we are, at best, just not quite as worthy to have all the rights afforded straight or cis-gendered people or, at worst, just plain evil. Many of these statements are bolstered by religious arguments using the Bible as ammunition, but, as it’s been pointed out time and again, the Bible demands we do or don’t do a lot of things that we no longer do or don’t do (like that we should own slaves and we shouldn’t eat popcorn shrimp), and Jesus himself never uttered a single word about being queer (and if he wanted us all to be “traditionally married” so badly, you’d think the guy himself would have gotten married).
For anyone reading this in a Chick-fil-A, “cis-gendered” is an academic term for straight people. It’s a way for the left to make it seem like “heterosexual” is just another PC category. Also, Jesus did indeed talk about marriage — “male and female he created them,” etc. Finally, I don’t know any civilized person who considers homosexuals “just plain evil.” This is self-serving martyrdom that Michelson is engaged in.
Not a good start there. A few points:
- “Cis-gendered” does not mean “straight people.” Cis-gendered means people who are not transgendered, a person whose “gender identity” matches their socially recognized sex. If you think you’re a man in a man’s body, you’re cisgendered. If you think you’re a woman in a man’s body, you’re transgendered. Now, that’s a gross oversimplification, but that should at least make the point that cisgender and transgender have nothing at all to do with sexual orientation.
- Is the author saying then, that conservatives who rant and rage against gays and lesbians not civilized? I ask because this comment came up in an article about LGBT issues at TheBlaze:
You are not getting it, LEFT: GOD HATES homosexuality and forbids HIS KIDS from going there. HE knows what it does to the soul.
The argument is not homosexuality vs. non-homosexuality. It is all about satan vs. GOD.
We’ve read THE BOOK and know the ending. Be good for those involved in the left to read THE BOOK while there is still time.
BTW: “tolerance” is mentioned only four times in the BIBLE and each time GOD IS ASKING, “Why do you tolerate….?”
“Tolerance” is of satan, period.
So gays are followers of Satan, and thus, “just plain evil.” Gotcha. Oh, and this:
Maybe we should have a boycott the ad agency month. Gays are disgusting. Jesus did not say: justify your sins and keep on sining. Jesus said go thy way and SIN NO MORE. Nothing about rationalization or denial or justification. Only lazy in relationships, afraid of rejection, promiscuous people are homosexual.
Oh, and this:
The web page ad says, ‘Couples enjoyed the comfortable seats.’ Ewwwwwwww ! I pity the cleaning crew !
And this:
This is just too sick for words! I am NOT tolerant of sin. I will not comply with those whom break God’s laws! No matter what sick people do to justify sin, God has the last word on the matter!
And finally, this:
I don’t get all this nonsense and I sure am getting tired of it. Can we have an Abusers Pride day. I doubt enough Abusers are riding the tracks and that would help sales I’m sure. Or Felons Pride day. Lots more groups to promote. Don’t worry about families being comfortable.
There’s more disgusting comments on that post, but you get the idea. The author of this op-ed I’m analyzing clearly does not know how much vitriol and hatred the anti-gay community has towards them, or he does and he’s just lying. Either way, it demolishes that argment pretty succintly. (And before you ask, no, it’s not just TheBlaze. Such sentiments can be found everywhere. In fact, I’ll show it later.)
Let’s get on with this argument. He says there is an argument based from reason, and that it is in two parts. The first part is thus:
Part one: While we stand foursquare against the bullying and disrespect of anyone based on race, politics, sexual preference or gender, there are certain irreducible things about human beings that to ignore would constitute ignoring reality. The first is that the male and female bodies are different. For most of the human species, there is a complementarity between male and female that is not only physical and biological, but psychological and even spiritual. This complementarity, even as much as the rearing of children, is the reason for marriage.
That is part one of the argument. It may seem obvious, but I once literally spent 20 minutes in my kitchen talking to a gay friend of mine who was about to get married. She had just become a doctor, and I was amazed that she could not and would not agree with the simple premise that two males or two females together constitute something different than a man and a woman together. Not better or worse, mind you — just something, even in a simply anatomical sense, that is different. As incredible as it may seem, we have gotten to a point in the culture when it’s possible to deny reality at its most basic level. We can no longer say that there is a difference between male and female. If the other side can note the odd commands in the Bible, we should be able to point out that male anatomy is different from female anatomy, and that for 50,000 years at least there has been a complementarity and attraction between the two — that the two, for lack of a better term, fit.
Here’s the reason why you spent twenty minutes and go nowhere: because biology doesn’t fricking matter.
Seriously. Gay marriage is not an issue about biology. Marriage itself is not based on biology, no matter how much conservatives want to think it is. The whole issue is about people living their lives as they choose to, so long as they harm nobody else, and being united with the ones that they love. So what if male and female anatomy are different? That is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The topic is about love—which you would think conservative Christians would totally and ineffably grok*, since Christianity is a religion based on love.
Here’s the second part of the argument:
The more difficult part of the argument is the second half, because such truth-telling is verboten even in the conservative press. It goes something like this:
After years of arguments over gay marriage, those who support it have yet to adequately answer the question of why, if gay marriage is legalized, marriages cannot thenceforth constitute multiple people, or even relatives. Love is love, right? Furthermore, many mainstream Americans are not comfortable with the propensity of gay activists to sexualize everything. The Chick-fil-A gay “kiss in” — a protest against the fast food chain that involves gay people making out in public — is a perfect example. Whereas an earlier generation of activists may have just showed up with picket signs, today’s gay marriage advocates have to emphasize, in a tacky and public way, their sexuality. To many people this is a reminder of the kind of lack of self-control that led to the spread of diseases in the gay bathhouse culture of the 1970s. This is not to argue that homosexuality is a pathology; it’s possible that gay culture became so saturated with sex because the repression of the larger culture made gay people think about sex much more than they would have in a more accepting society. But logically the harping on sex is a contradiction: the gay marriage movement is both insisting that their sexuality is no big deal and not worth the freak-out by the “cis-genders,” yet at every turn, from “Will & Grace” to gay pride parades to the Chick-fil-A kiss-in, they emphasize their sexuality. Is it no big deal or is it everything?
Again, a couple of points:
- As for “marriages cannot thenceforth constitute multiple people, or even relatives,” well yes, most liberal same-sex marriage proponents don’t go that far. And shame on them. Love is love. So long as it is consensual (meaning that you can’t marry children, or trees, or animals, because they cannot consent) it is fine. Multiple partners? Sure. Between relatives? I thought they already did that in North Carolina. And let’s not get started on Utah, for pete’s sakes. So yes, this is a weak spot for most same-sex proponents—but only because they create that vulnerability. In reality, everyone should have the right to marry as they wish, so long as it is consensual.
- So its all about sex, is it? Well, I mean, I can’t blame them, considering you made it that way. Look at the comments to The Blaze article I posted above; there were some I decided against quoting here, but basically implied that all gays were pedophiles. Conservatives make it about sex, because they’re the ones who are all gung-ho about it. Gays and lesbians just want to have families, and while I’m sure sex is involved some of the time, it’s not 100% right and center. But when you put that much pressure on them from that angle, of course they’re going to throw it right back in your face. Physician, heal thyself.
So this is a totally bunk and bankrupt article. But then that just begs the question: so why are people so against gay marriage? This is a comment from the Daily Caller, with my own emphasis:
I’m an atheist and have argued against gay rights since I went to my first Gay Pride parade. I always had a live-and-let-live attitude until I saw what these people are really advocating. It wasn’t until I opened my formerly closed liberal mind to conservatism that I understood the real goal of the gay rights movement.
It’s hysterically funny to watch gays and their liberal defenders try to squirm out of the objection of someone like me who has no religious basis for my opposition to granting people special rights because of their behavior. I’m also a smoker, so that adds to my resentment of people who fling hate at any anybody who doesn’t want to celebrate their personal habits.
What usually happens is that the defenders of gay rights, when they can’t bully me into agreeing that I have to accept and celebrate behavior I find disgusting, will say that being gay has nothing to do with sex. It’s a culture. Uh huh. Sure it is.
The gay rights movement is all about breaking down civil society. Religion is their target. Every religion except Islam, of course. They haven’t quite thought out how they’ll deal with that yet. Their hatred of Christianity is a little too bright at the moment so they don’t see that super nova off in the distance.
I get it now. Gays are icky.
Really. That’s the entirety of opposition to gay marriage. Sure, there are arguments based on tradition and whatnot, but what it comes down to is that some people find gays and lesbians just inherently icky. I will admit, shamefully, that when I was younger—middle and high school, around then—I too found it a bit weird and more than a bit gross. But then I wisened up and realized that, you know, it’s no more gross that people of the opposite sex trading bodily fluids.
I became what these people haven’t. An adult.
A shame, too. I was really looking forward to somethat that really used reason, something really tough, to knock down. All I got was a straw man.