Bubba Sounds Off

Response to Orson Scott Card article

Homosexual “Marriage” and Civilization

A little dialogue from Lewis Carroll:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has not yet declared that “day” shall now be construed to include that which was formerly known as “night,” but it might as well.

By declaring that homosexual couples are denied their constitutional rights by being forbidden to “marry,” it is treading on the same ground.

Actually, Mr. Card, a key difference here is that expanding the legal definition of marriage would have the added benefit of belatedly removing unwarranted discrimination from the term - you know, equal rights and all that. It’s kinda hard to see such a benefit in the whole day/night thing. Your analogies need a little work.

Do you want to know whose constitutional rights are being violated? Everybody’s. Because no constitution in the United States has ever granted the courts the right to make vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society.

I hate to break it to you, but that last sentence contained nothing to support your answer to your own question. All it did was identify a right the courts don’t have. It made no mention of any particular constitutional rights that anyone has, let alone any which are being violated. Perhaps you’ll be able to identify one at some point in your lengthy commentary?

And by the way, “vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society” seems a bit over the top, if all you’re referring to is extending the option of marriage to the relatively small percentage of couples who are of the same gender.

Regardless of their opinion of homosexual “marriage,” every American who believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic process.

It isn’t dictating a social innovation, it’s allowing those who wish to participate in one to do so, rather than letting the majority prohibit them from doing so. If anything, the latter would be an abuse of the democratic process. Again, it helps to be precise.

And we all know the course this thing will follow. Anyone who opposes this edict will be branded a bigot;

Lord knows, gays and lesbians have certainly never been branded with disparaging labels, have they?

any schoolchild who questions the legitimacy of homosexual marriage will be expelled for “hate speech.”

Good luck connecting the dots on that claim. But even if it turns out to be true, the proper response is to oppose censorship, not same sex marriage. Don’t use someone else’s stupidity to justify your own.

The fanatical Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a “homophobe” and therefore mentally ill.

Who cares? The “fanatical Left” represents only a small fraction of people who have no objection to same sex marriage, and surprise, surprise - some of us are not part of the “Left” at all! We simply recognize that there is no good reason for such discrimination.

And while opponents of same sex marriage might not be mentally ill, they do tend to harbor an irrational prejudice against homosexuality, and almost always demonstrate lapses in the ability to think critically. The lack of precision in some of your own commentary is certainly consistent with that assessment.

Which is the modern Jacobin equivalent of crying, “Off with their heads!”

We will once again be performing a potentially devastating social experiment on ourselves without any attempt to predict the consequences and find out if the American people actually want them.

Okay, still some precision problems, so let’s break it down a bit.

First of all, “the American people” clearly don’t all want the same thing, or there would be no controversy. So for this issue, it really just boils down to the majority seeking to impose its preference on everyone, with the minority preferring to let people make their own choices for their own lives.

Secondly, “we” will not be performing any particular experiment. To the degree that it is an experiment at all, a relatively small percentage of the population will be participating in it. The overwhelming majority who prefer traditional marriage can continue to participate in it without interference.

And finally, not finding credibility in your hyperbolic predictions (such as “potentially devastating”) does not equate to “without any attempt to predict the consequences”.

But anyone who has any understanding of how America — or any civilization — works, of the forces already at play, will realize that this new diktat of the courts will not have any of the intended effects, while the unintended effects are likely to be devastating.

Marriage Is Already Open to Everyone.

In the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

True but irrelevant. What banning same sex marriage does is tell at least some men and women that they cannot marry the consenting adult of their choice, and for no good reason. Merely pointing out the absence of one type of stupidity is worthless in trying to defend the presence of another type. Sadly, however, it is just the sort of smokescreen that’s likely to resonate with shallow minds.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.

Which is more likely to result in children from broken homes, the relationships you just described, or same sex marriages?

So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage.

It’s so funny to watch guys like you jump through hoops to try to make your position sound reasonable, and to see how close it comes to arguments that were almost certainly once made to defend taboos against interracial marriage. Try this on for size:

“It is a flat lie to say that people wanting to marry someone of a different race are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage, because all they have to do is find someone of their own race willing to join them in marriage”.

Ouch! Kinda makes you wince, huh? The problem is that you’re not smart enough to realize that’s also an appropriate reaction to your own words. But your myopia is at least understandable. It’s much more difficult to recognize stupid arguments during a period of history when they also happen to be popular ones.

In order to claim that they are deprived, you have to change the meaning of “marriage” to include a relationship that it has never included before this generation, anywhere on earth.

It’s worth noting that the embarrassing lack of sound arguments for continuing such discrimination usually results in heavy reliance on things like tradition. Do you suppose there have ever been any other points in history where people have defended an otherwise indefensible practice with something along the lines of “that’s the way it’s always been”? For that matter, prior to the last few decades, when has dissent or independent thinking ever been widely tolerated anyway, let alone encouraged? When was there ever a point in history during which anyone who might be prone to disagreeing with such traditional restrictions could openly question or challenge them without risking ostracism, at the very least? Did you give any serious consideration to such questions before assessing the value of tradition as an argument?

Just because homosexual partners wish to be called “married” and wish to force everyone else around them to regard them as “married,” does not mean that their Humpty-Dumpty-ish wish should be granted at the expense of the common language, democratic process, and the facts of human social organization.

First, they would only be forcing everyone around them to regard them as married in exactly the same sense that traditional couples are doing now. And in terms of anything more tangible than that, they’d be forcing government to stop discriminating against them in the distribution of benefits their taxes are helping to pay for.

Second, any use of “the common language” that results in unwarranted discrimination should be changed.

Third, the “democratic process” should not be abused to serve the irrational prejudices of the majority.

And finally, there is nothing about “the facts of human social organization” that provide any sound argument for prohibiting same sex marriages.

Once again, a little precision can work wonders in terms of taking the steam out of phony points.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.

Nonsense. A society that is more tolerant, and free from ridiculous prejudices and discriminations, is an improved society. And it is one where a greater number of individuals are likely to be happy - that is, with the possible exception of those who cannot mind their own business. You really do have an awful lot to say for someone who’s clearly given the subject so little objective thought.

Marrying Is Hard to Do.

Men and women, from childhood on, have very different biological and social imperatives. They are naturally disposed to different reproductive strategies; men are (on average) larger and stronger; the relative levels of various hormones, the difference in the rate of maturity, and many other factors make it far, far easier for women to get along with other women and men to get along with men.

Men, after all, know what men like far better than women do; women know how women think and feel far better than men do. But a man and a woman come together as strangers and their natural impulses remain at odds throughout their lives, requiring constant compromise, suppression of natural desires, and an unending effort to learn how to get through the intersexual swamp.

“Intersexual swamp”? Man, you do have a screwy way of looking at things.

And yet, throughout the history of human society — even in societies that tolerated relatively open homosexuality at some stages of life — it was always expected that children would be born into and raised by families consisting of a father and mother.

And in those families where one or both parents were missing, usually because of death, either stepparents, adoptive parents, or society in general would step in to provide, not just nurturing, but also the appropriate role models.

Do you have some good reason to believe gays and lesbians were never part of that process, or that they could not be among those providing “appropriate role models”? Just exactly how thoroughly and objectively have you studied this? And how did you collect your data?

It is a demonstrated tendency — as well as the private experience of most people — that when we become parents, we immediately find ourselves acting out most of the behaviors we observed in the parent of our own sex. We have to consciously make an effort to be different from them.

Sorry, but merely citing a “demonstrated tendency” isn’t much of an argument against something that deviates from that tendency, if that’s what you were going for.

We also expect our spouse to behave, as a parent, in the way we have learned to expect from the experiences we had with our opposite-sex parent — that’s why so many men seem to marry women just like their mother, and so many women to marry men just like their father. It takes conscious effort to break away from this pattern.

I think you’re overstating that tendency, but whether you are or not, it’s kind of hard to see how that’s an argument against same sex marriage.

So not only are two sexes required in order to conceive children, children also learn their sex-role expectations from the parents in their own family.

Some of your language is vague enough to make your meaning uncertain. When you refer to “sex-role expectations”, whose “expectations” are you referring to? And are you specifically talking about an expectation to be heterosexual? I don’t know about you, but when I became interested in the opposite sex, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It had nothing to do with role models, or anyone else’s “expectations”. In fact, it was so intense, and so radically different from what I thought was expected of me, that for a while I was worried there was something wrong with me. None of the stuff I found myself interested in doing was based on anything I had ever seen anyone else do, or any examples that had been set.

You seem excessively concerned with sexual preference when talking about role models, though other aspects of behavior are far more important to instill. One that comes to mind is to avoid fostering irrational prejudices. It should be obvious to any reasonable person that nature insures that most people will have an overwhelming preference for the opposite sex. If you deride someone for not being part of that “most people”, you’re just looking for stuff to complain about.

This is precisely what large segments of the Left would like to see break down. And if it is found to have unpleasant results, they will, as always, insist that the cure is to break down the family even further.

I think you’ve probably been getting some bad propaganda. Though not part of “the Left” myself, I’ll go out on a limb here, and suggest that all most of them want regarding this issue is to expand marriage to include same sex couples.

The War On Marriage

Sorry, I just couldn’t help being struck by this particularly blatant example of hyperbole. Now, as you were saying …

Of course, in our current society we are two generations into the systematic destruction of the institution of marriage. In my childhood, it was rare to know someone whose parents were divorced; now, it seems almost as rare to find someone whose parents have never been divorced.

And a growing number of children grow up in partial families not because of divorce, but because there never was a marriage at all.

The damage caused to children by divorce and illegitimate birth is obvious and devastating. While apologists for the current system are quick to blame poverty resulting from “deadbeat dads” as the cause, the children themselves know this is ludicrous.

There are plenty of poor families with both parents present whose children grow up knowing they are loved and having good role models from both parents.

And there are plenty of kids whose divorced parents have scads of money — but whose lives are deformed by the absence of one of their parents in their lives.

Most broken or wounded families are in that condition because of a missing father. There is substantial and growing evidence that our society’s contempt for the role of the father in the family is responsible for a massive number of “lost” children.

Only when the father became powerless or absent in the lives of huge numbers of children did we start to realize some of the things people need a father for: laying the groundwork for a sense of moral judgment; praise that is believed so that it can instill genuine self-confidence.

People lacking in fundamental self-esteem don’t need gold stars passed out to everyone in their class. Chances are, they need a father who will say — and mean — “I’m proud of you.”

This is an oversimplification of a very complex system. There are marriages that desperately need to be dissolved for the safety of the children, for instance, and divorced parents who do a very good job of keeping both parents closely involved in the children’s lives.

But you have to be in gross denial not to know that children would almost always rather have grown up with Dad and Mom in their proper places at home. Most kids would rather that, instead of divorcing, their parents would acquire the strength or maturity to stop doing the things that make the other parent want to leave.

Congratulations. You’ve just put forth some thoughtful commentary in opposition to divorce. Now, if only you could manage to come up with a credible argument against same sex marriage. (Of course, some of that stuff about fathers was a little weak. Did you mean to suggest that mothers are incapable of doing those things?)

Marriage Is Everybody’s Business.

And it isn’t just the damage that divorce and out-of-wedlock births do to the children in those broken families: Your divorce hurts my kids, too.

Then that reflects poorly on your kids, and probably on you too.

All American children grow up today in a society where they are keenly aware that marriages don’t last. At the first sign of a quarrel even in a stable marriage that is in no danger, the children fear divorce. Is this how it begins? Will I now be like my friends at school, shunted from half-family to half-family?

This is not trivial damage. Kids thrive best in an environment that teaches them how to be adults. They need the confidence and role models that come from a stable home with father and mother in their proper places.

Can I take it you would support laws prohibiting divorce, and which would forcibly remove kids born into single parent homes, and immediately placed in homes with two parents? If your concerns are so great that you want the state restricting marital choices among consenting adults, you should certainly be prepared to be consistent.

So long before the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided to play Humpty Dumpty, the American people had plunged into a terrible experiment on ourselves, guided only by the slogan of immaturity and barbarism: “If it feels good, do it!”

Did I miss a meeting? I thought I was part of “the American people”. In fact, I assumed you were too. Are you and I the only ones who have been spared from this terrible experiment? You’re truly not making much sense.

Civilization depends on people deliberately choosing not to do many things that feel good at the time, in order to accomplish more important, larger purposes. Having an affair; breaking up a marriage; oh, those can feel completely justified and the reasons very important at the time.

But society has a vital stake in child-rearing; and children have a vital stake in society.

Nothing is stopping individuals who share this view from child-rearing. And it only reflects poorly on their competence in that pursuit if they would be impeded by the mere presence of same sex marriages in society. If anything, the fostering of irrational prejudices is probably far more destructive to children.

Monogamous marriage is by far the most effective foundation for a civilization. It provides most males an opportunity to mate (polygamous systems always result in surplus males that have no reproductive stake in society); it provides most females an opportunity to have a mate who is exclusively devoted to her. Those who are successful in mating are the ones who will have the strongest loyalty to the social order; so the system that provides reproductive success to the largest number is the system that will be most likely to keep a civilization alive.

I have no idea what you mean by “loyalty to the social order”, but I’m betting the reason you chose such vague language is that it’s not something worthy of much concern. As for the rest of it, are you under the impression civilization is in danger of dying? In case you haven’t figured this out, even for the goal of preserving civilization, it’s only necessary to have some heterosexual mating going on. It isn’t necessary that everyone be participating in it. With that in mind, do you have some good reason to fear that the presence of same sex marriages in society will somehow have a significantly negative impact on the supply of people who would be prone to reproducing?

Monogamy depends on the vast majority of society both openly and privately obeying the rules. Since the natural reproductive strategy for males is to mate with every likely female at every opportunity, males who are not restrained by social pressure and expectations will soon devolve into a sort of Clintonesque chaos, where every man takes what he can get.

Sounds like an argument for monogamy, not against same sex marriage.

Civilization Is Rooted in Reproductive Security.

There is a very complex balance in maintaining a monogamous society, with plenty of lapses and exceptions and mechanisms to cope with the natural barbaric impulses of the male mating drive. There is always room to tolerate a small and covert number of exceptions to the rule.

But the rule must be largely observed, and must be seen to be observed even more than it actually is. If trust between the sexes breaks down, then males who are able will revert to the broadcast strategy of reproduction, while females will begin to compete for males who already have female mates. It is a reproductive free-for-all.

Civilization requires the suppression of natural impulses that would break down the social order. Civilization thrives only when most members can be persuaded to behave unnaturally, and when those who don’t follow the rules are censured in a meaningful way.

Why would men submit to rules that deprive them of the chance to satisfy their natural desire to mate with every attractive female?

Why would women submit to rules that keep them from trying to mate with the strongest (richest, most physically imposing, etc.) male, just because he already has a wife?

Because civilization provides the best odds for their children to live to adulthood. So even though civilized individuals can’t pursue the most obviously pleasurable and selfish (i.e., natural) strategies for reproduction, the fact is that they are far more likely to be successful at reproduction in a civilized society — whether they personally like the rules or not.

Civilizations that enforce rules of marriage that give most males and most females a chance to have children that live to reproduce in their turn are the civilizations that last the longest. It’s such an obvious principle that few civilizations have even attempted to flout it.

Even if the political system changes, as long as the marriage rules remain intact, the civilization can go on.

That’s all nice, but again, was there supposed to be an argument in there somewhere for not allowing same sex marriages? ‘Cause it’s pretty hard to see how “a chance to have children that live to reproduce in their turn” would be less available to those who want it as a result of the presence of same sex marriages.

Balancing Family and Society

There’s a lot of quid pro quo in civilization, though. Not all parents are good providers, for instance. So society, in one way or another, must provide for the children whose parents are either incapable or irresponsible.

Society must also step in to protect children from abusive adults; and the whole society must act in loco parentis, watching out for each other’s children, trusting that someone else is also watching out for their own.

The degree of trust can be enormous. We send our children to school for an enormous portion of their childhood, trusting that the school will help civilize them while we parents devote more of our time to providing for them materially (or caring for younger children not yet in school).

At the same time, parents recognize that non-parents are not as trustworthy caretakers. The school provides some aspects of civilization, but not others. Schools expect the parents to civilize their children in certain ways in order to take part safely with other children; parents expect to be left alone with some aspects of child-rearing, such as religion.

In other words, there are countless ways that parents and society at large are constantly negotiating to find the best balance between the parents’ natural desire to protect their children — their entrants in the reproductive lottery — and the civilization’s need to bring the greatest number of children, not just to adulthood, but to parenthood as committed members of the society who will teach their children to also be good citizens.

“Reproductive lottery”? Where are you getting this stuff? Since when does civilization need to bring “the greatest number of children” to parenthood?

Most of your commentary has just reflected a confidently expressed but extremely poorly thought out opinion on this issue, or has simply been irrelevant. But with that latest bit, you’re starting to sound a little nutty. In any case, still looking for that first sign of an intelligent argument against same sex marriage.

America’s Anti-Family Experiment

In this delicate balance, it is safe to say that beginning with a trickle in the 1950s, but becoming an overwhelming flood in the 1960s and 1970s, we took a pretty good system, and in order to solve problems that needed tweaking, we made massive, fundamental changes that have had devastating consequences.

Now huge numbers of Americans know that the schools are places where their children are indoctrinated in anti-family values. Trust is not just going — for them it’s gone.

Can you specifically identify any of these “anti-family values”? Or are you just talking about views of “family” that are less rigid than your own?

Huge numbers of children are deprived of two-parent homes, because society has decided to give legal status and social acceptance to out-of-wedlock parenting and couples who break up their marriages with little regard for what is good for the children.

The result is a generation of children with no trust in marriage who are mating in, at best, merely “marriage-like” patterns, and bearing children with no sense of responsibility to society at large; while society is trying to take on an ever greater role in caring for the children who are suffering — while doing an increasingly bad job of it.

You can speak with authority about the attitudes of an entire generation? What age range are we talking about? And are they all really “mating in, at best, merely ‘marriage-like’ patterns”?

Parents in a stable marriage are much better than schools at civilizing children. You have to be a fanatical ideologue not to recognize this as an obvious truth — in other words, you have to dumb down or radically twist the definition of “civilizing children” in order to claim that parents are not, on the whole, better at it.

We are so far gone down this road that it would take a wrenching, almost revolutionary social change to reverse it. And with the forces of P.C. orthodoxy insisting that the solutions to the problems they have caused is ever-larger doses of the disease, it is certain that any such revolution would be hotly contested.

Now, in the midst of this tragic collapse of marriage, along comes the Massachusetts Supreme Court, attempting to redefine marriage in a way that is absurdly irrelevant to any purpose for which society needs marriage in the first place.

It might be absurdly relevant to what you think the purpose is, but not all of us in the “society” you just referred to feel the need to limit everyone to one single narrow view of that purpose. Such heavy-handedness is usually found among “fanatical ideologues”.

Humpty Has Struck Before.

We’ve already seen similar attempts at redefinition. The ideologues have demanded that we stop defining “families” as Dad, Mom, and the kids. Now any grouping of people might be called a “family.”

Would you insist that everyone be forced by law to comply with your narrow view of the word? Because if so, you really should steer clear of words like “ideologues” in any future commentary on the subject.

But this doesn’t turn them into families, or even make rational people believe they’re families. It just makes it politically unacceptable to use the word family in any meaningful way.

Sorry, but if all you’re talking about is expanding the definition to include same sex couples, most rational people would consider that a pretty innocuous change, given the insignificant increase in the number of people the word would apply to as a result. Most people would probably have no trouble adjusting, and even continuing to use the word in a meaningful way. If anything, it seems a bit irrational to see this as a real problem.

The same thing will happen to the word marriage if the Massachusetts decision is allowed to stand, and is then enforced nationwide because of the “full faith and credit” clause in the Constitution.

Nope. It will mean what it has previously meant, except that it will no longer include the unnecessary restriction of applying only to two people of the opposite sex.

Just because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract a “marriage” does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as a legitimate word for the real thing.

If the definition changes, then whatever complies with the new definition is the real thing. You do understand how definitions work, right?

If you declare that there is no longer any legal difference between low tide and high tide, it might stop people from publishing tide charts, but it won’t change the fact that sometimes the water is lower and sometimes it’s higher.

That’s a pretty muddled analogy. Just exactly how would a “legal difference between low tide and high tide” manifest itself? And did you consider things like whether such a declaration would be beneficial in any way before you decided to try to pass it off as analagous to something that would have the benefit of reducing unwarranted discrimination?

Calling a homosexual contract “marriage” does not make it reproductively relevant and will not make it contribute in any meaningful way to the propagation of civilization.

So what? Even heterosexual marriages have no responsibility to be “reproductively relevant” or to “contribute in any meaningful way to the propagation of civilization”.

In fact, it will do harm. Nowhere near as much harm as we have already done through divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. But it’s another nail in the coffin. Maybe the last nail, precisely because it is the most obvious and outrageous attack on what is left of marriage in America.

And you’re going to get around to explaining how allowing same sex marriage is an “obvious and outrageous attack on what is left of marriage in America” at some point, right? ‘Cause you’ve spent most of your lengthy commentary railing against problems associated with marriage, but which have little if anything to do with gays and lesbians. Nowhere have you clearly articulated how their marriages would interfere with the choices of those who opt for the more traditional route.

Supporters of homosexual “marriage” dismiss warnings like mine as the predictable ranting of people who hate progress.

Speaking for myself, it’s more like the predictable ranting of someone who has an irrational objection to same sex marriage, and is trying to cover for the absence of intelligent arguments against it with an enormous amount of noise about problems associated with marriage that don’t actually have anything to do with same sex marriages.

But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm.

Once again, not sharing your conclusions about “the social costs” does not equate to taking something on “faith”. If anything, given your own rather embarrassing failure to establish any logical connection between same sex marriage and the problems you’ve been railing against, you have little room to be criticizing anyone else for taking something on faith.

You can’t add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious research.

Actually, it’s more like expanding that fundamental social unit to include an option that’s been traditionally excluded for no good reason, and which would only be chosen by a small percentage anyway, leaving everyone else to go on just as they have before. But thanks for once again demonstrating your affinity for hyperbole.

And by the way, what serious research have you done? Anything other than listening to, or reading, the propaganda of those who already agree with you?

Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn’t bothered them. That’s what tolerance looks like.

But homosexual “marriage” is an act of intolerance.

Are you devolving into self parody now?

It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society — to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction.

I hate to keep pointing out your blunders, but you keep making it necessary. So pay close attention. It is nothing more than an attempt to remove unwarranted discrimination from marriage, and to expand it to include an option that presents absolutely no threat to the traditional ones, or to the reproduction that usually results from them. In fact, you should probably write that down, and keep it handy the next time you attempt any meaningful commentary on this subject.

So if my friends insist on calling what they do “marriage,” they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.

I’m not sure it’s anyone’s objective to turn their relationship into whatever you and your wife have created. Was that comment meant for some other topic?

That aside, it almost sounds like you’re starting to see there’s no threat after all. Could we be making progress?

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.

Oops! One step forward, two steps back. Sorry, but you still have yet to support such hyperbole by identifying any threat presented by same sex marriage that traditional marriage needs to be protected from. Shouldn’t you have been able to do that by now?

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won’t be married. They’ll just be playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes.

Since ambiguity is often just a cover for flimsy arguments, can you specifically identify what it is that they’re stealing from you? And given the degree to which you’ve made an issue of reproduction, is there any reason you would not accuse childless couples in traditional marriages of stealing from you too - that is, any good reason?

The Propaganda Mill

What happens now if children grow up in a society that overtly teaches that homosexual partnering is not “just as good as” but actually is marriage?

Then marriage will probably become a viable option for those who are gay, and everyone else will pretty much do whatever they would have done anyway.

See? That’s how you make a reasonable, non-hysterical assessment of likely consequences. But sadly …

Once this is regarded as settled law, anyone who tries to teach children to aspire to create a child-centered family with a father and a mother will be labeled as a bigot and accused of hate speech.

Well, somebody might say such things, but it’s unlikely they would do so in great enough numbers to present much of a problem. And it’s a pretty silly complaint anyway, given all the crap gays and lesbians have put up with over the years.

Can you doubt that the textbooks will be far behind? Any depictions of “families” in schoolbooks will have to include a certain proportion of homosexual “marriages” as positive role models.

I certainly would not support that as a requirement. But it’s considerably less problematic than using the legal process to restrict the marital choices of consenting adults.

Television programs will start to show homosexual “marriages” as wonderful and happy (even as they continue to show heterosexual marriages as oppressive and conflict-ridden).

I guess you’ve never seen “7th Heaven”. And once again, how would this be any more problematic than using the legal process to restrict the marital choices of consenting adults? Your perspective about what consitutes a real problem seems a bit out of whack.

The propaganda mill will pound our children with homosexual marriage as a role model. We know this will happen because we have seen the fanatical Left do it many times before.

Is there some good reason gay and lesbian kids shouldn’t have a role model too? (By the way, thanks for the laugh. The “propaganda mill” reference is particularly amusing, given the nature of your own commentary.)

So when our children go through the normal adolescent period of sexual confusion and perplexity, which is precisely the time when parents have the least influence over their children and most depend on the rest of society to help their children grow through the last steps before adulthood, what will happen?

Pretty much what I said before. Those who are gay will finally have the option of marriage to look forward to, and those who are not will do whatever they would have wound up doing anyway. (Are you under the impression the “what will happen?” line of inquiry presents some kind of difficulty?)

Already any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move through this adolescent phase and never look back.

Told by whom? And how did you conduct your research?

Already any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms — effeminite boys and masculine girls — are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into “accepting” what many of them never suspected they had — a desire to permanently move into homosexual society.

Can you specifically identify anyone doing such things? And where do you get the time to find all this stuff out?

In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.

Like so many other things you’ve said, “society will bend all its efforts” seems a bit over the top. Aren’t there quite a few people in “society” who currently agree with you on this issue? Do you expect them to be participating in this? I certainly don’t plan to myself, and I don’t know of anyone who does. Where have you been getting your information?

Now, there is a myth that homosexuals are “born that way,” and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.

In fact what evidence there is suggests that if there is a genetic component to homosexuality, an entire range of environmental influences are also involved. While there is no scientific research whatsoever that indicates that there is no such thing as a borderline child who could go either way.

Those who claim that there is “no danger” and that homosexuals are born, not made, are simply stating their faith.

So are you. The jury is still out on this question, your comments about evidence notwithstanding. But what’s funny is to see someone trying to extract a phony argument from something so irrelevant anyway. Would you like to go on record stating that if there are “environmental influences” contributing to something, that makes it dangerous? Or were you going for something else here?

The dark secret of homosexual society — the one that dares not speak its name — is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

First, what the hell do you mean by “the one that dares not speak its name”? That doesn’t even make sense. Were you going for some kind of bizarre dramatic effect to compensate for the lack of well reasoned commentary?

And since you brought it up, just exactly how many homosexuals are there who “first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse”, and how many of them are there who “yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally”? And how did you find all this out?

It’s that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual “marriage.”

With this line of commentary, your own earlier references to propaganda just get funnier and funnier.

They are unhappy, but they think it’s because the rest of us “don’t fully accept them.”

Do you have some good reason to believe any unhappiness that exists is not due to lack of acceptance? Seriously, you really should stop relying on propaganda, and get out more and actually talk to some of them. Many of them are probably quite aware that an ever-increasing number of “the rest of us” actually do fully accept them. And oh yeah, some of them are even quite happy, in spite of the silly prejudices they face from people who share your view on this issue.

Homosexual “marriage” won’t accomplish what they hope. They will still be just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it.

I seriously doubt that being inside the “reproductive cycle of life” is a primary goal for most of them, so you might be a bit misguided about what they hope to accomplish. And just exactly how is it that same sex marriage will “inflict real damage” on those who are inside the “reproductive cycle of life”? If you had a credible case, you should have been able to clearly articulate this right away. And yet here we are, well over half way through your article, and you haven’t even come close. Are you saving it for a big finish?

They will make it harder for us to raise children with any confidence that they, in turn, will take their place in the reproductive cycle.

“Take their place”??? Sorry, Orson, you’re sounding a little nutty again.

They will use all the forces of our society to try to encourage our children that it is desirable to be like them.

There’s that lack of precision again. To the degree that any of them will encourage anything, it will most likely be that it is acceptable to be like them. Incidentally, how would you respond after finding out a child of yours was not in the “reproductive cycle”?

Most kids won’t be swayed, because the message of the hormones is clear for them. But for those parents who have kids who hover in confusion, their lives complicated by painful experiences, conflicting desires, and many fears, the P.C. elite will now demand that the full machinery of the state be employed to draw them away from the cycle of life.

Nope. No hyperbole here. By the way, is that whole “cycle of life” line of argument your own, or did you get it from someone else?

Children from broken and wounded families, with missing parents, may be the ones most confused and most susceptible. Instead of society helping these children overcome the handicaps that come from a missing or dysfunctional father or mother, it may well be exacerbating the damage.

And yet amazingly, you didn’t think it important to explain how it would do so, or to explain how “children from broken and wounded families” has any more to do with same sex marriage than traditional marriage. What a surprise.

All the while, the P.C. elite will be shouting at dismayed parents that it is somehow evil and bigoted of them not to rejoice when their children commit themselves to a reproductive dead end.

“Reproductive dead end”? This just gets better and better.

By the way, I’m not among the “PC elite”, but I would certainly be critical of parents who tried to make their children feel bad about being gay or lesbian. Would you be such a parent yourself?

But there is nothing irrational about parents grieving at the abduction-in-advance of their grandchildren.

Thanks for yet another example of over-the-top rhetoric. Can you send me a link to any websites you’re getting this stuff from?

Don’t you see the absurd contradiction? A postulated but unproven genetic disposition toward homosexuality is supposed to be embraced and accepted by everyone as “perfectly natural” — but the far stronger and almost universal genetic disposition toward having children and grandchildren is to be suppressed, kept to yourself, treated as a mental illness.

According to whom? Your affinity for hysterical claims knows no bounds. In any case, I think acceptance of both homosexuality and heterosexuality is a good idea, don’t you? Since the overwhelming majority will always be among the latter anyway, and since anyone physically capable of reproducing will always have the option of doing so, and in particular, will always have the option of traditional marriage, where’s the conflict?

You’re unhappy that your son wants to marry a boy? Then you’re sick, dangerous, a homophobe, filled with hate. Control your natural desires or be branded as evil by every movie and TV show coming out of P.C. Hollywood!

Do I really need to point it out again?

Compassion and tolerance flow only one way in the “Wonderland” of the politically correct.

Which is more consistent with compassion and tolerance, expanding options or limiting them? And by the way, isn’t it really just a variation on political correctness to insist that there is only one acceptable type of marriage?

Loss of Trust

The proponents of this anti-family revolution are counting on most Americans to do what they have done through every stage of the monstrous social revolution that we are still suffering through — nothing at all.

But that “nothing” is deceptive. In fact, the pro-family forces are already taking their most decisive action. It looks like “nothing” to the anti-family, politically correct elite, because it isn’t using their ranting methodology.

The pro-family response consists of quietly withdrawing allegiance from the society that is attacking the family.

Would-be parents take part in civilization only when they trust society to enhance their chances of raising children who will, in turn, reproduce. Societies that create that trust survive; societies that lose it, disappear, one way or another.

But the most common way is for the people who have the most at stake — parents and would-be parents — to simply make the untrusted society disappear by ceasing to lift a finger to sustain it.

It is parents who have the greatest ability to transmit a culture from one generation to the next.

If parents stop transmitting the culture of the American elite to their children, and actively resist letting the schools and media do it in their place, then that culture will disappear.

If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists — which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does — then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.

We will teach our children to have no loyalty to the culture of the American elite, and will instead teach them to be loyal to a competing culture that upholds the family. Whether we home school our kids or not, we will withdraw them at an early age from any sense of belonging to contemporary American culture.

We’re already far down that road. Already most parents regard schools — an institution of the state that most directly touches our children — as the enemy, even though we like and trust the individual teachers — because we perceive, correctly, that schools are being legally obligated to brainwash our children to despise the values that keep civilization alive.

And if marriage itself ceases to exist as a legally distinct social union with protection from the government, then why in the world should we trust that government enough to let it have authority over our children?

Thanks for the entertainment. You’re slipping further and further toward “kook” status. That “ranting methodology” reference was particularly funny.

They Think They Have the Power.

The politically correct elite think they have the power to make these changes, because they control the courts.

They don’t have to consult the people, because the courts nowadays have usurped the power to make new law.

Democracy? What a joke. These people hate putting questions like this to a vote. Like any good totalitarians, they know what’s best for the people, and they’ll force it down our throats any way they can.

This coming from a guy who supports using the force of law to restrict marital choices among consenting adults? Were you going for self parody again with that last part?

That’s what the Democratic filibuster in the Senate to block Bush’s judicial appointments is all about — to keep the anti-family values of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in control of our government.

And when you add this insult onto the already deep injuries to marriage caused by the widespread acceptance of nonmonogamous behavior, will there be anything left at all?

The humor continues. After blaming “the already deep injuries to marriage” on “the widespread acceptance of nonmonogamous behavior”, you somehow conclude that an option for lifelong monogamy among gays and lesbians would make matters worse?

Sure. In my church and many other churches, people still cling fiercely to civilized values and struggle to raise civilized children despite the barbarians who now rule us through the courts.

Do you have some good reason to believe most of us who support same sex marriage don’t also support civilized values, and raising civilized children?

The barbarians think that if they grab hold of the trunk of the tree, they’ve caught the birds in the branches. But the birds can fly to another tree.

And I don’t mean that civilized Americans will move. I mean that they’ll simply stop regarding the authority of the government as having any legitimacy.

It is the most morally conservative portion of society that is most successful in raising children who believe in loyalty and oath-keeping and self-control and self-sacrifice.

Actually, it is also probably the most morally conservative portion of society that is likely to indoctrinate their children with irrational prejudices, and teach them that it’s a good thing to use government to tell others how to live their personal lives. Just thought I’d throw that in.

And as far as loyalty and oath-keeping, doesn’t their merit (or lack thereof) depend on what it is that you’re being loyal to, or swearing an oath to?

And we’re tired of being subject to barbarian rules and laws that fight against our civilized values. We’re not interested in risking our children’s lives to defend a nation that does not defend us.

Who do you think is volunteering for the military to defend America against our enemies? Those who believe in the teachings of politically correct college professors? Or those who believe in the traditional values that the politically correct elite has been so successful in destroying?

I suspect the people defending our country don’t all share exactly the same values. Sadly, many of them probably do support using the force of law to impose their values on others. Is that who you’re talking about?

Let’s take a poll of our volunteer military — especially those who specialize in combat areas — and see what civilization it is that they actually volunteered to defend.

If they support using the force of law to impose their values on others, then that just means not everyone defending the country is doing so for the right reasons. Sorry, but some of us don’t form our opinions from taking polls.

Since the politically correct are loudly unwilling to fight or die for their version of America, and they are actively trying to destroy the version of America that traditional Americans are willing to fight or die to defend, just how long will “America” last, once they’ve driven out the traditional culture?

Speaking for myself (and, I suspect, many others who support same sex marriage), we aren’t interested in driving out the “traditional culture”. We’re simply interested in challenging those parts of it that should be sent to the scrapheap, such as the long standing widespread contempt for homosexuality. Remember, until very recently, taboos against interracial relationships were also part of “traditional culture”. So we simply find ourselves at a point in history when one irrational prejudice that was once a part of “traditional culture” has been driven from mainstream opinion, while another one is going to take a while longer.

Oh, it will still be called America.

But out of the old American mantras of “democracy” and “freedom” and “home” and “family,” of “motherhood” and “apple pie,” only the pie will be left.

And even if few people care enough to defend the old family values against the screaming hate speech of the Left — which is what they’re counting on, of course — the end will be the same. Because with marriage finally killed, America will no longer be able to raise up children with any trust in or loyalty to or willingness to sacrifice for that society.

So either civilized people will succeed in establishing a government that protects the family; or civilized people will withdraw their allegiance from the government that won’t protect it; or the politically correct barbarians will have complete victory over the family — and, lacking the strong family structure on which civilization depends, our civilization will collapse or fade away.

Remember how long Iraq’s powerful military lasted against a determined enemy, when the Iraqi soldiers no longer had any loyalty to the Iraqi leadership. That wasn’t an aberration. It’s how great nations and empires fall.

Depriving us of any democratic voice in these sweeping changes may not lead to revolution or even resistance. But it will be just as deadly if it leads to despair. For in the crisis, few citizens will lift a finger to protect or sustain the elite that treated the things we valued — our marriages, our children, and our right to self-government — with such contempt.

Let’s see, just in the last few statements, we have:

“the screaming hate speech of the Left”
“with marriage finally killed”
“the politically correct barbarians”
“complete victory over the family”
“civilization will collapse or fade away”
“these sweeping changes”
“that treated the things we valued — our marriages, our children, and our right to self-government — with such contempt”

Is there anyone out there who can make a case against same sex marriage without such heavy reliance on hyperbole? … anyone? … anyone?

As a more tolerant younger generation grows older, the absurdity of opposition to same sex marriages will continue to become more apparent to more people, helped along by people like you making fools of yourself with your rhetoric of hysteria. If the process you described in those last few statements occurs at all, it will be nothing more than a relatively small group of indoctrinated morons isolating and marginalizing themselves, and taking their rightful place of irrelevance alongside the KKK, and most of the rest of society will get along just fine without them.

__________________________________________________

After the above essay was published in the Rhinoceros Times, the paper received a letter to the editor criticizing it. This is OSC’s response. (To see the text of the letter, visit the Rhinoceros Times and scroll down to the letter titled “No Teetering Here”.)

I toyed with publishing, along with my essay, a mock letter listing all the cliche “arguments” against it. I’m glad I didn’t; Mr. Herman saved me the trouble. I’ll take his points in reverse order:

Having read your response to Mr. Herman, what stands out above all else is that you didn’t address most of his points at all. For instance, a truly reponsive response might have specifically and clearly addressed the question he raised about whether homosexuality is a natural variation on human sexuality, or his comments about the lack of foundation for your assertions about homosexuals being unhappy.

My column made it very clear that homosexual “marriage” is merely the latest, not the worst, damage done to marriage in America; thus his penultimate paragraph, far from refuting my essay, reinforces my main point and suggests possible topics for public debate - if debate is still allowed in Mr. Herman’s anti-democratic America.

Was there anything in Mr. Herman’s article suggesting even the slightest opposition to debate? And is it really “anti-democratic” to prefer that the democratic process be accompanied by some checks and balances?

I’ve also read his comments several times, and I’m still scratching my head over your suggestion that anything he said reinforces your main point - that is, if your main point was that there is anything about the presence of same sex marriages in society that represents any kind of threat to the traditional ones.

“Inclusion” is an empty word when used as a general virtue. Its value depends entirely on what is and is not included. Every inclusion of one group is an exclusion of another. I think even Mr. Herman would agree with me that there are certain groups that should be perpetually excluded from civilized society. Where we differ is only on our list of those groups, not on the principle.

So what? It’s pretty clear which group is the focus of this topic. Were you ever able to come up with a good reason why they should be excluded from anything?

As for what “studies have shown,” I’ll pit my “studies” against Mr. Herman’s “studies” and see who can outvague the other.

Such swagger seems a little out of place, considering that you have not yet clearly identified any of your studies, much less in a way that clearly establishes their objectivity or reliability.

I already conceded the point that society must compensate for bad parenting. But this is not done by institutionalizing the absence of heterosexual role models, especially since this would result in the schools relentlessly propagandizing all children toward homosexual “marriage” as a desirable choice.

Most of us who support same sex marriage have no interest in “institutionalizing the absence of heterosexual role models”, of course, which is a pretty tortured spin to try and put on this whole thing. To once again inject a little precision, we are interested in getting government to refrain from taking sides at all, and instead, to let individual taxpayers make up their own minds about their own lives, and to reward people equally with the benefits they are paying taxes for.

Similarly, “propagandizing all children toward homosexual ‘marriage’ as a desirable choice” appears to be trying to put a negative spin on simply presenting them with the view that it’s an acceptable option. Out of curiosity, would you use the word “propagandizing” to describe presenting them with the view that it’s not an acceptable option?

All heterosexual marriages, with or without children, present normalizing role models that affirm the institution of marriage;

Then there is no reason to believe same sex marriages cannot do the same. Or did you really mean to say “present normalizing role models that affirm my narrow view of the institution of marriage”?

childless people can still function as effective surrogate parents in society at large, encouraging children to remain within the cycle of life.

So can same sex couples, if they so choose. But it’s irrelevant anyway. Once again, these things are not the responsibility of any marriage.

It is absurd to claim that homosexual “marriages” are in any way parallel to childless marriages in their effect on society in general.

Actually, it’s pretty absurd to claim otherwise, when you come up as empty as you have in terms of identifying any differences that matter.

Woman suffrage? Abolition of slavery? You can bet that I approve of those changes. But Mr. Herman, those social revolutions were introduced by the constitutional process of amendment. It took long public debate and national struggle - including civil war - before a consensus emerged.

Yes, and the length of those struggles was almost certainly due in large part to many people clinging to stupid biases that were heavily based on popularity and tradition. Sound familiar? Don’t pat yourself on the back too much for supporting the right side of history on certain issues decades or generations after the fact, while you choose to be on the wrong side of this one while it still has a lot of support.

The real precedents for what we’re getting now are judicial diktats that imposed the view of an elite group on the whole nation without democratic process.

I don’t know about you, but if this had been done to speed up the process of letting women vote, or bringing an end to slavery, I’d be okay with it. Some things should not be subject to the democratic process.

One thinks of Plessy vs. Ferguson and Dred Scott. Wow. The courts do such a good job of inventing new constitutional laws when they don’t have to wait for democracy.

Since the 1970s, judges have been bolder and bolder about inventing new laws and forcing them on the American people.

It’s interesting to see which side of this issue you view as force. To some of us, at least as it applies to same sex marriage, it’s a matter of telling the American people that they cannot use government to force minorities to limit themselves to the options preferred by the majority. Once again, a little precision kinda takes the steam out of any righteous indignation you were trying to get across, huh?

Mr. Herman is content with this, because he is part of the elite that has seized control and agrees with the forced experiments. But I’m quite sure that if a different group were using the same mechanism to force social experiments on an unwilling people, he would have a very different opinion.

Your predictably over-the-top characterization sounds very much like an agenda of forcing everyone into same sex marriages, or at least banning traditional ones. Is this a view you’re trying to attribute to Mr Herman?

To those of us in the rational world, you only look ridiculous using words like “force social experiments on an unwilling people” to describe letting people have options. In a free society, it is restricting options that should be viewed as force. And it’s not entirely an unwilling people anyway. Even the number of heterosexuals who are impatient with this silly prejudice is growing. So all you’re complaining about is any challenge to the majority’s ability to bully everyone into compliance with its preferences. But it’s understandable that you would want to use expressions like “an unwilling people” to add some badly needed rhetorical punch to your concerns.

Courts that follow their own conscience instead of the letter of the law are an appalling form of government, however noble their intent.

No more appalling than the abuse of democracy.

If Mr. Herman is so sure gay “marriage” is a good idea, then why doesn’t he want us to reach that result by national debate and legislative process?

No doubt someone once said “if opponents of slavery are so sure abolishing it is a good idea, then why don’t they want us to reach that result by national debate and legislative process?”

Come to think of it, I can think of a possible answer to both questions right off the top of my head. It might just be because no amount of debate - or more specifically, no amount of being on the losing end of debate - will change the minds of guys like you. (Well, there is always hope I guess, since I used to be one myself.)

Why does he despise the principle of majority rule? Why does he regard democracy with such distrust?

Not surprisingly, I saw nothing in his comments to suggest that he despises the principle of majority rule. But since you brought it up, isn’t at least some concern warranted by the degree to which so many people are willing to abuse democracy to impose their poorly founded biases on their fellow human beings?

His entire attitude can be summed up by his closing paragraph, which ends with telling me: “Stick to what you know.” So much for inclusion, eh?

What is it that disqualifies me to enter the public debate? The fact that I reach conclusions different from him and the rest of the current dictatorial elite.

They’re not the only ones. You also reach different conclusions from those of us who simply don’t want government being used to validate stupid prejudices. And while that may not disqualify you from public debate, it certainly lowers expectations regarding your competence.

In Iran, people whom the ayatollahs don’t approve of are barred from running for office or taking part in public discussion. The ayatollahs have the right to impose their ideas on the whole nation because they’re really really really sure that they are correct about everything. All their friends agree with them, and anybody who disagrees with them is obviously evil or stupid.

Apparently, as long as he and his friends get to be the ayatollahs, Mr. Herman thinks that’s a good system.

Your analogies are truly amusing. Out of curiosity, whose view of same sex marriage do you suppose is more in line with that of the ayatollahs, yours or Mr. Herman’s?

Me, I prefer democracy - even if it means letting dumb people like me have our say - and our votes. Studies have shown that when you let dumb people vote, it works out way better than letting experts make all the political decisions.

I don’t know what studies you’ve been looking at, but I don’t need a study to tell me that it would work out “way better” if “dumb people” would stay away from the polls.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 8:12 am and is filed under Gay Marriage, Orson Scott Card. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.