Monday, May 23, 2005

You Are My Wife

A post over at The Curmudgeonly Crab got me thinking. It was referencing Jan LaRue, a member of the Concerned Women of America ('concerned' with getting all up in other peoples' private lives!) - a lawyer, for gosh sakes - talking about why gay marriage is so very wrong...
Granting a marriage license to homosexuals because they engage in sex is as illogical as granting a medical license to a barber because he wears a white coat or a law license to a salesman because he carries a briefcase. Real doctors, lawyers and the public would suffer as a result of licensing the unqualified and granting them rights, benefits and responsibilities as if they were qualified.

Qualified? Qualified?!?

Yes, I guess the lovely and talented Lyle Menendez is 'qualified' to get married. No doubt the devilishly handsome Scott Peterson, with his boyish charm, will be married before you know it, taking his pick of jailhouse proposals from the coterie of killer-hags that are inundating him with marriage offers. After all, he is single!

And if the purpose of marriage is to procreate only, are they going to snatch away the marriage licenses of the couples who don't have kids? Administer the 'Fertility Test' when you go for your marriage-license blood test?

If God indeed made us all, aren't you thwarting God's Will by interfering with the sexual orientation that God, in His Infinite Wisdom, conferred upon approximately 10% of His children?

And, no, you can't include child molesters (of either orientation) and sexual predators - they are not born with those urges, but have become psychologically twisted somewhere along the way. I know you'd like to include gays among their ranks, but it's simply not so. There are gay perverts, but it's the perversion that's the problem, not their gayness. Because there are straight child molesters, is that a reason to outlaw marriage between straight people?

So the vilest of the vile - if heterosexual - are 'qualified' to be married, and yet the most upright, responsible, well-adjusted, loving people - if gay - are not?

I don't know if you got the memo, Mrs. Concerned Woman, but Christians did not invent marriage. Marriage is a civil right first, which is legally binding, and covers so many facets of life, including property rights, next-of-kin rights, insurance rights, inheritance rights and other important life issues, that to deny them to one segment of the population is indeed a civil rights violation. You can get married without any religious ceremony at all and it is legally binding, but you can't get married in a religious ceremony and have it be legal without a civil license.

Of course, the religious right insists that people are not 'born gay', and that you can change your sexual orientation with enough prayer and church pressure, and they trot out their 'converted' poster children (most likely bisexual) as proof. If scientists were to come up with irrefutable proof that sexual orientation is an innate physical characteristic, fundamentalists would not suddenly say, "Oh, well, that's different! Who are we to question God's intention?" But that's really a smoke screen, like 'intelligent design', for their real position, which is "God sez it's a sin". Well, believe that all you like; I'm not in charge of what you believe, and wouldn't want to be if I could. But your belief system is not enough authority to deny someone else their civil rights under our Constitution.

Update - found an interesting article that notes that the lowest divorce rate in the country belongs to...what state allows gay marriage? And also notes that born-again Christians have among the highest. Check it out...

6 comments:

Robert Rouse said...

Something the government probably doesn't want brought to the attention of the main stream is how they'll use gays to the advantage of the government when they need them. "These people" (as I recently heard a politician call gays) seem to be acceptable as adoptive parents to unwanted children (except of course in Florida). That's right, they're good enough to raise our kids just as long as they don't do it as a married couple.

Alicia Morgan said...

The Staunch Defenders of Matrimony would like to make it illegal for gays (couple or not) to be adoptive parents, too...please explain the logic that makes them think it's better to leave a kid in the hell that is foster care than to be given a loving permanent home with a gay couple.

These people are just blind and cruel.

wanda said...

Lets not forget to mention the people who disrespect marriage by marrying, and getting divorced over and over and over. Like many of our politicians.
i am so sick of hearing how gays have no right to marriage. As far as I'm concerned that right falls under the right to the pursuit of happiness.
Not that I'd personally reccomend marriage as a way of pursuing happiness.

Alicia Morgan said...

Ha! Right you are, Wanda - what rhymes with "Lush"?

oldwhitelady said...

Good post - It's weird how the wingers have such a bias against gays. It's also astounding when we find out certain Republicans are closet gays.

Alicia Morgan said...

You know, in the interests of fairness, I did a Google search for a closeted gay Democrat, but I didn't have any luck. There are gay Democratic politicians, but they're out. I think the hypocrisy inherent in the Republican position drives them to all kinds of twisted behavior, much like priests (gay and straight) in the Catholic Church. If these people were part of a culture that accepted them as they are, perhaps there wouldn't be the dichotomy between who they are as humans and who their unrealistic and judgmental belief system tells them they should be, and they wouldn't be forced into a life of self-hatred which leads to sick behavior.