Facebook has exploded with reactions to the repeal of Proposition 8, with my more liberal friends crowing with delight and my conservative friends \u2013 especially the Mormons – lamenting the end of civilization as we know it. I\u2019ve recounted my position time and again, and I think it equally infuriates people on both sides of the debate. I have very little new to add, nor do I want to rehash what I\u2019ve said before. But I will say this:<\/p>\n
Given the way the debate is currently framed, opponents to gay marriage have already lost \u2013 and deservedly so.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happened is that virtually everyone has conceded the point that people are being denied a basic civil right by not being allowed to marry someone of the same gender. Proponents of gay marriage insist, righteously, that a majority of people do not have the power or authority to deny people their basic rights. Opponents have argued that, yes, we\u2019re denying you a basic right, but we\u2019ve got darn good reasons for doing so, and majority rules, so there.<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s the ground on which this battle is fought, then it\u2019s all over but the shouting.<\/p>\n
I find myself increasingly uncomfortable siding with many gay marriage opponents, because too many of them oppose gay marriage for silly and frivolous reasons. I don\u2019t care if you don\u2019t like Adam and Steve or if you\u2019re big on Leviticus or you think gay sex is icky. I don\u2019t think God hates gay people; I don\u2019t think we\u2019re currently bound to live by the Law of Moses, and I don\u2019t think children should be shielded from the concept that some people are attracted to people of the same gender.<\/p>\n
All the tired scare tactics used to frighten people into opposing gay marriage are losing their luster, because there\u2019s no substance behind them in the first place. And \u201cgay people are icky\u201d is certainly not reason enough to deny anyone any rights of any kind. For heaven\u2019s sake, I can think of a large number of heterosexual couples that I would not want to imagine coupling due to ickiness factors. (My parents spring to mind. Ick.)<\/p>\n
I have also never met an individual who has made a conscious decision about what gender they will decide to find attractive. Gay marriage will not increase or decrease homosexuality, and it will not lure our children into forbidden realms of perversion. If any of the above reasons are why you oppose gay marriage, then I\u2019m just not on board.<\/p>\n
So why am I not celebrating along with the rest of my friends?<\/p>\n
Because I still believe, axiomatically, that the best way to raise children is with a mommy and a daddy who are married to each other.<\/p>\n
As a society, we have been on the slow road to completely rejecting that principle for decades now. We\u2019ve cheapened marriage and embraced divorce, resulting in broken homes across the world. We\u2019ve said that marriage is essentially irrelevant for purposes of having children, and unwed motherhood has skyrocketed. We\u2019re abandoning any consideration of masculine or feminine, or that these ideas matter in any way with regard to childrearing or any other societal function. Soon, irrevocably, we\u2019re going to say, as a nation, that two mommies, or two daddies, or any number of daddies and mommies, is exactly the same as a married mommy and a daddy.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
At the same time, I don\u2019t think this step is nearly as bad as what we\u2019ve done to marriage prior to this. This is just one more chink in the armor; one more moment of erosion in the value of an institution that will essentially be worthless and discarded within a few decades. Everyone already had the right to marry, but now we\u2019re saying that everyone has not only the right to marry, but the right to define what marriage is. And someday, when everything is marriage, then nothing will be marriage, and that\u2019s essentially where we\u2019re heading. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good place to go.<\/p>\n
So look on the bright side, instead. There is much to celebrate about this ruling. All the silliness of gay couples not being allowed to visit their partners in the hospital and not being able to get survivor benefits and all that stuff will eventually be done away with, too, and that\u2019s marvelous. We\u2019ll get rid of nasty discrimination and the silliness of \u201cDon\u2019t Ask; Don\u2019t Tell.\u201d Up to a point, I see absolutely no reason that homosexual partnerships should not enjoy all the same benefits of married couples.<\/p>\n
But once you reach that point \u2013 that gay couples are EXACTLY THE SAME as a mommy and a daddy for purposes of raising children \u2013 you lose me. I think you cross a line that hurts society at large rather than helps it. We\u2019ve crossed similar lines before as we\u2019ve steadily chipped away at marriage as an institution of any saliency, and we\u2019ll probably cross it again as polygamy and other variations on the marriage theme become legal.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I\u2019m happy for my gay friends and for the friends of my gay friends, and I\u2019ll wait and see where this brave new world takes us.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, everyone who reads this will be ticked off to some degree.<\/p>\n
(BTW, I’ve been neglecting this blog because I want to record more demos as I recount my songwriting career. Said demos remain unrecorded. But I would be negligent if I didn’t chime in on a subject I’ve whined about so many times before now.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebookhas exploded with reactions to the repeal of Proposition 8, with my more liberal friends crowing with delight and my conservative friends \u2013 especially the Mormons - lamenting the end of civilization as we know it. I\u2019ve recounted my position time and again, and I think it equally infuriates people on both sides of the ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4992,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/4992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}