The Lesbian Said What??

Gay Marriage: Not a Very Good Idea    WILLIAM J. BENNETT

The institution of marriage is already reeling because of the effects of the sexual revolution, no-fault divorce and out-of-wedlock births. We have reaped the consequences of its devaluation. It is exceedingly imprudent to conduct a radical, untested and inherently flawed social experiment on an institution that is the keystone in the arch of civilization. Barf

We are engaged in a debate which, in a less confused time, would be considered pointless and even oxymoronic: the question of same-sex marriage. Are these times really confused?  Or is it just time to stand up for rights…because of the people who have gone before us?  Stone Wall, people arrested for holding hands in public because they were the same gender.  I’m sure someone thought of the 60’s as a ‘confused time’ too.

  Now, anyone who has known someone who has struggled with his homosexuality can appreciate the poignancy, human pain and sense of exclusion that are often involved. One can therefore understand the effort to achieve for homosexual unions both legal recognition and social acceptance. Advocates of homosexual marriages even make what appears to be a sound conservative argument: Allow marriage in order to promote faithfulness and monogamy. This is an intelligent and politically shrewd argument. One can even concede that it might benefit some people. But I believe that overall, allowing same-sex marriages would do significant, long-term social damage. Yeah it would benefit the gays and lesbians who love each other, and want to spend the rest of their lives with one another.  Who want to be-able to buy a house together, not worry about one side of the family or another swooping in if their partner passes away to take what they have built together.  Dip shit…behold the power of “I do.”  Long term social damage?  I’m sure they probably had the same sort of thinking when they gave African Americans the right to vote, let the Native Americans off the reservations, Let the Japanese out of the interment camps, need I go on?

  Recognizing the legal union of gay and lesbian couples would represent a profound change in the meaning and definition of marriage. Uhm to whom?  It means the same to me.  I want to spend the rest of my life with Cara, through sickness and health…happy or sad…richer poorer… Indeed, it would be the most radical step ever taken in the deconstruction of society’s most important institution. “Deconstruction”?!!  What I’m trying to be apart of it…not tear it down.  It is not a step we ought to take.

  The function of marriage is not elastic; the institution is already fragile enough. Broadening its definition to include same-sex marriages would stretch it almost beyond recognition — and new attempts to broaden the definition still further would surely follow. On what principled grounds could the advocates of same-sex marriage oppose the marriage of two consenting brothers? What a dumb ass.  That is a weak argument meant to gross people out.  Marriage to a family member went out with Jerry Lee Lewis. I bet they used the same type of argument when people wanted to allow African Americans to marry white people. How could they explain why we ought to deny a marriage license to a bisexual who wants to marry two people?  Ugh, I don’t know any bi-sexuals who want to marry two people, and they don’t date two people at a time.  Plus, what’s with these scare tactics?  Does he think that gay people are retarded and don’t know the meaning of marriage? After all, doing so would be a denial of that person’s sexuality.  In our time, there are more (not fewer) reasons than ever to preserve the essence of marriage.  Please tell us.

  Marriage is not an arbitrary construct; it is an “honorable estate” based on the different, complementary nature of men and women — and how they refine, support, encourage and complete one another. Gay people can’t do those things…I mean the straight people have the market cornered on that front.  To insist that we maintain this traditional understanding of marriage is not an attempt to put others down. It is simply an acknowledgment and celebration of our most precious and important social act. That act would be committing to live your life with just one person who you love.  Some reason…people think I’m not capable of doing that.

  Nor is this view arbitrary or idiosyncratic. It mirrors the accumulated wisdom of millennia and the teaching of every major religion. America has freedom of religion, and from religion…isn’t that why people showed up over here?  Isn’t that why people are free to be Wiccian, Jewish, all the things that make freedom of religion free?  Among worldwide cultures, where there are so few common threads, it is not a coincidence that marriage is almost universally recognized as an act meant to unite a man and a woman. Not true.  Dude needs to take a class or two…but those cultures to him would probably be heathen cultures and don’t count. Like Canada, Norway, Sweden, I’ll list them at the end of the page.

  To say that same-sex unions are not comparable to heterosexual marriages is not an argument for intolerance, bigotry or lack of compassion (although I am fully aware that it will be considered so by some). But it is an argument for making distinctions in law about relationships that are themselves distinct. I distinctly love someone and want to spend the rest of my life with them.

  Even Andrew Sullivan, among the most intelligent advocates of same-sex marriage, has admitted that a homosexual marriage contract will entail a greater understanding of the need for “extramarital outlets.” He argues that gay male relationships are served by the “openness of the contract,” and he has written that homosexuals should resist allowing their “varied and complicated lives” to be flattened into a “single, moralistic model.” Because one man speaks for all of us.  I don’t care how ‘intelligent’ you are, you can still say some dumb shit.  Plus…I’m not sure the context that Andrew Sullivan is being quoted in.

  But this “single, moralistic model” is precisely the point. The marriage commitment between a man and a woman does not — it cannot — countenance extramarital outlets.  Because you and I know that heterosexual couples don’t have affairs. Pick up prostitutes, look at porn etc. (I don’t have a problem with porn, but I’m sure Willy does.  By definition it is not an open contract; its essential idea is fidelity. Obviously that is not always honored in practice. But it is normative, the ideal to which we aspire precisely because we believe some things are right (faithfulness in marriage) and others are wrong (adultery). In insisting that marriage accommodate the less restrained sexual practices of homosexuals, Sullivan and his allies destroy the very thing that supposedly has drawn them to marriage in the first place. Is he hangen his whole argument on what Sullivan said?  Is Sullivan the Jesus Christ of gays? Less restrained?!!  As if I’m a dog that needs to be kept on a leash. What a fuck nut to say that.

  There are other arguments to consider against same-sex marriage — for example, the signals it would send, and the impact of such signals on the shaping of human sexuality, particularly among the young. Yeah you know all lesbians and gays were raised in lesbian and gay homes.  None of us had straight parents.  Former Harvard professor E. L. Pattullo has written that “a very substantial number of people are born with the potential to live either straight or gay lives.” Societal indifference about heterosexuality and homosexuality would cause a lot of confusion. What the hell? I wasn’t confused until high school when I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t attracted to guys. All the girls around me were into talking about how cute some guy was, I didn’t really see the point.  That’s fucken confusing, not knowing it’s okay to be attracted to the same gender.  A remarkable 1993 article in The Post supports this point. Fifty teenagers and dozens of school counselors and parents from the local area were interviewed. According to the article, teenagers said it has become “cool” for students to proclaim they are gay or bisexual — even for some who are not. That’s part of being a teen so you fit in…see what’s cool and latch on. I smoked pot, was tardy to class, and slept all day…cause that’s what my friends did.  Oh, I was a Satanist ’cause my friends were. *shrug*  Not surprisingly, the caseload of teenagers in “sexual identity crisis” doubled in one year. “Everything is front page, gay and homosexual,” according to one psychologist who works with the schools. “Kids are jumping on it … [counselors] are saying, “What are we going to do with all these kids proclaiming they are bisexual or homosexual when we know they are not?” Uhm let them grow up, and be supportive, ask questions…kids hormones are in over drive anyway…hell I think teenagers are all a bit crazy anyway.

  If the law recognizes homosexual marriages as the legal equivalent of heterosexual marriages, it will have enormous repercussions in many areas. Consider just two: sex education in the schools and adoption. The sex education curriculum of public schools would have to teach that heterosexual and homosexual marriage are equivalent. So? Heather Has Two Mommies would no longer be regarded as an anomaly; it would more likely become a staple of a sex education curriculum. Parents who want their children to be taught (for both moral and utilitarian reasons) the privileged status of heterosexual marriage will be portrayed as intolerant bigots; they will necessarily be at odds with the new law of matrimony and its derivative curriculum. Ol boy isn’t giving us enough credit, the parents can teach the kids what they want about marriage…they are the parents after all.  “privileged status of heterosexual marriage”  get off your high horse…

  Homosexual couples will also have equal claim with heterosexual couples in adopting children, forcing us (in law at least) to deny what we know to be true: that it is far better for a child to be raised by a mother and a father than by, say, two male homosexuals. I was adopted.  That shit just pisses me off.  Does this fool even know anything about adoption?  When my parents got me…they had a struggle…I was a minority baby and my parents are like Neil Diamond white.  The agency didn’t want to place me with them because they were white…fuck that they had money…and were married…they couldn’t help being white…any more than I could help that I was mocha…if you ask me…it is far better for a child to be raised in a loving home…than in a shitty DCFS system…or an abusive home with hetro folks…or or or…

  The institution of marriage is already reeling because of the effects of the sexual revolution, no-fault divorce and out-of-wedlock births. That’s only happened sense the conception of Jesus, shees…Mary was pregnant out of wedlock. 

  We have reaped the consequences of its devaluation.  It is exceedingly imprudent to conduct a radical, untested and inherently flawed social experiment on an institution that is the keystone in the arch of civilization. That we have to debate this issues at all tells us that the arch has slipped. Getting it firmly back in place is, as the lawyers say, a “compelling state interest.” Bull-shit. Conduct a radical, untested and inherently flawed social experiment. Uhm, is William telling someone to fire up the ovens?  Before people could get a divorce, how many women and men were in abusive relationships?  How many had husbands/wives that abused drugs or other things.  How many children suffered because the marriage couldn’t fail?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Bennett, William J. “Gay Marriage: Not a Very Good Idea.” The Washington Post (May 21, 1996).