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On marriage
Mar. 19th, 2004 04:31 pmThanks to Phoenix for telling me to go ahead and post this, even though there's a link in her-and-Ghost's journal that says the first major point of it. Becuase I appear to have rather more points than that article did. So.
Right. I think I have, with the help of many people, come to an understanding of What, Precisely, Is People’s Problem With Same-Sex Marriage.
Now, there really is a great deal of both “homosexuality is just ICKY!” and “The Bible says it’s wrong.” I can understand either of these as reasons why people think gay marriage is an abomination, and shouldn’t be allowed. However, I think that any rational person would see that, in a country with strong separation of church and state, which values individual rights and frowns on discrimination, they’re not a good basis for laws. Marriage does indeed have a religious component, but that can be separated from the civil/legal one-- as seen by the existence of marriage by judges, or the fact that some religions already perform same-sex marriages.
The more serious argument is that same-sex marriage will ‘damage traditional marriage.’ This is a statement which, on the surface, makes NO DAMN SENSE WHATSOEVER, and so has been widely parodied. After all-- the gays didn’t follow Britney around and say, “You! You’ve been married about four days-- that’s enough! Quit it!” But I think I’ve got hold of what it actually means, and it’s not that gay marriage destroys straight marriage-- it’s that gay marriage is a _symptom_ of what they see as the crumbling of the institution of marriage. And I think they’re actually right.
( It's long. )
--R
Right. I think I have, with the help of many people, come to an understanding of What, Precisely, Is People’s Problem With Same-Sex Marriage.
Now, there really is a great deal of both “homosexuality is just ICKY!” and “The Bible says it’s wrong.” I can understand either of these as reasons why people think gay marriage is an abomination, and shouldn’t be allowed. However, I think that any rational person would see that, in a country with strong separation of church and state, which values individual rights and frowns on discrimination, they’re not a good basis for laws. Marriage does indeed have a religious component, but that can be separated from the civil/legal one-- as seen by the existence of marriage by judges, or the fact that some religions already perform same-sex marriages.
The more serious argument is that same-sex marriage will ‘damage traditional marriage.’ This is a statement which, on the surface, makes NO DAMN SENSE WHATSOEVER, and so has been widely parodied. After all-- the gays didn’t follow Britney around and say, “You! You’ve been married about four days-- that’s enough! Quit it!” But I think I’ve got hold of what it actually means, and it’s not that gay marriage destroys straight marriage-- it’s that gay marriage is a _symptom_ of what they see as the crumbling of the institution of marriage. And I think they’re actually right.
( It's long. )
--R
