what will the cake look like?
regular readers of this rantpage will know that i am generally conservative in my beliefs. however, i have been acussed of being a liberal a few times. one of those times was because i was arguing that completely and immediatly eliminating the welfare system would be a disaster. the other was on gay marriage.
(this is extremely lengthy, skip to the third from last paragraph if you don't care to listen to me babble)
personally, i don't really have a problem with gay marriage. alot of conservatives talk about how it will destroy the fabric of one of the basic building blocks of society, that marriage in its idealized form is essential to the continuance of our culture. i say, you're about thirty years too late.
to keep this all in perspective, i should say that i don't have a particularly high view of marriage alltogether. my parents are divorced, all (that's a literal all) of my friends' parents are divorced, most have remarried at least once, and most of the married couples i know and have grown up around aren't happy in their marriage, but stay together for stupid reasons: fear of being a failure, a feeling of not being able to do better, fear of being alone, or for their children (the absolute worst reason for continuing a bad marriage, but that's a whole seperate blog post).
i should also say that i am not really oppossed to homosexuality in general. three rules: don't preach it to my children, don't rub it in my face, don't expect my tax dollars to pay for it. after that, you can have great big massive sausage-fest orgies for all i care.
i don't understand really where the huge problem is. two people want to say they're going to spend the rest of their lives together, good for them. i hope they're happy. they want the bennies of being married, whatever tax breaks and hospital visitation rights that accords them, i don't see where their request is any less legitimate than anybody else's. sure, the plumbing isn't exactly compatable, but marriage is suppossed to be about more than just sex, right? hell, we aren't even suppossed to have sex until we get married. so if two people love each other, how is that love lessened by their sexual attractions? if a man and a woman want to marry and never, ever do the nasty, that's okay. but not for two of the same gender. and if a man and a woman want to get married and have weird crazy kinky sex beyond our wildest, horniest dreams, that's cool too. until there's two peniseees involved, then it's a problem.
another argument is that the primary function of marriage is to produce children. i say, maybe a million years ago. there are plenty of people that come from families where parents were never married, and turn out just fine if both parents are responsible adults about it, and even sometimes when they aren't. there are also plenty of people who get married and never reproduce, either because of infertility or simply because they don't want kids. so if that's all kosher, there must be another reason for getting married. perhaps, love? people don't get married just so they can have kids, and they occasionally get married because they're unexpectedly having kids. but the primary purpose of getting married is suppossed to be because you want to spend the rest of your life with the person; just as with sex not being the foremost motivation, if you are getting married just so that you can legitamately have kids you're doing it for someone else (the child) and not for yourself and your love for the other person. while wanting to have children with a certain person and seeing them as a good mother/father can be a factor in qualification for marrying a person, marriage for the sole purpose of raising children is not only usually doomed for disaster, it is not the reason you should be getting married in the first place. marriage is about a commitment to that other person; while other reasons may play a part, they are not the focus of the idea of marriage.
gay marriage is not beastiality, nor is it polygamy. the argument of "where do we stop", in my mind, has little basis in reality. we on the right have been bitching about moral equivalence from the left for years, and now it seems that we are doing it ourselves. having sex with someone of the same gender is not the same as having sex with a sheep, and one does not lead to the other. we all know that in a free country, you have to allow for legalization of some things we don't agree with, but that there is a societal maximum to how far it can go. as an example, a hardcore catholic will find paganism incorrect, perhaps even offensive. but both catholics and pagans allow each other to be wrong, so long as they don't hurt each other. saying that gay marriage leads to polygamy and beastiality is like saying that paganism automatically leads to human sacrifice, if we allow one than the next is just a step away. i don't know if this is a good example, the point is that there are allowances given, with the understanding that there is a limit. saying that allowing some will automatically lead to an extreme perversity is ridiculous, we allow a certain amount to all, with an understanding that there is a limit. moderation is key, the trick is finding that moderate point.
you know what's funny, is that this above seems to me to be the most obvious point, but for some reason i don't feel that i have argued it very well. eh, ah well.
finally, i find it interesting that the whole debate seems to be over one relatively minor point: the word "marriage". the gay lobby refuses to accept anything less than full recognized marriage; while the opposite side is generally accepting of a "civil union", consisting of most of the legal benefits of marriage but not the further implications carried by actually being married. opponents say that this is due to the social acceptance and religious connotations of the word, proponents say that anything less is discrimination. personally, i think the religous aspect of the word (as far as the government is concerned) went out the window as soon as we started issuing "marriage liscences" and letting judges marry people, but that homosexuals need to learn to accept that many people are not in agreeance with their lifestyle. if all they want (as they say) is the superficial benefits of being married, then a civil union should be satisfactory. if they are looking for increased acceptance among the general public, then they are barking up the wrong tree.
as a strictly political point, i'm against the gay marriage amendment to the constitution, the constitution is the document upon which our country is built, adding a cluttering social disagreement like this to it is wasteful and diminishes the rest of the great ideas that propel this country. i don't think it stands a chance of passing, and if it did it will be overturned as soon as we have a democrat majority (pray god we never have a democrat majority again, for seperate reasons...). and while i don't find this a lynchpin issue as some (cough andrew sullivan cough cough) do, a surprising percent of gays voted for bush in '00; so, as a political point, bush could've just as easily gotten away with "i'm against gay marriage, and i'm introducing this bill into congress blah blah blah"...i'm no political strategist, but he could've easily satisfied his (anti-gay marriage) base without so spectacularly pissing off so many people, even some republicans, with this unnessecary amendment. even just remove the sentance about legal rights; i still don't think it would have lasted long, but the reaction to it wouldn't have nearly so negative.
anywho, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading! disagreement is welcomed and encouraged, but i won't be here much for the next few days so response time will be slow. and, agree or disagree, i hope i made my point, and that you find this babbling of mine thought-provoking, even if it's not thought-changing.
