Posted on 08/19/2006 10:17:22 PM PDT by SmithL
In Nashville, Scott and Jon adopted a young boy from a foster home in Massachusetts. The young boy had an abusive past and was struggling with poor grades. Today, with two loving parents, he is an honor roll student. He will tell you that he has a better family, better friends and a better neighborhood.
For weeks, we have heard politicians tell us that the only way to raise children is one man and one woman. In a state with one of the highest divorce rates in the country, isn't it time to be realistic? There are millions of children who need loving homes. There are thousands of stories like Scott and Jon's where gays and lesbians have provided loving homes for children.
These are homes with two parents to attend soccer games or dance recitals. These are homes with two parents to give children an extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Children are hurt when their gay parents cannot marry. In July, the American Pediatric Association released a study which said just that. It reminded us that there are over 1,000 rights associated with marriage. Some of those rights — such as survivor benefits — affect children when their parents are denied them.
Nancy and Joan met over 18 years ago in Bible school. Over the years, they have spent money with lawyers to secure rights such as health-care power of attorney and living wills. When one of them was hospitalized, the other had to each night show this legal document in order to spend time with the person she had committed her life and love to.
This story has made me think of my parents. Twenty-five years ago, my mother died of cancer. For the first month of the disease, my father spent every night at the hospital. I think of how difficult that time was for him and how much more difficult it would have been if he had had to produce his marriage license every night just to stay and provide comfort to my mom.
Lately, those opposed to marriage equality have been telling you that you can't make a square a circle or a circle a square. I would add that you can't make a gay person straight. Most of all, I would add that, at the end of the day, love is love. Loves does not discriminate, so why should we allow marriage to?
Young people agree. We know that this is a generational issue, with young people being opposed to this amendment — 60 percent in Tennessee. National polls show upwards of 60 percent of 18- to 24-years-olds support full marriage rights for gays and lesbians.
What is the reason for these numbers with young people? They do not believe the fear and scare tactics used by the opposition. Young voters know personally the people this proposed amendment hurts. They are not characters from television or movies. They are real Tennesseans who are family, classmates, colleagues. They know that these gays and lesbians have the same goals — a career, making a difference, finding someone to share all that with and maybe providing a loving home for children.
Possibly, they know the real facts, such as that the state in the country with the lowest divorce rate is the only state that allows gay marriage — Massachusetts. They see through the hypocrisy of those who argue about the sanctity of marriage while doing nothing about the causes of divorce.
They understand that this is just not a gay issue. Using the Constitution to take away rights instead of enhancing them is a dangerous precedent. They know we should think long and hard before making such a decision.
We talk often about leaving the world better for young people. We talk about leaving less debt. We talk about a world without war and with peace. On this issue, young people have told us they want a state Constitution without discrimination.
I have learned that, in the world today, there are many issues where young people are the experts because they know more. If I need computer help, I know I can get the answer from almost anyone younger than I. This generation of young adults is also one that has a true appreciation of diversity and desires to live in a world where we learn from those who are different as opposed to fearing them.
In many areas, they can teach old dogs some new tricks. Let's listen to their wishes on Amendment 1. Let's leave them the world they desire — one free from a Constitution that discriminates. In order to do that, we must vote no on 1 in November.
Randy Tarkington is the campaign manager for Vote NO on 1. A native of Centerville, Tenn., he recently returned to Nashville after living for 12 years in the San Francisco Bay area.
hmmmmm
Usually, the Bay Area IMPORTS weirdos.
Just in case either of you is around.
Discrimination is necessary for life. Someone who doesn't discriminate about what to eat, drink, where to live, who to befriend, who to marry - their life is a mess!
And there are billions of straight couples that have provided loving homes for children.
Proper biology is a necessary precursor to a loving home. Sodomy and Cunnilingus as a basis for any relationship between individuals is not a loving home, it is a protest against the truly loving home.
Sodomy and Cunnalingus are not acts of creation, or even attempted creation, but are acts of a self directed and fixating passion. One might argue that there is a place in the relationships for such self fixating passions between humans, but they cannot nor can they ever form the foundation of a loving home, where the energy, love and loyalty exists in a truly loving, healthy home.
Creation and its associated mental and physical acts are associated with an energy which takes one naturally outwards to the created other, a child, or any living thing in the immediate environment. Homosexual acts direct one inwards to ones self, one's selfish self. That is why marriage is an opposite institution of creation, a political, social and economic institution of creation.
Lesbians and Sodomites cannot create or participate in such an energy, and without it there can be no loving home, only a surrogate home, just as their relationships are surrogate ones of confudion and wandering, self fixation, and continual self appraisal and self examonation, without accepting themselves fully.
And just as they cannot accept themselves fully and unconditionally, neither can we when they seek to pretend that they can.
"In Nashville, Scott and Jon adopted a young boy from a foster home in Massachusetts. The young boy had an abusive past and was struggling with poor grades. Today, with two loving parents, he is an honor roll student. He will tell you that he has a better family, better friends and a better neighborhood."
Something about two gay men with a boy seems wrong.
Regardless of that, this is just selective writing. Same with the abortion movement and the talking point about abortions due to rape, which make up such an unbelievable small percentage of abortions that the whole point is pretty much moot.
Only 4% of Americans are homosexuals, and of that, very few adopt children. The media acts as if there are millions of abused children who can only be saved by being adoptive by the millions of loving homosexual couples clamoring for children. What a load of crap.
Love is an anarchonism. It is perhaps the most idiotic thing imaginable to promote as a standard by which to allow marriage.
If a priest adopts a child, does he need to get married? If a widowed grandmother raises a grandchild, does she need to get married?
Young people in this age group also overwhelmingly prefer MTV. So, what... we should embrace THAT culture!?
Sounds rather NAMBLA, doesn't it?
Marriage is the most important, most basic and most fundamental human institution of all. Its basis is the union of a man and a woman and nothing else. No other type of human union or relationship has the potential to found and undergird all other human endeavors that a committed man-woman relationship does. That is the concept that the word 'marriage' was coined to encompass. All other uses of the word are analogies spun off of that concept. To call a gay or lesbian relationship, regardless of its characteristics, a marriage is no different than using the word to say "the marriage of copper and zinc makes brass." It's nothing more than an analogy taken from the original form. It is what it is. Water is water, marriage is marriage.
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