Posted on 02/22/2004 6:54:58 AM PST by billorites
ONE QUESTION for the Rev. Gene Robinson, the nation’s first openly gay Episcopal priest (now bishop) who cautions those of us opposed to same-sex marriage: “Don’t waste your time and energy defending marriage from something that doesn’t threaten it.” Doesn’t polygamy threaten marriage?
Would the Rev. Robinson rise to defend polygamy, and perform wedding ceremonies for a man and two women, or a woman and two men (polyandry)? Because if same-sex marriage doesn’t threaten real marriage, why should polygamy? There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two institutions when you study them.
This comparison is not intended to be degrading or insulting; it’s not likening same-sex marriage to bestiality or incest or any other perversions that harm children and animals. Both same-sex marriage and polygamy are voluntary arrangements by consenting adults; why should we care what people do behind closed doors?
And if marriage need not be limited to one man and one woman — as Robinson is saying — why need it be limited to couples only? What’s so sacred about the number 2?
It seems a bit arbitrary to allow one man to marry another man, but not to marry two women. Why should the government restrict his choice, provided his partners are willing? Would the Rev. Robinson concede that letting groups of three, four or more marry would water down the meaning of marriage, which elevates and sanctifies the precise biological recipe for creating children?
Many homosexuals don’t take the polygamy analogy seriously, or they become easily offended when the comparison is made. But there are many sound reasons to consider legalizing polygamy, advocates of same-sex marriage must admit.
Just like people feel that they are born homosexual, which justifies their right to marry same-sex lovers, people also are born with the proclivity to have multiple sex partners. For many people, monogamy does not feel like their natural, biological state.
Animals, for the most part, are not monogamous. So should people who are born with a strong urge to mate with more than one woman be denied their constitutional right to follow their urge? Why should a man be thwarted by the government if he can find two (or more) women to go along with him?
Proponents of same-sex marriage claim it will have a stabilizing effect on homosexual relationships. Don’t we want to encourage marriage and lifelong commitment, they ask?
Similarly, marrying more than one woman might be a stabilizing, civilizing influence on natural-born philanderers. They may be less inclined to pursue mistresses and patronize prostitutes if they have legally sanctioned variety at home. They may become less inclined to take advantage of no-fault divorce laws to abandon their wives for other women (opting instead to bring them into the household).
And perhaps polygamy will even cut down on pornography, once threesomes are no longer relegated to the world of naughty fantasy, but are a staple of routine married life.
Polygamy, like homosexuality, has long and storied roots in antiquity. In the Bible, Abraham kept the concubine Hagar alongside his wife Sarah, and had sons with both. Hagar’s descendants are modern day Muslims, who are permitted by the Koran to have up to four wives, provided they are all treated equally.
Why are Muslims denied this Allah-given right by state laws? Why were the Mormons — a perfectly lovely group of Christians — slaughtered and persecuted for practicing the ancient institution of polygamy? Mormon men took multiple wives to protect them spiritually; but even modern-day economics shows that married women fare better than unmarried women. Why not allow men to “look out” for more than one woman at a time?
Considering same-sex marriage is like trying to walk on top of a chain-link fence: you’ll fall off within minutes, and your only decision is which side of the fence to fall on: The side that favors keeping marriage between one man and one woman, the formula for baby-making and dual-gender parenting, or the side that favors letting any combination of men and women call themselves a marriage?
But one can’t walk along the top of the fence indefinitely. There’s a 50 percent chance of falling onto the side that favors any collection of people as a marriage, and that’s why the Rev. Gene Robinson is wrong. In opposing gay marriage, we are defending marriage from something that does indeed threaten it.
Bernadette Malone is the former editorial page editor of The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News.
If we all did it, the human race would die out!!!!!!!!!!!
But some of these folks WANT kids to prove something (and propogate this perversion) which defies logic!!
The homosexuals will complain that those words offend their status as married couples and that everybody should be referred to as partners.
This is completely aside from the question of whether extending the franchise was or was not a good idea. Similarily, gay marriage may indeed be a bad idea; but to say that it 'endangers marriage' is simply nonsensical.
Ok, I want to marry my Mom.....still ok gays!
and finally, this political flash-in-the-pan that we are seeing cannot destroy Marriage, any more than a fly can destroy an eagle.
Voting is not a fundamental component of the social fabric. The family is. Marriage and the family have been under intense attack by social experimenters for one hundred years, and the institution is showing severe tattering around the edges. The homosexual marriage assault is the final attack, which will finish off marriage as a viable and stable social structure.
If you wish to gaze into the future and see what Western society will be like as a result of the erosion of marriage as a meaningful, stabilizing institution, merely observe what liberal social experimenters have done to the most vulnerable segment of our society, the black population.
Victims of slavery and then discrimination, blacks depended upon the family to be a solid refuge against the hate and disadvantage surrounding it. Liberals, while wishing to free blacks from discrimination originally, found a permanently dependent constituency to be ultimately desirable. That, coupled with leftist ideology that defines the family to be an enemy of the state - it interferes with control of individuals - resulted in policies and programs designed implicitly to "liberate" the individuals from the family. The result? A 70% single birthrate; institutionalized poverty, since single parents seldom advance economically; fatherless boys with high tendencies to murder members of their own communities.
More prosperous nonblack communities are more resilient and resistive to government programs designed to destroy the family structure. Therefore, other means are employed to erode it. Liberal judges impose what elected officials dare not. With making marriage symbolic only of devotion between two (or more) people, it discounts the serious dedication required in a genuine, child-generating and child-rearing institution. Just beyond this redefinition of marriage lies the increasing chaos of a family-less society.
By the way, this was tried on a very large scale in the USSR. The result today is a very bleak future for that unfortunate nation.
That is our future, as well, if this assault upon marriage is not successfully repelled.
What status? In most states, no-fault divorce has been the rule for decades; a 'contract' which either partner can abrogate at any time is no contract at all... and many 'couples' don't bother with even that trivial amount of formality.
Marriage is already moribund. At least when gay couples desire to wed, they are showing respect for an institution which many straights have abandoned.
I agree, and I didn't think the author's arguments advanced her case.
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