The problem with gay marriage is that we don’t know there’s a problem

  • Erin Man­ning is fill­ing in on Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Con blog, and she has some very good answers to those who argue for gay mar­riage. She also brings up the fact that in terms of the long-term affects of this, no one has answers. But then those who are in favor of homo­sex­ual mar­riage are stu­diously avoid­ing ask­ing the questions.

    In a news­pa­per arti­cle Erin is quot­ing, a con­ser­v­a­tive who has sud­denly seen the light ques­tions him­self, “Should my reli­gious beliefs keep [a gay cou­ple] legally unre­lated even if they remain com­mit­ted to each other for life?”

    And Erin answers the ques­tion for him:

    The answer to that rhetor­i­cal ques­tion is, “Yes.” If your reli­gious beliefs on the sub­ject of gay mar­riage are prop­erly formed by rea­son, his­tory, an appre­ci­a­tion for civ­i­liza­tion and the impor­tance of the fam­ily, and the com­plete impos­si­bil­ity for man to change in its essence a real­ity which pre-dates our coun­try and its laws and which speaks to the intrin­sic dig­nity not only of the human indi­vid­ual but of the family–then yes.

    The news­pa­per article’s author also says that he real­izes now that his prob­lems with gays were based on per­sonal bias — on think­ing it was icky for two men to kiss, etc. etc. It seems a lit­tle too con­ve­nient when a “con­ser­v­a­tive” fits neatly into all the lib­eral stereo­types for con­ser­v­a­tives, and then flip-flops just as neatly to the point of view lib­er­als would like us to have (that objec­tions to the “right” things are only ever based on igno­rance, prej­u­dice or sub­jec­tive opin­ion). Erin doesn’t know any­one who are against gay mar­riage because of the “ick fac­tor.” (Nei­ther do I, come to think of it.)

    So it’s not (for me, any­way) a mat­ter of dis­com­fort with the idea of homo­sex­ual attrac­tion or homo­sex­ual behav­ior that makes me oppose gay mar­riage; it’s the belief that we’re ven­tur­ing into truly uncharted ter­ri­tory, dis­man­tling the whole idea of the fam­ily and replac­ing it with some­thing that is philo­soph­i­cally and morally very, very different–and that it is rather blithely assumed that this will not mat­ter, that chil­dren will suf­fer no defi­cien­cies as a result of being raised by two men or two women, with the under­ly­ing belief that after all moth­ers and fathers are inter­change­able and equally unim­por­tant in a child’s life (so long as someone’s teach­ing the kids all about the UN Char­ter on the Rights of the Child, that is).

    And we have no idea how any of this will play out. We have no idea if we are dam­ag­ing chil­dren by telling them that Heather has two mom­mies or that a hand­some prince wants to marry another hand­some prince. We have no clue if this total nuclear anni­hi­la­tion of the tra­di­tional con­cept of the fam­ily will have any neg­a­tive effects on the small­est and most vul­ner­a­ble of our cit­i­zens. We don’t know to what extent reli­gious rights will be cur­tailed, or other free­doms removed from those who con­tinue to oppose gay mar­riage once it’s a fait accom­pli. We aren’t even ask­ing the ques­tions, because, I think, we’d rather not raise the pos­si­bil­ity that gay mar­riage won’t be an end­less source of sun­shine and flow­ers for America.

    (empha­sis mine)

    If there’s one thing that I find totally galling about human­ist social exper­i­menters, it’s that they seem to be under the impres­sion that our civ­i­liza­tion is an unsink­able ship. They frame the argu­ments about how we need to take on all ideas (or per­ver­sions of ideas) as if they all led to bet­ter liv­ing when actu­ally there are very few that can make that claim.


    Related posts:

    1. No gay mar­riage in gay Paree
    2. Polygamy — is big love a many splen­dored thing?
    3. A gay Mus­lim movie
    4. Do you want to cruise or not?
    5. The unwanted child might not be unneeded

    June 22nd, 2008 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Ceru­lar­ius 06.22.2008

    It should be said that although it’s Rod’s blog, it’s not Rod who wrote that post. Erin Man­ning is fill­ing in while Rod’s on vaca­tion, and she should get the credit for it.

  • Grace

    Oops, thanks for the catch. I edited the post to reflect that.

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