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November 14, 2004

Carla's education

Last week I asked those individuals who are against gay marriage to explain it to me. It's very difficult for me as a moral individual with strong progressive principles to understand why there would be such an aversion to equal rights and priviledges for our gay citizens.

85 comments are listed under that thread. I've read through them several times. I was especially looking for the thoughtful and reasoned comments from each anti gay marriage advocate who posted.

Most of the comments appeared to me to be from individuals who have no problem with gay marriage and were trying to come up with a guess or an assumption as to why some folks are opposed to gay marriage. I suppose that's because Kevin and I attend to attract moderate to liberal readers (I think) and from what I can tell those individuals tend to not have such an aversion to gays marrying.

From what I have gleaned, the general reasons appear to be:

(See the rest under the fold)

*Marriage is the only proper context for sexual activity. Same sex couples engaged in sexual activity are too much for the majority heterosexual community to visualize and accept. Therefore gay marriage cannot be sanctioned by the majority hetero community.

*There is a distrust of gays with children. Marriage is the proper vessel for raising children, as it were. If gays were to be given recognized marital sanctions, children would be in danger of being raised by a gay couple who would molest the child or treat them improperly.

There was also a third reason that crept up...which I felt didn't really address the aversion to gay marriage. Some commentors included the decisions of judiciary at the local level which allowed gay marriages to be recognized as legal. In my opinion, this is an extension of the root aversion to gay marriage, not the root itself.

Having read all of these things it appears to me to boil down to one thing: Prejudice. It's all based on feeling...not reason. There is no reason based explanation (at least expressed here) as to why gays shouldn't be able to marry AND raise a family.

To my knowledge, no credible study exists that says gays cannot raise children that are just as healthy and well balanced as those raised by a heterosexual couple.

I'm heterosexual and I have no desire to have mental images of gays engaging in sexual activity. My personal discomfort shouldn't trump another individual's rights.

In terms of the judiciary, the "activist judge" meme is garbage, in my opinion. The job of judges is to interpet the law and rule accordingly. In regions where gays were being afforded the right to legally marry, state and local laws were vague or strictly required rights to be afforded to all citizens. What's being shoved down the throats of the citizenry now are laws which make marriage the providence of heterosexuals, not vice versa.

I'm really disappointed by my findings here. I generally have hope for humankind that we can do what's right by people. After having gone through this exercise, my hopes are a bit dashed.

Posted by Carla at November 14, 2004 12:30 PM