A Warning from Canada:Same Sex Marriage Erodes Fundamental Rights
“I am one of six adult children of gay parents who recently filed amicus briefs with the US Supreme Court, asking the Court to respect the authority of citizens to keep the original definition of marriage: a union between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, so that children may know and may be raised by their biological parents. I also live in Canada, where same-sex marriage was federally mandated in 2005.” Click to read the whole thing.
Good article. She makes many valid points.
The State as Ultimate Arbiter of Parenthood, Hate Tribunals Are Coming,Which Is More Important: Sexual Autonomy or the First Amendment?
Also, “….Freedom to assemble and speak freely about man-woman marriage, family, and sexuality is now restricted. Most faith communities have become “politically correct” to avoid fines and loss of charitable status. Canadian media are restricted by the Canadian Radio, Television, and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which is similar to the FCC….”
A-yep. You know what gets me into the most trouble on the internet? Simply trying to speak about the joys of marriage and pay tribute to my husband. I never set out to even speak of same sex marriage, didn’t have even an inkling of intending to oppress of deprive anybody of “their rights.” Such things were not even on my radar. I simply wanted to talk about marriage and contemplate the nature of love.
Naive of me, I know. I accidentally stepped into a real hornets nest of outrage and offense and than I got angry and defiant and, well……hell hath no fury. Don’t mess with the contentious 😉
This idea that there were so many people on the internet that believed I should not be allowed to speak of marriage without using terms like “heteronormative,” and gender neutral pronouns, and heaven forbid anything to do with submission, really threw me for a loop. These weren’t just polite suggestions, they were demands with some pretty nasty threats and promises of future mandates compelling me to do so.
And than I realized how serious this issue is. Same sex marriage is not just a simple case of a handful of people wanting their rights, it is about compelling everyone, by force if necessary, to validate and approve of the behavior, desires, morality of others, whether you agree with them or not, and to punish all non compliance.
I’ve was blogging about love and discovered it was hate speech. Think about the implications of that for a moment. So, while I still have the freedom to speak out and speak up, that would be a resounding, No, I’m sorry, but your sexual autonomy does not trump my free speech.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
No it doesn’t careing what the next people do does! It has nothing to do with some mystery cult of homos trying to get married and everything to do with fear, manipulation by corrupt officials leading. Use what ever titles you see fit but really who care if a bunch of queers find love, or most girls will never make it out of high school without trying to be pregnant? We shouldn’t really celebrate stupity(not saying your being dumb specifically), but argueing this point splits curches right down the middle ask luther
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no judging allowed; except if you’re judging Christians, fundamentalists, or right wingers.
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Good point. Thou shall not judge. You may however, punish everybody that doesn’t pour constant validation and approval over you 😉
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Judge not lest you be judged!
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Canadians make one little, teensie-weensie “adjustment” to their laws and who could foresee what could possibly go wrong? Not their intention to cause problems at all, of course, but – sigh – one needs to break a few egg shells in order to cook an omelette, so not too high a price to pay, eh?
Until a fundamental societal and culture change occurs and Canada is no longer Canada, but instead becomes an oppressive society with a questionable long-term sustainable population.
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Interesting that tolerance has become a buzzword, considering that if you tolerate something you believe it to be wrong/incorrect and/or bad. If you believe it to be acceptable, you aren’t tolerating it. Yet if no one is permitted to criticize a behavior that is demanding acceptance, not tolerance.
Imagine if smokers adopted the same tactics. If you were to claim that smoking is dangerous, you’d be branded smokophobic. If you were to oppose allowing smokers to light up in public, you’d be branded narrow-minded. Any discussion of the merits of smoking would be treated as an attack on smokers. The only outcome smokers would accept is that you “tolerate” them, without the foundation of recognition that smoking is bad.
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Based on this article, what’s happened to personal freedoms in Canada is scary … and we can already see similar trends in the US. BUT … there are some fundamentally illogical arguments here!
First, no one is mandating same-sex marriage. The law is intended to PERMIT it, so that people who aren’t heterosexual may choose to enjoy the same social, cultural, familial and, of course, legal benefits as heterosexual people. All the arguments against this remind me in a frightening way of all the arguments against interracial marriage of not so long ago … I don’t know whether mixed marriages were ever banned in this country, but in South Africa people could be imprisoned for even having sex across the color bar. For crying out loud, can we once and for all get our noses out of other people’s bedrooms!
Second, of course it’s in the best interests of children to be raised by both biological parents – assuming those parents are willing and able to raise children. But apart from a very small minority of surrogate parents, no one intentionally makes a child with the intention of giving it to someone else! Unfortunately, however, not all children get to be the product of healthy, stable lifetime partnerships – and so it’s tough, but they don’t get to be raised by their blood relatives. Or maybe they get only one blood parent. We live in an imperfect world, I guess! Then, of course, there are people who can’t give birth to their own children, for whatever reason … are we going to forbid them from using the various methods available to them? Or will we make such wannabe parents pass some sort of “acceptability test”? Because if we do that, maybe we should control ALL parenting choices – you know, set standards in terms of household income level, education, IQ, EQ, etc etc.
Lastly, the big problem I have with the anti-same-sex argument is the way it conflates perceived effects that aren’t necessarily related. The fact that freedom of speech, association and religion are under attack is NOT as a result of allowing homosexuals to marry! Yes, they seem to go together – but that’s because activists and social engineers are using the very emotive marriage issue to pry open a whole shitload of other issues. Logically, however, there is no earthly reason why we can’t simply allow consenting adults to make their own choices regarding the structure of their marital relationships, while continuing to protect these other freedoms for EVERYONE.
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You based the whole of your comment on several seriously flawed assumptions.
1. Marriage is some kind of right. It isn’t. Marriage is what two responsible adults do to protect the rights of the children they might have.
2. Homosexuals want other people to keep their noses out of their bedrooms. Actually, what they want is for others to condone what they are doing in their bedrooms. Hence, the fuss about same-sex “marriage.”
3. Same-sex “marriage” is marriage. It isn’t. That’s why people have to be forced to pretend same-sex “marriage” is marriage.
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1. Marriage most certainly is a right. It fits in with that whole “pursuit of happiness” thing. And it is not exclusive to people of child-producing age. My husband and I married after our children were adults, and we certainly weren’t interested in making any more of them. We married for companionship, financial security, and the comfort of having someone with whom to share our declining years. No one questioned our marriage, however, because we’re white and heterosexual.
2. What other consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms is not your business. It’s not for you to condemn or condone. Of course you will probably do one or the other (I can’t imagine which!) but in fact what the homosexuals I know want is simply to be allowed to get on with their lives in peace and privacy.
3. This quibbling over “the definition of marriage” is just that – quibbling. You say it isn’t marriage unless it involves a man, a woman, and children. I think that makes you a bigot with a very limited capacity to love your neighbor. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
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@Belladonna Took
With respect to the points you just made, I can’t do much better than what Liz wrote. Instead, I will refer to this observation.
Whether any of us can govern ourselves or not, if we insist upon imposing our beliefs upon each other we will not be allowed to govern ourselves.
In the past, people regarded marriage as an obligation, not a right. Because it is immoral and irresponsible to to have sex out of wedlock, we want the “right” to marry. In our eagerness, we can forget that marriage exists mainly to protect the rights of children, not adults, and some people have forgotten.
What same-sex “marriage” advocates are trying to do is redefine marriage so that they can use the government to force everyone to respect their perverted sexual relationships. If we want a society that allows each of us to govern ourselves, then we must limit the role of government to protecting real rights. When those stronger than us insist upon taking our life, infringing upon our liberties, or stealing from our ability to pursue happiness, then we need government. What we don’t need government for is to force others to believe what we believe. That is in fact prohibited by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
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CT, I too own, read, and trust the Bible. What I don’t trust is the interpretations placed on its teachings by many of its adherents – people who cherry-pick scriptures to “prove” what they already think, and define God in their own distorted image.
And yes, I’m sure you believe I do that, just as strongly as I believe you do. This is why I won’t respond to any further comments you may make on this subject; it is clearly “fruitless argument”.
I want to point out, though, that very few people nowadays marry in order to have sex – and I am very sure that no one “liberal” enough to favor same-sex marriage is a virgin. The reasons for marrying are way more complex than sex, or even children. Marriage exists because “it is not good for man (or woman) to be alone”, and because many laws relating to property rights, the right to make decisions on behalf of an incapacitated partner, and probably others that I can’t think of right now, are written specifically with married couples in mind.
Lastly, you have a right to your moral stance. But I defy your right to impose your beliefs upon others. No one is trying to force you to marry a man, or to prevent you from marrying a woman, or in any other way to interfere with your personal sexual or familial relationships. Same sex marriage advocates simply want people like you to allow others to have something you have as a matter of course. You are free to believe what you want, and to marry whom you choose, and to have sex – or not – with the person of your choice. If others choose to believe differently, and structure their families differently from what you would choose for yourself, that does not harm you and it is no business of yours.
Also, I would remind you that Jesus told us to “go out into the world and make disciples”. He very specifically rejected any suggestion that he adopt a political role in his own life, and at no time did he tell his followers to use the law or any other kind of force to make people follow him.
I understand that you’re afraid of the changes that are coming. I believe that the resistance and hostility of people like you fans the flames of aggressive, anti-Christian activity among radical homosexuals, feminists and the like. Why don’t you simply follow Christ in the way He intended, and learn to LOVE God, LOVE others, and maybe even LOVE yourself? Maybe, if you quit trying to be God’s Little Helper and just get out of the way, God Himself can change the hearts, minds and bodies that HE thinks need changing.
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“What I don’t trust is the interpretations placed on its teachings by many of its adherents …”
I really have a hard time understanding how any Christian who actually reads the bible can miss the significance of marriage and the opposition to homosexuality to be found there?
I don’t mean that unkindly, I chat with half a dozen Christians on the internet who believe just that. Heck, several churches in my area support SSM.
I’m just saying you’re all wrong and scripture is pretty clear on the matter 😉
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IB, honestly, I don’t want to get into a verse-by-verse debate. I have given this matter some study but I don’t claim to be a biblical scholar. To me, the whole issue is a red herring. The question isn’t whether or not homosexuality is a sin. The issue, to my mind, is, how should Christians respond to homosexuals’ desire to be treated like regular citizens. And I think the church is rather badly missing the boat.
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@Belladonna Took
What we are talking about is state-sanctioned matrimony in the aftermath of the 60’s Sexual Revolution. Since I am in my 60’s, I have some dim recollections of the world that preceded the invention of the sanctified pill and the sacred antibiotics. I don’t think the changes in America’s sexual mores have been an improvement. What was once relatively simple, we have made horribly complicated. I think the solution is in the Bible, but I cannot make anyone read the Bible or believe the Bible. Jesus would not approve.
We cannot fix the mess we created by trying to force our beliefs upon each other. What I think would work better is letting the foolish suffer the consequences of their rash acts. Government does not exist to bail out the foolish. Bailouts cost too much money, but some politicians do think their job is taxing and spending. Those people are just making our problems worse.
Anyway, I would like you to observe something. I have yet to attack you personally. I have taken issue with your ideas. I have said they are illogical.
Note also that I have yet to call upon scripture to support my position. Could I use the Bible to point out that homosexuality is a sin? Yes, but some people insist upon ignoring certain parts of Bible. Then they accuse others of cherry-picking it. How do people reconcile such behavior? God only knows.
What I have done is pointed out the flaws and inconsistencies in your own words. In fact, I have gotten most of my material from your own words. So let’s continue mining that rich vein.
You said:
When people choose to “marry” someone of the same sex, they deny themselves. Two people of the same sex can pretend to be married, but such a marriage is worse than a farce.
Let’s consider your concluding paragraph.
Am I afraid of the changes that are coming? Yes. I have enjoyed living in free country, and I see our freedoms evaporating. So I argue for limited government.
I oppose same-sex “marriage” because it contrary to the idea of limited government. When the people in charge can tell us what to believe, freedom cannot survive. When we cannot act upon our personal beliefs, we cannot run our own lives.
Because same-sex “marriage” is self-destructive, we cannot condone such a pretense and still rightfully claim to love others. Yet using our increasingly ridiculous civil rights laws, homosexual rights activists have already started forcing bakers, florists, caterers, and so forth to participate in their “weddings.” It is just a matter of time before they start trying to force conservative members of the clergy to officiate their weddings. Yet it appears you are in favor of that. In fact, you blame the victims of this abuse. Look again at that last paragraph. You are not afraid of change. You are just getting out of the way. NOT!
I suppose I could (as you have done) talk about what Jesus told us to do. Instead, I will merely suggest that you look up how Jesus defined marriage and what the Bible says about homosexuality and fornication.
It is ironic. You want to govern yourself, but with respect to this issue, at least, you seem unwilling to let others do the same.
If we want to be free to exercise our conscience, we must permit others the same freedom.
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“If we want to be free to exercise our conscience, we must permit others the same freedom.”
Yes. Exactly.
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Belladonna Took
That’s the way children debate.
“Yes, it is.” “No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.” “No, it isn’t.”
And so forth.
However, when I consider your reply to IB, I see it is part of a pattern.
Because IB used more tact, you felt inclined to cover your inability to explain yourself with more words. More words. More of that rich vein of illogic and inconsistency. The church, not Belladonna Took, is just missing the boat.
Alas! I wish I had more of IB’s tact.
Is it possible that you are right, that you just don’t know how to explain yourself? With respect to homosexuality, the Bible is unambiguous. And what you call treating homosexuals like regular citizens requires us to condone homosexuality. Where is the love in enabling a self-destructive sin? Who would tell a smoker that cigarettes are good for him or an alcoholic that he should start each day with a bottle of vodka? Why would you do such a thing?
Why can’t you explain?
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CT, I tried to offer a reasonable response to your comments a while back. Your reply was chock-full of statements of opinion that you seem to regard as statements of fact (e.g., drawn from this most recent comment, your opinion that homosexuality is a “self-destructive sin”). I quoted some scriptural teachings that mean a lot to me, and you, by implication, criticized me for quoting from the Bible. It is very, very clear to me that you and I simply don’t have sufficient meeting ground to be able to communicate on this issue. You can’t understand my perspective because you simply don’t want to – but you object to the fact that I hold these opinions, and you’re expressing your objections by continuing to bludgeon and berate me with YOUR words and YOUR lack of logic and consistency. It is bizarre … you keep accusing me of doing precisely the thing you’re doing, just as you keep accusing homosexuals of attacking your freedoms – when in fact you’re the attacker, and they are the ones seeking freedoms.
So no, I don’t know how to explain myself to you. Maybe if I took the time to sit down and write an essay … I have been pondering a blog post on this topic for a while, and will probably eventually get around to writing it. But right now, on IB’s blog, in response specifically to someone whose sole desire is to win debate points rather than sharing ideas … honestly, I couldn’t be bothered.
To answer your questions, however … no I would not tell a smoker or an alcoholic to smoke or drink, and nor would I encourage them to do so. If they were someone I cared about, with whom I had a personal relationship that permitted comment, I would offer them encouragement to quit, if they welcomed my interference – and if they did not, I’d mind my own business. As a non-smoker I would not permit them to smoke in my home and I would absent myself from them when they were smoking. As a very moderate drinker, I would refrain from serving them alcohol since I find it unpleasant to be around drunk people.
What I would NOT do is ban cigarettes or alcohol, or consider them lesser people, deserving of fewer rights. I would not, for instance, apply different age requirements or a higher tax to them when they go to buy cigarettes or alcohol. And I would respect their right, as adults, to decide for themselves whether or not to drink or smoke. (I might, however, go so far as to hide car keys and drive them home myself if they had been drinking. If this seems inconsistent to you, so be it.)
With regard to the biblical view of homosexuality … You say it’s unambiguous. I’m not convinced, but – as I told IB – I am not a biblical scholar. I am still studying this matter. What I DO believe is unambiguous is what the bible teaches us about how to treat other people. You didn’t like it the last time I quoted scripture at you, so I guess I’ll just have to let you go read your Bible and figure that out for yourself.
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Belladonna Took
What I have seen you do is personalize the issue. When we personalize an issue, that’s tends to make us regard any disagreement as a personal attack. It also wrecks our objectivity. I have not berated you. I have just said you are wrong. I understand you well enough, but I do not agree. Does successful communication require us to agree?
Did I criticize you for quoting scripture? No. Even though I have not quoted any scripture, you accused me of cherry-picking scripture. Why did you do that? Was I wrong to respond and to point out the obvious fact you have chosen to ignore what the Bible says about homosexuality? And the Bible is unambiguous. Homosexuality is hardly what anyone would call a big topic in the Bible, but it is condemned in both the Old and New Testaments. As IB points out (here => https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/christ-never/), even Jesus made it clear He disapproved.
If you want to discuss scripture, I will be perfectly happy to do so, but you have indicated that you don’t want to do so. Nevertheless, as you say, you have quoted scripture.
Is homosexuality is a self-destructive sin? In a world where everyone has their own truth, I suppose there is no such thing an any statement of fact anymore, but would it really surprise you to find out that sodomy is unhealthy?
Of course, heterosexual couples can engage in sodomy. Dumb, but….. I think the real issue is fornication. As a practical matter, homosexuality just describes another way in which people engage in fornication. Because fornicators are willing to have sex out of wedlock, fornicators tend to have multiple partners, and often they don’t give much thought as to who their partner might be. Homosexuals are notorious for having multiple partners.
There are at least two big problems with fornication. Here are couple of links on the disease aspect.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/gender/msm/facts/index.html
http://www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/facts-statistics-infographic
The other problem is mental. Sex without commitment — without love — messes people up. I suppose I could cite articles for that too, but such stats are too easily manipulated. In addition, to advertise — to sell us things — the mass media abuses our sex drive, and for the most part character education doesn’t exist in the public school system. Frankly, I have no idea what the stats will look like in the next ten years. What is “normal” and what is moral are not the same thing. Hence, with respect to moral issues, I have little use for statistics.
Because the disease problems related to fornication are difficult to hide, homosexual rights activists propose marriage as the solution. With respect to homosexuals, marriage is not a solution. The legal aspects of marriage relates primarily to children. Two people of the same sex do not produce children. So if two homosexuals want to live together indefinitely and have “sex” only with each other, they don’t need to be married. Legal marriage will not keep them together, and neither will a religious ceremony. Marriage requires a personal commitment and the blessing of God, not the law or religion.
Homosexual unions don’t work well. For an obvious reason, Nature’s God did not design people of the same sex for matrimony. In addition to the anatomical issues, there are issues of mental compatibility. We don’t well understand them, but we know men and women are different, and most people celebrate those differences.
What two people of the same sex can do quite easily is become friends. Lifelong? Sometimes we are so blessed, but sex has little to do with friendship. Friendship is required, however, for a successful marriage.
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IB. I have a comment in moderation. Probably too many links.
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Sorry about that, Tom. I fished you out 😉
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Bellatook:
Wrong: Civilized society has a vested interest in suppressing behaviors which subvert it and encouraging those behaviors which promote it. The reason why fag-marriage has never been tolerated is because it is essentially an anti-social movement. This nonsense about their ‘live and let live’ attitudes is completely at variance with reality. They can’t reproduce, they have to recruit: and that necessarily means imposing their lifestyles on others.
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Beladonna Took: “1. Marriage most certainly is a right. It fits in with that whole “pursuit of happiness” thing.”
We’re speaking about state-sanctioned marriage, not the right to be happy. The state isn’t required to ensure people are happy with their life choices. Nor does marriage necessarily fall under the “happiness” umbrella. There’s nothing barring homosexuals from living together folks are suggesting that the state has no compelling interest in supporting this arrangement in any legally-binding way (outside of individual contracts, which the homosexual couple is free to draw up on their own).
“And it is not exclusive to people of child-producing age. My husband and I married after our children were adults, and we certainly weren’t interested in making any more of them. We married for companionship, financial security, and the comfort of having someone with whom to share our declining years. No one questioned our marriage, however, because we’re white and heterosexual.”
True, state sanctioned marriage doesn’t require the production of children. The production and rearing of children is the primary purpose for state-sanctioned marriage however. The argument you’re making could as easily apply to the state sanctioning of incest of bestiality too. What if a person determines they want to be married for “man’s best friend”? People with short life expectancies are allowed to get married! People covered in hair are allowed to get married! People don’t have to have children to get married! and so forth.
At the end of the day, there are some pretty obvious practical limitations free-society inconsistencies to demanding child production for the state (or demanding child production abilities). There are no such practical limitations or inconsistencies with denying the legal sanction of homosexual relationships.
“2. What other consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms is not your business.”
I agree. I couldn’t care less what people do in their bedrooms. But I see no reason to sanction it via the state. And that’s the question that matters if one is attempting to force state sanction. I definitely don’t see the logic of “oh, well, marriage should just end if homosexuals can’t do it” either (suggested by someone below, and a lot of other people when this issue comes up).
“3. This quibbling over “the definition of marriage” is just that – quibbling. You say it isn’t marriage unless it involves a man, a woman, and children. I think that makes you a bigot with a very limited capacity to love your neighbor. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
Of course you do. Now you’re throwing insults and pejoratives toward someone who disagrees with you about state sanction. This is pretty typical in my experience and progressives tend to do this.
“You’re a racist!” “You’re homophobic” “You’re misogynistic!” and “You’re a bigot”
(also Cowboy, cretin, and so forth when they run out of creative and useful pejoratives)
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Just thinking further, I suppose there could be outlier exceptions filed separately for homosexual marriages if certain factors are in place (factors that would make state sanction beneficial social cost to gains wise).
Laws aren’t typically based on exception but there are situations along the lines of child emancipation, for instance, that might be applied in certain exceptional circumstances. Provided that wouldn’t be some Trojan horse legislation (which of course it would be).
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It seems to me that you have yet another good answer for this question.
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Johnny on the spot CT; indeed an iron clad essay that cannot be dismissed by the fair minded. Yea, I would say the writer was accurate with her depiction of some disastrous results too.
Good call.
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This essay by Dawn Stephanowicz is clear, thorough, non-compromising, and presents the far reaching tentacles of the results of govt. mandated ssm, and etc. This is coming from Canada, and the writer is concerned about the devasting effects coming to a town near you.
Tkx for posting this insanitybytes22, in light of recent buzz from Citizen Tom, and others interested. The diabolical infiltration upon society has made tracks by the few, affecting the many. Clever, but ugly.
Her concerns are my concerns, they are yours, and anybody who values a good word such as ‘marriage,’ and all the ancillary connections, should be concerned too. Salt is good, unless it lost its savor………
The ramifications are staggering if a person is honest; and yes, telling the truth as suggested in your last line is at least for today, still legal.
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The gay agenda has never been about equality but about forcing people to agree with one version of morality or pay.
This was evident in the recent outrage over a Christian jeweler who believed in traditional marriage yet made rings for an lesbian couple anyway.
Seems we can’t win this one no matter what we do.
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IB, you are way out of line here. First of all, The Witherspoon Institute is an American piece of work. The studies they base their conclusions on, are crap. And every major publication, peer-review board, and university has discredited the findings. Here is a sample:
“In 2012, the Witherspoon Institute drew public attention for having funded the controversial New Family Structures Study (NFSS), a study of LGBT parenting conducted by Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. The study was criticized by major professional scientific institutions and associations, as well as other sociologists at the University of Texas.[24] Documents from the University of Texas at Austin indicate that Regnerus was provided with guidance by the Institute,[25] requested payment authorizations for assistance in data analysis to William Bradford Wilcox, who was an associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University, the director of The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and fellow of the Witherspoon Institute.[26] Critics argue that these documents show direct involvement in the study by the Witherspoon Institute.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witherspoon_Institute )
And that is just one small part of a whole series of respected institutions that have said that the studies used by Witherspoon are crap. They are an embarrassment to scientific research – and I’m not talking about the conclusions, I’m talking about the methodology and influence on the researcher.
Further more, if you want to compare Canadian and US societies why don;t you use some real statistics? Like in 2011 when the rate of death by guns in the US was 10.3 per 100,000 . For Canada the rate (2007-2011) was 2,2 per 100,000/ Five times as many Americans are killed by guns per capita per year in the US over Canada. We have medical care that treats everyone .regardless of wealth Being poor does not deny you medical care here – no one dies because of lack of money, unlike the US. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate )
As far as our hate laws are concerned – you guys got some real assholes that will deliberately antagonize and abuse immigrants in the name of free speech. It is illegal to spread hatred and prejudice here – you go to jail for it. The idiots that wrote the Witherspoon article said we restricted free speech . You’re f**king right we do – it is illegal to abuse others or their beliefs. Dallas apparently wasn’t a good place to hold a Mohammed cartoon contest. Two people died there and that was as predictable as a horse coming to the barn for supper. That is simply racial bullying. Or, while we are on the topic of needless deaths – how about all the people who died, again in Dallas, when gangs had a meeting. The shooting started over a parking spot – a f**king parking spot – what kind of society kills people over a parking spot? And you know what the police said? – “No bystanders were killed.” That wasn’t deliberate – with that many bullets flying, it was a miracle -and it won’t happen again (the miracle that is).
We choose, by democratic means, to allow non-heterosexual marriages. It is our society and our decision. America (not Americans , but America) is a bully. The great military and economic power that they wield is often used to try and change other country’s societies in return for greater wealth. They expound on principles that are not widely held and try to impose those principles on others. Did you know that some years ago the US controlled the World bank – and rightfully so as they had put up most of the money to support it. A number of poor African countries came to the world bank to beg for funds to feed their people. Do you know what the answer was? NO. And the logic was that the farmers growing subsistence crops had their seed and tools subsidized by the gov;t.they repaid the gov’t when the crops came in. The US said that that subsidy constituted an anti-capitalist behaviour and so denied the help, even though the US heavily subsidizes some parts of their agricultural sector.. Thousands starved to death that year in those countries solely because of the American bullying. Eventually when presented with all the dead bodies, the American begrudgingly changed their criteria for administering aid to third world countries.
Those same rules about not subsidizing went out the widow when the major American financial houses and car mfg were failing. America’s rule on that w as supposed to have been that failing businesses should be allowed to fail. – except of course when it is their businesses, then the rules change. So they are hypocrites as well as bullies.
I’m sorry IB, but I find your use of twisted and discredited research on another country to be far below your usual quality of writing.
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Sorry Paul, I don’t intend to upset you and I wasn’t aware I was advocating any particular piece of research. This is simply an article from a woman who has advocated against SSM from a now grown child’s point of view.
America has always had a far more intense and powerful commitment to free speech than many other countries, even when it makes us uncomfortable, such as allowing pornography and granting neo nazis the right to hold a parade. As to bullies, well, when you’ve got a huge and powerful country, the country’s power and ability to bully it’s own citizens becomes very pronounced and the only way we can guard against that is to rather fiercely protect and defend our freedoms. The problem with having “hate speech laws” in the US is that enforcement becomes a very subjective thing.
What offends one person’s sensibilities can be a very subjective thing. Consider in Britain right now, two separate street preachers were recently arrested for hate speech, after having said nothing at all about homosexuality. Not a word.The complainants simply felt that Christianity itself was hate speech.
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I’m cool IB. Thank you for publishing this comment – i was worried. And Yes I agree that power can be abused both internally and externally. It is one of the reasons that the courts have broken up large market dominating companies over the years.
The vast majority of Canadians embrace same sex unions.As there is everywhere there is a small minority who do not. Unfortunately that is the definition of a democracy – majority rules – there are always some dissenters.
Ye, hate speech can be subjective – that is why we have courts – but in my estimation that is far better than allowing hate speech under the guise of free speech. Your supreme court ruled many years ago that it is illegal too holler “Fire!” in a public area when there is no fire. the reason being that it could and likely would result in injury or death and human life has a higher priority than free speech. So it is too with racist comments – they can and do result in death (i.e. the Dallas Mohammed scenario) and so free speech should be limited. I was not aware if the situation in Britain. I shall check it out.
Thanks again for releasing the previous comment – you never cease to surprise me – many of your fellow countrymen would bristle at my comments questioning the righteousness of the American gov’t.
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I’m sorry you got trapped in spam, Paul. That was just your links and language, I suspect. Honest, I never refuse to post comments unless they are relentlessly hostile and have no substance 😉
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Paul, speaking as a Yank, I always question my government’s righteousness. Feel free to join me. I also question your government’s, too. And I trust absolutely no one to “regulate” free speech. If speech is regulated, it’s by definition, then, not free. But I appreciate your views. Thx.
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I for sure don’t trust our gov’t but they have far less power than yours so I don’t find them as scary. We have laws against bullying – which is basically using words to disrespect others. That has caused many teen suicides and as an individual adult you can charge perpetrators with defamation. Saying negative or nasty things about individuals, then, is protected by law.and yet you (in the Sates) are free to disrespect or abuse cultural or racial groups in public and you say it is protected by free speech. Why is that? Our hate laws are just an extension of anti- buying laws and defamation – except it applies to groups.
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Exactly—the Fags try and pose as though this were a civil rights issue, when they want to take away the right of anyone who dissents from them.
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What I don’t understand is why a minority group seems to think that everyone should agree with them and accuse those who don’t agree of prejudice.
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Is it possible that the minority group in question really doesn’t care whether or not you agree with them, but simply wants you to quit actively DISagreeing with them and denying them the freedoms you take for granted?
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The problem isn’t with same sex marriages. The problem is with restrictions on free speech. If some of the stories I’ve heard regarding what is deemed hate speech in Canada are true, then the country has gone too far down the road on restricting freedom of expression. It seems the laws regarding hate speech were in place before the changes in marriage law and have had a serious impact on free speech there. As I understand it, a call to boycott Israeli products as a protest against the treatment of Palestinians by Israel could be considered hate speech.
Here in NZ, a call to “stone the fags” at an LGBT rights rally would definitely be considered hate speech, but stating “I believe gays should be stoned” in a radio interview would not be. Context is important when it come to freedom of expression, at least in this country. Perhaps not so in Canada?
Regardless, the issue of same sex marriages and freedom of speech are separate issues and shouldn’t confused. I think that muddying the waters by confusing the two issues is counter productive.
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Yep, I’m worried: “…that is merely to say that we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” ~ Orwell
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The State probably had this planned when it fabricated for itself the idea of licensing “marriages” in the first place.
Christians should just stop paying filing fees to County marriage brokers entirely. Get married in church, and use all of the “gay marriage” arguments and court decisions to argue that all state marriages are discriminatory, and have them wiped out.
How many gay people are going to keep getting married once it’s nothing more than a private ceremony without any tax benefits?
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“The State probably had this planned when it fabricated for itself the idea of licensing “marriages” in the first place.”
You believe that the state has been planning homosexual marriage this for hundreds of years? They sure took their time about it.
Marriage is a way to automatically bestow certain rights and obligations on the formally united parties. This requires a state role. Without a “state role” there is no “marriage law” because the law requires the state for enforcement of contracts. When the church and state were synonymous (in Christmases past), the church enforced marriage law. Not to put too fine a point on the obvious, but there is no law without the state.
You have it exactly backwards. Progressives have been planning this for a long while, as a means to undermine and ultimately destroy traditional marriage. It’s an effective tactic and also the means for which they’ve pushed just about every one of their agendas. First a public paradigm shift, then push the agenda through via litigation. I was once more or less an advocate for same sex marriage. After discussing this issue many many times with a great many people over time I discovered that virtually no one in favor of gay marriage was actually an advocate for marriage at all. They’d prefer to destroy the institution all together. Does the state have a compelling interest in preserving marriage and enforcing the marriage contract? I think it does, and virtually every broken home/single parent family I’ve seen would support my view. Does that state have a similar compelling interest in enforcing the marriage contract between homosexuals? With the exception of outliers (homosexuals with children and both parents in the home) not so much.
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Liz: “You believe that the state has been planning homosexual marriage this for hundreds of years? They sure took their time about it…Progressives have been planning this for a long while, as a means to undermine and ultimately destroy traditional marriage…”
As you just said–they certainly did take their time about it. 🙂
Liz: “Does the state have a compelling interest in preserving marriage and enforcing the marriage contract?”
“The state” right now thinks it has an interest in forcing people to bake cakes for other people. I’d rather we all stopped making believe that a “state” can have “interests.”
I’m aware of the notion that marriage or family serve as a barrier to the state. That’s an interesting argument, but it’s wishful thinking. A good state would respect the privacy of both families and individuals, and a bad state would invade the privacy of both families and individuals. Right now, for example, Obama can listen in on the phone calls of both:
1) A family of two Christian adults who got married right after high school and their seven children; and,
2) An old atheist maid who lives alone and has no living relatives.
By contrast, post-Revolutionary War America might have respected the privacy of both the nine-member Christian family and the old atheist maid. Obama can invade your privacy whenever he wants, regardless of what kind of family structure you have. So it’s a pleasant, sentimental thought that granting the state the power to license relationships will somehow stop tyrants from tyrannizing us, but it’s not a realistic one.
If you give the state the power to license marriages and hand out preferential treatment to people whom it defines as marriage, then you’ve begun the process of placing all relationship power in the hands of the state. That kind of mistake leads inevitably to where we are today. State marriage has been corroding life-pairings ever since it became a formal process of filing papers and paying fees, rather than a communal process between a couple and their congregation.
I’m aware that very bad people are out there right now doing very bad things, and that part of their scheme is to destroy the few crumbs that remain of the cultural notion of “marriage.” I agree with you that what they are doing is wrong, both in motivation and in outcome. However, I should not take wrong actions simply because those actions would oppose someone else who is also committing wrong actions. It is not right for a state authority to gain power over life-pairings, reproduction, and family relationships. The horrors of a century of American divorce courts, child kidnapping agencies, foster child profit ranches, and abortion profit ranches, are all closely related to our idea that a state should be so vulgar as to presume to sanction one of our most sacred types of human relationships.
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“State marriage has been corroding life-pairings ever since it became a formal process of filing papers and paying fees, rather than a communal process between a couple and their congregation. ”
That’s a really good point, higharka. When the power, authority, over marriage was placed in the hands of the state, we eventually wound up with welfare polices, child support enforcement, no fault divorce, a whole slew of other legal enforcements and mandates that began to erode the entire design. Marriage become a covenant not between two people and God, but between two people and the state.
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higharka,
There’s no escaping the fact that laws impact us.
Whether they impact on us is beneficial way or not would depend on the law, but marriage (as a legal construct) is a pretty fundamental part of civilization and predates just about everything else.
We don’t actually have “horrors of a century of American divorce courts (child kidnapping agencies, foster child profit ranches, and abortion profit ranches)”. That trail of “horrors” is a fairly recent thing.
If one doesn’t believe law should matter when it comes to marriage, or have any impact they should take a look at the impact of no-fault divorce on the family. If it is “vulgar” for the state to “sanction” marriage, the first step toward ameliorating state power over those relationships would be to make such relationships more easily dissolvable. And since then, divorce rates have skyrocketed, single parent families are ubiquitous and people take marriage far less seriously.
It’s very apparent that marriage law has a huge impact on the family. The answer wouldn’t be to eliminate traditional marriage but to make it far less easy to dissolve.
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“When the power, authority, over marriage was placed in the hands of the state, we eventually wound up with welfare polices, child support enforcement, no fault divorce, a whole slew of other legal enforcements and mandates that began to erode the entire design. Marriage become a covenant not between two people and God, but between two people and the state.”
When has marriage NOT been the purview of the state? The only time I’m aware of would be a time when the church was ipso facto the state, with the power of enforcement.
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I think in the US, we began demanding marriages be registered with the state in 1837. From that point on, the authority over marriage began to slip away from churches to where we finally arrive at today, with government now declaring itself entitled to completely define marriage and mandate that churches comply.
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Even in tribal cultures there was an enforcement arm. But a smaller enforcement arm. One might compare “loose taboos” and “strict taboos” and come to the same conclusion about the law. We have a loose taboo on throwing chewing gum on the sidewalk and they have a strict taboo. Guess who gets more gum on their shoes?
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Sorry, “they” above was supposed to read Singapore. They have a strict taboo against throwing gum on the sidewalk (and vandalism, and so forth…no graffiti in Singapore, ubiquitous graffiti in parts of Italy and so forth where it is tolerated).
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Just saw this:
“I think in the US, we began demanding marriages be registered with the state in 1837. From that point on, the authority over marriage began to slip away from churches to where we finally arrive at today, with government now declaring itself entitled to completely define marriage and mandate that churches comply.”
Thanks for the response, Insanityb. 🙂
Perhaps at times when there are vast, dire direct social consequences or in environments on the pointy edge of survival enforcement can be less direct. During the times when the church and communities would cast people out for breaking their marriage vows there would be no need for legal enforcement. We don’t live in an environment like that anymore. How many people do you know who call themselves Christians are divorced for less than the most exigent reasons?
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“During the times when the church and communities would cast people out for breaking their marriage vows there would be no need for legal enforcement.”
See that’s what’s become so complex. The state doesn’t “enforce” marriage, they enforce divorce. They create policies, laws, and mandates that actually discourage marriage. They intervene in the sanctity of family and they make marriage economically impossible for many groups of people.
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“See that’s what’s become so complex. The state doesn’t “enforce” marriage, they enforce divorce. They create policies, laws, and mandates that actually discourage marriage. They intervene in the sanctity of family and they make marriage economically impossible for many groups of people.”
That’s a good point, and I agree 100 percent.
I’ve debated this issue in the past and it’s a very very difficult one because people tend to talk past one another.
In spite of the fact that I’ve posted more on this thread than any else so you might not believe it, this is actually my very very least favorite political debate topic…because it tends to be so divisive.
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I know, right? It is divisive! I would much prefer to talk about the joys of marriage and contemplate the dance of love between men and women, all day long 😉
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Just to make a quick comment on this point: the ancient cultures who practiced monogamy made it both a religious and state rite. The state was involved for civil reasons only; to deal with divorce, widow’s pensions &c. Polygamous cultures never bothered, since civil issues were usually covered contractually between the husband and father-in-law and the priest would arbitrate in a civil dispute.
The Early Christians couldn’t use State-sanctioned marriage, because the Romans required a tax paid to the Roman Temple, so the Church first instituted an internal system of privately dealing with the civil matters. When Rome accepted Christianity as a religion, the Christians were included in the state system and it’s been that way ever since.
As a side note: the marriage ceremony in our churches is a modification of the Roman one. The earliest Christians didn’t have a ceremony from the Apostles, so the early priests modified the ceremony already in use.
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Liz, marriage already is harder to dissolve for a large segment of the population–the male segment. For western men, marriage dissolution is an incredibly expensive meat grinder that can ravage the rest of one’s life. And the male response has been to stop getting married as often.
It would be nice to think that we could fix this by making marriage harder to get out of, but that alone would do nothing. Forcing a person to remain married to an unfaithful spouse; using “spousal support obligation” to permit one partner to extract family resources and redirect them to a second or third family; calling the police to enforce marital rape laws, domestic violence allegations, child abuse allegations, et cetera…it’s a band-aid on a breaking dam to try to make marriage more difficult to dissolve.
…in fact, now that I think about it, that would be an excellent strategy for those who want to destroy the idea of human life-pairing. If they followed-up to their “gay marriage” thing with legislation that “secured” marriage by making it more difficult to dissolve marriage, it would even further discourage people from getting married. They might well achieve a zero percent rate they want, ending human life-pairing in favor of a citizen’s cradle-to-grave relationship to Big Brother.
What supports your ideas about marriage the most is one of strong communities with socially-enforced, but not legally-enforced, marriage. If you want people to get married for purposes of love and responsibility, and to stay together for child-rearing purposes, you can best achieve it through a series of informal cultural expectations and private rewards and punishments. By all means, let three promiscuous old men say they’re married to each other if they want to–just don’t make me pay for a family court system to hash out their relationship status. I don’t want to do that anymore than I want to pay for a virginal man and woman to get married.
Privately, I might be more willing to help the latter couple watch their child than I would be willing to dog-sit for the former couple, but neither is an act the State should be enforcing at the point of a policeman’s gun. When charity becomes mandatory through taxation, we lose the ability to make a free-willed choice between real charity and real self-interest. No wonder, then, that dark powers prefer to take that choice away from us by integrating marriage regulation into a system of mandatory taxation.
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higharka, you make some good points. I have also toyed with the idea that we ought to get the state out of the marriage business, for some of the same reasons you mention.
As a Christian, I do not need the state approbation on my marriage. I understand that the state has always supported marriage because committed marriages are beneficial to a stable society. But that support is about to be erased. I do prefer to keep any tax breaks, but they are phasing out anyway.
And I’ve always thought it absolutely outrageous that once you have divorced, your children become the business of the state. Of course, two reasonable people can settle on a custodial agreement with minimal involvement by the courts, but if your ex is not compliant, your kid’s future becomes the business of the state?!
I disagree with you however, that gay marriage proponents will lose interest when there are no more tax breaks. They are clearly seeking more than that…some seek some sort of “equality”, others downright destruction of the hetero paradigm, all seek total and compliant acceptance by the public at large.
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Some of them are just interested in the tax breaks–I know several couples and individuals that just want the “right” to marry because they want to be sure that an early death does not cause them to lose out on a partner’s Social Security benefits or workplace pension.
And that’s “fair,” albeit in the “two wrongs make a right” way. It’s been wrong, for so many years, to force elderly widows, who have already raised their children, to pay additional taxes in order to fund pensions, family courts, abortion clinics, and foster parenting systems, which are there to (theoretically) benefit only people whose husbands didn’t already die in the war.
Similarly, people who have been disabled and aren’t chosen for marriage (because of their appearance, needs, or the potential inability to have children) are forced to subsidize state-licensed “marriages” in ways that are truly vulgar. An entire life spent alone, struggling to get by, while being forced to divert payroll taxes from your own check in order to support a system of licensing the cyclical relationships of people who can see, or who can walk, or who have ovaries…it’s offensive.
Your point about divorce making children the state’s business is well-taken. That’s something that seems to concern Liz, also. And that’s why it’s best for the state to be completely out of marriage. Giving it that authority to license and sanction gives it implied authority to license and sanction what comes of it. Families can only be a bastion against state power if they’re not already living under tyranny. Ending tyranny is the most meaningful variable involved in protecting the family’s privacy and autonomy–not asking tyrants to please respect the family a little more.
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I agree! Tyranny is tyranny for all.
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Higharka, you’ve made some statements that puzzle me, and I’d appreciate more information. Based on what you say, the cost of marriage is state-subsidized … am I understanding you correctly? Are you referring to the different tax structures – that singles are taxed more, individually, than couples are? Or are there other subsidies?
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Hey Ms. Took. 🙂
BT: Based on what you say, the cost of marriage is state-subsidized … am I understanding you correctly? Are you referring to the different tax structures – that singles are taxed more, individually, than couples are? Or are there other subsidies?
Yes, the cost of marriage is state-subsidized. Let me list some of the ways that come to mind right off the top of my head, as to America alone (which can all be extrapolated to other western countries with a few alterations in terminology):
1) File storage. The state maintains records of who is married, when they got married, and/or when they got divorced and/or remarried. Those records are maintained in large, very expensive government buildings which are generally built on prime downtown real estate, and which regularly get multi-million-dollar refurbishings. Many states are now spending more millions of dollars to develop extensive web networks of who/when/where as to marriages, then putting up expensive websites to make that information available worldwide, 24/7.
2) Personnel. All that file storage is handled by paid personnel. People with Master’s degrees in Library Sciences have to archive and store and update it, and there are managers to oversee that updating, and there are boards of important people who report to legislative committees of more important people to check up on how the file storage/access is going. There are janitors and security staff to clean and protect the information, and fire inspectors to inspect the storage areas. There are secretaries to answer the phones when someone calls in about the information, and there are committees that meet to formulate policies on who may access that information, and when, and where, and why.
3) Legal supervision of the family. In order to provide for state control of marriage, states need to codify laws which standardize how marriages are handled. This requires using massively expensive legislative, executive, and judicial buildings in every State and County, in order to make available officials who can grant authority to enter into or dissolve a marriage. Legislators have staffs of secretaries, law clerks, and legal assistants who draft, negotiate, research, and publicly defend alterations to marriage-related statutes, all being paid from public funds. Legislators then pass their bills on to executives, who have even larger staffs, who then sign the bill, and who must then (in theory) enforce it.
To provision for divorce, America has to maintain a gigantic (billions of dollars) network of family courts which operate 24/7/365 to negotiate marriage dissolution, child custody, supervised visits, alimony, support, postnuptial agreements, property division, et cetera. These courts almost always require prime downtown real estate (more multi-million-dollar buildings), parking, traffic congestion, wood paneled walls, jury boxes, chairs, evidence rooms, cafeterias, judicial offices…and then the judges need secretaries, and salaries, and benefits, and black robes, and law clerks, and updated law books, and computers, and printers, and copiers, and paper, and toner, and envelopes, and postage, and special date/time stamps, and gavels, and bailiffs…and the bailiffs need guns, and criminology courses, and self defense courses, and the courtrooms need flags, and janitors, and furniture repair specialists, and managers trained to manage the secretaries who answer the phone on the jury information line…
4) Medical supervision of the family. Because marriage is a state institution, the training and licensing of physicians, nurses, physician assistants, hospitals, urgent cares, dentists, etc. has to take it into account. All of those professions have to establish special guidelines for dealing with married people’s relationships, which are different from single people’s relationships–and all of those professions have to train their members to know those rules and to abide by them. Universities and trade schools have to hire experienced professionals who can train students to establish and update hospital guidelines handling how marriage privacy issues will differ from single privacy issues.
This could go on, with regards to law enforcement, schools, and private business. The actual filing process–the dinky county fees that people pay to get married or divorced–is essentially zero when compared to the massive and constant costs of making marriage a state affair. This says nothing, of course, about the non-monetary costs of state-marriage upon all of these people.
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Okay, so you’re talking about the cost of bureaucracy. These same costs apply to all aspects of society; they aren’t unique to marriage. So to my mind, this is not relevant as an argument against same-sex marriage.
If you want to argue against encroaching government, inflated bureaucracy, and the effects of a giant tangle of red tape on the so-called “Land of the Free”, I’ll have no argument with you at all… 🙂
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Ms. Took,
Yes, bureaucracy costs a lot. That’s why we should be extremely cautious when (if at all) requiring people to pay for anything that could give rise to bureaucracy.
When it comes to a social issue like “serial murder,” there seems to be a lot of justification for provisioning a court system that can deal with trying and convicting murderers.
When it comes to a social issue like “who wants the state to license their relationship,” though, there seems to be a vast difference between that kind of bureaucracy, and one designed to deal with serial murder. Some people might say that serial murder is several orders of magnitude more important, while others might say that, compared to serial murder, state-licensed sexual intercourse isn’t important at all.
Bureaucracy isn’t horrible just because it’s expensive, but because it’s life-or-death expensive. If you’d looked into some of the articles on tax theft I linked above, you’d see more on that. The existence of billion-dollar “family court” schemes is offensive in and of itself, but it’s all the more offensive to know that such court systems are funded at the point of a gun by the full military and law enforcement might of the United States being leveraged against taxpayers, with the government willing to kill those citizens who resist paying their taxes in order to fund those family court monstrosities.
That’s theft. That’s racketeering. It could be called “noble theft” if it was done for some noble reason (like, say, feeding orphans), and it could be called “noble theft” if it was being done efficiently (by buying food that is transferred directly to orphans), but it is hideous to extract resources from people in order to fund a system of state-licensed interpersonal relationships, and it is made even more hideous in light of how grossly inefficient, expensive, cronyistic, and self-perpetuating the system itself is.
People have recently come to realize how corrupt the Komen foundation is, using breast cancer as a front issue to transfer wealth to some unethical people, but “American marriage” has been using social relationships as a front issue to forcibly transfer wealth to unethical people for over a century.
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i think you’re absolutely right, however, even if lots of people have weird and extreme (perhaps sometimes uneducated – and I’m not excluding myself there) opinions, isn’t it good that society is finally trying to deal with this issue? I mean really, ancient greece was less judgemental and anyone who thinks thats not a problem is wrong
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Leaving the SSM argument aside, your points on speech suppression are spot on as that is the threat of the day as far as I’m concerned. This strategy of not only invalidating one’s opinion because it differs from accepted mainstream liberal thought, but demonizing the person as evil, dangerous, ignorant etc….is out of control and I place most of the blame firmly in the hands of politicians whose objective is to divide society to better gain votes and power. Their minions who flood college campus and internet comment sections merely parrot the vile they hear coming from their own leaders. Mix in insecurity issues and the anonymity of a screen name and things get ugly quick. Western Civilization is in for a heap of trouble if it’s people can’t learn to discuss things rationally and without fear that their fellow countrymen might hold valid opinions different from their own. Corrupt politicians love this actually which should tell you enough.
I’ve been called all sorts of things for merely making my preference known for individual liberty over the heavy hand of government. Things are worse now it seems though as critical thinking is nearly non existent so the insults come quicker.
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Just a note here, my comment is not directed at those who hold far left opinions, but at those on the left or right who try to shut down debate. I see this mostly coming from the left but I know it exists on all ends of the political spectrum.
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Pingback: Is Gay A “Trend”? | Penny Shares Too Much
hey, I referenced (and linked to) this post on my blog 🙂
care to check it out?
and as a starting blogger, I’d be really grateful too if you could give my post/blog a mention on you blog or in real life to your friends 🙂
cheers!
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Thank you for the link, will do 😉
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Here’s an link to an interesting issue everyone, something I’ve been pondering and observing myself, “is gay a trend?”
https://pennysharestoomuch.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/is-gay-a-trend/
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thanks! 🙂
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I was very sad to see the front page story of the gay pride rally in the park, and the picture of the little toddler with two gay men in the Coeur d’Alene Press (http://cdapress.com/news/local_news/article_64f80a65-9ddd-5659-99e2-15c259ba5380.html). When I pointed out the article to a lady at work, she told me of her two lesbian friends who are into the foster care business. It breaks my heart! I wonder if these gay and lesbian people have heard about Jesus, or understood the magnitude of their sins? Or, have they been given over to a depraved and reprobate mind for refusing to acknowledge God? Sin is sin, and I hope they will repent and find salvation through Jesus Christ before its too late, before these little children have to suffer.
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It really can be heart breaking. There are a group of grown children of gay parents, that love their parents very much, but they speak out about some of the problems that stem from being denied their other parent, from not having experiences with the other gender growing up. They blog, they write articles, they’ve testified before congress. We don’t often think of these things from a child’s perspective, but kids often pay the price for their parent’s choices.
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Very sad!
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Unavoidable thoughts:
1. “Same sex marriage” is an oxymoron.
2. Marriage is a contract between parties, not something conferred upon the parties by church or state.
3. A public interest arises only out of the reproductive basis of the contract. Removing reproduction also removes any plausible public interest.
It is pathetic enough but also pretty funny to watch the Supremes squirming past these straightforward legalities so as to provide the desired outcome. We have moved from the Rule of Law to the Rule of Jaw … And Humpty Dumpty rules our lexicon.
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