No, and here’s why…

(A special guest post by Wayne Kerr)

Same sex marriage is unnatural, and therefore immoral. Because, clearly, everything “unnatural” is bad, and everything “natural” is good. Like … antibiotics and automobiles are bad and earthquakes and hemorrhoids are good.

And, of course, being sexually attracted to the same sex is totally unnatural. That’s why those who are gay go to special camps. I’ve heard it takes years to brainwash someone into being gay.

Anyway, it’s definitely unnatural in the sense that nonhuman animals don’t do it. And that’s bad, because … we always take our behavioral cues from nonhuman animals. For example, instead of tossing bugs I find in my kids’ hair, I eat them. And my boys have gotten super adept at lifting their legs when they pee into the neighbors’ bushes.

And if — as some so called “scientists” are discovering — there is actually quite a lot of same sex sexual behavior among nonhuman animals? It’s not adaptive. It’ll be the ruination of their species! So what if evolutionary biologists are finding out that such behavior can help colonies who, for example, have more females, by allowing them to share parenting, or provides more stability to the offspring of males? Data can lie, and I bet that data does, too.

Look, we know same sex relations are unnatural because so few people are actually gay. I mean, really, anything so few people choose to do is obviously “unnatural”, and thus morally problematic. I was just saying this to my spouse as we were watching a documentary on Mount Everest climbers. But — she argued, as she turned off the DVD player and put in a CD of Tuvan throat singers — mountain climbing is healthy and being gay is most certainly not!

Think of “gay sex”. You know what that means. Using your sexual organs in a way they were not meant to be used. Which is unhealthy and dangerous. Which is why heterosexuals absolutely never, and I mean never, perform oral sex, have anal intercourse, or do any of those “gay sex” acts.

Consider the human mouth. It is so clearly meant to function in one way — to feed us! All this other stuff we do with our mouths, like breathing, talking, singing, and kissing — especially if it’s same sex kissing — is so clearly morally problematic. Nature has determined the function of each of our organs, and if you doubt me I will simply remind you that ears are only for listening, not for adornment such as piercings, nor for holding back your (probably gay) long hairdo.

Also, when we look at the purpose of marriage, the reason most of us want the get married, it is clear same sex couples cannot participate in it. I got married because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with the person I love. I wanted someone on my side, a companion I could count on. Same sex couples don’t function that way!! I don’t know why, but I am sure they do not.

Studies show that heterosexual marriage is really good for us, healthwise, and emotionally, and financially. And it is good for society — it encourages stable unions, which are good for raising children, and which tend to curb destructive self-interested behavior, especially among males. Why would we want to allow same sex couples to get in on that? Why can’t they just do their own thing? So what if domestic partner laws offer only a fraction of the protections and benefits of marriage laws? So what if the proliferation of various forms of “marriage lite” is actually confusing the issue of which relationships deserve special social sanction and which do not?

I do not support discrimination against gays, I really don’t. It’s just that I don’t think they should be equal to heterosexuals before the law.

Look, same sex marriage is not “inherently procreative”. It doesn’t matter if some heterosexuals choose not to, or cannot, have children. The symbolism is there in the heterosexual union. Marriage contains within it important norms which are passed on from generation to generation, and they are related to the procreative function of the intimate opposite sex pair bond. Marriage is about engendering respect for the transmission of human life.

Same sex couples cannot procreate. Oh sure, there’s adoption, and IVF, and surrogacy, and many many other ways same sex couples can become parents. But what I really mean is that they cannot have them the proper way, by having sex with each other. This is why heterosexual couples who are infertile are not allowed to have kids, or even get married. Or shouldn’t be.

But the real point is not whether actual heterosexual couples have or don’t have kids. I admit, we don’t make them promise to have kids when they marry, and many heterosexual marriages are happily child-free. But the point is that there’s a societal interest in keeping nuclear families intact, and this is not something same sex couples (or singles) can enjoy. This is why no one in America, least of all Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, or Sheryl Crow, is allowed to have kids unless they are married.

This is also why couples with children are not allowed to divorce, or hardly ever. I mean, if you have kids, and you want to divorce, you have to come up with really good reasons, like “irreconcilable differences”, and those are very hard to come by. Just ask the Gosselins.

Remember how I said before that so few people are gay that it must be an unnatural morally problematic aberration? Well, this is why I think allowing that small minority to marry will ruin marriage for the majority who are heterosexual. Think of how devastating the effects on the 90-95% of the population that is not gay will be of allowing the 5-10% of the population that is gay to marry!! It will be way worse than no fault divorce, which was responsible for the dramatic (40%) increase in the US divorce rate in the 1970s. If you doubt me, just look at the terrible effects of legalizing same sex marriage in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut and Vermont.

Marriage has been our tradition. Oh, I know it may look like marriage has changed a lot over time. For example, arranged marriage for economic reasons, not romantic love was once the norm. And men were once legally allowed to rape or kill their wives, or to take multiple wives. And women were once expected to stay home to raise kids, with men as the breadwinners. But those are just surface changes. Once you have already decided, like I have, that marriage is essentially about the union of a vagina with a penis, you see that marriage has not changed at all in thousands of years!

A good argument if I ever heard one for not changing laws is that they have been our laws for a long time. I mean, a law is a law, and a tradition is a tradition, for a reason, right? Best not to tamper with them!  I can not even think of a bad law in US history, as long as I don’t think about slavery, segregation, rape laws, forced sterilization, restrictive property laws, capital punishment, voting rights, or a host of others.

But the worst is the effect of same sex mariage on the children. Studies show that one effect on kids raised in same sex households is … and this is very upsetting, but bear with me … that they are more tolerant of homosexuality. We can’t allow this! Because being tolerant of homosexuality is the first step to actually being gay. (And this argument is not circular. At. All.) I’m sure of that, even though there is no data to suggest that children of same sex couples are more likely to identify as homosexual. Data can lie. And in this case, it sure does.

I also think it would be really bad for religious freedom. Oh, yes, I know the law says explicitly that religious leaders who perform marriages cannot be forced to carry out marriages contrary to their beliefs. But just because religious protections are written into our US constitution, our state constitutions, and the same sex marriage laws, doesn’t mean anything. I just know there’s a secret loophole, the same one that will force my rabbi to marry a Catholic couple.

You might notice that I haven’t said anything about effects on same sex couples of allowing them to marry. It’s because I don’t care.

Despite the fact that, legally, marriages in the US, as long as they are between two consenting adults, one male and one female, are pretty much anything the couple wants them to be — including the kind where “you live in New York, I will live in L.A, and I will see you every other year” — I am telling you, because I know, that the “essence” of marriage is the “symbolism” of the procreative union.

These other values which supporters of same sex marriage keep trumpeting — social stability, companionship, love, tolerance, acceptance, openness, equality, fairness, safety — are … really not important.

Are they?

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