Got Pure Milk > Why I Oppose Gay Marriage

Clark H Smith, I am the author

This article was originally a response to a former friend's post on Facebook. I'll eventually re-edit it.

A friend of mine recently posted this image - a lady (sorry, someone who has the outward appearance of a female human) holding a sign that reads “Claiming that someone else’s marriage is against your religion is like being mad at someone for eating a doughnut because you’re on a diet.” The sign is intended to be an in-your-face to opponents of homosexual marriage. Back to this in a moment.

(Not just in the last week) I’ve have been thinking very carefully about why I am opposed to homosexuality and to marriage between homosexuals. Then I struggled with how to express that opposition in a way that didn’t incite more vindictiveness and doughnut signs against PROPONENTS of heterosexuality and heterosexual marriage. It’s not easy. It’s not easy because of an obscure but important point of law: prior restraint. Prior restraint is censorship imposed, usually by a government, on expression before the expression actually takes place. That expression could be either words or action deemed harmful to an individual or society. The movie Minority Report focused on the premise of prior restraint.

In other words, my personal objection to homosexuality and to marriage between homosexuals is based solely on something that has not yet happened, but that I believe will happen. Obviously, the world did not end and my children and grandchildren were not harmed in the moment/hour/day/week that SCOTUS handed down their decision on the matter.

My argument against homosexuality and to marriage between homosexuals is two-fold. First, homosexual behavior is scientifically aberrant behavior. *I* didn’t say that. Every biology science book in the world (now) says that. Evolution (also once a scandalous idea now warmly embraced by this culture) teaches us that preservation of the species is a “biological imperative” - it HAS TO BE DONE! (read more here: http://www.followillustrated.com/2012/05/move-your-dadgum-foot.html)

Second, it is my belief that homosexual marriage does something harmful to society. Some proponents of homosexual marriage are very honest about their goal to legalize homosexual marriage as a step in a larger mission “to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution." (Read more here for the source and context of that quote:
http://www.followillustrated.com/2012/05/burn-all-books.html)

What is that “archaic institution”? It is the interwoven fabric of the Judeo-Christian culture from which this nation was crafted, upon which millions have staked their lives and fortunes, and for which millions have died to defend. It is a culture that is underpinned by moral tenets found in these historic religions - moral tenets that provide affirmation for those who follow those tenets and antagonizes those who behave in ways offensive to those tenets.

In short, homosexuality and marriage between homosexuals can only be engaged in freely in this culture if the moral fabric of the culture is rewoven.

The issue of prior restraint enters in here because of what people, me included, *think* will happen if the moral fabric of our culture is rewoven. I point you again to my Follow Illustrated blog post above: “Move Your Dadgum Foot”. In that post, I explain the salient aspects of heterosexual marriage: it stabilizes relationships, it stabilizes families, it stabilizes communities, it stabilizes nations. (It is absurd to have to explain why and how, so I shall not do so here - but ask me if you don’t understand.) And in that word “stabilize” we have the entire problem. Many people have preferences for behaviors that culture has deemed “destabilizing” and culture tries to keep those preferences from becoming behaviors. Stabilizing is also known as preserving or “conserving” as in "Conservative".

Let me give you an example… and don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about doughnut lady.

How many of you have money in a bank? Most of us? Good. Insured by FDIC and all that. Aren’t you glad to know that your paycheck goes into a bank that is regulated (dare I say “stabilized”?) by the FDIC so you have confidence your money won’t be "liberated" due to criminal, unscrupulous, or foolish behavior? You do feel good about that, right? I don’t have to explain to you why having stable banks is good for our modern economy, do I?

But what would you say to a new law that forced banks into destabilizing practices? Now, is that a good idea? Bah! Of course not. Bad idea. Never happen!

On the contrary, I give you The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA, P.L. 95-128, 91 Stat. 1147, title VIII of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.). The CRA was an effort to encourage banks to stop discriminating against low-income/high-risk home buyers. That’s a good thing right? Everyone is against discrimination, right? In fact, in 1977, if I was against the CRA I would be called a racist, prejudiced bigot because the CRA was focused on inner-city (largely minority) populations who had, historically, been given the crumbs of the American pie. To live in the sparkling tree-lined suburbs of America and deny the American dream of home ownership to those hardworking, under-served, under-privileged, over-discriminated folk who deserved the same aspirations as “the rest of us” was downright unna’Merican.

So, a liberal Democratic President and two liberal Democratic houses of Congress (both with filibuster-proof 60% super-majorities) passed into law the CRA which would be the crown jewel and billy club of ACORN and other community organizers right up until the economic collapse of 2008 which was caused, in very large part, due to high-risk, sub-prime loans banks were forced to make for the prior thirty years under CRA. You can look it up.

In 1977, if I were protesting the CRA - and if there were a Facebook - someone would be holding up a sign saying “Protesting the CRA is like eating a doughnut while forcing the person who baked it to go on a diet.” Or something like that. You see, we all have an innate sense of the wrongness of prior restraint. You can’t punish someone for something they haven’t (yet) done. So, me protesting the CRA in 1977 because I was “dead sure” that in 30 years’ time it would destabilize the world economy and cost investors (individual people who put money in banks and savings accounts and IRAs and 401Ks) trillions of dollars… well, up comes the doughnut sign.

In summation, I believe that homosexuality and marriage between homosexuals is… I’m not going to say “wrong”… I think it is based on unsound thinking that leads to irreparable damage to the fabric of society. How? Again, read my blog article, “Move Your Dadgum Foot”. Here's your bullet points:

Homosexuality is, first and foremost, offensive to the truths of biological science. It is not the Bible that tells us homosexuality is wrong, it is the tomes and tomes of “scientifically proven fact” that argues passionately that same-gender sexual activity is a raw aberration. Don't blame me, blame Darwin.

Second, throughout the long history of homosexual behavior it has not proven to stabilize anything. Irrefutable study after irrefutable study have shown that homosexuals tend to have higher numbers of relationships (focused on sexual behavior) and shorter lasting relationships than heterosexuals. Don’t bark at me, I’m just stating the facts. By a wide margin, homosexuals tend to have less stable relationships than homosexuals. (The dependency a society has on stability is an important matter to discuss. But not here and now. If you object, you object.)

Third, in homes where there are children, homosexual relationships deprive those children of whole and balanced relationships with both genders (in the home, on a daily basis, sharing in nurturing the child, and modeling what the majority heterosexual world is like). In the home of two females, a male child will not grow up learning about the male life from someone close and trusted from whom they feel love. Vice versa.

Fourth, as has been witnessed in less than a week following the SCOTUS decision, polygamy has been demanded as the next lifestyle deserving “equal protection under the law”. Please, don’t tell me I have to explain what’s wrong with polygamy. Please! This evidences the “slippery slope” Conservatives dread with all their lives. (By the way, do homosexuals agree that male + multiple females is a "born this way" condition?)

Fifth and most importantly, when you eventually strip all moral fiber out of a culture, when you finally wind up with “anything goes”, you do not end up with a infinitely tolerant culture, you end up with an intensely INtolerant culture. When self-expression is unchecked and uncontrolled you have essential lawlessness because, by definition, everyone is a law unto themselves. Example: “I had it first” is a fundamental, stabilizing, conserving moral concept that every child of 5 understands and expects to be true. But when you have devalued all moral tenets as mere impediments to self-expression, you have no right to say, “but we still like this moral tenet.” That again is the “slippery slope” that Conservatives fear.

None of these objections have come to fruition, not yet. The moral fabric of a 400 year old society does not tend to tear overnight. The world economy did not collapse in 1977… but it did nearly collapse in 2008, didn’t it?

It’s 2015. What do I fear? I fear a society in which people with moral values that offend society are shunned.

What’s that? Homosexuals have suffered this shunning from Judeo-Christian moralists for millennia. Yup. Entirely true. Judeo-Christian society has, for millennia, lived by a moral code that IT DID NOT CREATE (according to the Jews and Christians - unlike homosexuals who have created their own moral code). The moral code of Jews and Christians came from a source above and beyond them. It was not authored by them so as to permit their own “preferences of self-expression”. That code did not begin and end with “love the one you’re with”. That moral code taught Jews and Christians to put others first, have compassion on others, serve others, aspire to righteousness, and all that stuff. This new moral code is no higher, no nobler, no more aspirational than “if it feels good do it” (In his majority decision, Justice Kennedy calls this “freedom of expression”). Prior restraint prohibits me from stopping the decay that I anticipate, but can’t enumerate, can’t validate. Does that mean it is not going to happen?

Does that mean it is not going to happen?

Oh, about that doughnut lady. I completely agree. Eating a doughnut is an immediately-gratifying, self-indulgent act, and done habitually, can be harmful to one’s health. The person on a diet has forsaken self-indulgence for the sake of the delayed gratification / reward found in a healthy lifestyle. There is no doubt that the doughnut-eater feels “judged” by the dieter, but in reality, the doughnut-eater feels self-condemnation for his/her lack of wisdom, courage, and discipline to behave in ways that are healthy over the long run. Rather than change to healthy behaviors, the doughnut-eater blames the dieter for making them feel bad about themselves. In a culture of victimization, anybody that feels bad is all right (it's their freedom of expression that is being trampled) and anyone who makes them feel bad is all wrong... regardless of the underlying behavior.

Am I angry? Given that we now have socialized medicine, if I’m angry, it may be that I am angry because I live in a society where I and the rest of society has to share the cost for the consequences of doughnut-face-stuffing… down the road, oh say, 30 years in the future. I’m certainly not angry with the doughnut-eater personally, he/she has freedom of expression. The Supreme Court said so.

No comments:

Post a Comment