Friday, October 10, 2008

Marriage Depreciation

I remember growing up, back in the good ol' days, when people spoke of divorce in hushed tones and references to divorcees were said in a way that you just knew the woman was used goods. Those were the days the Christian Nationalists look back on fondly, days when girls who'd gained a little weight went to live with relatives far away and returned slim as ever, days when people referred to a healthy looking baby as having been delivered "prematurely" (less than 9 months after the child's parents were married) and back when the word bastard still had some sting. Back then, the only people that did anything to devalue marriage were those uppity black men who married trashy women and the aforementioned divorcees.

Nowadays, it's those damned liberals trying to ruin the institution of marriage by letting teh gayz do it too and they're not limiting it to the granola states like California, they've pushed it through in Massachusetts and may soon have legalized gay marriage in Connecticut too. Terrance posted a diary about the CT Supreme Court's decision to overturn the ban on gay marriage and included some info on those trying to get Proposition 8 approved in California (that will overturn the decision to allow SSM). According to Terrance's post, Karen England, campaign manager for Yes on Proposition 8, was a bit put out that Brad Pitt (or anyone else, for that matter) would be trying to sway people against the initiative. Per England:
"Homosexual marriage will harm married couples and our nation's children. Redefining marriage means that all marriages will immediately be devalued. "
Can Ms England please supply some actual descriptions of how anyone's marriage is harmed the marriage of another couple. Is she saying marriage will be of less utility/worth (after all, it's been "devalued") because there will be some sort of decreased demand for marriage licenses or that married straight couples will suddenly divorce en masse (as if they're not doing that already) or straight couples will stop getting married because we're letting the riff-raff get married too? How, exactly, will marriage be devalued? If good Christian heterosexuals (3 words I gather they consider redundant) refuse to get married because gay couples can, and do so because they think a marriage license meaningless due to the fact that gay couples can marry, the straight couples are the ones who have suddenly decided to value marriage less. If they limit themselves to religious marriage without benefit of obtaining a state license, the institution of marriage hasn't been devalued at all - those couples have just chosen to get married without the option of obtaining the rights conferred on married couples by the government. In this case, their marriages can still be the picture of Christian Salvation marriage is supposed to be - just like those performed in polygamist sects claim their non-legal marriages are.

Ms. England goes on to say:
Young children will be exposed to all sorts of unhealthy variations on marriage: one man and three women, two men and a woman, and eventually marriage with minors. Destroying the government-transcending definition of marriage will have far-reaching implications that we cannot even predict at this time because no society has ever survived such an anti-social experiment.
Huh? Well at least England doesn't seem to have the same fixation on beastiality that Rick Santorum does but she does show an exceptional lack of logic in this argument. Children are already exposed to all sorts of different relationships as they are not always born in wedlock or raised within a stable "traditional" marriage and there's no assurance that those who are will be raised in a stable or healthy environment or that exposure to other relationships are, by default, harmful. As for SSM being sounding the death knell for society, one of the fundamentalist arguments against SSM is that it has never been permitted or accepted in other societies, so how can England rightly say that no society has ever survived it?

Tags: ; ; ; ;

Sphere: Related Content

No comments: