{"id":31549,"date":"2012-11-05T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T13:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=31549"},"modified":"2012-11-05T07:11:27","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T13:11:27","slug":"nothing-but-lousy-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=31549","title":{"rendered":"Holding My Nose"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since the idea of the Marriage Amendment was broached, I’ve been deeply, intensely ambivalent about it.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, I’m a libertarian-conservative. \u00a0Indeed, I’m a libertarian-conservative before I’m a Republican. \u00a0I think government should get out of the way of peoples’ rights.<\/p>\n

And that means gay peoples’ rights, too. \u00a0One of the fundamental tenets of all conservatism, especially libertarian conservatism, is that we are all equal before the law. Or at least we should be.<\/p>\n

But I’ve found many of the arguments against the Marriage Amendment to be intensely disohonest.<\/p>\n

“If you don’t support gay marriage, you are a bigot”<\/strong>: Nope. \u00a0Not only do I support equal\u00a0rights\u00a0<\/em>for gays, but I guarantee you I’ve put more on the line against genuine hatred of gays than you have, pretty much whoever you are. \u00a0(No, I’m not going into details). \u00a0Anyone using this ‘argument” – it’s not an argument, it’s just browbeating – needs to shut up, go down to the courthouse, and officially renounce their right to vote; they don’t deserve it.<\/p>\n

“It’s about rights”!<\/strong>: \u00a0If only it were.<\/p>\n

I support – and have always supported – civil unions,\u00a0because they equalize gay couples’ civil rights<\/em>. But when you suggest civil unions – which are (or can and should be made to be)\u00a0exactly\u00a0<\/em>the same in terms of tax,\u00a0probate\u00a0and other legal rights as marriage – as a compromise, the fangs come out. \u00a0“It’s a second-class institution!”, they say – which completely upends the “it’s about rights” argument. \u00a0It’s\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>about rights, it’s about a status.<\/p>\n

“It’s about love!”<\/strong>: \u00a0Now we’re getting somewhere, sort of.<\/p>\n

Marriage is\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>about “love”. \u00a0Love is a vital part of a marriage, of course. \u00a0But saying marriage is “about two people loving each other” trivializes marriage.<\/p>\n

Of course, the institution has become more and more trivialized over the past fifty years or so. \u00a0The cultural left has tried to give marriage, the institution, the death of a thousand cultural cuts over the past generation or two. \u00a0No-fault divorce has, over time, led to such a debasement of the institution that the term “starter marriage” is tossed about with a chuckle and a wink in polite society. \u00a0“But what about all the people who used to stay in miserable marriages for fifty years?”, the well-meaning cultural lefties respond. \u00a0No argument here – a miserable marriage is a terrible thing…<\/p>\n

…for everyone but one participant. \u00a0The children. \u00a0One of the cultural left’s most self-indulgent conceits is that children are happier with divorced, “happy” parents than married miserable ones. \u00a0It is simply not true. \u00a0The children\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>happier if their miserable parents put on a happy face and sack up and\u00a0focus on raising them\u00a0<\/em>rather than indulging their own happiness (barring real, serious abuse – which, Lifetime movies notwithstanding, is a minority). \u00a0It is a fact<\/a>, and it is immutable, and ignoring it destroys children and turns them into miserable dysfunctional adults. \u00a0And about half of parents today aren’t up to the job.<\/p>\n

While cultural critics of traditional marriage point out that marriage has taken many forms in many societies, and even evolved considerably in our own society, when you strip away all the variants, it always boils down to A Guy and A Gal getting together to try to have and raise children. \u00a0Sometimes more than one guy, more often more than one gal, but usually one of each, and with a gender-count invariably stuck at two.<\/p>\n

And the fact that society sees marriage as something\u00a0other\u00a0<\/em>than “the best place to raise children” that is perhaps the greatest symptom of the trivialization of the institution. \u00a0When gay marriage advocates say “you don’t need to have kids to be married” – they have a point. \u00a0The Catholic Church until recently wouldn’t marry people that didn’t procreate; in some protestant parts of Western Europe until fairly recently, an engaged couple wouldn’t marry until they were expecting.<\/p>\n

The institution has become so trivialized that in many parts of the country, it’s becoming a formality for a minority; in some major Blue-state cities, most co-habiting couples are not married. \u00a0In some parts of the country – by no means all inner cities – most babies are born out of wedlock.<\/p>\n

And all of us – cultural conservatives and liberal alike – have allowed it to happen.<\/p>\n

“Why shouldn’t all these wondeful, loving gay families have the same status as conventional families?”<\/strong>: \u00a0This one’s a little better. \u00a0Given the epidemic of single-parent homes in this country, and the social pathologies it’s producing, I’ll say this; if a child has a choice between being adopted by a single parent or a gay couple, I’d say go with the couple; if nothing else, it’s a lot easier to raise kids when you can do one-on-one or double-team defense than if you have to play zone.<\/p>\n

And somewhere in that statement is a backhanded reason I’d almost support gay marriage in and of itself; the way the argument’s been presented so far,\u00a0every\u00a0<\/em>gay couple is a perfect, loving pair of superparents, as opposed to us nasty, dysfunctional,\u00a0human\u00a0<\/em>breeders. \u00a0If you were to legalize gay marriage, at least gay couples would be liberated from their image as perfect superhumans; the TV show\u00a0Cops\u00a0<\/em>would no doubt soon feature police responding to an impeccable Warehouse District loft to drag a drunk (and impeccably-coiffed) guy in a husband-beater T-shirt and boxers down to jail after a domestic disturbance, as the bloody-nosed partner yells “I love you, Derek! \u00a0I’ll be here when you get back” through his tears.<\/p>\n

I’ll return from facetious-land now.<\/p>\n

But here’s one big gnarly fact of human emotional development that the left – not just the gay marriage movement, but the entire cultural left (many of whom are as homophobic as the most caricatured southern baptist) – want to kill and bury;\u00a0Gender matters<\/em>. \u00a0There’s a reason that the social institution we call “marriage”, throughout human society, is always a mixed-doubles sport; because whatever you believe created humanity in all of our complexity – God, biochemistry, L. Ron Hubbard or remorseless fate – created us so that as the human mind develops emotionally, all other things equal, it is best served by having a male and a female parent. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>There are vast swathes of studies showing that, all other things being equal, kids develop best emotionally with two parents, one of each gender. \u00a0Female parents – mothers – provide empathy and nurturing and show boys what women are supposed to be like; Fathers teach risk-tolerance and socialized aggressiveness and show their daughters what a guy is supposed to be, ideally (and yes, that’s in functional families, and yes, any individusal person and couple may be different). \u00a0Single-parent households produce children who lack one of those sets of traits in their upbringing.<\/p>\n

Which isn’t to say that gay parents can’t do a good job; they just bring a double-helping of one set of tools to the table.<\/p>\n

But that’s OK – it’s a non-issue; I support gay adoption, because it’s better than many of the alternatives.<\/p>\n

That is why the left’s argument that a vote against gay marriage is like a vote for Jim Crow, for “Separate but Equal”, for slavery, is so very wrong. \u00a0Black and white men are biologically the same species; so are black and white women. \u00a0But men and women are, in fact, very very different – and they’ve very different for a reason.<\/p>\n

Men and women, black and white, should all have equal rights<\/em> under the law. \u00a0Even if their affectional orientation is toward the same sex.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

\u00a0So How About That Marriage Amendment?<\/strong><\/div>\n

Dennis Prager had an excellent article in the National Review<\/a> last week:<\/p>\n

Proponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is keeping the definition of marriage as man-woman fair to gays? Opponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is same-sex marriage good for society?<\/p>\n

Few on either side honestly address the question of the other side. Opponents of same-sex marriage rarely acknowledge how unfair the age-old man-woman definition is to gay couples. And proponents rarely, if ever, acknowledge that this unprecedented redefinition of marriage may not be good for society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Prager cuts to the crux of the issue; it’s really two issues:<\/p>\n