Marriage Under Attack!
Posted by: Amelia McDonell-Parry
Filed in:
news
1:00PM, Thursday November 6th 2008
One of the biggest defenses used by people who are not in favor of gay marriage—even from those who don’t oppose civil unions or other gay rights issues—is that marriage is an institution that’s founded on connecting mothers and fathers to their children. Writes Jennifer Roback Morse for the National Review, in her article “8 Is Not Hate”:
“I view marriage as a gender-based institution that attaches mothers and fathers to each other and to their children. Those of us who support Proposition 8 believe that children deserve at least the chance to have a relationship with a mom and a dad. That isn’t hateful toward anyone.”
Righty-o! Using “the children” as a shield for bigotry seems like shifty parenting to me, but whatevs. When the divorce rate is at 50% in this country, marriage is already under attack—by straight people!
Rachel Kramer Bussel discusses this article on her blog, saying:
“I am not anti-marriage and think it’s fine to have that as an ideal, but to pretend that that ideal in any way approximates reality makes some pretty assinine assumptions….It’s interesting in a horrifying kind of way to see just how stubbornly people are clinging to that institution, and want to “protect” it from those who would seemingly threaten it, which of course makes no sense when it’s dying anyway, clearly.”So true. My parents divorced after I had gone away to college, so I did get that warm and cuddly childhood with both parents—it was nice! But my friend Andrea grew up with two moms—her dad went AWOL when she was born, her mom came out as a lesbian and had the same partner for all of her childhood, so Andrea also enjoyed the luxury of a two-parent household. They just both happened to be women. Another friend of mine, her parents are still married—but her dad is a total a-hole, barely engaged her in conversation for most of her teenage years, and wasn’t particularly loving to her mother either. Clearly, having married parents was super fun for her. The point is, parents rule or suck, regardless of whether they’re married or not. And besides that, to argue that marriage is for parents is to ignore the fact that gay people can have children, through a variety of different methods (adoption, surrogacy, in-vitro, and, duh, intercourse). If marriage is such a wonderful institution to raise children in, shouldn’t children of gay men and women enjoy it too? Unless, of course, being anti-gay marriage is just one step closer towards preventing homosexuals from becoming parents…
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Mike
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 01:18 pm: [report]
On Tuesday, at least one state voted in a law that prevented unmarried couples from adopting children. And guess what kind of couples can’t get married?
Also, a lot of campaigning was done in support of proposition 8 in order to “prevent gay marriage from being taught in schools”. What does that even mean?
Simcha
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 01:22 pm: [report]
Didn’t anyone else love the show My Two Dads? I thought Nicole was the luckiest girl in the world!
Olivia
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 01:23 pm: [report]
Anti-gay marriage laws disgust me!
I’m straight but I support gay rights and don’t see ANYTHING wrong with people living their lives “differently” from me.
I personally don’t believe in marriage and do not see myself entering into that institution ever, but if others want to get married, regardless of what sexual orientation they have, then why should I, or anyone else stop them??
And you know what, even if I did want to get married I don’t think I would. Not until EVERYONE had the right to.
Kiki T
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 01:25 pm: [report]
hee hee Simcha—and let’s not forget, Full House! Those girls had three dads and what happened? Billionaire Fashion Icons!
Karmatir
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 03:06 pm: [report]
So does that mean if you don’t have, want or can’t have kids you shouldn’t be married either?? That has to be why my marriage failed! I knew it was something besides the ex losing his mind!
Rachel Kramer Bussel
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 03:57 pm: [report]
Simcha - My Two Dads! I loved that show. I also really liked the one about the girl who could stop time. It’s funny cause I rarely watch TV these days but that’s how I’d occupy many a night (and afternoon) as a kid, and I was obsessed.
whostolemyhamslice
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 04:26 pm: [report]
Wow Amelia, you cling to your stated position like head lice don’t you. Unfortunately, their is several holes in your argument, all of which relate to your implied blame on straight people for the 50% divorce rate. Similar to what I wrote on your last post relating to gay marriage, heterosexual couples have only in the last forty years seen such a dramatic uptick in divorces. What is the cause of such high divorce rates you ask? It is not “straight people,” since heterosexual couples had historically low divorce rates until recently. Instead, it has to do with legislative practices that started during the fifties and sixties. Basically, marriage works like incentives, and if you lessen the insentive of either party to stay married, then they simply won’t and divorce rates will climb. Society had no idea of these ramifications when they passed many of those laws, and since then, we have all these unhappy children growing up in divorced households, increasing levels of loneliness amongst single men and women, and recently, increased suicide rates amongst middle aged women (google it) which is directly related to their diminished societal worth once they are older and less able to find a mate. My point is, you shouldn’t go screwing around with something as important as marriage if you don’t fully understand the gravity of the societal implications thereafter.
Rachel Kramer Bussel
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 04:41 pm: [report]
@whostolemyhamslice - but again, how is allowing same-sex couples to marry “screwing around with” marriage as an institution? Why should straight people’s divorce rates be affected by same-sex marriage? I still fail to see how letting two men or two women get married threatens marriage/the family structure as a whole. There is no valid argument for denying same-sex couples the same right.
Now, I will give Jennifer Roback Morse credit for not being out and out homophobic of the “gay people should go to hell ASAP” variety, but that still doesn’t make it right. (same for Obama) Yes, you may know and love gay (and, if I may add, bisexual) people, great. But why not let them get married? The idea that that will somehow harm people not in that specific marriage is just ludicrous.
istoleyourhamslice
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 04:45 pm: [report]
@whostolemyhamslice
“you shouldn’t go screwing around with something as important as marriage”
Clearly 50% of previously married people shouldn’t have been screwing around with something as important as marriage either. Let’s just ban marriage for everyone!
Anabel
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 04:48 pm: [report]
Maybe the 50% of divorced couples who split because they had “no more incentives” should take a cue from happy gay couples and get married and work on their marriage and stay married for a little thing called LOVE.
Croutons
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 04:53 pm: [report]
Fortunately, polls consistently show that young Americans overwhelming reject anti-gay bigotry. So while the present reality may suck, it’s a just a matter of time before all the WhoStoleMyHamSlices of the world are DEAD, DEAD, DEAD - and this, one of the last remaining hurdles to universal equality, fades into the shameful shadows of history. Time is not on your side, HamSlice. And by the way, everyone knows that people who spend their time on random websites ranting against gay marriage only do so because they are just big CLOSET HOMOS WHO CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT HOT, STICKY, HOMO SEX - so why don’t you close this browser window, and click over to the other one that we all know is JAM-PACKED FULL OF THE RED-HOT, THROBBING GAY PORN YOU FEVERISHLY MASTURBATE TO EVERY NIGHT OF YOUR PATHETIC, ANGRY, LITTLE LIFE.
Lynn
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 08:20 pm: [report]
@whostolemyhamslice - what laws are you referring to?
afp1
wrote on November 6 2008 @ 09:00 pm: [report]
@whostolemyhamslice
Your quote, ” ...recently, increased suicide rates amongst middle aged women (google it) which is directly related to their diminished societal worth once they are older and less able to find a mate,” is very offensive to women.
You seem to have some mental image that women just LIVE FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE TO SUCK DICK. I hardly believe that increased suicide rates have jack #&@$% to do with not being able to get any, as the word “mate” implies. Women are not baby factories, and they certainly not killing themselves over something as stupid as what you have implied.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with a larger population at all. Our vaginas told us to do it.
par3
wrote on November 7 2008 @ 05:24 am: [report]
i don’t know why people are defending the ‘constitution of marriage’ so adamantly where it doesn’t even exist anymore in the sex obsessed adulterous pedophilic society america lives in. if they want marriage give it to them for what it’s worth i’m so sick of people living with their heads up their asses.
Milla
wrote on November 7 2008 @ 07:43 am: [report]
Thank you guys for not dropping this issue—a lot of folks feel like we got slapped in the face on Tuesday, and the Obama win was tinged with a lot of sadness. None of the anti-rights groups can give us a good reason why we should privilege heterosexual marriage/parenting, and I would guess that it’s because there isn’t one. People seem to think that the 1950’s model of marriage has been the one since the dawn of time. Well, it. . . hasn’t. The institution of marriage has been changing for a long, long time (as Jon Stewart pointed out, check out the politics of marriage in medieval kingdoms. Same thing as a mom, dad, and two kids, right?) and this change is the next step.