Here is a recent exchange that occured over at Pearl Diver.
So Miss California got baited and reeled in at the Miss USA Pageant.
[...]
First, We the People speak our minds and establish that in California, marriage is between one man and one woman. Then, our “little Miss,” responds to a loaded question posed by gay blogger, Perez Hilton, with a very diplomatic, but firm response, “I think in my country, in my family, I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised.”
It makes me laugh that she’s receiving heat over this as if she wasn’t asked the question in the first place. What was she supposed to do, tell a lie? Or not respond? Or apologize for her opinion? Yeah that’s tolerance for you.
Miss California answered a question honestly as she should. So ... What is the problem?
[...]
She was true to her values and morals and had the courage to state it. That's what America stands for and that's the kind of women that deserves to be MISS AMERICA.
A commenter who is against the CA Marriage Amendment said:
Let's go back 50 years ago... If I say to the TV audience: "Marriage is only between a white woman and a white man; and only a black man and a black woman; but never a white man and a black woman."
I am also expressing free speech. But we all know it is offensive and wrong. But 50 years ago, a black man and a white woman marrying was ILLEGAL.
The racist analogy backfires on SSMers.
The identify filter of racism was repudiated. It had brought selective sex segregation under the auspices of marriage. It had affronted the principles of responsible procreation. White Supremacy used marriage as a shield and aggressively embedded identity politics into the law of the land and into the culture.
The gay identity filter is closely analogous with the racist identity filter. It too would bring selective sex segregation under the umbrella of a foundational social institution that unites the sexes. It too would affront the integration of fatherhood and motherhood. The SSM campaign would use marriage as a means to innoculate gay identity politics against opposition and dissent.
The behavior of Perez Hilton and the defense of his actions by SSMers far and wide serve to exemplify the vulgarity that identity politics brings to public discourse and, if pressed into the law, the injustice it foists on jurisprudence and, yes, the bigotry it seeps into the culture.
Fifty years ago where the anti-miscegenation system existed (for this was not universal) there was no flaw in marriage. The flaw was the identity politics that trumped the core meaning of marriage in the law and social policy. Today there is no flaw in marriage but identity politics of the gaycentric kind is presented as a trump card against sex integration and provision for responsible procreation.
The imposition of SSM may seem more benign in the eyes of the proponents of SSM, but it would be no less unjust than the anti-miscegenation system was.
Interracial marriage laws were repealed because of race, not sex. Their repeal didn't try to redefine the institution of marriage as something it was not - it remained the union between a man and a woman. The laws were repealed on the grounds that they applied unequally to men and women because of race.
Gay activists now are trying to equate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (written to establish equal protection regardless of race) to a whole new class of individuals - homosexuals. This application is not based on any fundamental "gayness" but rather, on the outward expression of homosexuality. In other words, gay activists want to define a protected class status based on actions.
Gays, however, are not disfranchised from marriage as interracial couples were. Gays can get married according to both religious and civil law. No rights are infringed, only a perceived "unfairness" that gays cannot marry each other. Several other classes of people cannot marry each other: siblings, cousins, underage children, or more than two people.
Are these classes then not granted their civil rights? Of course not. And neither are gays.
And I'll add that domestic partnership is not illegal in California. The Marrige Amendment re-affirmed the same text that was approved as a statutory provision about 10 years ago by the voters of that state; shortly after that vote the Legislature enacted domestic partnership as a limited alternative to marital status.
However, the California gay lobby then pressed for a localized merger of domestic partnershp with marital status in all-but-name. The Legislature rushed to enact such a merger, against the affirmation that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.
The CA judiciary then used that localized merger as an excuse to overturn the affirmation of marriage as unconstitutional. It then mandated the merger of domestic partnershp with marriage in name as well.
In so doing, neither the gay lobby, the pro-SSM legislators, nor the CA high court managed to articulate a plausible basis for gay union, much less for the outright merger with marriage.
And the pro-marriage movement responded and won the election that ratified the California Marriage Amendment. This is the beauty of a Free Society, that marriage can be defended, that the constitution can be the repository of our highest principles, and that identity politics can be pushed back from its imposition as a peculair sectarianism.
Totally inept comparison. On multiple levels. The interracial marriage is still a marriage. If you asked people fifty years ago if it interracial marriages should be legal – that would be a quite different response on if it they personally apposed. Today a lot of Black women oppose interracial marriage on the basis of solidarity between black men & women – and a lack of desirable black male mates (An opinion I don’t consider either bigoted or racist)
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough a lot of the anti-miscegenation laws were passed in the 1930’s and were not part of Jim Crow. Rather they were passed as part of the Eugenics movement a very “progressive” cause championed by the educated elites and judicial elites at the time. This is evidenced buy their popularity outside the South in places like California that had no segregation & the fact that they included other “races” like Asians and the like.
Sexual orientation is no more relevant to the institution of marriage than skin color is. I'm 100% certain the Loving court would have agreed.
ReplyDeleteOne man, one woman. Regardless of race, regardless of "orientation".
Separate simply isn't equal.
There is a lot to attack in the poor "interracial marriage" analogy.
ReplyDeleteFirst, those who do not recognize same-sex 'marriage' often argue from the basis of the natural complementarity of the sexes and the capacity of healthy married couples to produce children.
That position also refutes anti-miscegenation sentiment: If God and nature saw fit to make the sexes compatible across races, laws barring such marital unions are trying to suppress an inherent aspect of natural order.
Second, we generally recognize that someone who would say "I could never marry someone of a different race..." is racist.
Then why do we let someone whose position implies "I could never marry someone of a different sex..." get away with expressing that kind of aversion?
This is partly a jest, but also partly serious. How consistently are we to take accusations of bigotry?
Let's grant for the sake of argument that anti-pseudogamists are as bigoted as racists. But if it's bigoted to oppose recognizing same-sex 'marriage' in law, isn't it also bigoted for someone who thinks himself heterosexual to oppose personally dating and marrying someone of the same sex?
Just because he has a deep personal aversion to or disinterest in the relationship is no excuse, by the pseudogamists' argument, since in their minds deep personal aversion or disinterest is just what's motivating defenders of marriage.
This is a reductio ad absurdum, but be warned: some radicals in fact claim that those who are unwilling to experiment with homosexual relationships are "homophobes."
It's no joke Kevin. What are we to make of the man who says "I could never love a woman, because she's a woman!" other than that the man is a sexist bigot?
ReplyDeleteOr of the woman who refuses to allow her children to have a father of their own, because (gasp!) that would mean she'd have to have a MAN around the house! Misandry anyone?
It's one thing to be a quiet racist or sexist bigot -- it's quite another to inflict your bigotry upon your own children.
Day by Day has a good comic on this also...
ReplyDeleteKevin asks: But if it's bigoted to oppose recognizing same-sex 'marriage' in law, isn't it also bigoted for someone who thinks himself heterosexual to oppose personally dating and marrying someone of the same sex?I predict that this will indeed be the next step neutered marriage advocates will take once they find that opinions have not changed as much as they'd have liked. They will argue that not only prejudice against the person has to be combatted, but that "prejudice" against the acts that homosexuals perform must be combatted as well. To that end, they will then argue, they must work to make students more open to the idea of same-sex sex for themselves, not just for others. They will argue that hostility to the acts is at the root of anti-gay bigotry and whatever is left of opposition to neutered marriage, and that the only way to conquer this is to confront people's personal horror of the acts.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this won't happen right away, but when they have reached what they feel is the "point-of-no-return" on SSM, when they feel the opposition has no chance, then see what will happen next.