Your Bad Childhood Has Nothing to Do With My Vote

The parade of emotion and complaining continues in the trial against Proposition 8, the California Marriage Amendment. This morning featured more testimony irrelevant to the case, but meant to garner sympathy in the public. Associated Press writer Lisa Leff checks in yet again. I think some of the other news wires are not bothering to report, for now. Perhaps they are waiting for the marriage neutering side to score points?

A gay man testified Wednesday in a federal same-sex marriage trial that the "reversal therapy" he underwent as a teenager to change his sexual orientation drove him to the brink of suicide.

I see the same sort of thing on "Celebrity Rehab" when it comes to issues related to substance abuse as well as sexual behaviors. I'm sure there are polyamorous husbands who feel suicidal when they are undergoing counseling because the wife caught them cheating.

Lawyers for two same-sex couples suing to overturn California's [constitutional amendment] called 26-year-old Ryan Kendall to the witness stand to demonstrate that a person's sexual orientation cannot usually be changed.

First of all, he is one example. Secondly, it doesn't matter if sexual orientation is unchangeable or not. State licensing has conditions based on behavior. It doesn't matter if people of one group or another are more prone to that behavior than others. Someone should not get any more "rights" than anyone else based on their claimed identity. If felons are prevented from owning certain firearms, should homosexual felons be exempt, because of past bigotry, and thus be granted a permit?

[More after the jump.]

Kendall said his parents discovered he was gay as they read his journal when he was 13. He was from a religious family and his mother and father "flipped out," he said.

Even unreligious parents tend to want their kids to do like them – grow up, find someone of the opposite sex, get married, make babies. Some parents are willing to pretend, for the sake of family peace, that it is all the same if their child partners up with someone of the same sex.

"I remember my mother looking at me and telling me I was going to burn in hell," he testified.

Last I checked, according to the Bible that was supposedly her holy book, she's not the one who decides. A preacher on TV told me that if I send him my money, I'll get out of debt. Does that mean the state should make the bank pay off my mortgage?

"My mother would tell me she hated me," he said. "Once she told me she wished she had had an abortion instead of a gay son."

According to what you say, you had a bad mother who acted very unchristianly. So the logical solution to you having a bad mother is overturning the vote of the people? How does that follow?

Campbell cross-examined Kendall gently, asking if he ever believed the therapy could help, since he had been forced to go by his parents.

"Your only goal for conversion therapy was to survive the experience, is that true?" Campbell asked.

"Very true," Kendall answered.

If someone maintains that attitude, no therapy for anything can be successful.

Will the defense be calling people who have undergone the therapy and consider it successful? I sure hope so. How about calling up alcoholics who have fallen off the wagon (or never really got on) and want their suspended driver's licenses back? What if they're Irish - known to be prone to drinking (yes, I have some Irish roots), and known to have been oppressed in the past?

It should be asked of each of these people testifying if they've ever tried to obtain a marriage license with someone of the opposite sex. If any of them have, then they will have found that they can get one. They can proudly proclaim their sexual orientation while waving a rainbow flag - and the county clerk will give them a license - as long as there is a bride and a groom who are of age and unmarried.

This fellow's bad childhood had nothing to do with my vote. However, the childhood of future generations did.