Thursday, January 19, 2012

Retro Post: Gay Marriage, You're Either For It, Or An Asshole

I largely subscribe to the Socrates quote "all I know is that I know nothing."  I try to continually understand that I am young, and am only an infinitesimal percentage of the world and universe and that my knowledge does not extend very far on a grand scale.  Therefore there are very few things I will assume that I am right about without question.



I'm right about this.

Right, and ironically also left

There is no defensible argument against homosexual marriage to the sane, intelligent, reasoning person.  If you think there is, then you are the antonym of one (or more!) of the above terms.  Congratulations captain crazy-stupid-illogical.

Gay Marriage is Wrong: Getting Biblical
Probably the first argument any right winger will bring to you is that gay marriage is wrong because the bible says it is wrong, and it is therefore wrong in IMitS's (Invisible Man in the Sky's) eyes.  Fun fact, among many other things, the bible bans:
  • Round haircuts
  • Eating or touching pigs
  • Fortune tellers
  • The pull and pray method of birth control
  • Tattoos
  • Blended fabrics
  • Divorce (but we knew that)
  • Eunuchs in church
  • Gold, pearls, and other "costly garments"
  • Shellfish
  • Women hitting men in the nuts (I need to look into this religion thing)
Tell your driving instructor you're only going to obey 40% of traffic signs.  Tell your local law enforcement that you're only going to abide by part of the legal code.  Tell Zombie Thomas Jefferson that you're going to pick the six amendments and articles of the constitution that you like best and follow them.  The responses you'll get will range from looks of sheer retardation to being eaten.  But with the bible, it's okay to cherry pick!

He will fuck you up

And really, that's fine.  It's a collection of stories written by a bunch of guys that have been dead for thousands of years.  It should be no more applicable to modern society than, say, the code of Hammurabi, or a rock.  It's not that difficult to reconcile Christianity and Gay rights by adding the anti-gay passages to the other ones from the bible that are already universally ignored.


Gay Marriage is Unnatural: The Procreation Theory
Another popular argument is that within a same-sex marriage, procreation is impossible, which goes against the function of the human race.  I thought about this point long and hard this morning, after I'd thrown off my synthetic material sheets, put on my glasses which enhance my naturally poor vision and turned on my heater that brings comfort into the naturally cold room in which I sleep.  And I thought...wait, this is a bad thing?

Less breeding is a bad thing?

The fact is that homosexuality is a whole lot more natural than Christians would have you believe.  It's found numerous times in the animal kingdom.  Homophobia is only found in one species...

Gay Marriage will Destroy the "Sanctity of Marriage:" The Immoral, Promiscuous Gays Argument
First of all, I love how religious groups claim so much shit as their own, like Christmas, Easter, and Marriage.  I hate to break it to all the christians out there, but virtually every sacrament is based on Pagan rituals with IMitS conveniently added to give them a sense of legitimacy that no one can debate.  (He's invisible and in the sky, how can you say He's wrong?)

Marriage is not a religious institution.  Marriage initially began as a contract between two people that ensure that a mother belonged to the man whose child she birthed, in doing so, ensuring that he was raising his heir.  Marriage is said to predate recorded history, beginning 4,000 years ago or more.  Religion entered the picture in 1563 at the Council of Trent when the Catholic Church accepted it as a Sacrament.  The assertion that marriage is a religious institution is bullshit.

This
(Credit: Hornbill Unleashed Blog)

Did you like that?  It involved some research and learning.  I thought it was too easy to straight up pwn people and say "the divorce rate in the United States is nearly 50%, what sanctity of marriage?"  Unfortunately, gay marriage has not been legal long enough to develop reliable statistics to compare to heterosexual marriage.  However, studies have shown that the divorce rate as a whole is higher in states that ban homosexual marriage.  Ouch.


An Environment Without a Man and a Woman is Harmful to Young Children: aka Let's Shit on Single Parents
The religious opponents of gay marriage will often pull a "let's think of the children" argument, probably because they know that their other arguments are indefensibly weak.  (This one is too).  The only thing harmful to children of same-sex parents is the discrimination they endure from the homophobes that populate this country.

Let's think about this from a purely logical standpoint.  The biggest argument is that children with same-sex parents are more likely to be gay because of the environment in which they are raised.  Which would make sense, you know, if up until gay marriage was legalized, straight marriages didn't produce 100% of the gay children.  Seriously, you have two same-sex parents who have had to fight tooth and nail simply for their right to be together.  So their child is going to learn the value of commitment.  They've had to endure unrelenting criticism from groups that despise them.  So their child is also going to learn the value of tolerance and understanding.


The assertion that an influence of either sex is necessary in raising a child is a huge slap in the face to single moms and dads everywhere, many of which do an immaculate job raising their children to be wonderful human beings.  But like I said, the opponents are getting desperate.  If they have to turn on their own to justify their bigotry, they will.

 If only she had more of a male influence in her life...

Gay Marriage is Just Unnatural
I am including this argument last because I believe it is the only "justification" agaisnt gay marriage by those opponents that is actually legitimate and honest.  People are against gay marriage because it goes against the norm and they just don't like it.  They are unable to tolerate, to attempt to understand, and to deal with something that fits outside their preconceived notions of what is "normal."

People, Americans in particular, have a difficulty in dealing with things that differ from themselves.  We're a very spiteful, intolerant, and argumentative culture.  It is the reason (in part) why our politics have become so polarized.  Both sides display an unrelenting inability to either step in the other's shoes, or tolerate something they don't understand.  People have been conditioned to think a certain way, have developed an inherent (and very negative) stubbornness and that is difficult to break.  It's why the following pictures elicit two very different responses.

Yumm

Eww

The picture of the men is far less racy than that of the women, though typically it will garner a more negative response, because women have historically been allowed to develop bonds that go beyond friendship (though not necessarily into bikini-makeouts) and men have not.

The bottom line is that while both may begin to grasp at the edges of something most people do not understand, neither displays anything that even hints at being immoral or wrong.

Gay and Lesbain partners love each other very much.  They're committed to each other in a society that shows it is still incapable of recognizing that commitment, and still they continue on.  They seek only the validation and acceptance of that love and that commitment.

How can that be wrong?
Two adults love each other.  How can you call love wrong?

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