Dear Friends of Marriage,
The great victories in Maine and New York-23 for pro-marriage forces continue to reverberate up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
NJ.com reported on Nov. 18 (”Gay Marriage… Now!”): “The word on the street is that the gay marriage initiative in the New Jersey State House is in big trouble. Apparently, the Democrats can’t get enough votes to pass it, even though outgoing Governor Jon Corzine is prepared to sign it.”
Praise God! And pray harder–this fight is not finished yet.
No wonder even New Jersey Democrats are having second thoughts. Jon Corzine ran on a pro-gay-marriage platform and he lost. Dede Scozzafava voted for gay marriage twice in New York–and she was trounced by an unknown third party candidate. Do these New Jersey politicians want to follow Jon Corzine over the political cliff?
If we can hold off this juggernaut over the next six weeks, we can prevent the New Jersey legislature from imposing gay marriage on voters whether they like it or not! I promised you, when I asked you to join with NOM, that we would fight for marriage wherever and whenever we needed. We knew that after Maine we would have to pivot and turn to New Jersey, where gay marriage advocates has promised their supporters they would push a bill through the lame duck session. NOM is different from most organizations–we go where the fight needs to be, to make sure that your voice and your values are heard.
In D.C. the city councilmembers appear to be men with hardened hearts. We suspect they will not listen to reason or to their constituents and will instead push a gay marriage bill through the council. But the fight will not end there. Not with Bishop Harry Jackson and others leading the charge to fight through the legal fog and the media spin to give the people of D.C. the power to take control of the future of marriage. Sitting in the council chambers watching liberal politicians condescend and lecture to these brave black pastors about civil rights would give anyone with any sense of history an odd feeling. Still, the room burst out in wild applause when these leaders of the black church stood up for their–for our–right to vote for marriage.
Why do we fight so hard? This week the Catholic bishops released a statement, “Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan.” It’s a document worth reading by any person of faith, or anyone who cares about the future of marriage.
On same-sex marriage the Catholic bishops remind us that we hold these truths to be self-evident: “Marriage, this clinging together of husband and wife as one flesh, is based on the fact that
man and woman are both different and the same. They are different as male and female, but the
same as human persons who are uniquely suited to be partners or helpmates for each other.”
I’ve included a link below if you want to read more. (I’ve also included NOM president Maggie Gallagher’s statement in her column on Carrie Prejean–keep her in your prayers.)
What do we have on our side in this fight? Nothing but truth, justice, and the majority of the American people! And a God who watches over each and every one of us.
You are the reason NOM can do all that we do. Thank you.
Faithfully,
Brian S. BrownExecutive Director
National Organization for Marriage
20 Nassau Street, Suite 242
Princeton, NJ 08542
bbrown@nationformarriage.org
PS: Marriage has won many victories this year, but there are tough battles ahead! Can you help NOM by donating $10, $20 or, if God has given you the means, $100 or $200? With your help we will fight–and we will win!
NOM Featured Articles
“Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan”
November 17, 2009
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
The task of proclamation to which the Holy Father refers is one that we bishops exercise
today as teachers and pastors, specifically in this pastoral letter. We address the pastoral letter
first and foremost to the Catholic faithful in the United States. We call upon them to stand
against all attacks on marriage and to stand up for the meaning, dignity, and sanctity of marriage
and the family. In a spirit of witness and service we also offer our message to all men and
women in the hope of inspiring them to embrace this teaching.
We intend this pastoral letter to be a theological and doctrinal foundation. It can be a
resource to help and encourage all those who are moving toward marriage, who are journeying in
married life, and who are accompanying and assisting those who are called to the vocation of
marriage.
“After Carrie”
November 17, 2009
Maggie Gallagher
Let me tell you a fairy tale. Once upon a time, a gorgeous blond California girl — let’s call her “Carrie” — wanted to be a beauty queen.
NOM in the News
“Push for Same-Sex Marriage in NJ Faces Uncertain Future”
November 18, 2009
Philadelphia Inquirer
The National Organization for Marriage, which has spent about a half-million dollars nationally to overturn gay marriage, has focused on New Jersey since Maine voters reversed that state’s same-sex marriage law on Nov. 3.
“Bishops Re-Affirm Stance on Marriage as DC Rejects Referendum”
November 18, 2009
All Headline News
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops moved to bolster their defense of traditional marriage on Tuesday, approving a pastoral letter that provides direction to the faithful amid nationwide efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. The D.C. Board of Elections ruled the same day against a proposal to hold a referendum on gay marriages.
35 Comments
NJ and NY 2 places where both governors are ready to sign the dotted line, but the legislatures know better. Both Governors are on their way out trying to at least strike up a few points with the gay marriage crowd. Nice politicking.
Glad to hear! Excellent news on NJ! Keep praying!
Homosexual “pretend” marriage may not be real, but the amount of money homosexuals raise from corporations definitely is. For example it appeared that the Human Rights Campaign took in about $150,000 just from corporate sponsorships at a recent event they held in Boston. In a better economic climate, the Human Rights Campaign probably could have raised far more from corporate sponsors.
However the voters have to deal with other issues, like whether homosexual “pretend” marriage is a threat to men’s masculinity and women’s feminism. That relates to parents continued concerns about what young children are being taught in public schools about a homosexual lifestyle, an issue that the Stand for Marriage campaign in Maine played on.
I wonder why corporations would support “pretend” homosexual marriage. I still think it’s good that school kids get taught appropriately about the variations of human sexuality.
Teach your own kids your perverted ideas Kev. Leave mine alone.
My belief on why corporations donate is because of intimidation. Imagine a company denies couples the opportunity to marriage.. The gay folks would go out and claim inequality and badger the company till they pay a hundred dollars. Or come out with a statement saying they believe gay marriage is okay and give an apology.
But Adam,
Don’t these companies risk alienating homophobes such as yourself? I mean, some homophobes have advocated boycotts against gay-friendly companies, like Pepsi and Ford. Why would they pander to 5% of the population?
Marty, your icon is a monkey. Very telling. Our ideas aren’t perverted. Yours are.
The fight for marriage equality will never be over - I am 25 years old and in a long-term committed relationship with someone of the same sex and I will continue to donate and remain active in fighting organizations such as this. We (esp those that are young adults such as myself) will continue to fight until the end of time esp as we increase our influence as well as financial capital. GET READY…we will fight for our civil rights forever!!!!!!!!!
RC, Be assured. We are ready. The fight for families and freedom is worth the fight.
RC, thanks for reminding me to send in a huge donation to NOM. I;m reminding my friends to do the same who also believe in protecting children and the sanctity of marriage.
Kevin, you again confirm that promoting homosexuality in elementary schools is an important goal of the radical homosexual movement. Homosexual “marriage”, an endorsement of homosexual lifestyle, is intended to help you accomplish that goal.
I realize I repeat myself, but for the benfit of people who have not yet heard this, Kevin had previously shared with us his vision/fantasy of “sexuality days” in elementary schools. On such days, homosexual recruiters would set up information booths, complete with pamphlets, touting “virtues” of homosexual lifestyle to elementary school children.
If this alone is not a sufficient reason to reject the ludicrous idea of homosexual “marriage”, I do not know what is.
“On such days, homosexual recruiters would set up information booths, complete with pamphlets, touting “virtues” of homosexual lifestyle to elementary school children.”
Ah but Laura, in your ongoing zeal to misportray my intent, you neglect to note that Heterosexual recruiters also would set up information booths, complete with pamphlets, touting “virtues” of heterosexual lifestyle to elementary school children.
Ah, so your confessed fantasy includes false bookends.
I hope you’re not talking to me, Chairm. I’m not fantasizing about teaching children about human sexuality. Laura thought it clever to lie that I advocated “teaching” children to choose homosexuality. I responded in a previous discussion that if sexuality is a choice that adolescents make, let’s give them all the information so they can make in informed choice. I sarcastically suggested holding “sex days” at schools, with information booths for each sexuality handing out literature LOL.
Biological Mom Ordered to Give Up Child
A Vermont judge rules Lisa Miller must turn over her daughter to her former lesbian partner.
Superior Judge William Cohen ruled last week that Lisa Miller, a former lesbian who is now a Christian, must hand her daughter, Isabelle, over to her former partner, Janet Jenkins by Jan. 1.
Miller conceived Isabella through artificial insemination while she was in a civil union with Jenkins. About a year later, Miller left homosexuality.
Jenkins sued for custody, even though she has no biological tie to the child.
Miller admits she made mistakes, like signing a custody agreement while still in the relationship with Jenkins, but Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and legal counsel for Miller, said that wouldn’t stop him from appealing the decision to the Vermont Supreme Court.
“This judge in Vermont ultimately ruled that he is going to switch custody from Lisa Miller,” he said, “and take her own biological daughter Isabella and move her from Virginia and put her into an activist lesbian household up in Vermont with a person she really doesn’t know, who’s not her biological mother, and frankly who’s not acted as a parent.”
The courts had ordered to spend time with Jenkins in the past, and Miller complied until her daughter complained.
“Every time that the visitation actually occurred, Isabella had violent reactions, because Janet exposed her to the lesbian lifestyle,” Staver said. “(Jenkins) tried to convince her that she has two moms and even tried to scare her by saying that she was going to be taken from Lisa and transferred to Vermont.”
Eventually, Miller refused the court-ordered visitations.
Historically, courts have sided with the biological mother in custody battles, and Staver said the judge has never questioned Miller’s fitness as a parent.
“How can a third party, a stranger,” he asked, “interfere with the parental rights of a biological parent when that parent is fit?”
Rena Lindevaldsen, professor at Liberty University School of Law, said it’s another example of where activist courts are taking the culture.
“To have the first reported decision in the country stripping a biological mother of her child,” she said, “solely because she has refused to give visitation to a legal stranger, is shocking.
“There’s a lot of talk nowadays about drawing that line in the sand and understanding that government can’t order certain things. When you’re ordering a child to be stripped from her biological mother, you’ve got to wonder, has the court overstepped its bounds?”
Biological parents lose custody of children more frequently than you might think. As society progresses and becomes more concerned with the welfare of children, it realizes that biology does not a good parent make. That’s why there are so many foster parents these days: the tales of children abused by their biological parents, kept in cages, treated as slaves, etc. are heart-breaking. Thank God that there are concerned adults willing to step in and care for the children of incompetent or abusive biological parents!
This mother wasn’t abusive, nobody even claimed she was. She’s just a mom, raising her daughter. A non biological ex partner should have no sway over her child. Kevinn, do you support what the court did?
I have to presume, Samantha, that the court has reason to do what it’s doing. You want to turn this into one more reason to hate gay people. I don’t think it is. The biological mother could be facing off with a stepfather to her child, who believes he is better suited to raising the girl. And you would have no objection.
Statistically, a child is FAR safer in a home with both biological parents, and is at a FAR greater risk of abuse living in a home with an unrelated adult. Kevin surely knows this, but ignores it because it doesn’t support his gaycentric anti-family agenda.
Kevin, as your recent remarks illustrate, your fantasies are hostile toward parents and toward their children.
The non-parent in this particular case is the intruder between the child and her mother. No fantasy. It is appears to be abusive and yet you’d rather cast aspersions on the mother and her child. That has been your default position, as an SSMer, in the comment sections of NOM.
“Statistically, a child is FAR safer in a home with both biological parents, and is at a FAR greater risk of abuse living in a home with an unrelated adult. Kevin surely knows this, but ignores it because it doesn’t support his gaycentric anti-family agenda.”
So let’s outlaw single parenting. Let’s out stepparenting. Why pick on gay couples?? If it’s all about the needs of children, let’s go whole hog and say that only married people can have and raise children, let’s outlaw divorce for parents with minor children. Let’s criminalize adultery for parents with minor age children, since sex outside of marriage threatens the strength of the marriage and therefore compromises parenting capabilities. Let’s not miss any opportunities to grant children the parents they deserve!
Of course it’s not at all about what’s best for children. That’s the homophobe’s “silver bullet,” so s/he thinks, but it’s inauthentically arrived at, and falsely used for reasons obvious in the previous paragraph.
The double-dad or double-mom scenarios are not outlawed. Nor criminalized.
Neither are such scenarios compulsory prerequisites for those who’d show-up for a license to SSM anyplace that SSM has been imposed.
The presence of children does not require society to issue licenses for polygamy nor for incestuous arrangements nor for underaged arrangements.
So Kevin’s rant includes fantasies that show that SSM argumentation is not about children; nor is it about the good of society. Rather, it is, for the activists, about “just us” — i.e. their identity group.
We are all born equal, of a man and a woman. That is societally significant in a way that some SSMers just cannot tolerate. See their disparagement of the sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity, for example. See their hostility toward the solidarity of motherhood and fatherhood. They take a very different default position.
Meanwhile, the double-dad or double mom scenarios have at least two legal pre-requisites: 1) parental relinquishment and 2) Government intervention to assign a replacement.
This is obvious with adoption — since the vast majority of children in same-sex households are the result of the previously procreative relationships of mom and dad. And these two pre-requisites are obvious in the use of IVF and ARTs where relinquishment is preemptive and enabling legislation makes a special exemption for replacement.
So such scenarios necessarily undo the default position of society as per the core meaning of marriage (which is accorded preferential status). This is accomplished via an exemption rather than an overhaul of marriage and the sexual basis of paternity.
Yet, SSM argumentation would impose an inversion and make the exemption the rule or default position of society.
No child is born to two women nor to two men. That is so regardless of the sexual orientation — or even the identity politics — of the child’s mom and dad.
This goes to show, by the way, that even SSMers who rant like Kevin concede, by the content of their own comments, that there is no sexual basis for imposing the SSM-merger on all of society.
I don’t calling my observation a rant weakens it LOL. Nor do the “slippery slope” or “guilt by association” taints by invoking fears of polygamy or incest.
As you noted, Chairm, society has no problem with single-gender parenting: it is not criminal for two men to raise children. Society DOES prohibit polygamy and incest. Ergo, comparisons between criminalized and non-criminalized arrangements are irrelevant.
Since society approves of two men raising children together, why not improve the lot of those children by permitting (if not encouraging) those two men to marry? Maggie Gallagher’s research shows that the children of married parents do better in life. Withholding marriage from some parents, but not others, serves no social purpose and clearly is illegal, under Equal Protection doctrine. Social or religious disapproval is a weak opponent to legal rights.
“No child is born to two women nor to two men. That is so regardless of the sexual orientation — or even the identity politics — of the child’s mom and dad.”
And no child is born to infertile couples, couples who don’t have sexual intercourse and, they hope, to couples using birth control. And being unmarried does not prevent pregnancy. So it really is an odd assertion that marriage and reproduction are somehow connected. Now marriage and its impact on couples and their children? Magggie Gallagher’s research clearly shows the benefits!
No slippery slope argument was made. No guilt by association argument, either. Anyway, Ross, your follow-up comment is as weak as your previous comments.
* * *
Given SSM argumentation, there is no reason to criminalize, much less to deny marital status for, the polygamous arrangement of consenting adults. Likewise the incestuous arrangement.
A group of adults are free to live and live together. As are adult siblings and other close relatives. They may do so lawfully. Millions of people living in such arrangements are also raising children.
Yet the distinction between marriage and nonmarriage remains legitimate.
For example, some related man-woman twosomes may marry, but some may not, in all societies. In our society, even under common-law marriage, if closely related people hold themselves out to be married and seek marital status, they would transgress the incest laws even if they did not touch each other sexually.
(Remember: the SSMer’s own remarks have shown that there is no sexual basis for SSM. He declared sexuality to be irrelevant.)
These arrangements are in the nonmarriage category, of course, because of the societal regard for the core of marriage.
Both scenarios are out of bounds due to the significance of sex integration and responsible procreation. Consent is not a trump card. Nor is love. Nor is romance. Nor is sexual attraction. Nor is the presence of children. Nor is minority of numbers.
SSMers denounce the core of marriage as unconstitutional and worse. So SSMers have burnt the bride and cannot now reclaim the boundaries that are based on the core of marriage.
The SSMers are left with the burden of justifying boundaries between SSM and the rest of the nonmarriage category — without relying on the core meaning of marriage. Their attempts at justification cannot now reject the very argumentation that they have used to attack the core of marriage.
Consent is a trump card, they say. As is love. And even the desire for government bennefits. Even gay identity politics cannot justify the lines. And, as we see in the previous comment, since groups of adults and related people may lawfully live and love together, without criminal sanctions, that supposed impediment is nonexistent.
So the SSMer must insist on the arbitrary use of governmental power to 1) treat SSM as special within the nonmarriage category and 2) abolish the core meaning of marriage.
Yet what is the central theme of the pro-SSM complaint? That the marriage law arbitrarily discriminates. It is obvious that what they really mean is that the law discriminates between marriage and nonmarriage.
SSM is the equal of nonmarriage but SSMers seek special status based on gay identity politics. They keep showing this to be their calling card.
Typo correction:
SSMers denounce the core of marriage as unconstitutional and worse. So SSMers have burnt the bridge and cannot now reclaim the boundaries that are based on the core of marriage.
* * *
Bridge, not bride.
Contrary to the SSMer’s earlier comment, children are born every year to couples who had been using birth control methods. Likewise, with infertile couples. Even to such couples who have not conceived through coitus.
This is stating the obvious, but sometimes the oblivious SSMer needs to be reminded of the obvious right under his nose.
Most couples who experience infertility resolve their problems without resort to intrusive medical interventions. More than half already have children before the problems arose. Of those who do seek fertility treatments, most, by far, do not use IVF/ARTs. And for those who do use such practices, the vast majority — more than 93% — do not use “donor” sperm and ova. But even among that tiny percentage who do use donors, their children are born of a man and a woman; and for the married couples those children are born to a union that unites fatherhood and motherhood.
But what does the SSMer mean by seeking the rarest of apparent exceptions — and inevitably coming up short? His remarks suggest that society must treat homosexuality like infertility, which is a medical disability.
The absence of the other sex in a chosen one-sexed arrangement is not infertility nor is it a medical disability. This is true whether the arrangement is sexualized or not — whether it is gay or not — whether it is registered with the government or not. The people who’d chose such a scenario might not feel the lack of the other sex, but it is a lack in terms of fertility. Obviously.
Besides, the SSMer would not wish to be understood as declaring homosexuality to be a medical disability in need of treatment. Quite the contrary, of course.
So what can the SSMer mean by this comparison? Something he has already conceded but keeps running away from. The there is some great societal significance he would assign to gayness; something he’d analogize with, for example, the couple in which a woman has undergone life-saving surgery for cancer and has been rendered sterile; or the couple in which a congenital problem has caused the husband to become subfertile. The SSMer seeks to use emotivism of a particular dishonest variety.
More on that in a bit.
Consider that the reproductively healthy man and woman share their fertility BECAUSE they are an opposite-sexed twosome; yet they are infertile — or subfertile — for most of each and every month during the height of the childbearing years. Human fertility is variable, by its very nature, and is constantly two-sexed.
All one-sexed arrangements are, by their very nature, essentially nonfertile and can not therefore be fertile nor infertile. This is constant. It does not vary. There is no medical condition to resolve — neither with medical treatment nor with empathy.
A lone individual can no more be fertile — without the other sex — than can a parade of gay men or an auditorium full of lesbian women.
Nonfertility is constant even for those in such scenarios who are healthy and could be fertile with the other sex. The arrangement is neither fertile nor infertile.
The lack of the other sex prevents impregnation even if the persons involved in the one-sexed arrangement would engage in lots and lots of same-sex sexual gratification.
A license to SSM would not change that one iota. Obviously.
So the attempted analogy of homoexuality and infertility is more than odd. It is absurd on its face.
Considering the strain on relationships that infertility can create; considering the real disabilities that create this condition; considering that the condition is very often resolvable within the marriage; and considering that the couples who do manage to have children will also unite fatherhood and motherhood, one must really be desperate to suggest that infertile couples are some how marginal to the core meaning of marriage.
It is rather crude of the SSMer to equate homosexuality with a medical disability; and crude again for the SSMer to attempt to the core meaning of marriage cannot apply to infertile couples; and crude again for the SSMer to denounce that core meaning while asserting that the segregation of motherhood and fatherhood is somehow the moral equivalent of the solidarity of motherhood and fatherhood.
* * *
The marital presumption of paternity has a sexual basis that is extrinsic to the one-sexed arrangement — whether that arrangement be gay, lesbian, or straight. This is the public-sexual aspect of the social institution of marriage.
There is no equivalent for SSM. The SSMer keeps admitting this and yet cannot provide the special reason to equate SSM with the special status of marriage.
Marriage and human procreation are definitely connected; responsible procreation is at the core of marriage along with sex integration. That is a constant even if human fertility has always been variable.
The constancy of SSM argumentation is found in its long litany of false equivalencies. When SSMers drag children into the pro-SSM spotlight, in center stage, it is merely to use them as temporary mascots. But when SSMers do that, they remind us all that responsible procreation is central to the special status of the social institution of marriage in our society.
Pointing outside of marriage - to one-sexed arrangements (with children or childless) defeats SSM argumentation.
But expect the SSMer to stumble forward toward the quicksand where he invites all of society to camp-out.
One-sexed arrangements — including that subset which might be described as gay — are among the broad range of domestic scenarios which comprise the nonmarriage category.
Where arrangements — by type — include a lack (or a diminishment) of sex integration and responsible procreation, families experience vulnerabilities. Most especially those with children. Nonmarital trends have provided the empirical evidence for reaffirming society’s preference for the core meaning of marriage.
However, because of the beating that the social institution has been suffering for the past few decades, those vunerable families in the nonmarriage category have become more numerous than ever before. Society can take steps to try to ameliorate the social ills and the disadvantages that these families face — but we cannot make sex-segregation the new sex-integration; we cannot abandon the great merit of responsible procreation.
Provisions for designated beneficiaries, and other measures, already exist for nonmarital families. More can be done — especially through civil society without increasing dependancies on government.
But the solution to nonmarital trends is not to merge nonmarriage with marriage. Marriage is special and is its reaffirmation and its strengthening is the longterm solution to the tragic increase of vulnerable nonmarital families.
“Both scenarios are out of bounds due to the significance of sex integration and responsible procreation.”
What IS the significance of sex integration and responsible procreation? What do they even mean and how are they relevant to the discussion? They have the air of sounding important; are they? How?
“SSMers denounce the core of marriage as unconstitutional and worse”
I don’t think “SSMers” even know what you mean by the “core of marriage” to even denounce it as anything!
“The SSMers are left with the burden of justifying boundaries between SSM and the rest of the nonmarriage category”
It’s not particularly burdensome to explain that same-sex marriage is a marriage between two people of the same sex. A couple is either married or it’s not. The nonmarriage category includes unmarried persons.
“So the SSMer must insist on the arbitrary use of governmental power….”
I think the many Americans who support marriage equality are questioning the arbitrary use of government power to discriminate against gay couples.
“Yet what is the central theme of the pro-SSM complaint? That the marriage law arbitrarily discriminates.”
Exactly. In violation of the US Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection for all citizens. You get it! Yea!
“One-sexed arrangements — including that subset which might be described as gay — are among the broad range of domestic scenarios which comprise the nonmarriage category.”
That is, until they get married. Then they are a part of the marriage category.
“Nonmarital trends have provided the empirical evidence for reaffirming society’s preference for the core meaning of marriage.”
Which is?
“His remarks suggest that society must treat homosexuality like infertility, which is a medical disability.”
Not at all. The point is that marriage and children are not connected. To create a valid connection, there can’t be so many exceptions, even possibly rendering that connection the exception not the rule. If marriage is to encourage procreation, it is not doing a very good job: many fertile married couples have no children by choice, and infertile couples are permitted to marry. Like senior citizen couples, same-sex couples are infertile. Why do the former get to marry and the latter don’t?
“The there is some great societal significance he would assign to gayness”
The better observation is there is NO great societal significance to being straight. Therefore, straight people do not get special rights denied to gay people. If all marriage is outlawed, as may have been inadvertently done in Texas and a few other states in their zeal to stop same-sex couples from having legal rights, I would be ok with that. Either all citizens have the right to marry or none do. There’s no legal middle ground.
Kevin, you have not pointed to actual exceptions to the core meaning of marriage.
Your imitation of a brick wall is amusing.
* * *
Now you’d equate homosexuality with old age. That’s quite the skip, hop, and jump.
The comparison to be made is between the one-sexed the two-sexed arrangements. Regardless of sexual orientation the former is constantly nonfertile and the latter is variably fertile.
You basic error is the attempt to transform a difference of degree (the variability of human fertility) into a difference of kind (one-sexed arrangement is constantly nonfertile). Upon that error you skip to a false equivalence of the one-sexed and the two-sexed scenarios; and upon that mistake you jump to a false equivalence of SSM and marriage. You have fouled-out at the start line.
Predictably, you changed your comparison to that of homosexuality and heterosexuality — and then changed that futher into a comparison of gayness and straightness.
* * *
People begin young and grow old, obviously. This is another variable feature of human fertility. It supports my previous remarks and defeats Kevin’s assertions.
A two-sexed combination, at birth, begins life pre-fertile, but would grow into fertility, and would mature into the post-fertility of old age. Even during the height of fertility, there are periods of subfertility and infertility.
A one-sexed combination is nonfertile throughout the aging process. This is a constant that defies the variability of maturation. No change — regardless of age and regardless of sexual orientation.
Sure, we can use shorthand and refer to the ‘fertile individual’, however, what is left unspoken is obvious — that individual would be fertile with the other sex. Fertility is not sex-neutral. And that’s so regardless of the sexual orientation of the individual. That person’s identity group is irrelevant, too.
Marriage, at its core, directly reflects all of this directly and also indirectly.
* * *
So, no, old age is not an actual exception.
The methods by which a one-sexed arrangement (a lone individual or a twosome or a moresome) might attain children provides abundant evidence of these significant facts.
The sexual basis of marriage is two-sexed, not one-sexed, as our laws express in provisions for consummation, adultery, paternity, and so forth. This is also expressed via the lines drawn based on age, relatedness, and the limit of one man and one woman.
None of that is significant to the meaning of SSM, of course. As Kevin’s comments keep reminding us all.
* * *
Denial on the part of the SSMer does not lighten the burden that SSM argumentation has created for itself. Nor does the arbitrariness of favoring a subset of nonmarriage over the rest of the category.
To SSMers:
Justify special status for SSM. If your axiomatic beliefs cannot permit you to make the attempt, then, justify special status for SSM/marriage.
Eligiblity is based on what the thing actually is. The lines should not be arbitrary, according to the pro-SSM complaint (as Kevin has confirmed).
His rhetoric — that people are married when they marry — illustrates the superficiality of that complaint. Before they marry they are either eligible or not. What is the basis for drawing any lines around SSM/marriage?
If you cannot justify the special status of marriage, then, you’d concede that in your view marriage does not merit its special status — because preferential treatment of the social institution would be unjustified and arbitrary.
Everything else you’d say on the subject would be superfluous.
Actually, Chairm
“Now you’d equate homosexuality with old age. That’s quite the skip, hop, and jump.”
No, I’m equating the infertility of homosexual couples and elderly couples. One couple is allowed to marry and, in 45 states still, another couple isn’t. Neither can produce children conventionally. Either may or may not be raising children, who benefit by having married parents (again, an aspect of marriage discrimination you carefully avoid: what is best for the children of same-sex couples, being raised by married parents or being raised out of wedlock?)
Your marriage concept, despite the lead balloon of reality, is about procreation. Why should imitators, then, with no chance to procreate, such as elderly couples, be allowed to marry. Why are they given special status as part of the non-marriageable set you defined but not same-sex couples?
“Fertility is not sex-neutral”
Wrong. Fertility is a characteristic of the individual, not a gender. You might be confusing fertility with procreation. Homosexuals, as individuals, are every bit as fertile as heterosexuals, as individuals.
“The sexual basis of marriage is two-sexed, not one-sexed, as our laws express in provisions for consummation, adultery, paternity, and so forth.”
Except when it’s not, as in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire and soon, Washington, DC. And that’s just in the US? Let’s all welcome Argentina to the growing number of states and countries adopting marriage equality!
“Justify special status for SSM.”
There is no special status, just equal status. Simple!
Stating the obvious for the oblivious SSMer.
No one-sexed arrangement is infertile because it can never be fertile in the first place. The lack of the other sex is NOT infertility.
We do use shorthand and can say that the lone individual might be fertile; but what is left unspoken, because it is glaringly obvious, is that the individual might be fertile with the other sex.
With the other sex. Not one sex alone.
This has zilch to do with whatever an all-male or an all-female arrangement might do sexually. The constancy of nonfertility is universal to all one-sexed arrangements (a lone individual, a parade of men, or an auditoriaum full of women) — sexualized or not.
Your own comment concedes that outright. But you’d press identity politics into it, shamelessly.
Your irrational demand that society morally equate these two different things is itself morally repugnant.
* * *
In the jurisdictions you listed, there has been a localized merger of SSM and marriage. That merger is, according to your own argumentation, sex-neutral. To achieve that, the core of marriage is abolished. In its place is a hollow thing that, in your own comments here, you have conceded lacks a core meaning and lacks societal significance.
You have failed, continuously, to distinguish SSM from the rest of the nonmarriage category. The merger fails to do so, as well.
Your demand is not for marriage equality. It is for the false equivalence of nonmarriage with marriage. That is the regressive meaning of the merger.
* * *
I note, again, that you insist on certain standards that you abondon when it comes to your own attempted justification for the merger.
No exceptions can be allowed! That is your rule.
You have over-stretched in search of what are merely apparent exceptions, and not actual exceptions, to the core meaning of marriage. You have done so by misrepresenting that core. And you have done so while conceding that SSM would come with many exceptions.
Your comments here are cowardly. You runaway from the actual disagreement. You cheat against your own stated rules and standards. You routinely misrepresent and, after correction, continue to do so — which makes your repeated misrepresntations outright lies.
That all adds up to a bigoted advocacy of SSM.
Other SSMers at least try to make SSM stand on its own two feet. Not you. It is your weakenss and even fellow supporters of SSM can see it on the record here in these comment sections.
NOM’s website is thus providing a valuable service.
“The constancy of nonfertility is universal to all one-sexed arrangements (a lone individual, a parade of men, or an auditoriaum full of women) — sexualized or not.”
Good thing marriage has nothing to do with procreation, eh?
“You have failed, continuously, to distinguish SSM from the rest of the nonmarriage category”
For the, oh, 100th time: same-sex marriage is a part of MARRIAGE, not nonmarriage. That’s why they call it same-sex MARRIAGE. Same-sex marriage is a subset of marriage, just like a male nurse is a subset of “nurse.” Just like “second marriage” is a subset of marriage. Just like “unhappy marriage” is a subset of marriage. Just like “inter-racial marriage” is a subset of marriage. These sub-categories are all part of marriage. They are not part of non-marriage.
“NOM’s website is thus providing a valuable service.”
Raising money to oppose marriage rights for a minority, in violation of the US Constitution, and denying the children of same-sex couples the security we want for the children of opposite-sex children is a “valuable service.” Yikes, that’s some crazy family values system you got going on, Chairm!
Meanwhile, homosexuality is not infertility, as you, Kevin, have conceded. The lack of the other sex is not infertility, as you have conceded. The sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity does not apply to any one-sexed arrangement.
Your attempted equivalence is false. Your reasoning has defeated itself. Your remarks are anti-marriage.
It’s a very good thing that marriage means far more than your failed notion of “SSM”.
Note: S.S.M = Specious Substitution of Marriage.
* * *
Kevin, “for the, oh, 100th time” (as you would say) it is on the record that you’ve failed; you have relied on circular thinking and rules of argumentation that turnout to support the core of marriage and destroy your complaint and proposed remedy.
You did that. I’m just pointing out that NOM provided the place for you to demonstrate the profound weaknesses of SSM argumentation.
You are not at fault, really, since you are merely spouting what the SSM campaign has been asserting all along.
NOM has provided a very good service here. You have played our part. Thank you.