Dissecting the Gay Marriage Argument

Pejman Yousefzadeh has done a good service in this post about the gay marriage law in New York. It neatly encapsulates, in a few well-written paragraphs, the entire argument in favor of gay marriage – and thus allows the opportunity of an equally concise rebuttal. This I shall attempt. To begin:

…No, this will not threaten traditional marriage; if anything, the fact that so many people–whether gay or straight–want to enter into a lifetime monogamous relationship that entails (among other things) arguing about who takes out the trash, arguing about the position of the toilet seat, arguing about finances, purchasing a home with a picket fence, and worrying endlessly about the fate and well-being of approximately 2.5 kids speaks immensely well of marriage…

This is an important first step in the pro-gay marriage argument: the trivialization of marriage. Marriage is actually the most important step a person can possibly take in life. This is because marriage is the port of entry to family, and the purpose of family is the creation and raising of the next generation. The family, you see, is the most important thing of all – there is nothing we do which is more important than this for the simple fact that if we don’t have families raising children, we will not exist as a people. When you propose to alter marriage you are proposing to alter family – and thus you are tinkering with the basis of our civilization. Nothing but the most grave of concerns would ever impel a man to seek a change in this area for fear that the change would undermine and destroy. And thus the need to make it a small, rather unimportant thing…just a funny, little compact which will result in arguments about taking out the trash and worries about 2.5 children.

After that, your next important step in the process is to demonize those who would dare to disagree while implying that agreement is in accordance with basic fairness:

…What is threatened, of course, by the legalization of same sex marriage is the notion that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are somehow not “normal” people, and that they should somehow be shunned by society. The privilege of loving someone, being loved in return, and building a life based on that love is not some kind of country club fringe benefit that is, or should be available only to a particular group of people. Quite the contrary; all should enjoy its blessings…

I know of no proposal among us opposed to gay marriage to shun gay people. In fact, I know of no one on my side who is concerned about the living arrangements of any particular gay person or gay couple. But it is useful, if you are trying to advance a weak case, to imply unreasonableness on the part of your opponent. All these gay people want to do is love – and you bigoted homophobes are just cruel in your desire to prevent love from being enjoyed.

From there you just rush to your conclusion without any further ado (and without any further thought) and assert that a happy, glorious time is coming now that everyone (‘cept them darned homophobes) will soon embrace your point of view:

…we can, and should celebrate what happened in New York, and hope that what happened in New York replicates itself elsewhere…It’s nice to see that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are at long last being recognized as fundamentally human, and therefore worthy of both enjoying that right, and shouldering the responsibilities that come with it.

The author did leave out the transgendered part of the constituency – but maybe they aren’t covered by gay marriage because it is presumed that a man who becomes a woman will want to marry a man and thus that wouldn’t be a gay marriage? No matter, the main thing is that the argument is completely stated just in that short bit – to nutshell it: marriage is just this thing that all people should be able to do, only hateful bigots oppose this, and it is coming because basic, human decency requires it.

The trouble here is that the argument misses the main points – it doesn’t address the fundamental question of what marriage is for and why it has been accorded, in our civilization, as a privilege reserved for one man and one woman.

The first thing to remember is that the assertion that marriage is a right is specious. Human rights are individual rights. You can only have a right to something which you can – at least in theory – do entirely on your own. Thus you have a right to personal property; a right to speak your mind; a right to believe as you wish. But as soon as a second human being is brought in to the picture, we are no longer dealing with rights, but with privileges to be assigned by one means or another. I can speak my mind, but I can’t force you to agree – I can marry, but I can’t force you to marry me: whether or not I’ll marry you will, first off, be determined by your decision (or refusal) to privilege me with that power…and further on, whether or not all the other human beings we live among believe that even if we’re both agreeable, it should happen.

Secondly, we must remember what marriage is for – it is for the creation of a family which will organically produce children and raise them to adulthood. This task, upon which our whole civilization turns, is so important – while also being so difficult – that we, as a society, have chosen to hedge it about with all manner of privileges and immunities. We provide tax breaks; we provide free education; we prohibit a person from testifying against their spouse; we make inheritance from one spouse to another automatic; etc, etc, etc. To say that a gay person must be accorded the privileges and immunities of marriage because those privileges and immunities are valuable and that it is unfair to deny them to a gay person is putting the cart ten thousand miles in front of the horse. The question is not whether gay couples – or, indeed, any particular couple – should be accorded the privileges, but whether any particular type of couple advances or retards the basic goal of marriage: child-producing/rearing families. If it does, it gets the privilege of marriage – if it doesn’t, then nothing doing.

The final thing to remember is that you can’t have it both ways – you can’t have an awed respect for something and yet treat it in a trivial fashion. We found this out, with certainty, in the matter of divorce. When the arguments in favor of divorce were first advanced it was asserted that divorce would only be for those extreme cases where a continued marriage was clearly impossible. We had to make an exception for those hard cases. But as was pointed out at the time, if you once admit the exception, the exception will rapidly become the rule. In modern times, it isn’t a matter of allowing a divorce for a poor woman abused by a cruel husband, but of allowing men and women to terminate their marriage for “irreconcilable differences”…a perfectly meaningless phrase designed to cover “because I don’t wanna do it anymore” in legalese.

Admit this new exception – that gay men and women should be able to marry their like – and you’ll open up a flood gate and the exception will, once again, become the rule. We will be defenseless against polygamy and all manner of horrors and scams which will be dressed up as “marriage”…because the argument used to advance gay marriage (it is a “right” and that love must not be denied) are the same argument which will be used to justify a man with 8 wives, or 40 year old men marrying 15 year old girls, or a whole group of people marrying each other any which way in order to maximize benefits.

This is serious business; the life of our civilization is hanging by a thread. Not because of gay marriage, alone – it is, indeed, just the most recent in a long string of efforts which have broken down our civilization. But because we are now approaching a tipping point (passed some years ago in Europe) where if we continue on a little more, we will start to die out as a people. One by one we have broken down the moral, economic and social reasons for getting married and having families…the rapid decline in our birth rate and the stunning moral collapse we see all around is the result. Adding gay marriage is just one more step towards destruction – maybe not the final step, but we’re not more than a few steps away from dissolution and death.

It is time to call a halt – to say, “thus far, and no further”. Accommodation can be made for those gay people who wish to unite their fortunes, but we must not allow gay marriage. In fact, not only must we refuse this bit of sociological hemlock, we should start rolling back the erosion of marriage.

An Excellent GOP Tax Hike Proposal

From the comments over at Just One Minute:

…I think our side ought to make a good faith effort to show we’re open to tax increases of some kind. My suggestion is that the Republicans propose an end to a tax break for fat cats that reduces federal revenue by millions of dollars a year. I am speaking of the deductibility of state income tax. I think this would be a very popular proposal, because it would show the Democrats how committed we are to bipartisanship, it would give the patriotic citizens of places like New York and California and Massachusetts the opportunity to send more money to the government without just doing so voluntarily, and it sure wouldn’t bother anybody in places like Texas or Florida.

I can’t think of any objection to this proposal. Can you? I mean, it is just perfect – as well as being a heck of a lot of fun.

Just like my proposal for a “wealth tax“, this proposal would box the Democrats in – they would either have to go along with it, and harm their own constituents, or be revealed as the utter hypocrites they are. It is a win/win for us.

HAT TIP: PJ Tatler

Pelosi Decides to Help Republicans

From The Hill:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will demand a seat in the table for the final talks on the national debt limit, putting a strong liberal voice in the room.

Pelosi and House Democrats were left out of the negotiations between President Obama and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last year that extended nearly all of the Bush tax rates though 2012.

Pelosi didn’t participate in the final high-level talks over fiscal 2011 spending levels either…

I can’t imagine anything which would help the GOP better than to put Pelosi as the face of the Democrat party in the budget battle. Nothing like a corrupt, failed, liberal hack to set all things in focus – the GOP is for America, the Democrats are for the dying, destructive system. So, yes, by all means – give Pelosi a seat at the table. In fact, put her front and center. Make sure the cameras are always on her so that not a word of her wisdom is lost to the American people…

Does Venezuela's Chavez Have Cancer?

Venezuela News and Views retails a theory:

…Apparently the “knee” problem was a way to hide the prostate surgery which today can be dealt well enough in a couple of weeks. But if we are to believe Gustavo the post biopsy was not encouraging and they decided to do some advanced body scans which in Venezuela can only be done in a couple of private clinics. Not only Chavez entourage would not trust the discretion of private clinics but it would have been also an admission that the “socialist” care was not as performing as the “capitalist” care since the regime had not been able to match the equipment of the private sector for “el pueblo”. Thus the trip to Cuba. One caveat here: where would have Chavez got prostate surgery in full discretion? Has he set an O.R. inside Miraflores or Fuerte Tiuna?

Before, for show, Chavez stopped in Brazil and Ecuador and that must have been a mistake because he got a post op infection. And also some people found him walking strangely well for someone with an alleged serious knee injury. Arriving in Cuba he got feverish soon and they had to drain the abscess. That would have been the real “emergency” part. In a way that was a convenient excuse to justify Chavez stay while the real stuff was being done, namely the body scans.

He seems to have recovered well enough form his infection but apparently the scans were not good and they decided to start radiotherapy…

Before anyone breaks out the champagne to celebrate the imminent demise of a tyrant, keep two things in mind:

1. There is no real way to test this theory. Chavez keeps tight control over his own nation and Cuba is even tighter than Venezuela. Getting the truth out of either place is very difficult.

2. As the reports goes on to note, if Chavez were to die suddenly he could easily become a mythical hero of sorts, thus keeping alive his band of socialist totalitarianism. Remember, the best thing that ever happened to Stalin was that Lenin died…it allowed Stalin to use the image of Lenin to legitimize his own tyranny.

Still, the removal of a tyrant is always a good thing, over all. It is a pity, however, that Venezuela may never get a chance to overthrow this tyrant and put him on trial for his crimes.

Iowa Poll: Romney 23%, Bachmann 22%

From the Des Moines Register:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann sit atop the standings in the year’s first Des Moines Register Iowa Poll on the Republican presidential field.

Romney, the national front-runner and a familiar face in Iowa after his 2008 presidential run, attracts support from 23 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers. Bachmann, who will officially kick off her campaign in Iowa on Monday, nearly matches him, with 22 percent…

I’d have to rate Romney’s support as soft – the sort of support you get for being around and not doing anything to make yourself actually unelectable. It is the sort of support which can easily be lost when someone better comes along – and right now, it appears that Iowa Republicans are starting to think that Bachmann is better.

To be sure, poll strength is not decisive in Iowa – that is all about the ground game at Caucus time, and if Romney’s caucus effort out here in Nevada in 2008 is any indicator, he’ll have a first class campaign for Iowa (Romney’s people simply steam rollered our caucuses…there was never a chance he wouldn’t win them). It now remains to be seen whether Bachmann, or anyone else, can out hustle Romney.

New York Votes to End Marriage

From the CBS New York:

The (ability) of same-sex couples to “wed” became reality in New York state late Friday night after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the controversial Marriage (Destruction) Act into law.

The Democratic governor signed the measure shortly before midnight, following up on a promise to put his name on the legislation as soon as he received it rather than wait the usual 10 days to sign it for it to become law….(MSM report edited for accuracy)

Because with our economy falling apart and wars going on around the world, getting gay marriage just ranks right up there, huh? Can’t wait even a minute for it…my goodness, the whole world will die if gay people can’t get married. What New York really did last night was to vote to end marriage – because marriage isn’t about tax breaks and inheritance. It is about far more than most gay marriage supporters imagine.

Oh, I know that liberals will say otherwise – that this will actually help marriage and be a wonderful thing. But the fact of the matter is that when gay marriage is instituted, there is a fairly rapid drop-off in all marriage. This is already noted in Europe where gay marriage has been a reality for some time now. Now, to be certain, you can’t entirely blame gay marriage for it…but as one more thing on the gigantic pile of cultural dissolution, gay marriage is quite the icing on the cake…it really kicks at the heart of marriage and family because gay “marriage” is a negation of both concepts.

Our liberals are entirely too ignorant of history, philosophy and theology to understand what they are doing…all they really know is that the Catholic Church and evangelicals are against it, so it must be a good thing. This is just another failure of liberals to think the matter all the way through and, in this case, realize that marriage is a sacred trust between one man and one woman in order to create children and raise them. Two men getting “married” bears as much relation to real marriage as scuba gear does to mountain climbing; they are not just dissimilar, they are opposites.

In the end, this victory for gay rights activists will be temporary. Either we’ll roll it back and re-ban it in New York and the rest of the country, or this sort of thing will advance to the point where American civilization dies off, and its successor will not fool around with such nonsense as two men pretending to be married. This is the act of a selfish, self-centered and ignorant class of people – and in its own action will come its own destruction. So, no fretting on my part – we’ll just keep fighting it off and hoping to destroy it, but with the full knowledge that absolute victory for rational, moral behavior is assured.

Can the Media Save Obama?

John Tamny over at Zero Hedge says, “no“:

…no doubt most in the media worship President Obama, and because they do they’ll strive mightily to create the impression that all is well, or at the very least that the economic malaise isn’t Obama’s fault. They would have a point, though for reasons none could articulate…

…Basically the Bush bailouts of banks and car companies “in the name of free markets” disallowed the initial economic cleansing necessary for a massive snapback, and then once in office, Obama’s economic team poured gasoline on the fire; most notably with policies meant to mimic the Bush economic disaster in the form of nosebleed spending and an even weaker dollar. The economy is weak, its weakness by definition has Washington and the Obama administration’s fingerprints all over it, and no matter how the media spin that which isn’t working, Obama is in serious trouble…

Much as I hate to say it, the author is right that the bailouts which started late in the Bush Administration were the first shot and borrowing and spending out way out of the crisis. Of course, President Bush was acting upon expert advice…and only a very few people raised their voices in objection at the time. Most people, even is wary, were willing to try just about anything to avert complete collapse. And, of course, it did avert complete collapse…for about three or four months, by which time Obama was in office.

It was a certainty that a liberal, Democrat President working with a liberal, Democrat Congress would try a round of spending to get things moving. It is built in, as it were – they really believe that it was government spending which solved the Great Depression, and so were certain a bit of it would solve the Great Recession. We can’t blame the liberals for doing it – it is what they do, and they had just won an historic victory. But that still doesn’t mean it was good policy – in fact, when coupled with Bernanke’s massive money printing, it became economic suicide.

By now, the fat is in the fire. Liberals can comfort themselves that some polls still show more people blaming Bush for the economy…but I caution against this. Such polls may only reflect the reality that the recession did, indeed, start when Bush was President. But such a poll does not mean “I don’t blame Obama”. Now that we’re two and a half years in to Obama, it is becoming increasingly difficult (and soon will become impossible) to pin the mess on Bush…at least in such a way as it helps Obama to get re-elected. Obama and his Democrats, in spite of their stout resistance, are being forced to own the economy. And as the linked article notes elsewhere, the most positive media spin in the world simply will not make people forget lost jobs, foreclosed homes, reduced pay and higher prices. The MSM spin for Obama will be astounding – more nakedly partisan for Obama than 2008; in fact probably the most partisan MSM reporting ever seen. But it won’t work – unless the real economy gets better, no amount of spin will change minds.

This doesn’t mean Obama is a sure loser – it just means that the MSM will not be able to carry him over the finish line. The MSM can help (and they will help Obama every chance they get) but it can’t decide…the nation is already too far gone in to revolutionary sentiment to fall for MSM propaganda.

Well, Yeah, This Does Seem Like a Campaign Ad

This is a “let’s go to DC and clean up the mess” statement…the statement of a man who wants to switch his arena from New Jersey to Washington…we’ll see.

Soros Attempts to Ensure Voter Fraud at State Level

Gotta hand it to him – he does know the mechanics of politics. In this case, he’s just taking his fellow socialist Stalin’s advice: doesn’t matter who votes, it only matters who counts the votes. From the Washington Times:

A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”

Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.

The group’s website said it wants to stop Republicans from “manipulating” election results…

By “manipulating” these liberals mean “only ensuring that legitimate votes are cast”. You see, to a liberal an election is “manipulated” every time a Republican wins a close contest. All such races are supposed to go to liberals because liberals are experts at stuffing the ballot box with illegal votes. It is very annoying to them when we start bringing all that tedious bit about laws and citizenship…like it matters that we have a clean, legitimate vote when liberals know full well that only the result counts. As long as a liberal wins, it is a good thing, don’t you know?

In this case here, I think Soros and the liberals got a step ahead of us – and we need to counter with efforts to defeat liberal ballot box-stuffers. We’re winning the fight to ensure that voter ID is required, but if we’re not careful then the liberals will get around that by having the people who count the votes just “find” as many as they need for the liberal to win.

Not just the Secretary of State, but all officials who ensure the legitimacy of the vote must be, as far as possible, Republicans and conservatives. Only thus can we have a shot at ensuring that only citizens vote and that each of them only votes once. Democrats by their routine resort to voter fraud are undermining the entire American political system – Soros’ effort here is to cement that fraud and make sure that it is built in to the system. It must be stopped.

Liberals Make Another Effort to Duplicate the TEA Party

From Post Politics:

At last weekend’s Netroots Nation gathering in Minneapolis, liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement. Former White House environmental official Van Jones is hoping to change that with a new political effort dubbed “The American Dream Movement.”

Organizers are hoping to emulate the the success of the tea party, which became a significant force in the 2010 midterms…

I know that our liberals like to believe that the TEA Party was created by the Koch brothers and isn’t grass roots, but the facts are otherwise. No one person or group can be said to have started the TEA Party – and no one person or group speaks for it. As someone with a pretty good knowledge of history, I have never seen anything quite like it. Mass movements we’ve had a-plenty, but none arising so spontaneously from the people and so entirely resistant to central control. The leadership of the GOP and conservatism is still struggling to keep up…and to keep up not in line with taking over, but only of remaining at the forefront of organic, American political development.

Van Jones doesn’t understand this – he looks around and wonders why there isn’t a liberal TEA Party and so sets out to create one. But it can’t be done…you can’t create a spontaneous movement. For there to be a liberal TEA Party there would have to arise among liberal-minded people first a willingness to act without orders (liberals are the most unthinking and regimented people imaginable, when you get down to it…only a very few ever dare stray from the party line); secondly, there would have to be a conviction that liberalism, as such, is both vital and under existential threat. After Wisconsin a lot of liberals are still feeling the threat, but it is hard to consider liberalism vital in the sense of something to die for. The TEA Party feels that if it doesn’t win then the men who fought at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Normandy will have died in vain…liberalism works out to a whine about how life isn’t fair.

Van Jones is free to try his effort, but he won’t be able to do anything other than duplicate what liberalism already has – ponderous groups of liberal special interests who, in the end, are just bitching and moaning about the taxpayer not paying them more money. Meanwhile, the TEA Party will move on from victory to victory because it isn’t fighting for the special benefit of TEA Party activists, but for the whole of the United States of America.