Vermont: Gay marriage is religious liberty threat

Here's the thing I don't get, Franklin: since when is the idea that it takes a man and a woman to get married a strictly Christian notion?

The way so many SSM people seem to think, the world was one crazy day-glow paradise of gay marriages, group marriages, incestuous marriages, marriages which actually described the legal relationship of celibate spinster sisters, etc. until those evil Christians came along and restricted marriage to male-female sexual pairings.

That's not the case at all.

All human societies have been founded around the idea that it takes some combination of males and females willingly entering into a sexual partnership (not merely a legal one) to form a foundational unit of society. Now, I'm at a loss to explain this--gosh, why should all those pagan and Christian and Jewish and Muslim and other groups have thought there was anything different or special or unique about bonds between men and women, or, increasingly throughout history, one man and one woman, that needed to be encouraged and stabilized with society's involvement?

Gee. I guess it was bigotry. Couldn't have had anything to do with setting up a framework which would nurture and protect children by letting them know not only their mothers (because until Cat Cora's type of experiment a child would always at least know who his mother was) but also his father, who without marriage tends not to be around for the kids, which is still true today. Couldn't have been meant to be for the benefit of future generations, for the transmission and communication of that society and culture's values. Nope--because marriage does not, has never, and can never have the slightest thing to do with children.

Marriage, say the gay activists, has always been nothing more than society's stamp of approval on your love 'n sex relationship, and because society approves of you, society grants you tax breaks and hospital visits. Since that is all marriage ever has been, is now, or ever will be, then it's nothing but discrimination to tell *these* adults they can have a marriage, but *those* they can't. Gender has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage--it never did, it never can, and it never will. Children have nothing to do with marriage--they never did, never can, and never will.

I don't know how it's possible NOT to see what a radical new interpretation of marriage that notion is, and yet it is what same-sex marriage advocates are saying. Oh, sure, some will insist they're not really saying that, but the reality is that by insisting that SSM is the same thing as heterosexual marriage, and by demanding that SSM be treated exactly equally in the law, that is exactly what they are saying.

I guarantee you that we will see a further erosion of fatherhood in this country as a direct result of SSM. We will see a time when married fathers will have to adopt their own biological children if they want to claim them on taxes etc., or if they don't want a court to arbitrarily declare that someone else in the child's life has become a "psychological parent" or a "de-facto parent" and strip him of his rights to see his children or be involved in his children's lives. With marriage already seeming like a bad investment to men, who usually get the short end of the stick in divorce and custody proceedings, I don't see this situation as improving the lives of children already at risk from our culture where "sex without consequences" always means that children are put dead last and must suffer the effects of the sexual selfishness their "parenting partners" display.

My honest feeling is that if society thinks civil marriage has nothing to do with children at all, then society has lost its prevailing interest in marriage. Society doesn't interfere in any other sexual relationship, after all. There's no such thing as a "friends with benefits" contract which gives you inheritance rights and tax breaks. There's no such thing as a "coed contract" which covers your college sexual excursions. If American society has decided that marriage means nothing but "benefits the state gives you for making a temporary, legally breakable promise to stay with the person you're currently engaging in sexual behavior with," then I insist that the State no longer has any compelling interest in marriage at all, and must abolish it as a civil state, as a simple matter of justice.

Now, because I'm a Catholic I can't promote that, because I think the State should have some concern for making sure that a child's parents remain married to each other. But if you tell me that civil marriage does not, can not, and never can have anything to do with children or their protection and stability, then abolish it--what good is it, and what business is it of the State who anybody's sleeping with or wants to visit in the hospital?

This is a first take on your response, Erin, so please don't take it as a complete reply. Also, may I gently remind you that I have never thought of you as a bigot, let alone called you one. With that, I definitely understand your sensitivity around that.

Funding of public schools has gone around the tax-base and government mandate circle many times, and a recurrent (ubiquitous around here) theme has been one or both of: "I'm childless, and you have no right to make me pay for it..." and "I send my children to parochial school, and I shouldn't have to pay for both."

I am put in mind, also that public, mandated education grew out of the advent of child labor laws, which in turn were established to address exploitation by industry (and not a few farmers). I further note from history one of the primary motivations for the establishment of a parochial school system: obligatory prayer in public schools using Protestant prayers.

That history is an example of the societal recognition of its obligation to our children, their value to the current generation and the future of our society, and subsequent losing of the sight of that.

As a parent, and further as a product of public education, you may expect me to stand firmly and adamantly on the side of keeping that obligation to our children, and further accepting partners in that effort from any camp, including Catholics who don't like paying taxes for public schools. With that, I am firmly and adamantly against mandatory prayer in public schools, teaching religion in any way that resembles evangelising (and yes, should any religion attempt it, I will oppose them), or allowing the local religious majority to dictate curricula according to their beliefs.

So, am I pro-child or anti-child? Am I simply complex, or a hypocrite? Those are serious questions, and I would make serious answers to them if asked.

If SSM proves to be a detriment to children in any significant proportion to current laws and practices that are already a detriment to children, then I will act, just as I am acting now in those ways I can to fight those current laws and practices. What I can tell you about that from my personal, local perspective is that the several homosexual couples in committed relationships that I know (with one exception) would all be better parents than the many parents I know about and with whom my wife deals on a daily basis as a special ed teacher and liaison (she deals personally, for her school, with mental health pros, lawyers and private services such as specialized schools). With my support for those homosexual couples' demand for equal treatment under the law, I would never advocate for the denial of or removal of those students' parents' rights to marry and have their marriages recognized by law. I would, in fact, stand up in opposition to that denial or removal, and I'd call upon those homosexual couples to do the same. Knowing them as I do, I would expect them to do it.

"No, it doesn't ask "Americans" to surrender a "core belief," because not all Americans hold that as a core belief. What it does is ask people who hold that core belief to continue to do so in their own lives and mind their own friggin' business.

What part of this is so hard to understand?"

Right on!