The debate over Gay Marriage has come front and center in political debates lately, and with all of the electrons that have been spilled writing about it there is one detail that should not get lost in the shuffle. I am of course, referring to the bigotry, intolerance, and hatred of… the left.
For starters, in its most basic form the debate is over how people on one side feel that marriage is between one man and one woman, while the other side feels that marriage between two adults should be recognized regardless of gender. This is one issue where I think that both sides’ arguments have merit, although one is doing everything in its power to show its viscous, ugly side. Most leftists assume that this would describe conservatives, and sadly do not realize that it is actually themselves.
Civil Unions
Gay marriage was a subject I had never really had an opinion about until around twelve years ago when I read Jesse Ventura’s first book, “Do I Stand Alone?” Mind you, back in 2000 Jesse was still a new governor in Minnesota and a breath of fresh air in the system, not the full time conspiracy theorist he’s become today. On the issue of gay marriage he looked at both sides, and his assertion was that it was wrong to discriminate against two consenting adults from legal benefits from a system that they have paid taxes into based on their gender preference. On the other side, the term “Marriage” has an important spiritual meaning in religions practiced by many Americans, and their views should be respected as well. His solution was civil unions – granting legal rights for gay couples while still respecting the people whose religious views would be offended.
This seems like a reasonable compromise for both sides, and one that I supported then and still continue to do so. In fact, contrary to the leftist notion that conservatives are opposed to “gay rights” polls show that the majority of Conservatives as well as Republicans support civil unions. So why do I oppose gay marriage and support civil unions?
The Argument Against
I am in full agreement on the legal aspects of the concept, and while I feel that respect for religious views is important that is not my main reason for opposing gay marriage. The problem is that leftists never stop once they go down a road. Just as the civil rights movement has evolved from gaining equal rights for black Americans to maintaining a permanent underclass voting block and the feminist movement has evolved from voting rights and equal pay to whining that someone else won’t subsidize their efforts to contract Herpes or AIDS, gay marriage is not an end goal, but merely a milestone objective.
When we’re worrying about the quality of education in this country I don’t think that laws that lead to pushing schools to teach our kids about gay marriage is a good idea – personally I feel that subjects like math, science, and American history are more important. I also don’t like the idea of church-affiliated adoption agencies being pushed out of the business because they won’t place children with gay couples. I would have a problem with Catholic agencies not placing children with gay couples if there weren’t also other agencies that do, but they are not the only show in town. Personally, I think that fewer children looking for families to live with is a good thing.
I also mentioned that leftist dogma has no end point, just a continuation. When the concept of civil unions came about we were assured that it was an end point and of course all leftists respected marriage itself. Now that gay marriage is the new accepted norm (among leftists), we are assured that it will stop here, and not lead to polygamy or anything crazy like someone marrying their dog. Going back and forth with a lefty buddy of mine on FaceBook I told him to remember the conversation we just had in five years when polygamy will be seen as the newest right. I assumed that it would evolve from leftist love for acquiescence to Islamic culture, but I was wrong. The subject has already come up, and from a completely different direction.
Beliefs
Before I go any further I want to try to explain the religious aspect of the objections from the perspective of the Catholic Church to help clarify its views for any leftists reading this. First, they believe in a higher being as their creator, namely God. In layman’s terms their religion is a set of beliefs that give them a code of conduct, along with various milestones in their lives that bring them closer to God. There are seven sacraments, such as Baptism, Communion, and of course, marriage. Marriage is quite important, as it is through procreation that the human race survives. Procreation is another key element to marriage – having children is a miracle and gift from God (and yes, Catholics do take science classes and understand the biology involved). For obvious biological reasons, this part is physically impossible for a gay or lesbian couple. One other note regarding procreation – many Christians also believe that life begins when the two cells meet and a baby begins to grow. I wanted to mention this last point while we’re here, although that belongs to a separate debate.1
Or, if you’d rather hear this issue explained from a direct source, here is how San Francisco’s Archbishop Cordileone weighed in:
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Archbishop-designate Salvatore J. Cordileone might find himself at the receiving end of leftist criticism if he does what he says he will do.
In a CNA article titled “New San Francisco archbishop vows to support marriage, immigrants”, Archbishop Cordileone affirms the Catholic Church’s support of traditional marriage:
While he said that he will need time to get to know the area, the archbishop-elect anticipates that many of the challenges he faces will deal with “issues of family life,” which are ultimately rooted in “foundational philosophical issues” about the nature of the human person and the purpose of sexuality.
“Marriage is a foundational good,” he emphasized, explaining that the Church’s stance against “gay marriage” is not discriminatory but is simply rooted in the nature and definition of marriage as an institution.
Children “can only come about through the embrace of a man and a woman coming together,” he said, adding that this necessarily limits marriage to the type of union that can bring new life into the world.
“Children deserve to have a mother and a father,” the archbishop-elect said, and so “we need to do everything we can to strengthen marriage.”
In addressing “moral challenges” involving the weakening of family life, it is important to realize that strong marriages benefit all of society, he said.
He added that there is a need to lovingly welcome those who “feel alienated from the Church” due to their sexual orientation, showing them that “our stand for marriage is not against anyone, but it’s because we believe this is foundational for the good of our society.”
In other words, Archbishop Cordileone is in agreement with Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy on the nature of marriage, specifically the definition of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman only.
Back to my leftist friends, hopefully now you see why your insistence on redefining an element of someone’s values can be found so offensive. I know you don’t agree with it – all I’m asking you to do is to understand the reasoning. This is called “tolerance”, and respect for other people’s values that may differ from your own. Or another way to put it is respecting “diversity”. If you want to consider yourself tolerant and respectful of other religions, that does not mean limiting yourself to only those religions that are followed mainly outside of the US by non-white cultures. You also need to include a people that is strange, exotic and completely foreign to you – average Americans. Now I know that taken literally my overview of the faith probably has leftist secularists chuckling at the stupidity of those knuckle dragging Christians for their backwards faith, but maybe you should look in the mirror. How many of you still follow the Global Warming Climate Change cult despite the debunked science at the heart of those beliefs? For that matter, how many of you accepted as your Lord and Savior a second rate politician back in 2008? And how many of you still worship him?
Now that we’ve covered the arguments against gay marriage, let ‘s look at this from the leftist perspective. The left’s two main arguments seem to break down to societal acceptance, and legal rights.
Acceptance
Leftists have pretty much dropped the term “gay marriage” because this accurate description doesn’t seem to resonate well with average Americans, so it is now referred to as “Marriage Rights” or “Marriage Equality”. This has a twofold purpose – 1) How many people will say that they are truly against something that involves equality or rights, and 2) it’s easier to scream down opposition as hateful bigots, since respectful, intelligent dialogue has not worked as the leftists had hoped it would. When you get down to it, the co-opting of the word marriage comes down to something more basic – societal acceptance. I have some bad news for you leftists – that’s not going to happen, at least not how you are probably envisioning it. And it’s not because conservatives are bigots, it’s because your expectations are unrealistic.
Before I go any further, let me clarify that not all conservatives are angels. There are those who are anti-gay bigots, and there is not much we can do to change that. Mind you though, opposing gay marriage itself does not equate bigotry. The people who the left should be looking for acceptance from are the open minded conservatives. Based on that ultimate goal and how the left goes about pursuing it, achieving the acceptance that leftists envision is not possible.
A few years ago the satirical newspaper, “The Onion” wrote a funny article stating that “Local Gay Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years” (Images in the article are NSFW-ish). In the article they talked about over the top costumes and sexual displays that led straight onlookers to decide that they were wrong that gays were just like them and that these people are in fact deviants. And this is not homophobic either – if my town had a parade and Sister Babe and I participated with her wearing a dominatrix outfit while leading me on a leash with me shirtless and wearing cheekless leather chaps along with a mask similar to The Gimp character from the movie “Pulp Fiction” my neighbors would probably view us as a bit deviant and be less accepting of us, hetero or not.2 The article was a good piece of humorous fiction, but it brings up a valid point. A recent article on National Review’s online pages (can’t find the link – sorry for lack of better citation) asserted that you can’t say that any culture should completely accept you when you are introducing an element to it that is foreign to that culture. If you are making your presence in a community predicated on how you are defying it, expecting full acceptance is impossible. That is not to say that if you are gay you can’t be accepted in a heterosexual community, but if your goal is to spit in the face of the values of some of its members it is unrealistic to expect to be fully accepted. And for those of you who think that gay marriage is no different than interracial marriage, read my previous post where I argued in favor of gays being allowed to serve openly in the military (yes, really).
Legal Rights
If achieving state recognition of non-heterosexual relationships and affording the legal protections with it are the goal, why not take that approach? As I cited earlier the majority of Republicans and Conservatives favor civil unions, and the left would have a much easier time passing said laws since the religious element has been removed from the equation. The reason why not is where the issue starts to get ugly. To the left this issue is not about rights or legal protection. It is about achieving rights and equal protection, but only in a way that is particularly offensive to Christians. I’ve written before about the leftist need to hate, and not having a Republican president forces the left to get creative in designating a target. If this argument were framed strictly around rights that could be gained through civil unions the left would most likely have achieved it. One of the ugly sides of the leftist identity politics is the necessity of permanent victimhood. By maintaining divides in society the left is able to frame themselves as champions and protectors of their groups. Anyone who actually graduates from the victim class and achieves the success (that they didn’t build themselves, of course) and wants to be identified for who they are rather than their group’s collective grievances is seen as a sellout. If gays are granted simply the legal protection and benefits, suddenly spitting in the eye of the Catholic Church might not seem as important. And of far greater importance, not having a cause to rally around could leave this segment less likely to vote for people who need to have them as victims.
Divide
The voting aspect is key, as we’ve been seeing that the president’s realizes that he can’t run for re-election on his record. His only hope is to get his base fired up and angry, hence the manufactured “war on women”, suggesting that removing dead people from voter rolls is a return of Jim Crow, and of course, portraying support for traditional marriage as extreme anti-gay bigotry. If the general electorate is getting tired of the president’s act, he figures he can get his base angry enough to focus their anger since empty promises of hope and change have left nothing to offer but divisiveness and class warfare. And in true Alinskyite fashion, the Chick Fil A fast food chain has been chosen by the left as its latest target for demonization.
This brings us to how the left treats people who don’t share their opinions.The main reason for Chick Fil A’s being targeted is the fact in itself that Cathy is a Christian and supports Christian values in the charities it sponsors. And this also leads to another dark side – the anti-Christian bigotry of the left. Part of this comes from natural opposition on highly emotional issues – abortion and gay marriage. It also comes from basic philosophical differences, such as how one views being a part of a community. To the conservative charity is volunteering time or giving money to those in need, while to the leftist being charitable means forcing someone else to give their money to the government for redistribution. Leftists also seem to have disdain for anyone who believes in a higher power other than the state. Seeing how they’ve treated Cathy and others who share his view of marriage has been disturbing at best.
Distort
We’ve seen outright distortion of Cathy’s views. It took me all of two minutes to find how the LA Times twisted Cathy’s words with its headline, “Is Chick-fil-A anti-gay marriage? ‘Guilty as charged,’ leader says.” Actually, Cathy was only asked about his views on traditional marriage, never a word about gay marriage. Yes, I’m getting into semantics here, but the headline creates the impression that Cathy expressed a dislike for gays. Chick Fil A doesn’t discriminate against gays. They will hire and promote employees regardless of sexual orientation, and will serve any customers. There are no “Queer only” restrooms or water fountains. For the reasons stated above, being opposed to gay marriage does not make you anti-gay. To give a similar example, I am very much against rape. At the Occupy Wall Street protests among the myriad of crimes committed at them, rape was among them. Because of my strong feelings on this subject when Men’s Warehouse decided to support the OWSers I decided to stop doing business with them. While I am running my own personal boycott of Men’s Warehouse I’m not taking this to its extension of labeling anyone who supports them as being pro-rape for supporting the occupiers. And I am not citing their pro-rape stance as part of the left’s War on Women. It would sound stupid if I were thinking that way, and it’s no less stupid coming from the leftists on gay marriage.
Suppress
The assault on Chick Fil A also shows a much darker side of leftist rage – the desire to kill free speech when they disapprove of it. Out in California angry leftists staged protests trying to destroy businesses who did not support gay marriage. Back in 2009 gossip columnist Perez Hilton launched a heated attack on Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean because she held the incorrect opinion on gay marriage. Perez Hilton showed his tolerance and respect for other views by blogging that “She gave the worst answer in pageant history. “She lost because she’s a dumb b—-, okay?” For people who claim to hate bullying the left certainly likes to engage in it.
…And Back
And at the end of the day we’re already starting to see a backlash, where even the not exactly conservative publications like the Boston Globe and Chicago Sun Times are picking up on the fact that clamping down on free speech might not be such a good idea. Now the right has fired back to some degree, with Mike Huckabee organizing on Facebook a “Support Chick Fil A Day” for Wednesday, 8/1. Even thought Sister Babe and I generally don’t go out to eat during the week we might go there on general principle. We also generally don’t grab fast food, but when we do it usually is Chick Fil A. And no, it’s not because of the company leadership’s religious views. We go there because as fast food goes their food is excellent. Their places are always clean, the staff members are always pleasant, and neither of us has ever had a remotely bad experience eating there. I’ve worked in enough organizations to recognize one where the employees are treated well – you can see it in how everybody conducts themselves and interacts with their customers. Maybe there is a benefit to a company’s values being guided by Christian principles.
Not to be outdone, the lefties are proposing a Gay Makeout Day for the following day, 8/2. No, it does not look like a serious effort, and I really hope that it doesn’t happen. Aside from being obnoxious I hope that anyone thinking of trying this will realize that going out of their way to behave offensively won’t help to promote tolerance or understanding. It’s not hateful of me to want to be able to eat dinner without two guys making out in front of me. I don’t want to see two transsexuals making out in front of me while I eat, nor would I want to see two lesbians kissing, even if both chicks are totally hot. (Author’s aside to Sister Babe if she’s reading this: Just kidding Sweetie – love you!) But I’m not bigoted, as I wouldn’t want to see a heterosexual couple getting it on in front of me, either. For that matter, I’m guessing that people with families would prefer to eat in peace as well. Let’s hope that sanity prevails over leftist anger on this one.
There is hope though – Antoine Dodson, of the web famous “hide yo kids, hide yo wife” bed intruder video just put out another video, this time supporting Chick Fil A. Dodson is gay himself, and doesn’t really care who makes him a quality chicken sandwich:
“A lot of people from the gay community have been coming to me and telling me that I shouldn’t eat from Chick-fil-A, and I’m thinking like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so crazy. Why?” the openly gay man said in a video posted on YouTube yesterday. “Chick-fil-A makes good meals, and I eat there quite frequently. No one is going to stop me from eating there. If I’m going to have a Chick-fil-A sandwich, I’m going to have a Chick-fil-A sandwich.”
My advice to any leftists reading this, get over yourselves. Your support for gay marriage doesn’t make you a civil rights crusader following in Martin Luther King’s footsteps, nor does my opposition make me two holes in my bed sheet short of being a Klansman. Showing the angry, bigoted, intolerant side of your ideology that tries to scream down any dissenting opinions isn’t helping anyone. For that matter, if your serious about wanting tolerance and civility, the best way to receive it is to start showing it.
Cross Posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
1 To any Catholics or other Christians reading this, what I gave was just a “seven miles high” general overview of the faith. I’m going on my Catholic upbringing as my reference point, but having spent roughly twenty years as a Born Again Existentialist my knowledge of the faith is a bit rusty. If I completely missed any of the points please correct me in the comments but don’t rough me up too badly – any misrepresentation was purely accidental.
2 Lest anyone think I was serious, no, Sister Babe and I neither I own nor wear any outfits like the ones I described. My apologies to any readers who were eating at the time, and deeper apologies to any readers who know me personally and now had that horrific image of me scorched into their minds.
