(november 2008) Why i voted against "gay" marriage. Let's start by admitting that discrimination is pervasive and totally accepted. Western society discriminates against many categories of people: mentally insane people (who are denied almost all civil rights based on a very arbitrary definition of "mental illness"); physically handicapped people (who can be legally denied many jobs); convicts (two million citizens who are currently denied most civil rights, including the right to walk in a park); sick people (who are denied, for example, the right to adopt and sometimes even the right to travel); less educated people (who never have the same chance in life as higher educated people); last but not least, singles (who don't have the same rights as people who are married, from taxes to adoption). It is likely that all of these categories would like to have more rights than they have today. Then one could add soccer fans, who don't get as many fields as baseball fans, and listeners of avantgarde music, who don't get as many concerts as pop music fans, and so forth and so forth and so forth. You can come up with an infinite list of "minorities" that are discriminated because they are a minority.
So the argument that we should not "discriminate" against homosexuals calls for the opposite question: why is it anathema to raise issues about homosexuals when it is ok to have all sorts of discriminations against all sorts of categories?
Second, if we have to expand the definition of marriage, why only expand it to homosexuals? Why is marriage limited to two people? why can't i marry six women at the same time? why can't you have marriage between two men and three women? Polygamy has been pervasive in ancient times, and it is among most mammal species. It is perfectly legal to be a single mother or single father, but it is not legal to have a marriage among three people.
Why are there age limits? why can't i marry a 12-year old? Helen of Troy was 12, Juliet and Cleopatra were still teenagers when they became famous. Medical studies show that the best age for a woman to have children is between 15 and 25 (lowest chances of miscarriage, of birth defects and, last but not least, of the woman dying while giving birth); while the worst age is after the mid 30s. And the younger you are, the more likely you are to cement a real friendship with your children; the older you are, the more likely that the "generational gap" will hurt your children's psychology. Therefore it is much more natural to have a child at 16 than at 40. In countless countries of the world women have their first child at a very young age, and stop having children at a relatively young age. Nonetheless, in the USA it is illegal to have sex before 18 (but, note, only if the partner is over 18), while it is perfectly legal to get pregnant at 40 or (thanks to medical progress) even at 50. Note that all of these forms of marriage were common in ancient times before the introduction of Christian "morality". Therefore one could find stronger arguments in favor of these forms of marriage than in favor of homosexual marriage (which has been relatively rare throughout the centuries).
Today incest is illegal, but it was common in ancient times (all kings and queens of Egypt married their siblings or mothers): why is it illegal for two siblings to get married and why does incest disqualify a couple from adopting children?
And, if we expand the definition of marriage to all of these categories, what rights do we give them? For example, to me it looks much more natural for a group of two men and three women to raise children (as it was in most ancestral societies) than for an homosexual couple to do so (something for which i find no precedents in ancestral societies). A family without a man or without a woman goes against biology, and probably has psychological consequences that the entire society will pay for.
Prostitution is still illegal in most countries of the world, even though today it is normal for a woman to have sex with many men: why is it illegal to do it for money but legal to do it for fun? A secretary can sleep with her or his boss and a college student can sleep with her or his professor, but a prostitute cannot sleep with a customer for money: why? A former prostitute is disqualified from ever adopting children, wbereas a woman or man who has had many sexual partners is considered perfectly fit to adopt children: why? There are many more unnatural and unreasonable laws today than the laws against homosexual marriage: why focus only on homosexual marriage and leave all the other restrictions on sex and marriage in place?
The argument that i keep hearing is that there are many homosexual couples who are better parents than straight couples. I have no problem believing it (and personally know two of them). But what makes you think that a family with two men and three women wouldn't be good parents of their children? Or that a 15-year old mother married to a 40-year old man wouldn't be a better parent than a 35-year old mother married to a 26-year old man? Or that a prostitute wouldn't be a better mother than a business woman? Or that parents who are siblings are more likely to have abnormal children than women in their 40s? All of these are pure prejudices.
Personally, i would instead prefer to close this can of worms. For each of these categories, i would instead like to see a list of the *specific* rights that they want (certainly they all want more) and then be asked to vote on each and every additional right that they want. But not on something so vague as "marriage", that is a higher category encompassing a number of specific rights that i am not familiar with.
To start with, i disagree with homosexual couples having the right to adopt children, until the day that i read enough literature; and the literature i read so far seems to imply that the "traditional" family that has become the norm all over the planet is the result of a "natural selection" of possible forms of family. Before we tamper with it, it's worth pondering the consequences. Most empires collapsed not because of economic or military factors but because they tampered with the structure of family. If there isn't enough literature, then i am opposed to experimenting on children. Homosexual couples can do a lot of good by sending money to poor families and institutions in the third world, instead of "stealing" children that the biological parents would probably not have given them.
Discriminating over family-related things (such as adoption) against homosexuals sounds more legitimate to me than discriminating against incestuous couples, prostitutes, polygamous/polyandric relationships, etc. Homosexual couples cannot reproduce. Telling me that they are identical to couples who reproduce sounds like denying the obvious. Those are couples in which neither is capable of breast feeding a baby. Neither (if males) has a truly feminine voice (a fundamental part of developing the brain of an infant is listening to sounds) or (if lesbians) neither has a male voice. Particularly the lack of a mother may be dreadful. Read a book on child development and pay attention to the role played by the two sexes. All of that probably disappears if you have only male or only female parents.
I find it insulting to women that homosexuals frequently compare their political fight to the fight for gender equality: women are *not* a minority. Anyway, we do discriminate based on gender when it comes to physical strength, for example in Olympic sports, that are divided along gender lines. Why? Because women on the average are less strong than men. And we actually give them more rights in restrooms, in hospitalization, in pregnancy laws, in the military draft, etc etc. Even current abortion laws are asymmetric, discriminating against men: when they talk about "choice", they mean "the woman's right to choose", and not the man's right to choose. Whenever there is a biological difference, we condone and actually encourage "gender-based discrimination". (Discriminating women based on intelligence was wrong because women are not less intelligent than men. That was a prejudice not a fact. That most male athletes run faster than most female athletes is a fact, not a prejudice).
We even discriminate based on skin colors when it comes to skin color, e.g. if you need an actor to impersonate Nelson Mandela the most natural choice is to hire an African actor, not a Chinese.
Is it legitimate to discriminate against homosexual couples when it comes to issues such as adoption? Yes, precisely for the same reason that we "discriminate" against women in tasks in which physical strength is a major issue, precisely for the same reason that we discriminate against Chinese actors in movies about African people.
Claiming that those who discriminate against homosexuals are like the people who used to discriminate against women is 1. cheap propaganda (using the same logic, right-wing Republicans used to call traitors all those who opposed the war in Iraq) 2. an insult to women (whose discrimination was truly based on prejudice).
The one thing that seems dangerous to me is the wholesale question "is homosexual marriage ok"? It had the opposite effect on me. Not only am i voting "no" to homosexual marriage if the only choices are yes and no, but i would also like to revisit any other right that they have accrued over the years.
I am more likely to vote in favor of expanding marriage to more than two people (as long as there is at least one female and one male).
What is missing on this issue is an honest debate because homosexuals have been able to create a terror campaign in liberal states like California, and their opponents have been able to create a terror campaign in conservative states. Living in California, i personally feel oppressed by homosexuals: the moment you speak up against gay marriage in California, you are treated like suspected communists were treated during the witch hunt of the 1950s. It's like criticizing Islam in Saudi Arabia. Gay-rights advocates are proving to be children of the George W Bush era by using the same methods of psychological coercion that he used to go to war against Iraq and pass many dubious laws. When they call "prejudice" the opinion of others, they echo all the great dictators of the past. People who dare oppose gay marriage are branded as fanatics, but it's gay marriage advocates who are behaving like fundamentalists: they are creating a dogmatic religion in favor of gay marriage.
Another non-trivial element in making me vote against homosexual marriage is that the world is falling apart and we waste energy and time discussing if gays should or should not have the right to get married? It seems like we are tweaking the seats of the Titanic while it is sinking (which could be one of the reasons why it is sinking: we spent too much time around issues that were irrelevant while there was a much bigger problem that nobody really paid attention to).
The more people will press this issue, the more hostile i will become. Its attempt to repress dissent is too reminiscent of other historical cases of intolerance.
In fact, for the first time in my life, i am worried about the fact that children might be "brainwashed" in schools throughout the country to "tolerate" homosexuality, which may turn out to be an encouragement to 1. uncritically approve gay marriage, and 2. become gay yourself. One thing is to teach that you should not be hostile to a homosexual individual, but another thing is to teach that you should become gay yourself. I wrote the exact same things when i was a teenager and Christian priests enjoyed the privilege of teaching religion in schools. And i would write the same thing if schools taught that Islam is somewhat special. Teach tolerance, not proselyzation.
Iniciado por dahakamdq
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