THE BENEFITS OF GAY MARRIAGE

The Marriage Protection Amendment is one of the most asinine ideas to come down the pike in at least fifty years. In the first place it’s a misnomer. It doesn’t protect heterosexual marriage at all. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but whenever you ask the proponents of the Marriage Protections exactly how it protects heterosexual marriage, they never quite manage to muster a proper response. They go into convoluted Biblical arguments about how the primary purpose of marriage is reproduction, or how God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, or how gay marriage will open the doors on incestuous relationships or bestiality, but they never directly answer the question. How is gay marriage harmful to heterosexual couples? Do the Bible-thumpers in this world really believe that a straight couple will one day encounter a gay couple and that one of the heterosexuals will turn to his partner and quip, “Jeeze dear, that looks kind of neat, I think I’d like to try that?” I wouldn’t be surprised. As for the idea that gay marriage will promote incest and bestiality, I don’t suppose it ever dawned on the Bible-thumpers that they might want to pass Constitutional Amendments against those abnormal practices and leave the GLBT community the hell alone. But when the truth is told the fact of the matter is that gay marriage will have no ill effect other than denying gay couples what heterosexual couples already enjoy.

Homophobic religious fanatics routinely claim that gay marriage is responsible for the rising divorce rate, but the truth of the matter is that the divorce rate has been rising since the 1950s and 1960s. So if the fanatics want to blame something for the rising divorce rate they might want to take a look at the availability of cheap, effective contraception and the changing rolls of women in society at large. That isn’t to blame the women either. The truth of the matter is that before contraception and the women’s movement women had very few options in this society. When they went to college they were expected to study enlightening subjects like home economics so that they could marry and run the home. Those who didn’t go to college were still expected to get married and remain inside the home to raise children. In other words, women were expected to marry, have children, and spend the rest of their lives raising those children. Translated into modern English, the same religious conservatives who condemn gay marriage and who propose a national Marriage Protection Amendment to the Constitution, are the same people who think that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant according to some “literal” preconception (pun intended) of The Protestant or Catholic Bibles. Another factor was the changing economy. During the 1950s a couple could afford to live on a single income with the husband working outside the home and the “little woman” staying at home. That clearly has changed.

The Bible-thumpers routinely blame social spending for the poor and subsequent tax increases to fund those programs, but once again, the same demented “Christians” who condemn the idea of spending money on the poor are the same social darwinist’s who would both, allow the weakest in our society to languish and die and who–you guessed it–saw a woman’s position in society as subservient to men. As proof of their arguments, the Bible-thumpers often point to the declining marriage rates in Scandanavia (Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) where they claim that gay marriage is legal. Of course the fact that gay marriage is not legal and that these countries have legalized domestic partnerships is a minor fact which the Bible-thumpers conveniently ignore; just as they ignore the fact that Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have comparable divorce rates to countries which ave not legalized domestic partnerships. Moreover, the decline of marriage has been taking place for decades, again, well before the idea of Gay Marriage became a front burner issue. Of course none of this has anything to do with the fact that the Bible-thumpers don’t have their facts straight and that they are merely condemning (read “persecuting”) the people who they love to hate the most.

That said it might be argued that gay marriage might prove helpful to marriage overall, increasing the overall marriage rate and inspiring other couples, both gay and straight to give marriage a shot. Moreover, gay marriage would provide a stable institution for the GLBT community. One of the most common arguments against the GLBT community is that we are promiscuous, that promiscuity spreads AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. But it seems to me that marriage would provide a certain degree of stability, and thus undermine the argument that we are supposedly more promiscuous than the Bible-thumpers. As if they should talk. Heterosexuals tend to be promiscuous as well. They just do it in a more “respectable manner,” cheating on their spouses, dragging the entire family through a messy divorce suit and then graduating to become serial monogamists. Yup. Real morality there. But what else can we expect? The Bible-thumpers are very adept at quoting those parts of The Bible which condemn homosexuality, but isn’t it interesting that they seldom quote the verses in Matthew Chapter 5 in which Christ alters the Old Testament divorce provisions and outright bans the practice of divorce. You’d think that some of these divorced conservatives would know their Bibles, but it seems as if they only quote the parts which don’t condemn their own hypocrisy In a similar vein, Gay marriage would provide more stability for the children of gays and lesbians, another fact which seems to have eluded the reactionary Bible-thumpers. God knows the children of gays and lesbians often suffer persecution at the hands of self-righteous homophobes, but if you ask me, the legalization of gay marriage will go a long way towards popularizing the idea of gay marriage and perhaps–just perhaps– create a more stable environment for the children of gay and lesbian couples.

If gay marriage offers social benefits it also offers economic benefits. In 2003, after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down laws banning gay marriage, the state of Massachusetts saw an influx of gay professionals who were seeking the right to live as married couples. Prior to that the state had been experiencing a brain drain for several decades. Even though the state possesses some of the most illustrious colleges and universities in the entire country, the United States Census Bureau revealed a decline in population from 6,438,510 to 6,429,137. Now, however, gay professionals are bringing their talents and abilities to a state which refuses to discriminate against them, which is willing to grant then the same rights that heterosexuals take for granted on a regular basis. Indeed, membership in business organizations has begun to increase as a result of gay marriage rights.

The Bible-thumpers routinely claim that gays and lesbians are demanding special rights. This is perhaps one of the grossest misrepresentation in their entire, homophobic (smear) campaign. As I stated before, the GLBT community is only seeking the same rights that heterosexuals take for granted. If the GLBT community were to connect their demand for marriage rights to special tax breaks for married (gay) couples, or if it were to demand special adoption rights favoring their community, one could accurately argue that an argument were being made for special rights. But what the Bible-thumpers fail to comprehend is that a demand for equal rights does not constitute a demand for special rights.

Actually, it is the Bible-thumpers who are demanding special rights. They want the federal and/or state governments to use their considerable power to distribute sanctity and sacred trusts. In other words, they are attempting to establish their religion on the entire United States. They want their literal interpretation of the Bible to replace the Constitution as the law of the land. And if they can’t establish their religion at a national level they have another strategy. They would trash Article IV of the Constitution and allow individual states to deny the institutions of other states. In other words they would take us back to the bad old days of the Articles of Confederation when the states often refused to recognize the institutions of other states. It was bad enough in the late Eighteenth Century. Can you imagine how chaotic this country would be if we took their anti-gay marriage to its logical extreme in the Twenty-First Century, with fifty states acting as individual republics?

Ultimately we need to admit that the Marriage Protection Amendment represents the last breath of a dying movement against the GLBT community. According to a December 2004 Pew Research Poll, 61 percent of the American people were opposed to gay marriage, In a subsequent Pew Research Poll from March 2006 that figure had dropped to a mere 51 percent. At the same time a majority of Americans approve of equal employment opportunities and civil unions for gays and lesbians. Given a little more time I strongly suspect that a majority of Americans won’t only approve of civil unions but of gay marriage itself. And the homophobes in this country may well hasten the process. All in all the American people can be very fair minded. They don’t take kindly to hate speech or acts of violence against minority groups, and if you’ve been keeping abreast of the situation you must know that gays and lesbians often find themselves on the receiving end of hate speech and anti-gay violence. That kind of barbarism doesn’t settle well with the American public and can only create a backlash against the homophobic right.

Moreover, the Bible-thumpers do not have the votes to launch a Marriage Protection Amendment. A Constitutional Amendment requires a two thirds majority in the House of Representatives. That amounts to 290 out of 435 votes. In the Senate a Constitutional Amendment requires a two thirds majority of 67 out of 100. After that the Amendment must pass three quarters of the states. The Bible-thumpers couldn’t muster majorities in neither the House nor the Senate during the height of the anti-gay-marriage hysteria in 2004. Or to be succinct, it ain’t gonna happen! They may be able to pass state amendments and they may be able to pass laws to restrict gay marriage, but what the homophobes have forgotten is that laws give more power to the federal government, Amendments (with the single exception of Prohibition which was eventually repealed) extend rights to the American people; they deregulate and strip the federal government of the power. Ironic, isn’t it? Right wingers arguing for a Constitutional Amendment which, by its very nature, is unconstitutional. Right wingers, who under normal circumstances argue against giving more power to the federal government, supporting a Constitutional Amendment which takes rights away from the people and gives more power to the federal government: Can you say “hypocritical?”

In closing I shall offer the following comment. Ultimately gay marriage will become a reality. My suggestion is that they learn to love it.

Sweet Pea

Source Material:

GAY MARRIAGE ATTRACTING SKILLED WORKERS TO MASS.

By 365.Gay.com News Center Staff

http://365gay.com/Newscon08/03/03/030308

FOUR REASONS TO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE AND TO OPPOSE THE FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

By Tom Head

http://civilliberty.about/od/gendersexuality/a/marriageamend.htm