Some amusing arguments against gay marriage…
If you have a cognitively-challenged underclass, as every large nation has, you need some anchoring institutions for them to aspire to; and those institutions should have some continuity and stability. Heterosexual marriage is a key such institution. In a society in which nobody had an IQ below 120, homosexual marriage might be plausible. In the actual societies we have, other considerations kick in.
It is difficult to decide where to begin in pulling this apart.
To accept the basic oh-so-flawless premises here, though, wouldn’t it be simpler to explain the simple idea of marriage (1) to the “cognitively-challenged” (ah, the conservative exploits political correctness to avoid letting his audience know he means them!) - rather than the idea of sex-restricted marriage (2)? Count the words in my explanations of them:
Surely the first one, where gender is irrelevant, is a lot simpler to explain to the “cognitively-challenged”?
The actual argument here appears to boil down to this, though:
Don’t we elect smart people to ensure that democracy does not mean idiocracy? It is frightening to imagine this lack of logic passing for argument.
Moving on:
Human nature exists, and has fixed characteristics.
Source? Just gonna go ahead and give this sentence the “anti-diversity” seal of approval.
We are not infinitely malleable.
*cough* How did we evolve?
Human society and human institutions need to ”fit” human nature, or at least not go too brazenly against the grain of it.
If there is a human nature (some kind of average of the way that people do things across the board), then human institutions are an extension of it, an aspect of the cultural components to our evolution. That something is “natural” - say, rape, murder: presumably components of human nature as they pop up again and again - must mean that our institutions need to “fit” that something. This is precisely why no nation on earth has ever criminalised murder.
Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us.
Yes. Not innately, though. But because when we grow up we see heterosexuals prized over homosexuals - in the same way that we see colonists prized over indigenous peoples, Europeans prized over Africans, the rich prized over the poor, men prized over women, the abled prized over the disabled - we develop an instituationalised homophobia. Again, natural != moral, Thomas Aquinas.
It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.”
Okay, so it’s unfair. Thank you. Notice misogyny here, not to mention the ignorance of lesbianism. Oh, and the prizing of homosexuality in, say, settings in Ancient Greece, the pre-Colombian Americas, the Pacific Islands, Japan pre-Europeanisation …
There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding.
WHERE HAS THERE BEEN A SOCIETY THAT APPROVED EGALITARIAN HETEROSEXUAL BONDING? Marriage in the Western tradition is a contractual thing, an extension of property rights. Nothing egalitarian about that.
This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.
Great. Be a conservative. Ignore the facts and ignore the chance to improve your world. Why even get out of bed?
They say:
OMAHA — A west Omaha couple says their 8-year-old son has asked for years to wear dresses and change his name, so they’re enrolling him in a new school where he can live openly as a girl.
The parents say their middle child is transgender, and he’s asked to be called a girl since age 4.
“One night she said, ’Every night when I go to bed, I pray my inside will match my outside. But it never happens,“’ the mother said, recalling a conversation with her child.The family, which is not being identified to protect them from possible harm, met with therapists and gender experts before deciding to switch the child’s gender affiliation.
Ellie Hites, an Omaha therapist who’s worked with more than 200 transgender people in the city, says it’s healthier to live as one’s chosen gender when there’s a discrepancy with the biological gender.
“It’s like they arrive here with one biology but the mental set is counter to that,” she said.
Many of Hites’ transgender clients have suffered from nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts and deep depression because they’ve been forced to hide their true identity, she said.
As the 8-year-old explained: “It’s kind of like you’re trapped somewhere and you can’t get out.”
He’s been allowed to dress as a girl at home, but has had to dress and act as a boy in public. The family says that will soon change.
The child recently completed second grade at a local Catholic school. His parents agreed to allow him to enter third grade as a girl, but the Rev. Joseph Taphorn, chancellor of the Omaha Archdiocese, won’t allow it.
Taphorn said it would be disruptive to other students who’ve come to know their classmate as a boy.
So, the child will be enrolled in public school — as a girl.
“Now I can wear nail polish, get rid of all my boy clothes and not worry about that name,” the child said. He’s also looking forward to growing a ponytail and getting his ears pierced.
I say:
To the author:
You could have done the child the honour of using appropriate pronouns! Pronouns refer to gender, not sex. The “son” is a girl (in gender), if male (in sex). The discrepancy between the two may be confusing to some (hence the necessity of the term ‘transgender’) but is irrelevant in using correct pronouns. It is shoddy reporting - especially given what the AP Style Guide has to say on the matter - to insult the girl in question and make her life even more difficult by insisting on using “he” and “his” and him”, acting as though you know more about her identity than she does.
At least it was reported; genderqueers seem to be a bit of a surprise to most of the people who’ve commented on this, citing “moral decline” and other absurdities. Sad that it has to be “news” though.
Am I fighting a losing battle here?
