Although it is neither my desire nor intent, I am reasonably certain that something in this article will offend everyone. Issues like Gay Marriage do that sort of thing.
Many people think we live in a post-modern world, which is not the case as we always live in the present, yet we remain mired in our discussions of gay rights, civil unions, domestic partners, gay marriage, and anything dealing with the homosexual community.
‘We’ – at least some of us -- consider gay marriage to be a civil rights issue, akin to the struggle of blacks in the post-Civil War area up to and including not only 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was enacted but also today, when Barack Obama sits in the White House and leads the greatest power on earth. Strange, isn’t it?
Political correctness (PC) will spawn such phenomena. Confound and confuse the quintessence of a question by linking it to unrelated concepts. Gay ‘marriage’ is a classic example. We have overcome the hurdle of portraying homosexuals as semi-human deviants who cannot be allowed out in public without doing untold harm to unsuspecting citizens (at least no one will say that publicly – one PC goal met).
The Gay Community wants nothing more than to co-opt the term ‘marriage’ and make it theirs. They have been very successful in achieving civil and legal rights, so why not go for the whole enchilada? Even respected major media outlets such as The Washington Post are equating gay ‘marriage’ with civil rights, unions, partnerships, etc.
This will shock many and cause a predictable result based on one’s political philosophy: ‘marriage’ is between a male and a female, biologically capable – as a class (not always as individuals) -- of propagating the species. Homosexuals are unable to do that. As strange as this may sound, many people apparently do not realize this. Many believe or want to believe or ‘feel’ that gays are fully equivalent in all regards to heterosexuals. As people, they can and should be able to do anything that any mixed gender couple can achieve.
Sorry. They cannot.
Sure, our secular society (in some states) allows gays to adopt, so an appearance of normality exists with children present within many gay unions. How marvelous. Our society perpetuates the myth of equivalency between the so-called straight and gay communities.
By now, many readers, if they have even read this far, are labeling me one of the world’s biggest homophobes. They would be wrong, but they cannot afford to be wrong because that would mean being open to the obvious as opposed to the desired. This is not about civil rights, it is about culture, traditions, religion, and civilization. For millennia, the concept of ‘marriage,’ regardless of what term has been used, has applied exclusively and appropriately to heterosexual unions.
People are to be fruitful and multiply, but there are only so many children available for adoption for the gay community, especially with millions of fetuses aborted annually and unavailable for anyone – barren heterosexuals or homosexuals -- to adopt, love, nurture, and raise into responsible and caring citizens.
So much vile and bile swirls around the gay issue presumably because that community wishes to be ‘equal,’ whatever that means, that all the issues cannot be addressed here. When Blue Cross/Blue Shield health applications have a separate box for “Domestic Partners” and existing law for years has allowed anyone to own jointly with or bequeath anything to anyone, then the arguments to pursue full equality, whatever that means, is specious, supercilious, and sinister.
A good buddy of mine from the South used to say, “If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a cart.” Well, she did not have wheels and she was not a cart and would never be. So it is with gay marriage.
Gays who are loving, monogamous, and the sweetest people you would ever want to meet, are entitled to every legal and social opportunity that our secular world can afford them. In that regard, their civil rights are unquestioned. But when you inject centuries of cultural considerations, as well as our religious teachings, the sexual desires and proclivities of a subset of the larger society should never co-opt the standing of the biological bastions that maintain and replenish the species.
Call homosexual unions what you like. Mergers, Fusions, Partnerships. But do not call them marriages.
X + Y = marriage. X + X or Y + Y = 2X or 2Y. Even mathematically speaking, the gay community cannot prove that their living arrangements rise to the cultural and traditional equivalent of ‘marriage.’
Fred W. Apelquist, M.Ed.
Approximately 765 words.
© May 18, 2009
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