Saturday, November 15, 2008
You are having a more impressive Friday night
Staying in to write a paper on a totally unrelated subject (though now I'm seeing a connection...), I'm now distracted by a blog-war set forth almost entirely by my poor choice of post title. Now everyone's angry, and I'm not sure quite how to defend myself. I do think opposition to gay marriage is bad (a simplistic word, I realize, but it's late, and I've argued why here before, blogsearch away), and though the word "backwards" comes to mind, as it happens I don't favor recognizing gay marriage because it's The Future, but because it's the humane thing to do to recognize the status quo of many perfectly viable, loving (pardon the pun) families. I know I'm a coastal elite whose views don't count and all, but having grown up knowing families like that, I see this more as an issue of promoting a positive institution that already exists than of creating a new one out of thin air. In my own not-real-American framework, being for gay marriage is conservative.
In my own not-real-American framework, being for gay marriage is conservative.
ReplyDeleteThey must be very sheltered if they think being in favor of state recognition for same-sex relationships is the wildly liberal position. I have encountered many people who consider it wholly improper for the state to recognize relationships except those between parent and child (for the purpose of assigning responsibility), or who consider marriage a fatally flawed institution that ought to be scrapped at best, but in the meantime certainly oughtn't be treated as a prize by homosexuals.
Also, the fact that these families already exist is taken as another data point by some folks for why we never should have given gay people any social tolerance in the first place. Let 'em live without fear of being thrown in Reading gaol, and next thing you know they'll have the gall to start families.
As for the idea of society being broken now, I always wonder, "When was it whole and flawless?"