The anti-gay marriage votes

One of my favorite bloggers Chas has a post about the reaction to the anti-gay marriage votes in the recent election. He makes a point I have argued (unsuccessfully) for years that no-fault divorce gutted marriage. When one partner can simply quit the contract without regard to the desires of the other, you have something less than marriage. Chas says it is simply a civil contract.


"As a civil contract, how can it be legally denied to gay people? Arguments against gay marriage as a religious choice will probably still hold up, because no one has to join a religion that they don't like. (snip) If the religious right continues to try to control secular civil marriage contracts to reflect their own views, they may find themselves in a very uncomfortable, and losing, position."

I think, however, that the votes on gay marriage nationwide tell us that it isn't just the religious right trying to control marriage. There is a vast pool of sentiment against 'gay marriages.'

Now, is that bigotry? Is that prejudice? I would say yes. Is it wrong? If it is wrong, it is at least understandable.

The gay movement is a movement based on sexual behavior and it is a movement that insists on special rights to that sexual behavior, special tolerance, even before we get to the issue of marriage: Sex parades, sex clubs, promiscuous sex, and public funding for health problems arising from promiscuous sex. Demands for public education in the 'right' of people to have sex a certain way, even as far as educating children in the 'right' to have sex a certain way. All of these things I would put in the category of demands for special tolerance and special rights. To date, the larger culture has granted the gay movement these special tolerances, even at enormous cost to the state and culture. I might add that, though the heterosexual culture is also increasingly perverse, it still does not condone any of the behaviors for itself that the gay movement prides itself on.

These are serious presumptions on civil culture and public sentiment. But to my mind, that isn't all that is wrong with the so-called gay movement. I know we are just stupid idiots here in mid-America and what we think shouldn't count, but I rather doubt we know all there is to know about human sexuality. What we might find out has been utterly blocked by politics. So I'll just go ahead and show what a stupid idiot I am:

- Is it a normal human development (a perfectly acceptable alternative lifestyle) for a man to adopt the mannerisms of an adolescent girl? Or does it not strike you as a manifestation of mental illness?

- Is it normal human development for a woman to adopt the mannerisms of a boxer or a street fighter?

You may argue that not all gays do this and I would agree with you, but I also think that gay politics has prevented us from looking further into the issue of what is and what is not a manifestation of mental illness. Now, suppose we find out with certainty that my two examples are indeed mental illnesses. What should be done? Nothing. But I think we do then have an argument to make that our children should not be instructed that this is a normal example of human development.

As a former writer for a gay magazine (yes, friends, I wrote for a gay magazine because at one time I was young and liberal), I knew lots of gay men and women. (As a matter of fact, I know a lesbian couple who have been together for years, whom I love, who barely speak to me any more because I am not liberal.) I rarely met a gay man with a lasting love relationship and where there was one, it was never, ever monogamous even temporarily. Indeed, I would say the norm for gay men was to fall in love madly every week. And all the time cruising the bars for a sexual encounter (more than one) every night. The relationships I saw were also more likely to be violent, among gay men and women. I'd say since the gay movement began, we have never heard anything remotely honest about the nature of gay behavior. If we did, I think the vote against gay marriage would be exponentially higher.

Marriage stands for something in our culture that is more than a contract, no matter how trivial liberal governments have tried to make it: Monogamy, commitment, sexual discretion, and civil society.

NONE of these qualities are valued by the gay movement though, I happily and heartily admit that these are certainly values of SOME gay men and women.

But before we further chip away at the idea of marriage, can the gay movement attempt to show some responsibility? Can it value some of the things we value? Can it fearlessly face and analyze its own behavior?

Not yet it can't.

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