legalizing gay "marriage" will not only destroy the stability of the institution of marriage, it is part of a subversive movement to destroy american culture as we know it.
kurtz
stanley kurtz writes that "marriage" has only recently become an objective of the gay community. for a long time, marriage was shunned by homosexuals as "just a piece of paper". in fact, kurtz notes,
during the height of the lesbian feminist movement of the seventies, even many heterosexual feminists refused to marry because they believed marriage to be an inherently patriarchal and oppressive institution. [source]
now, switching gears a bit, let's follow this mock conversation between sally citizen and andy amendment.
sally citizen: so why the recent push for the legalization of same-sex "marriages"? how can we decide that "marriage", which has always meant "union between woman and man in covenant with god"?
andy amendment: well, we live in a democracy! and if all the people...or at least a majority of the people--
sally citizen: WAIT!
andy amendment: what?
sally citizen: did you say a majority?
andy amendment: yeah. in a democracy, the majority rules. otherwise it is a dictatorship. or something else. people are happy in a democracy because the common values of the people are upheld by their laws, and a single man or woman acting alone cannot change things drastically.
sally citizen: oh, cool!...but wait! what is gavin newsom thinking then?
andy amendment: good question.
the answer? these radicals would rather abolish marriage altogether in order to validate an alternative lifestyle than live in the oppressive society of traditional america. they love the new europe, where so much more free love is to be found and so much more acceptance is offered them. of this europe, kurtz is quoted as saying,
...a majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern -- including gay marriage -- is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.
More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birthrates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher. Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage, Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable. [source]
this liberation movement has never been intended to strengthen marriage. men and women who claim gay tendencies will continue, in large part, to support liberal candidates even if they oppose gay marriage, just as the AFL-CIO continues to support liberal candidates who ignore their main lobby issues. why? they know that with the party of relativism, their cause will triumph eventually anyway. bush has been labeled a "hater" and a "bigot" for supporting traditional marriage, while kerry and edwards, democratic candidates for president, have only had half-hearted disapproval expressed toward their similar opinions. kurtz continues,
STATE-SANCTIONED polyamory is now the cutting-edge issue among scholars of family law. The preeminent school of thought in academic family law has its origins in the arguments of radical gay activists who once opposed same-sex marriage. In the early nineties, radicals like longtime National Gay and Lesbian Task Force policy director Paula Ettelbrick spoke out against making legal marriage a priority for the gay rights movement. Marriage, Ettelbrick reminded her fellow activists, "has long been the focus of radical feminist revulsion." Encouraging gays to marry, said Ettelbrick, would only force gay "assimilation" to American norms, when the real object of the gay rights movement ought to be getting Americans to accept gay difference. "Being queer," said Ettelbrick, "means pushing the parameters of sex and family, and in the process transforming the very fabric of society."
Promoting polyamory is the ideal way to "radically reorder society's view of the family," and Ettelbrick, who has since formally signed on as a supporter of gay marriage (and is frequently quoted by the press), is now part of a movement that hopes to use gay marriage as an opening to press for state-sanctioned polyamory. Ettelbrick teaches law at the University of Michigan, New York University, Barnard, and Columbia. She has a lot of company.
read what this person is saying about polyamory, and ask yourself how different the arguments sound from those which advocate same-sex "marriage." also ask yourself whether the way it's defined wouldn't destroy marriage as we know it. have a nice day.
ps: notice in this screenshot of google's search page for polyamory that about half of the google adwords advertisements are for "swinging" websites. this is not a stable, family-friendly, backbone-'o'-society lifestyle.
Posted by travis at March 14, 2004 10:21 PM | TrackBackIt's just so sad. The notion that this millenia-old institution is so fragile that simply letting gay folks into the club will destroy it. I know that I'm terrified. Clearly, if a gay couple is allowed to be married, my love and commitment for my wife will wither and die. Not only that, but if gay people are allowed to codify their commitment to each other with the state, then that presence- the presence of more marriages- in society will cause more promiscuity.
There is no logic whatsoever to your arguements!!
I BEG YOU! Learn how to support your conclusions with premises rather than quotations so that I can at least make sense of the argument. Instead of saying "X said this, and that's right," try "here are the facts and logical steps that lead me to this conclusion."
You build an argument with premises. If you want a conclusion to hold any water at all, you must show how you arrived there. Just stating that gay marriage causes the downfall of society simply isn't enough! You must give your reasons for this position.
Some quick definitions:
A valid argument is one where, if the premises are true, the conclusion cannot be false. It can be based on false premises, of course, and if it is, then obviously that skews the effectiveness of the arguement, but at least it's valid.
A sound argument is a valid argument in which all the premises are true. Your arguement cannot be sound without it first being valid. Even if your conclusion is true, no reasonable person can be expected to listen to your point of view if you are unwilling to explain how you came to that conclusion.
You're killing me here!
Posted by: dan at March 16, 2004 10:57 AMDan:
I belive his argument actually does have a logical basis that you happen to be ignoring. from what i've read it seem's that his premise is something like this:
IF alternate forms of marrage are made legal, THEN marrage is a institution will crumble.
Sounds like a pefectly logical premise to me. Whether or not you agree with the premise is another matter altogether.
If you are critquing the establishment of the premise, then logic is not relly usable in this situation, as really the only way to estblish premise(s) is to use an inductive, observational approach, i.e. watch what happens and form a premise based on the patterns you witness.
Only in pure math can everything be based on deductive reasoning. Even physics takes everthing from expirimental observation.
Dan, as far is i can see, tho one here who's having a tough time with logic is you, not Travis. Perhaps you should take a simple course on pholosophical logic, and then reread what travis
said.
Ed, you represent much that's wrong with America. It's when people who have no understanding of a thing feel perfectly at ease talking like an expert that I despair for the entire concept of thought in our Country.
I hate to burst your righteously indignant bubble, but you are just plain wrong. Just because a sentence has the words if and then in it doesn't make it part of a worthy argument.
Today's lesson:
If alternate forms of marriage are made legal, then marriage as an institution will crumble.
[I presumed to correct spelling]
First of all, this isn't actually a premise. This is half a premise and a conclusion. "If alternate forms of marriage are made legal" is the beginning of a conditional premise. And you're right, the second part of the sentence probably should begin with "Then. . ."
I'll attempt to construct a valid (though not sound) argument to illustrate how it's done:
If alternate forms of marriage are made legal, then current mainstream married couples will feel their marriages are devalued.
If these couples feel their relationships are devalued, then they will begin to neglect their relationships.
If they neglect their relationships, then their marriage will suffer and end in divorce.
Therefore, (this is where you put your conclusion) allowing gay marriage will cause the institution of marriage to crumble.
Of course this argument is stupid, but at least it's valid. If we assume all the premises are true, we can't escape the conclusion.
Try again, Ed. You too, Travis.
Posted by: dan at March 17, 2004 07:06 PMed, please ignore dan. he's our 3rd grade troll. no argument will please him because he has no intention of considering an alternative to his position. in a few days, i will post my formal and technical arguments for the conservative position (per whiny dan's--http://www.tinypineapple.com/dan--and the strange redneck's--http://strangesemantics.blogspot.com--requests) and what i suppose are the arguments for the liberal position.
the truth is, no formal logical argument is going to convince anyone of anything here. this is a practical political discussion, not a textbook on abstract logic. this is the future of our society we're discussing here. philosophy isn't going to solve anything. philosophers have a saying to point out their uselessness:
"philosophy! we've done less in the last 2000 years than most people do before noon."
think about it. and you can quote me. i'll be graduating with a BA in philosophy next month.
Posted by: travis at March 17, 2004 10:51 PMDan,
Just so you know am a major in mathematics at UCSB, with an emphasis in set theory and mathematical logic. i find it highly amusing that you feel free to say that i know nothing about the topic when, in fact, it is going to be my JOB! Amazingly, i actually am an expert in this area.
However, as you have pointed out the statement is not a premise. It is a logical implicitive statement that contains both a premise and a conclusion. You are correct about the semantics for the argument, but the spirit of what is being said here still stands. Travis was using logic in his argument
As for correcting my spelling, feel free. I'm a math major, and as such, apparently unlike you, I am no longer taking classes in which I learn to spell.
Posted by: Ed at March 20, 2004 05:11 PM