After a relentless onslaught of “opinions” from the punditry flock, well I’m left sneezing from so many feathers being ruffled over the same-sex marriage debate that rages on and on and on. The PC culture effort to mainstream “alternative lifestyles” confidently proclaimed victory with polling data, as this Slate piece asserted last week. Considering American culture takes it’s cues from pop culture, Hollywood and mass media outlets, this change in public opinion comes as no surprise. Americans worry about “fairness” and “equal rights” more than any other people on earth, so framing the issue of same sex marriage in terms of a civil rights struggle muffled most of the opposition, because it’s difficult to argue against an issue framed in those terms. The demagogues on the left marginalize all opposing viewpoints, labeling opponents as hatemongers, who secretly have a white hood buried in their closet. So, the beginning the argument on same sex marriage should begin by defining what marriage is and what’s the difference between marriage and domestic partnerships. The same sex marriage activists insist they must have marriage. The only certainty is that no matter what the US Supreme Court decides, without a doubt if the court makes any sweeping changes it will set up another Roe v. Wade scenario, where the decision will only serve to fuel more heated public confrontations. It won’t settle the matter, because at heart a “legal decision” can’t settle cultural upheavals that only society, in time comes to grips with.
Starting at the heart of the CA issue, same-sex couples now do have all the “civil rights” as traditional heterosexual married couples, under their 1999 domestic partnership law and with subsequent modifications in the intervening years. So what’s at stake is more about forcing a change in the definition of marriage using the civil rights Jim Crow argument that “separate but equal” isn’t “equal” at all. How this would be envisioned to work with regards to the rights of various churches and their religious tenets on marriage, confuses me. Would churches be forced to perform marriage ceremonies, against their religious tenets? Would churches be subject to being sued for civil rights violations for refusing to perform same-sex marriage services or for speaking out against homosexuality? Perhaps my concerns sound absurd and alarmist, but after watching the relentless attacks on religious institutions over contraception last year, well, there’s always a large degree of deception with the left and their redefining traditional sexual roles in society. Just as with the ardent feminists, equal pay for equal work and opening up career opportunities was never enough, insisting on a pervasive cultural indoctrination program that they waged for decades. “Experts” to tell us how men and women should interact, mass media deluges to reeducate us on the correct way to view sexual identity and women’s roles in society, and plenty of academics to fill bookshelves with how-to manuals on feminist living .
Once ordinary people started listening to these harpies, it became taboo to speak up for traditional female roles, like being a stay at home mother. In fact, to this day the brainwashing is so persistent that many women feel ostracized for choosing to care for their own children. As a mother who stayed home with my children and lived through the decades where absurd tropes were dished out to convince American families that it was just wonderful to shove the kiddos in daycare, I remember their mantra that what mattered was “quality time” (isn’t that one of the most idiotic phrases ever pawned on the unsuspecting public) over the quantity of time. What matters to young children is a safe, secure routine and frankly most small children fare better in a loving home environment rather than a school setting and knowing that Mom is there all the time matters. The argument that a paid daycare worker has the same vested interest in a child’s welfare as that child’s mother never rang true to me. So, now we’re having same-sex marriage foisted on us and it’s either embrace it or be labeled a bigoted, hatemonger, worthy of nothing but endless scorn and derision. No one is allowed to say, “I do not condone homosexuality, because of my religious convictions.” That makes you a religious zealot and a hater. So, what these activist are after goes far beyond simply getting court rulings favoring same-sex marriage. They are like President Obama, wanting fundamental transformation of America.
For decades the feminist mouthpieces presented “scientific studies” and a parade of “experts” to put forth their view that children are better off in daycare and with happy career mothers rather than being cared for at home by an unhappy drudge mother, who would rather be anywhere but at home. Needless to say, one shoe doesn’t fit all and many mothers have no choice but to work, many choose to be at home, many choose career and many others choose some combination of either staying at home during the early childhood years and returning to work or working part-time. All these “choices’ truly are personal choices and should be respected, although it always makes me chuckle to read about those home-schooled kid and how well they score when pitted against public school students – kind of hints that staying at home has some benefits. Within most families, we all have mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, etc., who chose various routes to caring for their children and formed opinions. It took decades to see the carnage of the single-mother/absent father family model though and no amount of Hollywood glorification could bandage over the gaping wound it has left on society. The family unit, as thousands of years of civilization defined it – a husband and a wife, really does provide the most stable model, despite the dopey social dogma from academics. Can children prosper in alternative arrangements? Without a doubt many children do prosper, but that doesn’t really negate the argument that strong traditional family units create a social fabric with a stronger, more durable weave than all these other models. A single-mother, unless she has the financial means to pay for a lot of help, most assuredly will struggle to manage all the duties inherent in caring for children, maintaining a home and juggling a career besides. And strong, reliable fathers matter a great deal to a child’s well-being too, no matter how loudly the feminists shriek otherwise.
Trying to explain traditional marriage as more than a legal contract (as my one daughter explains it to me), but as a covenant with God, where a man and a woman stand before God and pledge to become a team that has a mission sounds archaic. Central to this belief system is the sadly lacking component, my Dad’s cardinal rule – “if you give your word, you keep it!” The concept of an oath that’s for life does not fit well with our modern, me-first culture. Sure, a lot of Americans still cringe at homosexuality being mainstreamed or they want to cling to traditional marriage as optimal, but even among these people, the vast majority abdicated walking the talk decades ago. They divorce at the first hint of adversity and they feed at the trough of pop culture, leaving us with a society mired in moral ambiguity and muddled values, regardless what the US Supreme Court decides. At this point our culture is so fractured, self-indulgent, historically clueless, and intellectually lazy that court rulings won’t much impact the deep morass we’re in. In a society where everything you want to do is a “right”, the moral imperatives to look beyond your own self -interests begin to vanish. So, what’s next after same sex marriage is mainstreamed?
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