"Paul Cameron (Nebraska) was dropped from membership for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists."

- Notification sent to all members of the American Psychological Association (APA), 1984

[The Nebraska Psychological Association] "formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality."

- From minutes of the October 19, 1984 membership meeting of the NPA

"It’s fascinating that someone with his capacity, a trained scientist, would do these things…The guy has no moral inhibitions."

- Dr. James Cole, U. of Nebraska, on Dr. Paul Cameron

"Right now, here in Lincoln, there is a four year old boy who has had his genitals almost severed from his body at Gateway mall in a restroom with a homosexual act."

- Dr. Paul Cameron, in a speech delivered on May 3, 1982 at the University of Nebraska Lutheran Chapel, quoted (among many other places) here

"It may or may not have been true."

- Dr. Paul Cameron, when his above statement was revealed to be a complete and total lie

"an obscure journal…[which allowed a claim] that would not be allowed in a refereed journal...."

- Dr. Paul Cameron, on the journal, Adolescence

As I mentioned earlier, (Rev.) Dr. Gerald McDermott and his colleague Dr. Robert Benne made the claim below in Christianity Today online and defended it with two hyperlinks which did not support the claim in the slightest. However, in this earlier version of the same article, which is not written in hypertext, they followed their claim with citations (sort of).

Research has also shown that children raised by homosexuals were more dissatisfied with their own gender, suffer a greater rate of molestation within the family, and have homosexual experiences more often. (Adolescence 31:124 [1996]; Archives of Sexual Behavior 15: 2 [1986])

This is an incredibly lazy method of citation that would earn major demerits to any freshman student. Benne & McDermott, who presumably preside over classes in which students are required to document their research in term papers, most certainly know that a proper citation is not limited to the title, volume, and issue of a journal but includes the most important components: the title of the article, the author(s) of said article, and the page numbers on which the article appeared. (Ideally, an endnote or footnote should include the exact page on which a particular claim was made.)

However, my purpose is not to grade McDermott and Benne- they have Ph.D.s already. I seriously doubt that their intended readership gives a damn about the source or even the accuracy of their claims anyway, contenting themselves with the knowledge "two college perfessirs thinks the same way I do" and leaving it at that.

On the other hand, their main readership hasn’t just been accused of being more likely to molest children than the rest of the population.

The irrelevance of the Archives of Sexual Behavior article I discussed in the last post. The second citation, which appears only in this version of the article and not in the Christianity Today online version and for which no author is given (almost as if Benne & McDermott were deliberately trying to obfuscate the fact), should properly read like this (using, for irony's sake, the APA Citation Style):

Cameron, P., and Cameron, K. (1996). Homosexual Parents. Adolescence, 31, 757-776.

The "study" consists of Paul Cameron’s analysis of data he collected from a "representative sample" of gay parents and their children. I could easily spend many pages doing a point by point deconstruction of this article, including the many flaws in its methodology, but I won’t as this post is quite long already. Besides, ironically the most damning statement about this article is to be found in the Camerons' own words in this very article about the sampling they used:

"We make no claims that ours is 'representative' of homosexual parenting" (p. 774)

But let’s go on from there. This article appeared in the journal Adolescence (no website available), one of the least respected and least cited journals in the field of psychology. The journal makes no mention of its review process (standard for most academic journals), the manuscripts are sent to a husband-wife publishing team (William & Betty Kroll, Libra Publishing, San Diego), at the time this article appeared it was ranked 30th most influential of only 36 journals in the field (measure Journal Citation Reports), and even Cameron himself once referred to the journal as "obscure" and stated that they would publish claims "that would not be allowed in a refereed journal."

A major indicator of how influential or respected a specific article is may be found in how many times it is cited in the research of others. (Any professor at a research university who has ever gone up for tenure or promotion can tell you all about this process.) In Academic Search Premier, a major database that indexes thousands of journals in full-text and provides the number of times each has been cited in one of its millions of other articles, this article has been cited ONE (1) time. That was in an article by… Dr. Paul Cameron, in his article "Molestations by Homosexual Foster Parents" in the December 2003 issue of Psychological Reports. (Psychological Reports, incidentally, is a vanity press, with no review process, that will publish any article for a fee.)

The author most frequently cited in Cameron’s bibliography in both articles, of course, was Paul Cameron.

Cameron’s methodologies have been challenged more than almost any other aspect of his work. In several studies he equates any man who molests a male child as gay, even though this is completely at odds with all accepted studies of pedophilia. (Not to oversimplify the matter, but essentially pedophiles have dual sex drives: their "normal" sex drive with other adults and their pathological sex drive with children. The vast majority of pedophiles who molest male children are completely heterosexual in their relationships with other adults; while there have been pedophiles who were gay, they are a tiny minority no more represented among pedophiles than they are among the general population.)

Cameron loves to use non-representative samples as representative. Examples include the use of court records in the trials of gay men convicted of criminal offenses as statistically representative of all gays as violent, or his famous study that concluded the average life expectancy for gay men was 43 based upon AIDS obituaries from a single gay newspaper (roughly the equivalent of basing a report on the life expectancy of single-mothers solely on information gleaned from the records of those who died in childbirth).

So Who Exactly is Paul Cameron?

Since this is a blog posting, rather than a book or article, I’ll be brief:

Dr. Paul Cameron is generally viewed as one of the most discredited "researchers" in America today. He was expelled from the APA for ethical violations specifically related to the falsification of research regarding homosexuals. He is a fanatic. He is the founder of the Family Research Institute (which I will not link to, but you can find it yourself with ease using Google), an organization that exists solely and exclusively to produce incendiary propaganda against gays, including pamphlets containing increasingly bizarre "facts", unsupported by other any other source, that are swallowed with amazing gullibility and willingness by conservative Christians who never even try to investigate the claims.

Cameron literally takes pride in being called, with some justification, "the most dangerous man in America" by gay activists. Unlike Fred Phelps, whom even the arch-homophobe Jerry Falwell dismisses as a "first class nut" (albeit due more to his condemnation of Falwell than his condemnation of gays), Cameron, who is not lent credence by any objective association of social scientists and who has been soundly condemned even by other conservative organizations, is given clout by the Christian Right, who either do not know or, more likely, do not care, that his writings have been thoroughly debunked and refuted by far more prestigious social scientists across the world.

Cameron’s "studies" and his testimony have been used to remove the children of a lesbian mother from their home (this was in Alabama- the woman later appealed the decision to then Chief Justice Roy Moore for this verdict), to remove many openly gay individuals from the rosters of desperately needed foster parents in Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee and other states, and to justify the United States’ position as one of the last First World nations not to allow openly gay men and women in its military.

If it were only liberals and gays who dismissed Cameron’s work, one could possibly claim bias, but it is not. Such conservatives as William "the Bookie of Virtues" Bennett have dismissed him (the not-known-for-his-humility Bennett publicly apologized and recanted for citing a study done by Cameron when he learned more about the source); the Roman Catholic Church ordered a priest to stop distributing one of his tracts. Even Focus on the Family, the archconservative and extremely homophobic organization that once cited Cameron’s work, has noticeably distanced themselves from him in recent years (due mainly to Cameron's denunciation of Focus's commie-pinko stance that just maybe homosexuality is a difficult orientation to change).

Judge Jerry Buchmeyer, in a case in which Cameron made his claims of the likelihood of gays to molest children more than a decade before the Adolescence article, made the following statement in his verdict:

"Dr. Paul Cameron...has himself made misrepresentations to this Court...There has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron"

Baker v. Wade, 106 Federal Rules Decisions 526 (N.D. Texas, 1985) p. 536

"The evidence is that men do a better job on men, and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm… It's pure sexuality. It's almost like pure heroin. It's such a rush."

To Summarize

Benne & McDermott stated that gays should be denied the rights to marry because they are more likely to sexually violate (or furnish an environment that leads to the sexual violation of) children. As justification for their statement they supplied three sources, two of which make no mention of this "fact" at all, one way or the other, and another the writings of a discredited psychologist with a long history of ethical violations writing in "an obscure journal" using definitions not accepted by other psychologists and a sample that he himself admits may not be valid. This is inexcusable.

Should McDermott & Benne have known the full story behind Paul Cameron (assuming that they did not)?

Yes.

Absolutely.

In no uncertain terms.

It is the duty of any reputable researcher to always ensure that their information is reliable and to be suspect if a claim is made that does not seem to be supported by any other study. Both McDermott and Benne have long lists of publications in scholarly journals (longer by far than my own, and I certainly know to check my sources), so more-so than the vast majority of the nation, they know that to cite a source entails the responsibility to check its accuracy, all the more-so if the claim is unusual or extreme.

If it is the case that they had never heard of Paul Cameron and were not aware of his reputation or his proven methodological flaws, how difficult would it have been to learn more about him?

By Googling "Paul Cameron" , the first site that appears is a University of California-Davis site at which you can find photocopies of many of the documents I've referenced here. It does an excellent job of discrediting the man without ever resorting to hyperbole or screed. In fact, there are several sites that discredit the man before you even arrive at his own site (to which, again, I will not link).

If they preferred not to use the Internet, there are dozens of print sources that also discredit the man, all of which document their sources with reliable information.

For all of these reasons I assert that Gerald McDermott and Robert Benne are the equals of Cameron either in ethics or in "research". I suspect both, though I hope that my suspicions are unfounded. Whatever the case, they need look no farther than themselves for examples of why America is becoming an increasingly secular nation. If they are men of any integrity whatever, they will withdraw and apologize for their statements, or at very least cite better evidence, but I am not holding my breath.

RETURN TO PART ONE OF THIS RANT (introduction)

RETURN TO PART TWO OF THIS RANT (Benne & McDermott's other claims)

RETURN TO PART THREE OF THIS RANT (Molestation claim, part 1)

An Update to this rant: 4-24-04

A DIFFERENT BUT CLOSELY RELATED RANT

CORRECTION: In the original posting of this entry, I accidentally referred to the name of Cameron's organization, the Family Research Institute, by the name of the similarly titled Family Research Council (another ultraconservative and anti-gay group [founded by Gary Bauer rather than Paul Cameron] which, like FRI, equates homosexuality with pedophilia). I apologize for any confusion.

PART ONE

In 1995 Charles Grapski was a 32 year old graduate student with a less than spotless past running for president of the University of Florida student body. His opponent, along with other members of Florida Blue Key (a University of Florida honor society portrayed in trial as incredibly corrupt and the power behind the throne of UF), was witnessed distributing anonymous fliers accusing Grapski of being a child molester, a completely false allegation. Grapski understandably sued, seeking $150,000 in actual and $500,000 in punitive damages.

The jury deliberated for only twenty minutes. Though they found in Grapski's favor, they did not grant him the $650,000 he sought in damages. They awarded him $6,000,000 instead. This act by a jury in Florida is an excellent example of just how seriously the false accusation of child molesting is deemed in the United States and most other western nations.

There are very few, if any, accusations that can be made of anybody that are more powerful and damning than the statement "He is a child molester." The as-yet-unproven accusation has been enough to irrevocably damage the career and reputation of Michael Jackson, while the fact that Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens was accused of possessing child pornography (a form of child molestation) has probably destroyed forever any chance he had for a comeback, even though the charges were dropped.

The sexual exploitation of children is commonly perceived, and not without justification, as literally the lowest and most vile criminal act. It is a stigma that transcends race, orientation, gender, age, class, nationality and every demographic possible. In maximum security prisons, convicted child molesters are more likely to be beaten, raped and killed by other prisoners than any other type of inmate, for even thieves, drug dealers, murderers and rapists feel a moral superiority to them. Child molesters are generally held to exist in the lowest rungs of the lowest rings of humanity.

For all of the reasons above and many more, to accuse a person or an individual of the most unholy of unholy crimes should require the most unarguable evidence gatherable. To accuse a person or a group of people of being more disposed to do this is not just to defame them but to endanger them.

I first mentioned the Christianity Today article written by Dr. Gerald McDermott and Dr. Robert Benne, both professors of theology at Roanoke College, in this post, and then began a (longwinded) deconstruction of the post here. In that article Benne & McDermott make the following claim (bolding mine; hyperlinks replicated from the Christianity Today article):

Research has also shown that children raised by homosexuals were more dissatisfied with their own gender, suffer a greater rate of molestation within the family, and have homosexual experiences more often.

RESEARCH HAS SHOWN

(While I believe that all three charges in the excerpt above are bogus, it is the molestation charge that I will address the most as it is by far the most damning.)

This is a mighty powerful and inflammatory allegation (certainly far worse today than being called a witch or a communist, neither of which is considered a pathology or even particularly harmful by most courts in the land). Benne & McDermott have just said that I, as a gay man, am more likely (implicitly significantly more likely) to sexually violate a child, or at very least that I am more likely to allow a child in my care to be sexually violated, than a heterosexual man would be.

Fighting words. They demand justification by evidence if they are to be seen as anything other than, to borrow a line of Jim's, the "blood libel" of gays, the 21st century equivalent of the assertion that Jews kill Christian babies to use their blood in occult rites. This is an accusation of such gravity that if it is true, gays should not be trusted with the young.

If it is false, then McDermott & Benne, two men who have earned the highest degrees awarded in academia and whose careers rely upon their understanding of research and integrity of publication- should lose their jobs, for they have clearly demonstrated that one of these two comments is true:

• They have no concept of what is and what is not reliable information and thus should perhaps reserve their writing for grocery lists and or white supremacist propaganda, neither of which require documentation

  Or...

• That they are so blinded by their personal prejudices that they would, in full knowledge of the damage their words could create, intentionally disregard integrity and knowingly perpetrate a vicious and dangerous lie.

And yet, with absolute and complete knowledge of the gravity of my accusation and the harm it could bring, I state in clear terms with no room whatever for equivocation of interpretation, I charge just that: in my opinion, McDermott and Benne are either thoroughly (if not criminally) incompetent in their research and writing, or that they are flat-out libelous homophobes who care more for spewing hatred than for the Nazarene they allegedly worship. Of these two, I do not know which is worse.

As I have said, powerful accusations demand powerful evidence, and while I have not accused Benne & McDermott of a felony like, say, child molestation, I have made a powerful charge nonetheless, therefore I must show evidence, so, as Dr. Lecter said to Inspector Pazzi, "Okey dokey. Here we go."

In the Christianity Today article, Benne & McDermott post two links to corroborate their statement. This is the first.

It is to Youth.org. From their homepage:

YOUTH.ORG is a service run by volunteers, created to help self-identifying gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning youth. YOUTH.ORG exists to provide young people with a safe space online to be themselves.

YOUTH.ORG was formed to provide for the needs of GLBT youth; the need for a rare opportunity to express themselves, to know they are not alone, and to interact with others who have already accepted their sexuality.

If you don't have the time or interest to read all of the page to which McDermott and Benne linked, use the Ctrl+F function available: it allows you to search for a particular phrase on any electronic document. (Hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the F key, then type in any of the following words or phrases: molest, gay parents, dissatisfaction, etc.) You will find, as I did, that there simply is nothing on this page to corroborate any of McDermott & Benne's three accusations. I honestly do not have a clue why they chose this page when this one offers just as much by way of corroboration and is far more visually impressive.

This is the second link. It is an abstract to an article on Sexual Scripts, a concept defined by a reviewer of the article as "a rough plan, or guideline, providing answers to the questions about what to do, with whom to do it, how often, when, where, and even why" sexually.

The article is 23 pages long. I have serious doubts as to whether or not McDermott or Benne read it at all.

I did.

(One reason I am so late in posting this is the time it took for me to secure a copy and read and re-read it.)

Archives of Sexual Behavior, in which the article appeared, is a scholarly, refereed journal written by and primarily for psychologists and sociologists dedicated to the research of human sexuality. It is clearly written for an academic readership- the 23 pages are filled with jargon and psychological & sociological terminology, as well as a few terms that may have been coined by its authors, Drs. Simon and Gagnon, themselves. The article is an elucidation of Simon & Gagnon's theory of the dual sociogenic and biological elements of the development of sexuality- it does not represent itself as gospel or as the last word on the subject, and, in fact, makes a call for more research on the topic, but most importantly:

NOWHERE IN ITS TWENTY-THREE SINGLE SPACED WELL DOCUMENTED PAGES DOES IT MAKE ANY COMMENT EVEN REMOTELY OR APPROXIMATELY SYNONYMOUS WITH ANY OF MCDERMOTT AND BENNE'S CLAIMS

If anything, it has less to do with the subject than Youth.org. The closest the article comes to mentioning gay parenting, and it isn't very close at all, is this sentence in a paragraph about the use of psychic metaphor when performing sexual acts when there is no real emotional arousal:

Such a response was typified by a transsexual who when asked how she could have fathered several children while she was a he, replied "There was always a penis there, but it was never mine."

(Simon & Gagnon, page 110)

However- where sexual arousal is required as for example in the case of much of homosexual male prostitution, where the prostitute is paid to have an orgasm or in some instances to perform anal intercourse upon the client, the evoking of an erotic intrapsychic script become necessary.

(footnote, page 107)

Suggestive of the expectation of this integration is the fact that for Kinsey, and virtually all others, conceptualization of heterosexual behavior have been organized in terms of marital status.

(page 113)

So that's it for the Christianity Today online article- two sites that do not in any way directly or remotely say what McDermott and Benne claim that they say.

For most people in this nation, to make a statement of the gravity that Benne & McDermott made- to say that gays should not be allowed to marry because
THEY ARE FAR MORE LIKELY TO MOLEST CHILDREN and then to justify it with two completely meritless citations that say no such thing, would be, to invoke the vernacular, a shitty thing to do that in some western democracies countries would get your ass thrown in jail or bankrupted by litigation (ala David Irving).

For two college professors of theology, a field majorly concerned with moral truths, both of whom fully understand from their own DECADE of undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate education, both of whom would require that their students make no factual claims that they cannot clearly demonstrate, to do this is a disgrace on par with malpractice for a lawyer or for a "real" doctor (or the defrocking of an Episcopal priest, which McDermott is).

But wait "there's more!"

At the bottom of the Christianity Today article is the following sentence:

Robert Benne and Gerald McDermott, who both teach religion at Roanoke College, wrote an earlier version of this article for the Public Theology Project.

THIS RANT CONTINUED HERE

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my life by apologizing in advance for excessive length, but I must do so again nevertheless. This is a longer than average blog-posting, though if you're in a rush the Appendix at the end can be safely skipped (though you'll miss some juicy 200 year old dish) by pressing the THIS RANT CONTINUED HERE link at the end.

So when last we met I mentioned the article hyperlinked above. Written by Dr. Gerald McDermott (a Jonathan Edwards scholar) and Dr. Robert Benne (a public theologian), both professors at Roanoke College, it has become one of the most ubiquitous apologias for the anti-gay marriage camp to be found on the web. For the most part it’s the same silly rhetoric read elsewhere- conservative Christian ideology attempting to masquerade as objective ration and failing miserably- but because it was written by two Ph.D.s and has no misspellings it’s being hailed as Sinai 4.01 by many Christian webbers.

However, there is one thing both new and old about the article that crosses a line so important that it not only casts the research skills of its writers into debate, but their common decency. A single sentence makes the piece vile and despicable, all the more so considering that it was written by men who make careers of their morality and research integrity, a libel of the sort that makes me shout again the Yogi Berra like cry of "Thank God I'm not a Christian".

Jim at Looking for Sam has already posted an excellent section-by-section refutation of this article. Since he has addressed the whole of the post, I'll address some of the minutiae.

We’ll start with a few sentences from the article that define Benne & McDermott’s notions of history and definition of marriage:

For thousands of years and in every Western society marriage has meant the life-long union of a man and a woman...
The concept of marriage necessarily includes the idea of a man and woman committing themselves to each other...
acceptance of gay marriage will strengthen the notion that marriage is primarily about adult yearnings for intimacy and is not essentially connected to raising children.

I’m not sure which Chick pamphlet Benne & McDermott used for their primary source material on the history of marriage; whatever the source, both seem to view history in general and the history of marriage in particular as an amazingly uncomplicated and uniform matter. In truth, marriage 'was what it was' at any given time in history.

Over the past thousands of years there have been many forms of domestic union not covered by the Benne/McDermott definition of marriage (not to be confused with the Bene Gesserit definition of marriage, which is stranger but more logically consistent). Polygyny, concubinage, ritual marriage to gods & goddesses, temple prostitution, and even the occasional officially recognized same-sex coupling [e.g. Hadrian & Antoninus, St. Sergius & St. Bacchus} occurred in sufficient quantities to disprove the uniformity of marriage. As for the life-long union business, the code of Hammurabi, the Talmud, Justinian’s Digest, and every other known codification of law from early Antiquity to the present has allowed for divorce under certain requirements. Julius Cæsar alone had three divorces (as well as as, it is rumored, a sexual relationship with the King of Bithynia and a polygamous marriage to Cleopatra), and that was centuries before the really decadent phase of Imperial Rome began. In Christian Europe, divorce was time-honored among the crowned heads and commoners alike long before Henry VIII found a loophole to the til death us do part clause, while bastardy and even sanctioned polygyny were far more widespread in medeival and Reformation era Europe than many seem to realize.

As for the "primary" purpose, marriage has existed for countless reasons other than child production: political alliances, financial security, pure companionship, necessity (it was not uncommon in Colonial America for a widow or widower to remarry within a month of their spouse's death out of pure need for a provider or homemaker), convenience (countless reasons), lust, love and the need for assistance in a business or on a farm. Almost invariably children were seen as a nice and much-to-be-desired additive to the marriage, but if they didn't happen it rarely resulted in the dissolution of the union.

As for American history, for 20,000 years the rules that prevailed were those of the Native Americans, whose known marital traditions just in the historic era ranged from rigidly ritualized to amazingly casual. Then there were the millions of slaves forced to endure the pathetic humiliation of jumping the broom while the phrase til death or distance do you part was read by their white Christian masters. Their marriages were not considered legally sustainable in any court of the nation's history, and just how much their good Christian masters cared about their own marital fidelity or the sexual virtue of their slave women is still evidenced in the hundred shades of brown among African Americans today.

But Benne & McDermott are presumably talking about civilized (i.e. white) folks, so let me get to them.

There are some bills and a handful of coins on the desk in front of me, which gives me an idea for a random sampling. The people who grace our currency were all born in what is now America in the last three-hundred years- a temporal and spatial microcosm of the every Western society… for thousands of years parameters that Benne/McDermott set, so it should stand to reason that all (or at least all but say, one or two) of their marriages will fit into the parameters of a life-long union essentially connected to the raising of children, yes? Let’s sample them:

The subject group consists of nine individuals who lived in what is now the United States of America between 1706 and 1963. All were married and betwixt them they produced more than three-dozen legitimate children.

Of the people in this sample, two were married to divorcees (so much for the life long commitment virtue). Two were childless and at least two made absolutely no secret of the fact that they married for money and social position (so much for the raising of children incentive). One was married to a barren woman yet was so committed to her that he killed a man who spoke ill ofher (so much for the "not about personal intimacy" thing). At least one committed bigamy, at least two had children out of wedlock, one openly practiced polygamy and at least six (probably more) were adulterers (so much for the one-man/one-woman proviso). Just for the oddity factor, one married his bucktoothed cousin (and he wasn’t even Southern), two received their bride's sister as a wedding gift, one shared a bed with his male business partner for four years and sank into a nearly suicidal depression when said business partner left to be married, at least two never had a civil or religious marriage at all and one wrote passionate love letters to the same male friend whose assistance he asked for in finding a wife. (If you’re curious as to who’s who, there’s an appendix at the end of this post that gives more in-depth biographical details.)

However, while I think it's a truly fascinating topic, it’s all beside the point. In terms of should or shouldn’t gay unions be legally recognized, I honestly don't care what the marital norms were thousands of years ago or even one hundred years ago. Neither Alexander the Great (who left two pregnant widows and a teenaged eunuch to mourn him, incidentally) nor U. S. Grant had a U.S. Social Security Number, and that is the crux of the issue.

The reason gays today are seeking state recognition (again, not church sanctioning, but the rights recognized by the secular state) of their unions is for benefits that are unique to the post Depression Era generations. These include but are not limited to Social Security benefits, pension inheritance, spousal hospitalization insurance, the right to visit in ICU with or without the permission of the family, etc. . I honestly could not care less what your personal feelings on the intrinsic morality or immorality of same sex unions; it’s the state benefits (which have to a large degree become a necessity) that I seek.

Enough. Back to Benne & McDermott.

Think back to the 1960s, when illegitimacy and cohabitation were relatively rare.

I’m sure its just coincidental, but have you ever noticed that the jumping off point for when things went to hell in this country in the writings of conservatives is almost invariably the Civil Rights era? That, for example, their auto da fes about how terrible schools have become since the bannng of school prayer coincide nicely with the integration of schools as well? I’m sure there’s no connection, of course, but like the Kennedy & Lincoln assassinations, it does make for interesting coincidences.

Of course the nice thing about the word relatively is that it’s vague enough to lend any statement some truth. No need to point out that advertisements for abortionists and STD treatments can be found in every single issue of the New York Times printed during the Civil War or that the illegitimacy rates of the New England Puritans were on par with our own since I’m sure its irrelevant; we’ll take for writ that the 60s were when morality nosedived and premarital sex became fashionable.

At that time many asked how one young woman having a baby out of wedlock or living with an unmarried man could hurt their neighbors. Now we know the negative social effects these two living arrangements have spawned: lower marriage rates, more instability in the marriages that are enacted, more fatherless children, increased rates of domestic violence and poverty, and a vast expansion of welfare state expenses.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc much? Is there hard evidence that these two factors were the most major contributors to higher divorce rates and increased rates of domestic violence and poverty, or could it be they were born of the same causes (i.e. the fact that women are no longer financially dependent upon men, mechanization has allowed single people to raise families, etc.). And why is it that single-fathers are so often given a pass? Unless Jesus has millions of half-siblings, these "unwed mothers" had a bit of help achieving both the unwed and the mother part.

But again, this thing is too long by half already. Let’s take it for granted that social history is a uniform and uncomplicated thing: single mothers are the ruination of society and somehow women who did not wish to marry 40 years ago are directly analogous to gays who do wish to marry today.

Advocates of gay marriage recognize this contradiction by proposing "gay unions" instead, but this distinction is, we believe, a strategic one. The ultimate goal for them is the societal acceptance of gay marriage.

See what I mean about why bother calling it anything other than gay marriage?

Scrambling the definition of marriage will be a shock to our fundamental understanding of human social relations and institutions.

I apparently have more faith in humanity's recuperative powers than do Messer’s Benne & McDermott. For thousands of years slavery, exposing unwanted infants, animal sacrifice and state supported polytheism seemed like good ideas and abandoning them was, I'm sure, quite a shock to our “fundamental etceteras”. The move from nomadic clans to agricultural communities, the birth of cities and of literacy, the Crusades, the Reformation, the Inquisition, the European colonization of America, the American Civil War, Reconstruction, two World Wars, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate and 9-11 were all respective and collective shocks to our fundamental understanding of human social relations and institutions, but we weathered and emerged. Compared to the revocation of the Jim Crow Laws alone, gay marriage is nothing, the bloodless addition of a tiny-minority of Americans to an existing legal definition. I seriously doubt that three decades after the advent of gay marriage will see a return to cannibalism and wearing animal skins (but then I was wrong about American Pie Wedding winning the Oscar, I might be wrong about this as well).

One effect will be that sexual fidelity will be detached from the commitment of marriage. The advocates of gay marriage themselves admit as much.

Evidently Benne/McDermott feels that gays hold a monopoly on infidelity- that's another Chick pamphlet I must have missed.

"Among gay male relationships, the openness of the contract makes it more likely to survive than many heterosexual bonds," Andrew Sullivan, the most eloquent proponent of gay marriage, wrote in his 1996 book, Virtually Normal. "

News flash: Andrew Sullivan speaks for Andrew Sullivan. I can honestly say that I would expect complete fidelity from my own spouse and so would most of my friends both gay and straight. I don’t know how all other gays feel and I honestly do not care.

The former moderator of the Metropolitan Community Church, a largely homosexual denomination, made the same point. "Monogamy is not a word the gay community uses," Troy Perry told The Dallas Morning News.

Interesting that Benne & McDermott cite the above followed by the rest of Perry’s interview with the exception of two short sentences. These are the sentences they omitted (bolding mine):

"Monogamy is not a word the gay community uses. It doesn't believe that heterosexuals are monogamous anymore. Just look at all the divorces in America."

Benne/McDermott evidently didn't feel the need to rebut the statement, just to remove it.

A recent study from the Netherlands, where gay marriage is legal, suggests that the moderator is correct. Researchers found that even among stable homosexual partnerships, men have an average of eight partners per year outside their "monogamous" relationship.

I cannot address the specifics of the poll because the link is dead and I was unable to find the full-text of the survey from the Netherlands (a nation with more than 12.5 times the population density of the U.S. [Alaska not included] as well as extremely different religious, political and cultural traditions) but a few questions that come immediately to mind:
*What is the infidelity rate of heterosexual monogamous relationships in the Netherlands?
*What were the average age, educational level and income of the respondents?
*What organization conducted the poll? Where did they find their respondents and what specifically was the purpose of the study?
*How is “stable homosexual partnership” defined? Are these people “married” under Dutch law?
*Does this poll include lesbians? If not, what is their average rate of infidelity? Since lesbians tend to be more monogamous than gay men (or straight couples), would you allow them to wed (and why not)?
*Doesn’t “eight partners for year” (nine if you include their spouse) seem just a tad “boastful”?

(A fact not mentioned about the Netherlands: this "land of dikes" with its legalized queer marriage has an incomparably lower divorce rate among straights than the God-fearin' US of A.)

Besides which, moot point. Not all gay unions are monogamous. News flash: not all straight unions are monogamous: Bill Clinton, Henry Hyde, Bob Barr, Bob Livingstone, Bill Cosby, John Hagee, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Karl Malden, Mel Gibson, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Meg Ryan, Rena Chenoweth, Luciano Pavarotti, Newt Gingrich- these are just a few of the names that came to mind immediately of living heterosexuals who have either admitted to multiple infidelities while legally married or have been “outed” as adulterers with enough evidence to remove all doubts. Some of the marriages ended in divorce due to the infidelities, some did not, but in no case was the case made for the eradication of marriage because some people cheat.

Jim addresses this in more detail and less digression than I do here.

According to a recent article in Child Trends, "Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

I don’t know of anybody who would argue this statement, though I think that the word biological is no more important than the word two and far less important than the phrase low-conflict marriage. It would also be wonderful if all children were born with no major medical problems to happy middle-class-and-better families with access to first world medical care, excellent school systems, a mother with the financial liberty to remain home, and the assurance that their parents would remain alive and happily together into their golden years, but they’re not and never will be.

While gay marriage would encourage adoption of children by homosexual couples

Are Benne & McDermott honestly not aware that gays are already adopting children?

which may be preferable to foster care,

A stable home and sense of belonging with two parents MAY be preferable to foster care? It sounds crazy, but it just might be so.

some lesbian couples want to have children through anonymous sperm donations,

Are they not familiar that more straight women (and even infertile straight couples) have used sperm donations than lesbian couples, or is there understanding of lesbian parenthood gleaned solely from midnight viewings of PINK FLAMINGOS?

which means some children will be created purposely without knowledge of one of their biological parents.

Millions of Americans were adopted and had no knowledge of either of their biological parents. They include James Michener, Steve Jobs, and Melissa Gilbert to name a few. Most turn out quite alright; studies actually indicate (which is what valid studies do) that many adoptive children are on average more, not less, well adjusted than randomly studied biological children: they were all wanted, their parents had to pass stringent state criteria, etc..
Any social worker will gladly tell you free of charge that the sentence “biology is the least important thing about being a parent” is a cliché because it’s true.

Research has also shown that children raised by homosexuals were more dissatisfied with their own gender, suffer a greater rate of molestation within the family, and have homosexual experiences more often.

Let's read that again.

Research has also shown that children raised by homosexuals were more dissatisfied with their own gender, suffer a greater rate of molestation within the family, and have homosexual experiences more often.

It is this one sentence that makes me say the following: Gerald McDermott and Robert Benne are either absolutely incompetent and criminally negligent researchers or they are morally bankrupt pieces of academic excrement. I will address this sentence in detail in a very long posting to follow, but for now I’ll return to the rest of Benne & McDermott already in progress:

Gay marriage will also encourage teens who are unsure of their sexuality to embrace a lifestyle that suffers high rates of suicide, depression, HIV, drug abuse, STDs, and other pathogens. This is particularly alarming because, according to a 1991 scientific survey among 12-year-old boys, more than 25 percent feel uncertain about their sexual orientations.

1. Don't you think that the suicide and depression rates suffered by gays might have just a teensy weensy bit to do with the way society views and treats gays (such as, hypothetical example- would never actually happen- the systematic condemnation of gays as abominations bound for hell [an idea enabled in part by Ph.D.s disseminating false information] by conservative religious groups who then claim no culpability when a member of their congregation commits a hate crime, or a draft dodging president proposing a Constitutional amendment for no other purpose than to forbid individual states the right to view gay unions as anything but inferior to straight unions even though the Constitution doesn't deal with marriage whatsoever)?

2. Ideally, 12 year old boys aren’t having sex with or contemplating marriage to anybody. Regardless of the case, I would love to see the flow chart that causally connects the legal recognition of gay unions to increased homosexuality among boys as it would seem to give the "First step collect underpants/Third step- profit" plan of the underpants gnomes a run for its money in Carrollian logic.

3. I think I know your ancillary source material; guys, Rusty is just a cartoon. (If you only read one hyperlink, make it this one- you'll be glad you did.)

We have already seen that lesbianism is "chic" in certain elite social sectors.

By its very definition, certain elite social sectors affect a tiny portion of America.

The vast majority of people define marriage as the life-long union of a man and a woman.

The majority of Americans opposed our separation from England.

The majority of Americans firmly believed that blacks were intrinsically inferior and that slavery was either a just system or, at very least, not worth going to war over.

The majority of Americans believed that the United States should remain isolated prior to World War II (a stance that cost countless lives and most of our Pacific fleet.)

The majority of Americans believed that separate but equal was a fair policy (even if the equal part was nudge-nudge wink-wink).

The majority of Americans believed that miscegenation was immoral and should be kept illegal.

The majority of Alabamians last year believed the Ten Commandments should stay in the Supreme Court building even when the SCOTUS said, with ample reason, it was a constitutional violation.

The majority of people believed witches were responsible for disease and crop failure and that torture was a good way of finding out who witches were.

The majority of the people polled outside the Antonia fortress on Easter Weekend ca. 29 CE wanted the release of bar-Abbas, not Jesus. (Perhaps if Benne & McDermott had been theologians in the first century instead of their own the world’s largest religion would be “Bar-Abbanism” since it’s what the people wanted.)

The vast majority of people everwhere had completely erroneous conceits about conception (pangenes, homunculus, etc.) that led to major overemphasis on the mystical nature of sperm and infertility and contributed significantly to the demonization of homosexuality and masturbation.

When citing what the majority wants it’s always useful to remember that 50% of all people are below average in intelligence, education and or reasoning. Remembering this will explain a lot to you about our elected officials and our television programming.

This is not to say that what the majority of people feel is by definition wrong: all other factors being equal, life really is easier with money than without, Audi TTs really are better cars than Ford Fiestas, and O.J. really is a murderer. However, the truth value of the above can be proven with evidence- truth has never relied on majority opinion but exists completely independently thereof (or else Christianity was wrong in its first few centuries but suddenly Jesus really did become the Son of God and Messiah around the time Constantine proclaimed his cult the state religion and the majority of Rome converted, but even then became true only for most of the world since there are still more non-Christians than Christians on Earth).

As for how the majority of people view our court systems, it’s largely moot: they're bound by our court decisions whether they agree with them or not and most will honor them. If you don’t believe this, please visit Montgomery, Alabama and ride a city bus- you’ll not likely see a major distinction twixt front and rear passengers.

A godsend of our Constitution is that the rights of citizens and the individual cases brought before the Supreme Court are not, ideally, determined by the will of the majority but upon their own merits. When the will of majority is allowed to overrule evidence in a trial, the result is almost invariably a travesty.

Engraved on the walls of many courthouses throughout the nation (including the Supreme Court buildings of several states) is the Latin phrase "Fiat justitia ruat caelum", meaning “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall", a clear disregard for the will of the majority in determining legal right and wrong.
For this reason, I leave to the Supreme Court the determination of justice.

I leave to Benne and McDermott the right to say the "sky is falling. They already have experience.

In summary, we believe that the introduction of gay marriage will seriously harm Americans including those in heterosexual marriages

In summary, I think Benne & McDermott are hypocritical morons cut from the same black fabric as the SS (and you’ll understand further why I think that when I make my next post).

Strong political measures may be necessary to maintain the traditional definition of marriage, possibly even a constitutional amendment.

Ummm... but some polls say the majority of Americans polled have said they don't want that... I thought Benne and McDermott said that the maj... oh, never mind.

Some legal entitlements sought by gays and lesbians might be addressed by recognizing non-sexually defined domestic partnerships.

Didn’t Benne/McDermott just dismiss that very thing as a strategic move whose ultimate purpose was to promote gay marriage?

Advocates of gay marriage recognize this contradiction by proposing "gay unions" instead, but this distinction is, we believe, a strategic one. The ultimate goal for them is the societal acceptance of gay marriage.

Why yes, they sure did... hmmm.

But as for marriage, let us keep the definition as it is, and strengthen our capacity to live up to its ideals.

Those are two separate sentences.

THIS RANT CONTINUED HERE (another link appears at the end of the appendix)

APPENDIX

For those interested, the details of the folks on the money and their marriages appear below.

Green-Paper Marriages

We’ll begin with bills:

$1 Bill- George Washington (1732-1799)

In 1759 he married Martha Parke Dandridge Custis, the daughter of one of Virginia’s wealthiest planters and the widow of one of Virginia’s wealthiest merchants. Though described as sweet tempered, she was barely literate and far from beautiful; not even Washington’s most hagiographic biographers deny that money was a key motivator to the union. Her substantial dowry included slaves (including her quadroon half-sister), land, money, furniture, and livestock, all of it much needed by the ambitious but far from wealthy Colonel Washington.
While Washington seems to have loved Martha, his passion was reserved for Sally Fairfax, the beautiful wife of his best friend. His letters to her and her's to him still survive; their correspondence continued even after she and her Loyalist husband abandoned the colonies for Mother England. It is unknown whether their relationship was ever made sexual, but the letters most definitely exceeded the platonic.
Washington and Martha had no children, though he did help rear her surviving children from her first marriage, both of whom died in young adulthood. After the death of Martha’s son Jack and his wife, General & Mrs. Washington adopted his two legitimate children. (His oldest children were produced by his union with his aunt, Martha’s slave half-sister.)

$2 Bill- Thomas Jefferson-

Like Washington he married a wealthy widow named Martha who brought to the marriage children from her first marriage and whose dowry included a quadroon slave half-sibling. Unlike Washington, Jefferson does seem to have been passionately devoted to his lady, pledging (at her request) never to remarry when she died young. True to his word, he contented himself first with an adulterous romance with the married artist Maria Cosway (wife of Richard Cosway, a homosexual English artist at the Court of Versailles) before replacing her in his bed if not his heart with the infamous Sally Heming (said to be the image of her half-sister, Jefferson's wife). You know the rest of the story.

$5 Bill- Abraham Lincoln-

We’ll ignore the gossip about Joshua Speed and assume that Mary Todd was the love of his life. Lincoln himself admitted that social prestige was a factor in his courtship, though there can be no doubt he loved her deeply. Their union was sad more than unhappy, and all through the worst times of their marriage (the deaths of two sons, the vicious accusations that Mary was a Confederate spy, the Civil War, Mary's manic overspending and increasingly frequent bouts of madness, her addiction to spiritualism, etc.) they were unable to have the sacred and life affirming penile-vaginal sex that marriage is made for. (They were advised to abstain from sexual relations after the birth of their fourth child as doctors were convinced a fifth pregnancy would kill the fragile Mrs. Lincoln.) After Abraham's assassination and Tad's death, Mary broke even further with sanity, becoming convinced that there was a plot to kill her, buying hundreds of pairs of gloves at a time, sewing more than $20,000 into her skirts in order to ransom herself if necessary, etc.. Her sole surviving son ultimately had to commit her to the Lunatic Asylum at Bellevue Hospital.

$10 Bill- Alexander Hamilton

In his private correspondence, the penniless and illegitimate former child prodigy Hamilton made absolutely no secret of the fact that he married Elizabeth Schuyler for her family's money and social prestige. In one of his letters pledging his undying love to John Laurens, he sweetly described his new bride as "no genius" and "...no beauty, but with pretty black eyes", and a woman who would help him raise his station.

Trivia of no real importance to the issue of marriage but interesting nonetheless: in 1801, Hamilton's oldest son, Philip Schuyler Hamilton, was killed in a duel. The following year Elizabeth gave birth to their eighth child, a son whom they named Philip Schuyler Hamilton II. When Phil 2 was 2, Alexander was fatally wounded in his duel with (Jonathan Edwards's grandson) Aaron Burr, his body falling in the same spot where his son's had fallen three years before.

Biographers have debated whether Hamilton and Laurens were lovers. Some say that the constant professions of love in their letters were just indicative of hyperbolic sentimentality of the time, while others posit that they were banging away like adolescent monkeys on Ecstasy. Personally the letters leave me with no doubt as to the nature of their relationship, but judge -for- yourself.

Of Hamilton's adulteries with women there is no doubt, the most significant being with Mrs. Reynolds (whose husband blackmailed him for years- the story was broken by James Callendar, incidentally, the same yellow journalist who broke the story of Sally Hemings a few years later) and the most notorious being with his wife's sister Angelica (whose other paramours may have included Thomas Jefferson).

Hamilton's long suffering lady suffered much longer. Her husband died penniless and deeply in debt leaving her with several young children still to raise. She survived him by fifty years.

$20 Bill- Andrew Jackson

Anybody who knows anything of American leaders's private lives knows this one: Andrew was the tall thin penniless Anglophobic orphan and Rachel the plump divorcee daughter of a tavern keep when they fell in love at first sight. A few years after their marriage it became public knowledge that her divorce from her first husband was never finalized and thus her marriage to Jackson was bigamous. The couple remarried after the divorce was completed, though the scandal lasted for their entire lives. (Jackson fought at least two duels over slurs to his polyandrous wife's character, fatally wounding Charles Dickinson in the most famous.)
Jackson and Rachel had no biological issue, though they adopted one of the twin sons of Rachel's brother. (As with puppies, they chose the one they wanted and took him home.) Other children they raised included Lincoier (spellings vary), a Creek Indian orphaned in Jackson's attack on Horsehoe Bend very near my childhood home; he died in childhood.

$50 Bill- Ulysses Grant

Of all the green paper marriages, Ulysses and Julia Dent Grant had the one most suited to the ones described by Benne and McDermott. He was a chain smoking drunk and she was by all accounts unattractive, but the union was so happy it was boring. They remained together through thin, thick, very thick, unbelievably thick, and thin again, with the stories of his race against time to complete his memoirs that his widow might live in comfort a well known final chapter of his life.
Less well known: Julia, like Marthas Washington and Jefferson, was also dowered with four slaves. The Grants later purchased a fifth. Hence, the victorious Union general was a slave owner while his Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, never owned a slave (though his wife, a descendant of Martha Washington's son Jack [though not through his slave aunt] did).

$100 Bill- Benjamin Franklin

Around 1732 Benjy began living with the intelligent and comely young divorcee Deborah Read Rogers. Though they referred to each other as "husband and wife", they never legally married. After six months of "marriage";, Franklin gave his wife a son, though not in the unconventional sense; it was his newborn son from a previous relationship- the mother has never been identified. The Franklins had two children together and had a relatively happy though unconventional life, living apart for years at a time due to Ben's diplomatic service in Europe and Deborah's phobia of sea travel. That Franklin never lacked for female companionship in his wife's absence or after her death is a matter of historic record.

COINAGE

I'll skip the penny, nickel and quarter so as not to repeat the above.

Dime- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

He married his sixth cousin, the daughter of his famous cousin Teddy's barking mad brother Eliot, 99 years ago this week, changing her name from Eleanor Roosevelt to Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. (Ironically, FDR's half-brother was named James Roosevelt Roosevelt; the family should really be investigated for possible Tourettes- James' son Tad dated lovely German divorcee Magda Ritschel Quandt, who later married this man.) They produced six children but by all accounts the marriage had turned unhappy even before Franklin lost the use of his legs to polio.
Franklin had numerous infidelities but by far his most significant was with Eleanor social secretary, Lucy Mercer. It began during WW1 (when Franklin was Secretary of the Navy), ended when Mama Roosevelt threatened to disinherit him (he had very little money in his own right, but she was loaded and he was her only child), and resumed again during his presidency. It was Lucy, not Eleanor, who was with him when he died in Warm Springs, Georgia; ushering her discreetly from the house before the arrival of the press corps and Eleanor was the first task for those at hand.
Few now dispute that Eleanor and the openly gay Lorena Hickock were lovers- their letters leave almost no room for doubt. Franklin himself was sufficiently disturbed by their friendship that he ordered Lorena to move out of the White House (where Eleanor had given her quarters)- his order was refused.
But, infidelities on both sides aside, they had kids which is what marriage is for, so who needs happiness?

Half-Dollar John F. Kennedy

Enough said.

Dollar Coin Sacagawea (trans. Bird Woman)

Abducted during intertribal war and sold as a slave, she was about fourteen when she was purchased (along with another teenaged captive named Otter Woman) by Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trader thirty years her senior. Sacagawea accompanied her husband and wife-in-law on the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery expedition, her linguistic skills and family connections ultimately proving far more useful than anything achieved by her husband (who, incidentally, had been almost fatally stabbed a few years before by an irate Indian woman whose daughter he tried to rape). Journals of Lewis and Clark recall her bravery as well as her husband's cowardice, intoxication, and propensity for wife-beating.

Sacagawea is known to have borne two children (Jean Baptiste "Pomp" Charbonneau, born during the expedition, and a daughter, Lysette, born a few years later), though little is known of her later life. By most accounts she died of fever in 1812 (the credence to this is leant by the fact that both of her children were adopted by Clark around this time) while by other accounts she died of extreme old age on a Shoshone reservation in 1884. Still others claim she was a prostitute in St. Louis as late as the 1820s.

Personally I like to think she remained with the wife-beating Charbonneau until her early death ended their life-long union as God, Benne & McDermott see proper, but then I'm a hopeless romantic. (Charbonneau himself lived on and on, marrying yet another Indian wife (at least his sixth) when he was 80 and she was 14; he died six years later.)

As for the only baby pictured on U.S. currency, Pomp Charbonneau led an eccentric life that included an incredible education in America and Europe, fluency in more than a dozen European and Indian languages, and careers as a guide, trapper, Indian trader, long-time houseguest of King Frederick William III of Prussia, gold miner, magistrate of a Mexican town, bartender and hotel employee. He died in Oregon in 1866; I cannot find any details of his marriage(s), although he does have descendants.

Update

A reader pointed out that I didn't include the people found on the new state quarters. This was actually intentional because, of the eight historical individuals pictured on the new quarters, two have already been addressed (Washington & Lincoln) and, strangely enough, five- Caesar Rodney, Merriwether Lewis, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright and Helen Keller- never married.

(Helen Keller probably came closest, even setting a time and place [her sister's porch a block from the ugly building where I once worked in Montgomery, AL] to elope with her lover, but he stood her up. Her biographers generally concur that he was probably discouraged by Annie Sullivan [who, though she loved Helen beyond the need for spoken words, blamed her for her own divorce] and the Keller family [who also loved Helen dearly, but never really saw her as much more than a brilliant crippled].)

The one additional married fellow, William Clark (of Lewis & fame), contented himself with mulatto and Indian women until he was 38, when he married Miss Julia Hancock; accounts of her age vary from 15 to 17, though by all she was significantly less than half his age. She died 12 years and 5 children later and after a year Clark married her first cousin, Harriet Radford, a widow and mother who bore him two more children. (The marriage of a 38 year old and a 15 year old followed by a quick remarriage to her cousin may seem odd today, but at the time... oh wait, forgot- marital norms are steadfast.)

Some gossip I throw in for the benefit of McDermott should he read this since it touches his area of qualification to speak with authority: the death of Merriwether Lewis, which was most probably a suicide, caused much gossip at the time with many allegations of murder. Among the suspects was Aaron Burr, who despised Lewis's relationship with his obsessively beloved daughter, Theodosia Burr Alford, who was through her father the great-granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards. (Gore Vidal codified 170 year old gossip in his novel Burr by portraying an allegation that Aaron & Theodosia engaged in incest as the calumny which provoked America's most famous duel.)

THIS RANT CONTINUED HERE

A frustrating thing about the gay marriage debate is the number of people who defend marriage as a spiritual union in one breath only to reduce it to the purely biological with the next. More frustrating still is that they see no inconsistency. "Marriage is a sacred institution created by God"; they argue, "and its purpose is for having children." It must be defended, don't you see, for two men or two women can't make babies- it's a scientific fact. (That a high percentage of people who make this argument have no trouble believing that humans can be manufactured from dirt or ribs, that 90 year old women can have healthy babies and virgins can give birth to demigods makes it even more an absurdist's dream.)

When confronted with the unarguable facts that countless heterosexual couples marry every year with no intentions, often without even the ability, to reproduce, it doesn't faze the people making the statement. Penile-vaginal sex is just intrinsically holier and ultimately marriage is about hetero-sex and babies, even when it's not (just as homosexuality is unnatural, regardless of how often it occurs in nature).

Personally I think any woman would do better to die a spinster than to marry a man who sees her as a device to carry a uterus from place to place, but to each his own (unless his own is a he).

I was asked recently why I care whether gay marriage is legalized or not. After all, it really won't affect my life in the slightest now or in the foreseeable future; I'm not in a committed relationship and in fact I haven’t even had a date since before Gore was elected. I would much prefer to see all of the sound and fury surrounding the issue focused on passing federal anti-discrimination legislation that would protect competent gay employees from being fired solely due to their orientation.

Further, I’ve argued for years that if activists truly want to succeed in gaining the same rights for committed gay couples that are currently available to committed straight couples then they should stop calling it gay marriage. The word marriage carries more baggage than Paris Hilton's bellboy, besides which it’s not even what gays are seeking: they can already get married in any church that will let them. It is the rights afforded by the state that they seek: inheritance of pensions, health benefits, the right to visit ailing partners in hospital without the consent of blood relatives, automatic power of attorney when necessary, the right to file taxes jointly, facilitation of resident alien status should they fall in love with a non-American citizen, etc. etc. etc..

Whether they have the blessings of the church is up to the church. The Federal government can no more require the Baptist church to recognize gay couples as on par with heterosexual couples than it can order the Catholic Church to allow their priests or divorcees to marry within its sanctuary (though the same priests and divorcees can most certainly marry down the street at the City Hall with no moral judgment or required pledge that they’re going to reproduce). We are talking strictly about the renderings of Cæsar, not the renderings of God- our souls we’ll worry about ourselves. That should not be hard to understand.

For the reasons above, I’ve argued for years that they should call it domestic partnership registration (or something like it) rather than marriage and word it in such a way that it has the same rights as marriage but is also open to eligible straight couples. (To paraphrase Lazarus Long, you’ll get much farther appealing to peoples’s self interests than to their ration or better natures.) Frankly, I still think from a purely political standpoint it’s a better idea than gay marriage.

However, it’s not just gay activists who call it gay marriage; straight activists and the media insist on doing so as well. So semantics be damned; gay marriage it is, pure and simple.

That said, I am 100% in favor of gay marriage now and it is completely a matter of principal. I became an advocate the moment valiant Dubya (1st Lt., AWOL division, retired) proposed his asinine amendment to the Constitution, the first to deal with public morality since the overwhelming success of Prohibition. The line is drawn- the battlefield is to be the swampy ground of gay marriage. I’d rather the battle take place on the plains of domestic partnership or better yet on the fields of anti-discrimination legislation, but it’s not, so to borrow Captain John Parker’s speech from Lexington:

Stand your ground, don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.

Dubya shot and the blast knocked many moderates off the fence. That a lying pandering fish-brained deficit-loving hypocrite could or would ignore so many other more pressing matters and propose an AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION to deliberately override the rights of states to determine their own marriage laws strictly so that he can dehumanize gays for the benefit of people so convinced that a manic-depressive desert sky-god cares what consenting adults may or may not do with their ding-dongs that it determines who they’ll vote for is, in a word, nauseous, and affects the rights of all Americans whether they realize it or not.

And speaking of things that are nauseous (a word used here in its proper context, incidentally), check out this article. It will be the subject of the almost immediately to follow second portion of this multiposting.

PROCEED TO PART 2

"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples."

"It doesn't change a thing
but even so...
it's nice to know."