Magge Gallagher, whose obsession with the issue seems almost pathological, continues to rail against gay marriage:She claims to have received a "foretaste" of how it will affect the next generation when challenged by a college student, Matthew, on a shuttle from DC:

"Why are you against it?" Matthew asked. So I told him.

Marriage is the place where we not only tolerate people having babies and raising children, we positively welcome and encourage it. Same-sex marriage will be a public and legal declaration that the state of Massachusetts believes that children do not need mothers and fathers. Alternative family forms are not only just as good, they are just the same as a husband and wife raising kids together.

She then complains that the student received exactly that message from the present state of heterosexual marriage:

He told me knew some kids at school who were being raised by a same-sex couple. They seemed OK to him. Besides, he said, his mom and dad were divorced. His older brother seemed to have some problems with it, he hinted, but that was probably just because his brother was older and knew his dad better before they divorced.

* * *

Abandon your kids early enough, he implied, and fatherlessness is all they know. They won't need you. Kids adjust.

She continues,

People won't avoid umarried childbearing in a society that says what same-sex marriage says: Children don't need mothers and fathers. Alternative family structures are just as good. Young men who are raised to believe that fathers don't matter to their children will not become dependable husbands and fathers themselves.

Marriage is our most basic social institution for protecting children. Same-sex marriage amounts to a vast social experiment on children. Rewriting the basic rules of marriage puts all children, not just the children in unisex unions, at risk. Do not expect boys to become good family men in a society of Matthews who believe, as they have been taught, that men are optional in family life.

So let me see if I understand this....

Heterosexuals have been so irresponsible in their exercise of the institution of marriage - choosing single parent lifestyles, getting divorced, etc. - that kids are getting the message that marriage isn't important. She believes, without evidence, that extending the right of marriage to people who obviously have a very strong desire to make a life commitment will have precisely the same effect on the institution of marriage as does the cavalier attitude many heterosexuals carry toward that institution.

And as apparently heterosexual Matthew is continuing this cavalier attitude, she expects his children will also undervalue the role of the father - not that she has demonstrated, in fact, that Matthew does so. She simply assumes that from the fact that he is satisfied with the manner in which his mother raised him.

Meanwhile, she posits that increasing even lifelong, committed marriage in a society where no small percentage of the population has no desire for children, is somehow a "vast social experiment on children". Um... sure.

Ann Coulter, apparently afraid of being outdone by Jeff Jacoby on the use of the slippery slope logical fallacy, scribbles in crayon:

And if we don't get Massachusetts judges out of the country soon, we could start reading headlines like: Mass. Supreme Court Abolishes Capitalism; Gives Legislature 6 months to Nationalize All Industry.

The rest of it? As mythago might observe, when you open the fridge door the light goes on, when you close it the light goes off.... And here, we're squinting because the bulb is really, really dim.

Brent Bozell of the "Media Research Center" joins the chorus of "conservative" columnists out to embarrass themselves:

As the courts of ultraliberal states seek to impose their immorality on society, liberals ought to be preparing for the backlash, for their pendulum is swinging way too far to the left. It's judicial legislating like this decision that says to the average God-fearing American that liberals are not simply for the separation of church and state. They are for the separation of church and society, pouring acid on our spiritual foundations, masking their contempt for God in their preaching for moral equivalence.

With all due respect to critiques of "legislating from the bench", a screed like that can only make you grateful for the First Amendment's separation of church and state.

And the true horror Jacoby reveals--soon we won't be able to blather about "unique sex roles in family life!" Mrs. Jacoby will be after his whiny ass to pick up his own socks once in a while, instead of pointing to millenia of wifely precedent! Hell in a handbasket, I tell you.

Paleo-conservatives may owe John McCain and Robert Novak a pat on the back, for standing up to the corruption and fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush White House.

Now comes Jeff Jacoby, a man desperately in love with the slippery slope logical fallacy. Next, he tells us, comes legitimization of polygamy and incest. As if to prove that he has his thumb on the pulse of his subject, he also rails against the ERA. (Remember the ERA?)

"the superior natural order of which cannot be disputed"...now there's a line to titter over in capuccino bars.

I wonder how classics-worshipping conservatives deal with the sexual behavior of their idols, the Athenians.

And now we have Kathleen Turner chiming in with "I'm not a bigot, because some of my best friends are gay".

But this is not an insignificant social experiment to be tittered over in cappuccino bars. Making homosexual unions equal to heterosexual unions - the superior natural order of which cannot be disputed - is not just a small step for equality. It is a gargantuan leap from a natural order that has served mankind throughout civilized human society.

Perhaps she should have closed with, "Après moi le Deluge".

Edited by author 11-21-2003 02:53 PM
Oh, if you go hang out with frothing conservatives I'm sure you'll find many who wank off to Ann Coulter's book jacket photograph. Believe me, there are an awful lot of folks who go "Mmm....long blond hair...skinny..." and, well, that's about as far as they care. Oh, and probably all four limbs is a plus.

I disagree that Goldberg fails to embarass himself. Anyone who flatly says that the "marriage is a man and a woman" is lying or ignorant about the purpose of marriage. For millenia, the definition of marriage has included the presumption of children, and the subjugation of the wife to the husband. Only recently, for example, has American law made the extremely radical suggestion that children are irrelevant to the marriage's status, and that a wife's legal rights should be the same as her husband's.

Once you get rid of those two things, you really might as well let the queers marry, as Hawaii found out the hard way.

Re: /m8

Sugar, please. Would you do that frothing harpy? I don't know any man that would take on that bundle of hysterical yowling, even if she put out ten times a day.

It's best that she not ever be put in the position of reproducing anyway. The cloned version is already more than we should have to contend with.

Hm. David Limbaugh, who seems to be the pundit's equivalent to a Billy Carter, proclaims:

In the Moore case you have a federal court telling a state court that it can't symbolically recognize the God of the Bible as the source of our laws (or otherwise). In the Massachusetts case you have a state court ruling that the Bible can't be the source of our laws. I think the latter has even graver implications.

Is the Bible supposed to be the source of our laws? Where's the statute that echoes the Bible's declaration, "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live"? Or the law which, as mythago indicated, should be on the books to make women legally subject to their husbands? Or the law which prohibits remarriage after divorce as adultery? Let me guess... "That's different".

Johan Goldberg, by way of contrast, demonstrates that it is possible for a modern conservative pundit to speak to the issue of gay marriage without embarrassing himself, even though he finds it strangely necessary to take pot shots at Howard Dean prior to demonstrating rationality.

Perhaps the difference is that, as one might infer from his endorsement of civil unions, Goldberg isn't homophobic?

Okay.... So I found an editorial by a "conservative" who objects to the approach of the Bush Administration:

True Movement Conservatives still have time to press this administration for a campaign pledge to reduce and reform the federal government. The heartland is with them, if my visits to these areas are any evidence. Folks I talk to shake their heads and ask, “Whatever happened to the Conservative Agenda?” They certainly support George Bush, but they are still waiting for the kinds of positive changes that a majority party should be able to deliver.

The question seems to be, will traditional Conservatives lead and move an agenda forward, or will they cede leadership to the Big Government Republicans, who apparently have not yet found a huge government program that bothers them?

Another question might be, what’s the difference between a Big Government Republican and a Big Government Liberal Democrat?

Of course, to get to those comments, one first must wade through his "analysis" that "partial birth abortion" results when a mother seeks "to kill a baby just days before birth due to a 'bad' mood". Um.... fiscal conservativism meets wacky religious right propaganda?

Married people are also more likely to have kids. ;-)

Hm, the last study along those lines I heard found that marrieds have better sex lives than singles, but couples who "shack up" have better sex lives than marrieds. It was interesting to see all the pundits who bragged about marriage being good for your sex life, but who conveniently didn't mention that living in sin was superior in that regard.

Lynne - you're being silly again. If you read or listen to Ann Coulter, you should already know that conservatives have better sex than liberals. She cites a "study" which she purports to hold that married conservatives are the most satisfied with their sex lives, while liberals are dissatisfied with their bed hopping and, um, "unnatural acts". (Okay - so she didn't specifically reference "unnatural acts".)

As she remains unmarried, given her stance on the subject, she presumably has either never had good sex or she remains a virgin.

Because of the evil liberal element that likes to run around and have sex and stuff and ruin this good Christian county? ;)

Believe me, I spent several days trying to explain to someone else why when a federal court ordered an Alabama judge to remove a monument to the ten commandments from the courthouse, it wasnt religious discrimination. All I can say is that there are a bunch of whackos on the right. They really dont see the irony of bragging about how the US is the best country in the world because of our freedom while at the same time doing anything they can to abridge the freedom of others.