But a recent "analysis" by FRC gives a good indication of why these groups have been getting practically destroyed in the courts.
The analysis, Complementarity in Marriage: What it is and Why it Matters, was written by FRC Senior Vice President Rob Schwarzwalder and has to be the most oblivious piece of anything I have ever read. The first excerpts gives you a clue:
Men and women are different.
This self-evident and clichéd claim is no longer as uncontroversial as, historically, it once was. According to a 2011 report from the American Psychological Association,
Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or something else; gender expression refers to the way a person communicates gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice, or body characteristics ... Transgender people experience their transgender identity in a variety of ways and may become aware of their transgender identity at any age.
This statement includes a reference to an undefined but apparently defining “internal sense” and the concurrent argument that one can recognize his or her transgenderism “at any age.” Such an assumption has stunning implications for the way law, society, and family all function. But before we examine that assumption, let’s start here: what’s the deal with exclusively male- female unions?
Men and women are different? No kidding.
And it goes on like that for seven pages, carrying on different variations of the tired argument that "men and women complement each other and their function is to get married, have children, and raise children while living together as husband and wife."
It's an argument the lgbt community has heard so many times that a lot of us can probably recite it fro memory. Never mind that it's an argument which does not speak to a reality where not all couples are married or have children and not all children have both parents or at least one parent in the home.
This analysis doesn't hardly touch same-sex relationship except to say that if the door is opened for it, we could be seeing things like polygamous relationships and a vague reference to how children "need both a mother and a father."
And therein lies the problem. Where is the concrete evidence that marriage equality would prevent male/female relationships, harm male/female relationships, or harm children who are already in same-sex families.
FRC doesn't say a word about that reality. It's as if the organization refuses to comprehend that the latter (children in same-sex households) don't exist.
In short, this analysis is more neutered than a stereotypical 1950s husband after his harridan of a wife has bashed him over the head a few times with a rolling pin.
The truth is clear. Marriage equality is not a danger to society and FRC knows it. And in writing this junk analysis, Schwarzwalder and FRC have obviously given up on their attempts to raise a false alarm. At least this time.
Are we finally getting to them?
These people keep grasping at the same tired old limp straws. There's nothing in this piece that the LGBTQ community has not been perfectly aware of for generations. Gay men, masculine or feminine, still think of themselves as men. Lesbians, however butch their affect, still consider themselves women. And all the evidence indicates that transgender persons "always knew" there was something wrong even before they could describe it, hence the semi-acurate but misleading term "gender confusion," which may be a phase for some transgenders but if it is, it is usually a short one; at the end of the day, we all know who and what we are and we do not need some fly-by-night organization like the FRC to tell us our own identities.
ReplyDelete“Men and women are different.”
ReplyDeleteTherefore, they are incompatible. Which most likely explains the 50% divorce rate, and high percentage of single-parent families. Same-sex couples ARE obviously compatible. Therefore, ONLY same-sex couples should have the right to marry. I win the internets!
“Same-sex unions do not threaten healthy natural marriages but, rather, they undermine the meaning and nature of marriage and, thereby, the well-being of countless families.”
So how exactly does that work? So if I don’t tell my next-door neighbors that my husband and I are actually married, THEN their own marriage and family won’t be undermined. But if they DO find out, then their marriage will have lost all its meaning, and they’ll have no choice but to get divorced? I had no idea that gay people were so powerful, that if you legally recognize their relationships, straight marriages will instantly be destroyed. Impressive.
“Consensual homosexual unions might cause no apparent distress to persons proximate to them, but they distort and diminish our shared, public understanding of marriage. Without that true understanding, our civilization will erode ever more quickly.”
The funny thing is, you can use that same argument to support banning interracial marriages. The shared, public understanding of marriage in the 1960’s was that marriage was only between people of the same race. 75% of society shared that view at the time.
"men and women complement each other and their function is to get married, have children, and raise children while living together as husband and wife." Men and women complement each other in groups, like tribes/clans/villages etc and has nothing to do with sex or romance or breeding.
ReplyDeleteA much truer statement would go something like this - "men and women complement each other and their function is to raise children while living together as a society."
Moreover, it's such a strange sad argument for them to base their fight on. The fact that they believe "difference" between the genders is the most important feature in society, and the most important feature underlying marriage, is so telling. They're a people committed to separatism, to highlighting differences, to maintaining that difference can mean one group who exhibit one different characteristic (men, white people, straight people) are inherently better than those who exhibit another characteristic. Their argument is based in competition and opposition, not in communality and understanding.
ReplyDeleteAnd they highlight one difference -- one's genitals -- above all others. My husband and I aren't the same, just because we both have a penis. We're as different, and as complementary, as were my parents, as are my sister and her husband.
How strange that our opponents claim we're the ones who are all about sex, when they're actually the ones who reduce one of mankind's most amazing institutions to a requirement that it contain one set of male genitals and one set of female genitals. This is the very definition of sex-obsessed.
Dan, I accidentally erased your comment while attempting to post it. I did copy and save it though:
ReplyDelete"Why would a group who (often by your own good self) has been shown to ignore reason rely on "facts" or "evidence" to prove anything?
On a tangent, keep up the great work :) I love reading your stuff, it gives me just the right blend of laughter and cynicism to get through my day."
Love the comments so far.
ReplyDeleteMen and women are different? That's why we group them by different words. If one were to use a gender-neutral word like "person" to refer to a man and also to a woman it would necessarily begin to degrade the difference between them and rot civilization from its foundations, that is, that men and women are really totally different.