12 posts tagged “gay marriage”

This guy may be the best person you will ever see.

Over here of the David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute (an essentially Christian organization that promotes intelligent design and other religious objectives in public life) posts in his Kingdom of Priests column that gay marriage existed in ancient Canaan. He cites an ancient text called the Sifra that comments on the Book of Leviticus. Mr. Klinghoffer writes:

An ancient Biblical tradition, a midrash, relates that the Canaanites wrote marriage contracts between man and man and woman and woman, and that this was one reason the land "vomited" them up in favor of the Israelites who took their place. The historicity of this isn't the point. It's the moral that matters, having to do with the social impact of being libertarian about marriage combinations

Then here, he adds Egyptians into the gay marriage mix:

Some context: Leviticus 18 records the forbidden sexual relationships, including homosexual intercourse (v. 22). The list is prefaced with the statement, "Do not perform the practice of the land of Egypt in which you dwelled; and do not perform the practice of the land of Canaan to which I bring you, and do not follow their decrees" (18:3).

 

Sifra explains there about those "decrees": "And what did they do? A man would marry a man, and a woman would marry a woman." 

 

The end of the chapter in the Bible warns, "[T]he inhabitants of the land who are before you committed all these abominations, and the land became contaminated. Let not the land disgorge you for having contaminated it, as it disgorged the nation that was before you" (v. 27-28).

 

It sounds like such things were also done in Egypt, but it was the decrees of Canaan sanctioning same-sex marriage and similar relationships that resulted in the Canaanites losing their land and dying out as a people.

Please note that the Egyptians were neither vomited from their land nor died out. Also please note that David Klinghoffer is not a liberal, anti-Christian fellow making the case that gay marriage existed in ancient times. As I noted in an earlier post, Theodosian Code, Roman legal text from the year 342 also strongly suggests that gay marriage existed in ancient Rome. And here is what Klinghoffer learns from this:

First, the institution of marriage is very ancient, and that by itself tells us something. A profound wisdom accumulates over the millennia, as generations discover the kind of institutions best suited for human beings. For thousands of years and across a multitude of cultures, people have agreed that marriage means the union of man with woman.

But according to Kilnghoffer’s own research, people did not agree. According to him, the Egyptians and the Canaanites did not agree. Further, if the Hebrews needed a law to stop Jews from engaging in same sex marriage, then not all of the Jews agreed. Why would you need to tell people not to do something if everyone has already agreed that they didn’t want to do it? He continues:

This consensus is enshrined in religious beliefs, revered by Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus alike. You can think of these beliefs as God-given, but you don't have to. You also can think of them as human discoveries.

Or we could think of this as laws reflecting personal bias. Let’s ignore for a second that Hindus have performed marriages between people and animals and between people and plants and note that the “consensus” Kilnghoffer refers to is just the majority agreeing that they are correct and that the tiny minority is wrong. The majority deciding they are better than the minority is hardly a “human discovery.” If history teaches us anything, it is when the majority realizes that it is in the wrong that true discovery takes place. Deciding that “most of us are like this; therefore, this is the way everyone should be” is a bias, not a discovery. The assumption that the way of the majority is the only correct way prevents discovery.

You want to know how you can tell that Kilnghoffer isn’t really serious about this “discovery” business? Read this:

Third, the integrity of moral tradition as a whole is at stake. Apart from its impact on family life, government endorsement of gay marriage undercuts other, seemingly unrelated beliefs about right and wrong, because those beliefs derive from the same authoritative source. It calls into question the whole authority and structure of traditional morality. Our confidence in this tradition gives us strength to face moral challenges in every area of life. Government-imposed gay marriage makes it harder for us all to be as good as we would wish.

You can tell because although he seemed to be suggesting that he likes “discovery,” he then says we shouldn’t shake our confidence in “beliefs” derived from an “authoritative source” or from “tradition.” Saying that we must keep our beliefs in traditions based on authoritative sources is the opposite of espousing discovery as a value. Kilnghoffer clearly does not believe that Jews, Christians, and Muslims came to anti-gay marriage stance via discovery. He clearly believes they came to it via “the same authoritative source,” i.e. the Books of Moses. Although Kilnghoffer would like to see as if he is arguing on a rational basis by implying that he believes that societies discovered that gay marriage was bad because they tried it out and found that it didn’t work for them, he knows very well that they come to this conclusion from reading and citing from the very same authoritative source that he cites.

We can also tell that Kilnghoffer is anti-discovery and pro-authority by noting that he doesn’t really believe that we’ve discovered new things about morality through the ages. He suggests that morals were discovered thousands of years ago and no knew discoveries have been made since. In no other field of study would one suggest that the researchers of ancient times discovered everything there was to discover and no knew discoveries of today were valid. Kilnghoffer appears to believe that the ancient Hebrews -- who bought and sold their wives and children, who kidnapped people who they conquered and forced them to be their sex slaves, who had multiple wives, who forced guys to marry their dead brothers’ wives, who had children with their slaves, who sold their slaves’ children -- figured out all the morality of marriage and the family and anything new like same sex marriage is silly because it runs counter the wisdom that ancient people figured out through their numerous marriage experiments. He seems to believe that unlike physics, music, dance, psychology, medicine, architecture, engineering, sociology, etc. etc. etc. everything that would ever be discovered about marriage was discovered thousands upon thousands of years ago. He does not believe that we’ve accumulated any wisdom on marriage since the ancient times that would add anything new to the field of study.

What he doesn’t explain, and none of the people who argue against gay marriage with the “accumulated wisdom of the ages” argument is why allowing gay marriage isn’t a response to our accumulated knowledge of marriage instead of a rejection of it. The Bible doesn’t say, “We tried gay marriage for a few decades, but we discovered that the birth rate so dropped significantly that we had negative population growth and the divorce rate among straight couples tripled.” If it did, then going forward with gay marriage would in fact be a rejection of accumulated wisdom on the subject. But there is no indication that the Bible’s negative statements on homosexuality are based on the discovery of social organ. Instead, we are told that the reason the Hebrews were opposed to homosexuality that they read that a guy wrote that some other invisible, magical guy said that homosexuals should be executed. This tells us that only wasn’t the Hebrew aversion based on an experiment in gay marriage, but that an experiment couldn’t possibly have been conducted because the participants would have been murdered before they could test the results.

Kilnghoffer suggests that because societies before us didn’t have gay marriage, our creation of gay marriage is a rejection of their accumulated knowledge on marriage. His logic would suggest that the launch of a rocket to the moon was not the product of accumulated knowledge but a rejection of that knowledge because the people before never launched rockets to the moon. Accumulating knowledge on a topic frequently allows you or even compels you to do things that people in the past could not or would not do.

All in all, Kilnghoffer’s thoughts on this subject are just a mishmash of inconsistent babblings that sprang from a belief that gay marriage was bad instead of any substantive research.

In this weird rambling discussion with Camille Paglia, the noted thinker says that she thinks the “Heather has two mommies” idea was created for parents, but telling a kid that both of the people raising him are his mothers would be needlessly confusing for the kid and subject him to teasing when he’s an adolescent. Ms. Paglia notes that she has adopted the son of her (now ex-) lesbian partner. “He’s my adopted son,” she says. But she thinks it would be confusing for her son to call her his mother. Am I the only one who thinks that’s more confusing?

And I don’t understand why saying “These are my two mommies” would subject a child to ridicule but saying “This is my mommy and the other woman is my co-parent who is not my mother” would allow the child to be accepted unconditionally. Surely, it is the fact that they are lesbians, not mommies, that will spark the teasing. It is homophobia, not mommyphobia, that people get teased about.  

"We haven’t taken this to its ultimate conclusion. You got polygamy out there. How can we rule that polygamy is illegal when you say that homosexual marriage is legal. What is it about polygamy that’s different? Well, polygamy was outlawed because it was considered immoral according to biblical standards. But if we take biblical standards away in homosexuality, what about the other? And what about bestiality and ultimately what about child molestation and pedophilia? How can we criminalize these things and at the same time have constitutional amendments allowing same-sex marriage among homosexuals. You mark my words, this is just the beginning in a long downward slide in relation to all the things that we consider to be abhorrent."

Hey, Pat Robertson is lying about the Bible! That’s gotta be a sin, right? Let’s take a look at the lies!

First, polygamy was not outlawed because it was considered immoral by biblical standards. There is not one sentence in the Bible condemning polygamy. While the Bible has rules for everything from planting crops to what clothes to wear and rules on marriage, nowhere does God or a Prophet or Jesus or an Apostle ever say anything like “Thou shall not take more than one wife.” Never. Several heroes of the Bible had multiple wives, David & Solomon, for instance. In fact, in 2 Samuel 12:8, we are told that God gave David his wives. If it is a sin to have multiple wives, why would God give multiple wives to David? The arguments that Christians use to say that the Bible is against polygamy (an argument they made only after polygamy went out of style) are:

1.  The Bible frequently speaks of a husband and wife without using the plural, which doesn’t really say much given that it also frequently refers to husbands with multiple wives.

2.  Multiple wives are sometimes shown as causing problems in Biblical stories; however, they aren’t always. For instance, the first mention of polygamy is in Genesis 4:19: “Lamech married two women.” And that’s about it. No suggestion that anything was done wrong or that any problems arose from this polygamous marriage.

3.  In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6 give “the husband of one wife” in a list of qualifications for spiritual leadership. But it doesn’t say that having more than one wife is a sin. Still some have read this to mean the following:

While these qualifications are specifically for positions of spiritual leadership, they should apply equally to all Christians. Should not all Christians be “above reproach ... temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:2-4)? If we are called to be holy (1 Peter 1:16), and if these standards are holy for elders and deacons, then they are holy for all.

That doesn’t really hold water. Both St. Paul (I Cor. 7: 1-11) and Jesus said it was better not to marry at all (Matt 19: 10-12)! So the idea that the Bible can be seen as anti-polygamy from 1 Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6 doesn’t really hold water unless we also say the Bible is anti-marriage because of I Cor. 7: 1-11 and Matt 19: 10-12!

In short, the arguments are bullshit.

The second lie is that there is some biblical law against child molestation and pedophilia. Again, there is not one sentence in the Bible saying that children should not be one’s sex partners. Nowhere does the Bible set a minimum age for sex or a biological minimum (i.e. after puberty). As for “molestation,” let’s note that the Bible had no problem with selling children into sexual slavery (Ex. 25: 2-11) and Moses (Num. 31) had no problem telling his soldiers to kill all their male captives (i.e. little boys) and non-virgin women while handing over the virgin girls over to them as sex slaves. Interesting fun fact: Moses was prevented from entering into the Promised Land as a punishment from God because Moses hit a rock to make water come out of it instead of speaking to the rock as God commanded, not because he order the murder of innocent women and boys or handed virgin girls over to their families’ murderers as sex slaves. Yeah, I’m guessing that the prevention of the molestation of children was not the highest priority of the Bible.

So let’s recap. The Bible had no problem with polygamy or child molestation or pedophilia. It is kind of anti-marriage if Jesus and St. Paul are to be taken at their word. But Pat Robertson suggests that if you take biblical principles out of marriage, people will be screwing goats. And that, dear reader, is why Pat Robertson is a lying fear-monger.

Hey, look at this CristianNewsWire and Robert Peters, President, Morality in Media:

Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murders

 

It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement! It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.

OK, now let’s look at a couple of myths.

Myth #1: The United States is becoming less and less moral.

Bullshit. First of all let’s note that expanding rights for women and racial minorities has been taken place at the same time as the expansion of rights for gay people. Does anyone one want to come out and say our more racist/sexist society of the past was more moral than the one we have now?

Second, if the US were becoming less moral and more likely to become murders, certainly, we’d see a rise in crime in general and murder specifically while the gay rights movement has been growing. So let’s take a look at the truth from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics:

Violent Crime Rates from 1973 through 2005

Property Crime Rates from 1973 through 2005

Those charts don’t suggest that the US has become more criminal, less moral lately do they? If anything, one would have to say that the US has become more moral lately. So if Robert Peters wants to connect the dots, shouldn’t he be finding that gay marriage and gay rights have increased morality and decreased crime?

Myth #2: Christianity makes people more moral.

You can see in this entry of my blog that religion does not seem to be connected to morality in the US. There we found that when compared to the least religious states in the US, the most religious states in the US:

rape was 2.3% more frequent.

robbery was 13.3% more frequent.

violent crime was 16.0% more frequent.

property crime was 22.8% more frequent.

murder was a whopping 27.9% more frequent.

And the trend continues throughout the world. Below is an excerpt from a Slate article by Steve Chapman  entitled Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammo:

The United States is the most religious of all the industrialized nations. Forty-four percent of Americans attend church once a week, compared with 27 percent in Britain, 21 percent in France, 16 percent in Australia, and 4 percent in Sweden. Yet violent crime is not less common in the United States--it's more common. The murder rate here is six times higher than the rate in Britain, seven times higher than in France, five times higher than in Australia, and five times higher than in Sweden. Japan, where Christianity has almost no adherents, has less violent crime than almost any country. There are a few advanced nations that have high rates of church attendance and low rates of violent crime--Ireland, Italy, and Belgium--but they're the exceptions.

 

Within the 50 states, there is no evidence that a God-fearing populace equals a law-abiding populace. The Bible Belt has more than its share of both praying and killing. Louisiana has the highest churchgoing rate in the country, but its murder rate is more than twice the national average. The same pattern generally holds in the rest of the South. Tom DeLay's Bible-toting state of Texas has a murder rate triple that of Massachusetts, which is "ungodly" enough to have elected two openly gay members of Congress. New York, the very symbol of godless depravity, is perfectly average when it comes to extralegal slaughter. In Washington state, where Sunday morning slugabeds are more common than anywhere else in America, murder is 38 percent less common.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Christianity causes crime. I’m just saying there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that it prevents crime. And let’s go further and say that there doesn’t appear to be any connection between adding gay marriage to a society and an increase in murder.

What we might be able to find is a connection between irrationally fearing gays and being willing to lie about them.

"Homosexuality is seen as a violation of this natural created order, and it is an offense to God...I'm not saying this (homosexuality) is the only sin that's out there. We have murder. We have all sorts of sin. We have adultery. And we don't make laws making those legal, and we would never think to make murder legal."

Scott Renfroe is in the Colorado legislature, so I thought it might be a good idea for someone to explain some things about the law to him.

The first thing I’d like to point out is that the bill he was speaking against, Senate Bill 88, which would extend healthcare coverage to the same-sex partners of state employees, does not make homosexuality legal. Lawrence v. Texas did that. Senate Bill 88 gives people medical coverage, so it helps sick people as in Matthew 4:23-25, where Jesus healed all the sick, not just those who were sinless.

Second, we absolutely make laws that make sins legal. While it is true that both murder and adultery are illegal in Colorado, the sins that God frowns upon the most are made legal by the highest law in the land. Really, take a look at the first four sins described in the Ten Commandments:

1. You shall have no other gods before me.
    
2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
    
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
    
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
   
   

The First Amendment makes all of those sins legal. By ensuring the freedoms of religion and speech, we make it legal to have other gods, make graven images, take the Lord’s name in vain, and work on Saturday. The First Amendment is not just any law. It is the highest law, and it runs absolutely contrary to the first and highest laws of God. Our system of laws may have been influenced by Biblical law, but it is certainly not based on Biblical law. Our laws are based on the freedom from Biblical law.

Third, if Senator Renfroe is truly worried about illegitimate marriages being supported by Colorado’s state employee insurance benefits, may I suggest that he try to kick the people off who have married after being divorced? Colorado has one of the higher divorce rates in the US. And Matt 5:31-32 says that any man who marries a divorced woman is committing adultery. As I recall, adultery was one of the sins Senator Renfroe was so worried about, so surely he would sponsor a bill that prevents divorced women and men who have married state employees from getting health insurance, right?

I’m still on my gay marriage kick and I’d like to address the falsehood that Huckabee and several other anti-gay marriage folks spread, namely that if you allow gay marriage, you’d have to allow polygamous marriages too.

My thought is: what if we suggest the same thing about straight marriages and accuse straight marriages of leading to polygamous marriages? There is in fact far more evidence to suggest that straight marriages lead to the recognition of polygamous marriages than there is to suggest that gay marriages lead to the recognition of polygamous marriages.

For instance, all of the countries that promote and perform polygamous marriages recognized straight marriages, but none of them recognize gay marriages. Libya and the Sudan are in the business of polygamy, but they make homosexuality illegal, not just gay marriage, homosexuality. If you look around the globe, you’ll see that the more likely a nation is to perform polygamous marriages, the less likely they are to recognize gay relationships. Clearly, the connection to polygamous marriages comes from straight marriages, not gay ones.

In fact, every polygamous society has recognized straight marriage. 100%! Coincidence? I think not! Look around, people! Those communes of polygamists are filled with supporters of straight marriage! You don’t see communes of gay married people forcing their kids into multiple marriages! It’s only straight married people doing that! The Book of Mormon is filled with support for straight marriage and multiple wives! Wake up to the threat of straight marriage!

And don’t think we haven’t seen it sneaking into our American society and all Western societies. A significant number of people, more all the time, are divorcing and remarrying! Clearly, allowing a man to have second wife could lead to a man having a second wife! And doesn’t the Bible say that remarriage is a form of adultery! (Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:3-9, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18) Straight marriages and their all too common divorces have already led us down the slippery slope of multiple wives (and husbands)!!!

What argument can you possibly make to man who you’ve allowed to have one wife that he can’t have another? Especially, if you’ve allowed him to remarry to a second wife after a divorce? What’s to stop you from being forced to allow him to remarry his first wife while he's still married to the second? Surely, if a society recognized both the first and second marriages, it would be forced to recognize the first marriage again! How can you tell a man he can’t marry the mother of his children?!?

Only Massachusetts, the only state in the US that still performs gay marriages and the state with the lowest divorce rate, seems to be aware that the only thing preventing the pernicious advance of polygamy is gay marriage!

This is a story I heard from one of my legal classes on picking a jury:

A lawyer was working on a case that involved Native Americans in an area that was known to have a bias against Native Americans. To weed out biased jurors, the lawyer asked the prospective jurors their feelings on Native Americans. One juror proudly said that she had no bias against Native Americans and cited her upbringing as the reason. She said, “Sometimes Indians would be traveling through town and need a place to stay. My father would let them stay in our barn.” To which, the lawyer said, “Did your father make anyone else sleep in the barn?” With a sudden realization, the prospective juror burst into tears as she realized that her prejudice had been cruelly obvious and the behavior she was so proud of was despicable. The lawyer let her on the jury because she knew the juror would be especially wary of bias now ... and might even try to redeem herself.

Now this interview between Mick Huckabee and John Stewart:

The first thing I want to point out here is that Huckabee says that marriage under our law is a privilege, not a right. He is wrong. Here is what the Supreme Court said in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival

Huckabee is wrong. Clearly, absolutely, and fundamentally wrong. And Stewart made a direct hit when he said:

It's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights.

Stewart is right. Shouldn't the burden be on Huckabee and his ilk to come up with compelling reasons to deny marriage instead of the other way around? Shouldn't we err to the side of giving rights? Upon hearing his, Huckabee changed his tactic and said:

... if a person does not necessarily support the idea of changing the definition of marriage, it does not necessarily mean that they are a homophobe.

Later Huck said:

... we have to be very thoughtful and careful before we say that we are going to undo an entire social structure

While it is theoretically possible that someone could oppose gay marriage and not be a homophobe, Huckabee reveals himself in the statement above as a homophobe. To be homophobic is to have an irrational fear of homosexuals, to have fears that aren’t based on reality. Huckabee clearly has fears of gay marriage or he wouldn’t think that we needed to be “careful.” Saying that you think we need to be careful implies that you think there is risk; it implies that there is something to fear. And when I say “fear,” I don’t mean the fear of the cold sweat. I mean it like a psychiatrists means it. I mean “anxiety.” Gay marriage makes Huckabee anxious, irrationally anxious.

We can tell that he is irrationally anxious because he suggests that allowing gays to marry will “undo an entire social structure.” But is that a rational belief? Have the gay marriages of Massachusetts undone the entire social structure of Massachusetts or even Huck’s marriage when he campaigned there? Are heterosexual Canadian marriages undone by gay Canadian marriages? Does Huckabee believe that his own marriage was undone when he was in the NYC doing this interview because NY recognizes gay marriages performed in other states?

Like the juror, Huckabee is staring directly at his irrational bigory. Unlike the juror, he did not have the good sense to weep.

One more look at Orson Scott Card’s diabolical screed against gay marriage.

Here's the irony: There is no branch of government with the authority to redefine marriage. Marriage is older than government. Its meaning is universal: It is the permanent or semipermanent bond between a man and a woman, establishing responsibilities between the couple and any children that ensue.

Oh, for heaven sake, its meaning is universal? Let me start with my favorite meaning of marriage that does not fit Mr. Card’s supposedly universal definition. It can be seen coming the Franciscan Sisters, T.O.R. of Penance of the Sorrowful Mother in their answer to this question:

Q. Why do some sisters wear a uniform?

A. A sister's "uniform" is called a habit. It is sort of like a school uniform because it identifies which community a sister belongs to, although it is much more than a uniform. A religious habit identifies a sister as a bride of Christ. People know that she belongs to God and His Church in a particular and special way. It allows people to know that she is not available for marriage, because she is already married to Christ. The wearing of a religious habit can tell people that there is something (actually SOMEONE) worth living for beyond the world that we see. It often speaks to people of the life to come in eternity. Let's begin at the top. Some sisters wear a veil over their heads. They do this primarily to signify that they are eternally married to God; they are forever brides. Traditionally, religious women wore a white veil during novitiate (to know about novitiate look at the New Members page) and took a black veil when they professed their vows. In our community, we wear white veils for the whole of our lives, signifying the purity of bridal love, and our desire to remain always as beginners or novices in the Lord's school of love.

Nuns are married to God, eh? Many wear “wedding rings.” So let me see – according to Wikipedia, Roman Catholics make up a sixth of the world’s population. So just how universal is Card’s definition of marriage that excludes a definition that is held by a sixth of the world’s population? Rather, more than a sixth because there are people like me who are not Roman Catholic who would say that nuns are indeed married to Christ/the Church (as peculiar as I might think that is.) And mind you, this definition of marriage that includes marriage to a spiritual being is not a definition of some wildly liberal group. This is the conservative Roman Catholic Church and these nuns have the blessing of the Pope … who is ever so vocally opposed to gay marriage. Btw, “catholic” means “universal.” And it seems that some of the Orthodox Christian denominations also believe in monastic marriage to God/the Church and that’s a few hundred million more people.

And there are other marriages that don’t fit Card’s definition. For instance, some people in India apparently believe that marriage, and it’s accompanying wedding is a mystical ritual that can be done to create good luck for a community, like when that woman married a snake and 2000 guests showed up to celebrate the event or the custom in which the groom is required to marry with a plant called Tulsi before a second marriage to overcome ominous predictions about the health of the husband. And there is the practice of living people marrying ghosts found in Taiwan or living people marrying the recently deceased found in France.

And what about marriage by abduction? It seems that some people think this is marriage. It was in the Bible, so is it marriage or is it a criminal act, kidnapping and rape and perhaps even child abuse? Speaking of child abuse, are those instances were underage girls are forced to marry older men marriage or are those crimes? Does marriage require the consent? Card’s definition doesn’t include an element of consent like my definition and the Roman Catholic Church’s do, so I’m guessing those things that most of us would consider “human trafficking” or “sexual slavery” or “child abuse,” are things Card would call marriage. But that means that his definition is not “universal” because we wouldn’t call those marriages, we’d call those horrific crimes.

We might note that Card’s definition fits some things that would not be considered marriage. For instance, Card’s definition fits the relationship between a man and a concubine, and yet a concubine is not a wife. She is not married.

Of course, Card would say this and that about those definitions to parse them but then say that no matter what we say about those marriages or marriage-like definitions, gay marriage does not fit anyone’s definition. But of course, it does. We already know that there was gay marriage mentioned in ancient Roman law. And of course, there have been same sex marriages in many cultures throughout history. Take a look at Wiki’s entry here and below is a favorite passage of mine:

Same-sex marriage has been documented in many societies that were not subject to Christian influence. In North America, among the Native Americans societies, it has taken the form of Two-Spirit-type relationships, in which some male members of the tribe, from an early age, heed a calling to take on female gender with all its responsibilities. They are prized as wives by the other men in the tribe, who enter into formal marriages with these Two-Spirit men. They are also respected as being especially powerful shamans.

Moreover, we know that there are countries and states in the world today that believe in gay marriage, who define marriage in such a way that they include the possibility of same-sex partners. For instance, my definition includes gay marriage. Card is trying to win the argument by claiming that no one disagrees with him, that we are universally in agreement with him. If that were true, there would be no reason for him to write his fear-mongering lying diatribe. The fact that he felt the need to claim that marriage was universally defined as straight proves that it is not.

Orson Scott Card and his little friend

OK, now let’s look at Orson Scott Card as the goddamn liar that he is by examining this statement found here:

 

Remember how rapidly gay marriage has become a requirement. When gay rights were being enforced by the courts back in the '70s and '80s, we were repeatedly told by all the proponents of gay rights that they would never attempt to legalize gay marriage.

It took about 15 minutes for that promise to be broken.

This is a lie. While there were (and are still) some gay activists saying they didn’t not want marriage, it is also true that there have always been gay activists wanting gay marriage. I know I was thinking about gay marriage in the 70s and went to a group meeting on the subject in the 80s. Denmark began having gay marriages in 1989, so surely, someone was saying they wanted it at least in the 80s if not much sooner. And it was much sooner. For instance, Rev. Troy Perry performed the first public gay wedding in the United States in 1969, but it was not legally recognized, and in 1970, his Metropolitan Community Church filed the first-ever lawsuit seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriages. They’ve been performing “marriage” ceremonies since then. Apparently, they do about 6000 annually. I remember seeing a sitcom in the 70s where a character sued in a New York Court to have a gay marriage and he won. It was a rather pro gay marriage show, but you didn’t have to watch that show to know there had been a movement in the American judicial system in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Below is a list of cases from the ‘70s and ‘80s where someone in the United States sued for the right to same sex marriage:

1. Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971)
2. Jones v. Hallahan, 501 S.W.2d 588 (Ky. 1973)
3. Singer v. Hara, 522 P.2d 1187 (Wash. App. 1974)
4. Adams v. Howerton, 673 F.2d 1036 (9th Cir. 1982)
5. De Santo v. Barnsley, 476 A.2d 952 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1984)

So who told Orson Scott Card that '70s and '80s homosexuals promised not to try to get legalized gay marriage? It couldn’t have been anyone who had studied the history of the gay marriage movement or anyone who had even googled it. So it is possible that Card isn’t lying when he says that there was a promise not to seek gay marriage. It might be that  Card just didn’t know that gays were trying to get married in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but Card couldn’t be bothered to look up the information. Instead off even hitting Wikipedia or Google or a book, Card decided to say that gay people were liars. Of course, it could be that he thought he was educated on the subject. But does even that hold up?

Mr. Card, you are a goddamn liar!

In order for Card not to seem like a complete lair when he says that gays promised not to ask for gay marriage, it has to make sense that someone could make that promise for gay people. But that can’t possibly be the case. Seriously, who made this “promise”? Did the King of Homosexaulvania enter into some kind agreement with the American government that I never heard of? If not him, who could have made this promise? Who would have made this promise? Which the "all the proponents of gay rights" thought to him or herself, "I can make this promise for all of the homosexuals in the United States!"? Not only don’t I think anyone made this promise, I think it is ridiculous to think that anyone would make this promise and if someone had made this promise, it is ridiculous to think that the person making the promise had the authority to do so.

Think about this for a moment: is it even possible that there weren’t a significant number of gay people who wanted to get married way back in the ‘70s and ‘80s? Or the ‘60s? Or the even 1860s? How could it even be possible that some gay people didn’t want the same kind of relationship that they’d seen everywhere when they grew up, the marriage their parents had, that their siblings had, that virtually everyone they’d ever known had? Hell, gay people did marry, but they married the only people they were allowed to marry, people of another sex, instead of whom they wanted to marry. So where in the hell is Card getting this idea that there was some kind of deal between gay activists and mainstream America not to ask for marriage if they’d allow us to live without being arrested or fired or beaten?

Can someone tell me who signed this contract with America and how that person got to represent me? Even a moment’s thought reveals this story of a “promise” as a lie, an obvious fiction. This lie that Card is spreading is truly ironic because his is using a lie about us to suggest that we are liars. Nice.

And you can guess how long it will now take before any group that speaks against "gay marriage" being identical to marriage will be attacked using the same tools that have been used against anti-abortion groups -- RICO laws, for instance.

Umm. I can see how that would work for anti-abortion groups that target business and harass and even murder abortionists, but how would this work for gay marriage? Is Card suggesting that he or others are planning on using illegal activities to harass or murder people who perform gay marriages? Or is this another scare tactic? First, gay marriage will destroy democracy, then it will cause people to be classified as having mental illness, and finally, it will cause you to be arrested … like it did in Denmark. Or Massachusetts. Yes, Card would have us believe jails and asylums are full of gay marriage opponents. Oh, and ignore the fact that gay people have been persecuted for years, actually thrown in jail and in asylums. The fact that we have been tossed in jail and asylums is irrelevant. What’s important is Card’s hypothetical, but so far completely nonexistent gay marriage opponents in jail and asylums. And that way, you can pretend you aren't a slanderous bastard.