Same Sex Marriage? No Way

I guess that I am an old fart because I have always felt that the idea of same-sex marriage was both ludicrous and harmful. Marriage is the most civilizing institution that mankind has ever created. It changed men from rampaging marauders into husbands and fathers. Perhaps today’s women see no need for protection, but I think those who think that way are deluding themselves. Women still need protection and support, and, especially, children need a mother and a father to nurture and guide them. All you have to do is to look at the extent of criminal and disruptive behavior that defines fatherless children.

The basic problem with same-sex marriage is that it trivializes and weakens traditional marriage – which needs all the help and support it can get these days. The record shows that whatever government approves, government then encourages. This is true of welfare, abortion, disability claims and tax-payer funded contraception, among other issues, and it will be true of same-sex marriage if we don’t stop it in its tracks.

If Same Sex Marriage Is a Civil Rights Issue...

By Grant Dossetto May 13, 2012 American Thinker (Excerpt)
"The passing of Amendment One in North Carolina, making the Tar Heel State the 32nd state in the country to enshrine in their constitution that marriage is between one man and one woman, created the predictable flurry of outrage among gay rights supporters. Shrill complaints of bigotry and homophobia with an added dose of backwardness filled up airwaves, internet forums, and Facebook statuses all intended to smear the 88% of states and over 90% of Americans who now live where same sex-marriage is illegal as the worst kind of bigot and homophobe.

Many in the gay rights community cloak their cause in grandiose terms. It is not simply another front in the culture war, a values vote issue. To supporters, gay rights have taken on more importance. If a state will not allow two members of the same sex to marry, then it is committing a violation of those people's inalienable human rights. These supporters' actions indicate something entirely different. In fact, there is a good case to be made that if you view same-sex marriage as a human rights violation, the worst offender is the same-sex marriage supporter himself.

National polling outlets such as Pew and Gallup put support for same-sex marriage at around 50%. If the country were truly nationally split, then it would seem impossible for traditional marriage to have the support that is has enjoyed in this century. Traditional marriage is now 32 for 32 on state constitutional ballots, enacted in centrist or outright liberal states such as Maine and California in direct response to legislative statutes recognizing same-sex marriage, as well as plenty of traditional Democratic strongholds such as Minnesota and Michigan by overwhelming majorities.
It passed in North Carolina, while garnering national attention, with over 60% of the vote. Traditional marriage support is truly a bipartisan platform which attracts people across race and income as well as political affiliation. Can this majority coalition truly be at its core nasty and bigoted? Conceding that point actually makes same-sex marriage supporters look worse.

There are many theories why same-sex marriage polls better than it performs at the ballot box. Some, such as Public Policy Polling tweeted on Tuesday, suggest a Bradley effect on the issue -- i.e., that the average voter will say to a pollster that he supports same-sex marriage to avoid being viewed as a bigot but vote differently at the polls.
Another explanation appears more plausible, though, and that is that same-sex marriage is particularly popular among voting blocs who do not turn out to the polls in high numbers. Voting is not a difficult task though, and even cynicism or disbelief in the political structure in your local capital or Washington, D.C., the usual excuse for not voting, rings awfully hollow when you have a chance to right a great -- many say the great -- moral wrong of our age.

How can one claim that an issue as a human right and then refuse to make any sacrifice to vote on the issue? Gay rights, according to its supporters, are more than a school board election or art museum millage. It is modern slavery, modern Jim Crow, and the response to that is indifference and apathy? That is bigotry.

A failure to vote is not the only anti-gay behavior that occurs among the same-sex marriage crowd. Whom the same-sex marriage supporter votes for also exposes a terrible homophobia. This week, Barack Obama came out for same-sex marriage. His support was in no way unconditional, though; he carefully parsed that he personally supports the practice but that states have the right to decide.

How many other issues has Obama determined were purely states' rights issues? Not health care, or border enforcement, or abortion, or even coal plant emissions, to name but a few issues that should fall below an innate human right. As Bruce Carroll, the creator of gaypatriot.org, wrote this week, replacing same-sex marriage with slavery in Obama's quotation sounds like something President James Buchanan would've said circa 1860." American Thinker