It Ain't About Hate (or Love)

Maybe opponents of "gay-marriage" aren't hateful bigots after all, says Richard Thompson Ford in "Hate and Marriage" at Slate.com. Maybe the opposition is not about civil rights for "gays," but an effort to defend traditional sexual roles. There's a thought. A thoughtful piece that I hope will receive wide circulation. Maybe a few more judges should read it, though some seem to "get it."

There's more to the "sexual roles" idea than he gives here, but maybe the idea of permanent and meaningful differences between the sexes--and that those differences might lie at the core of whatever marriage really is all about--is a notion that just won't go away. One might, I suppose, be able to subvert some hardware design features using software, but that's using programming to subvert or overcome hardwiring. Software programming is what much of the "gay" agenda is really about.

Comments

[Bobby Winters]

It sounds like he almost gets it. There is still a bit of disconnect from reality. I’ve never seen anyone ask in print why there are benefits associated with marriage. The answer is that raising a family is hard and expensive. Every time a typical (I am sweeping a lot into this word) heterosexual couple engages in sex, there is a positive probability they will be adding to their family. No homosexual couple can say that. The benefits associated with marriage actually are there to alleviate some of the costs.

[James A. Altena]

I find the article much less thoughtful than does Mr. Kushiner. The problem throughout is that it ascribes what Mr. Kushiner calls "an effort to defend traditional sex roles" to purely "psychological" motivations, i.e. non-rational emotional or sentimental attachments, and not to a rational grounding in the nature of man or to honest, non-bigoted religious conviction. This still plays into the "homophobic" rhetoric of the pro-gay activists who want to characterize opposition to gay "marriage" as part of a general psycholgoical maladjustment by insecure straights, and also into their open agenda to alter the very concepts of "gender" (i.e. sex). As a result, its tone and content are still condescending and patronizing.

[Wonders For Oyarsa]

Mr. Altena,

Not to try and spar with you about everything, but I think Mr. Kushiner's praise of the article comes largely from considering the source. That the author can begin where he begins and end up where he does requires a good bit of independent thought, even though we can see far better from where we stand.

[Joe Long]

Indeed. "Condescending and patronizing" is downright warm and fuzzy, from "Slate!" (Bet he got hate mail from his fellows for this piece.)