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08/03/2012
Where is the reproduction checkbox, Ruth blogger?
"JThieme," the pseudonymous blogger for the National Organization For Marriage's Ruth Institute project, has written a whole piece attempting to discredit same-sex couples's right to marry by playing a reproductive card. But check out the last few lines of the below snip to see her logic completely collapse in on itself:
Straight sex can lead to babies, homosexual sex cannot. Not a single person reading this got here as a result of gay sexual activity. This is an utterly vital difference!
….
I see various forms of this argument all over the internet: “Hey there’s no real change! What are you homophobes getting upset about? You’re so hung up about sex!” In reality the burden should be on them to defend why we should change the gender requirement in marriage (from m/w to any two people), and also to defend how changing this gender requirement will NOT (as they insist) shift incentives or demographics over the long term in a way that harms families and children. Notice how I did not say that gays harm children, only that they should defend how altering a fundamental component of marriage may harm children over the long term.
A mutation of this argument goes like this: “Marriage is about love! Straight people marry for love, and gays should be allowed too!” It’s true that anybody can love, but from a public policy perspective, marriage is NOT about love. If it was EVER about love, why is there no checkbox on the marriage certificate asking if the people love each other? If it was the reason, you’d think the government would need to verify it to make sure friends were not marrying.
Hey, "JThieme": You know what other checkbox is missing from the marriage certificate? Yup, you guessed it: The one asking whether or not the couple intends to reproduce or is even capable of making a baby happen via their unassisted loins. That's because reproduction is not a marital requirement. Therefore, it cannot be a tool of marital exclusion.
If these social conservatives who are so into making same-sex couples feel guilty about their inability to conceive children spontaneously on their honeymoon night really cared about what they say they care about, then they would be pushing legislation that does, in fact, making babies a non-negotiable part of the civil marriage contract. They won't do that, because they know that would have minuscule support among the American electorate. So instead, they talk this fantasy game about marriage = babies, without actually taking strides to follow through on their supposed stances. They look to LGBT people and the myriad of reasons why we marry and turn us into the scapegoats—the catch-alls onto whom they can (and will) project every marital problem and/or fear that they can dream up.
Not to mention, they are aggressively stripping so much joy, romance, and humanity from an institution that most would agree could benefit from all three. If "traditional marriage" means moving away from love and companionship and moving toward an institution that trades down on heart and trades up on genitalia, then I'll stick with the loving marriage that I call a reality, thank you very much. Talk to me, my husband, and our kid(s) in twenty years and see how we fared (*that is, if you can make your way through the bombed-out heterosexual households that will apparently occur in our wake).
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