“How can I help you this morning?”
“I’m not satisfied with the way I presented my case, so I thought I’d go straight to the horse’s mouth. That’s you.”
I considered neighing, but thought better of it.
“Could I just lay out my argument step by step?” she asked. “As soon as you spot a problem, you can say ‘Stop’ and I’ll stop.”
I smiled. “Just what I was about to suggest.”
On the basis of this argument the State should require heterosexual marriage and outlaw single parenthood. It’s a flimsy fairy tale.
Two years ago, Obama gave a ringing call to blacks in America in which he stressed the importance of having both a mother and a father in the home to raise children. Somehow I missed the part where anyone in the media asked him how his excellent statements would apply to the question of same-sex partnerships.
“On the basis of this argument the State should require heterosexual marriage and outlaw single parenthood.”
That response is a flimsy fairytale non sequiter.
Requiring heterosexual marriage certainly would not result in strong marriages. That is just flippant.
One could conclude that the State should deny infertility treatments to octomoms – or at very least disallow insurance (that is to say all of us because we purchase insurance) paying for it. Once could conclude that the law should encourage pre-marital counseling, cooling off periods, etc.
I really like this, as it does not rely on biblical or even moral persuasion – trying those avenues does not work with atheists and libertarians…another thing I like to say is that I never met a gay person who was not happy they had a mom and a dad.
This presentation is an extremely weak one. And it’s a very old one. This was the basis of the Church’s struggle over whether to bless heterosexual marriage in the first place If marriage was only about the begetting of children, then the Church’s prime exemper of marriage, namely Mary and Joseph, didn’t make sense. Otherwise, they would have had to toss the concept of the Virgin Birth. Today, outside of some very primitive societies where woman are chattel, there are few who do not acknowledge three purposes of marriage: Sexual fulfillment in a lifelong committed relationship of fidelity, companionship, and the creation of children. To commit fully to that credo would require a very careful reconsideration of abortion, divorce, the marriage of the older and infertile, and single parenthood. There is no evidence that society (in or out of the Church) is willing to change or reconsider those things except perhaps for legal abortion.) Say what you will about the Catholics, at least there is some logical consistancy to their teachings. No gay marriage, no divorce, no birth control. No abortion, no capital punishment (taking a human life is wrong). I’m afraid the horse is long long out of the barn and it’s only a matter of time before there is gay marriage.
Like it or not homosexual couples cannot naturally reproduce. They cannot create a family absent some form of intervention outside themselves. The fact that some heterosexual couples cannot (due to some problem) or do not have children is beside the point, no homosexual couple, by operation of nature, can.
And Mary and Joseph were married under Jewish law. To argue the virgin birth is a total non sequitur.
#1–That pretty much used to be the law before the Sexual Revolution. Sex outside of heterosexual marriage was illegal in most places in the U.S. (i.e., the crime of “fornication). It’s still on the books in a number of states, although not enforced. Just checking, the last fornication prosecution was in 1996 in Idaho.
I thought it was a very well presented argument.
It is not an argument about why christians are against gay marriage. Rather, it is an argument as to why everyone in our society should be against it, regardless of their beliefs.