No. 2 — the longest section of the [Manhattan] declaration — applies to same-sex marriage. It amounts to a confession of confusion, a cry by the perplexed who have come to think that same-sex marriage is at the core — the rotten core — of much that ails our society. Everything from divorce to promiscuity is addressed in this section without any acknowledgement that same-sex marriage, like all marriage, is a way of containing promiscuity (or at least of inducing guilt) and that not having it would not reduce promiscuity in the least. This I state as a fact.
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The declaration calls the out-of-wedlock birth rate the “most telling and alarming indicator” of a collapse of the “marriage culture.” Yes. But that collapse occurred long before same-sex marriage became an issue, not to mention a reality, and so one has nothing to do with the other.<\/p>\n
It remains true that the family is the single best place to raise children. That being the case, same-sex marriage would serve the same purpose. I know of children raised by same-sex partners and they seem no worse for the experience, although — O’Reilly beware — they lack a certain knee-jerk antipathy to gays, lesbians, transsexuals and similar people of dissimilar sexuality.<\/p>\n
Some of the declaration is couched in religious terms, and with that I cannot argue. But it is its appeal to common sense that I find so appalling.<\/p>\n