My take on Prop 8
So someone sent me a forwarded video the other day about California's Proposition 8. This is a measure to do away with California's same-sex marriage provision. Mostly it dealt with small schoolchildren being introduced to books that dealt on the concept at a very basic level - ie that some "couples" are made up of 2 men or 2 women, rather than one of each. To be fair, I haven't read the books yet. Nonetheless, I found I had a visceral reaction to the video (sorry, I haven't been able to link it thus far) that was in favor of banning same-sex marriage altogether for the sake of kindergarteners everywhere...
This was my reply:
I simply couldn't disagree more.
Whether or not same-sex marriage is legal, same sex couples are here to stay, and will be raising children. My daughters are going to grow up accepting the fact that some families are different. Some have stepparents. Some live with grandparents or adoptive parents. Some have parents of opposite races. Some have 2 moms or 2 dads. Not dealing with it is leaving children utterly unequipped to handle different families with grace and generosity. It exposes the children of these unions to harsh criticism that children learn from their parents.
I don't want my kid to be the one who parrots an overheard harsh phrase to some kid who didn't choose their parents and unintentionally crushes a child in already-trying social circumstances.
It's key how much the video harps on the word "homosexuality", as if small children are being asked to understand what happens in the bedroom. They aren't, and young children don't care. They don't want to know about Mommy and Daddy's intimacies, either. It's simply teaching children to handle other types of families with the same care and respect as with traditional nuclear families.
This is a thinly veiled excuse to promote a social agenda that is financially beneficial to some and actively seeks to discriminate against families that are different. It's the worst kind of wrong and utterly contradicts Jesus' example of embracing those who are different.
It's an attempt to answer the question "How does same-sex marriage hurt traditional marriage?" And it's a pitiful attempt.
I understand that people personally disagree with same-sex marriage on a religious basis, and you have to do as you feel you're required. But the greatest of the commandments is this: "Love Thy Neighbor". Who's to say that God didn't present us with this issue in order to test our faithfulness to his most important commandment?
Being in my profession, I've seen the worst of circumstances. There is precious little love in this world. My conscience directs me to support whatever kindness, gentleness and love that this world has to offer, regardless of form. And as a spouse in a traditional marriage, I wouldn't want to spend a lifetime loving and caring for someone who couldn't truly love me in return, who is only using me to "conform". The social pressure to conform to a heterosexual standard is not fair to them in the end, either.
Sorry for the rant. This is why people don't send me forwards.
This was my reply:
I simply couldn't disagree more.
Whether or not same-sex marriage is legal, same sex couples are here to stay, and will be raising children. My daughters are going to grow up accepting the fact that some families are different. Some have stepparents. Some live with grandparents or adoptive parents. Some have parents of opposite races. Some have 2 moms or 2 dads. Not dealing with it is leaving children utterly unequipped to handle different families with grace and generosity. It exposes the children of these unions to harsh criticism that children learn from their parents.
I don't want my kid to be the one who parrots an overheard harsh phrase to some kid who didn't choose their parents and unintentionally crushes a child in already-trying social circumstances.
It's key how much the video harps on the word "homosexuality", as if small children are being asked to understand what happens in the bedroom. They aren't, and young children don't care. They don't want to know about Mommy and Daddy's intimacies, either. It's simply teaching children to handle other types of families with the same care and respect as with traditional nuclear families.
This is a thinly veiled excuse to promote a social agenda that is financially beneficial to some and actively seeks to discriminate against families that are different. It's the worst kind of wrong and utterly contradicts Jesus' example of embracing those who are different.
It's an attempt to answer the question "How does same-sex marriage hurt traditional marriage?" And it's a pitiful attempt.
I understand that people personally disagree with same-sex marriage on a religious basis, and you have to do as you feel you're required. But the greatest of the commandments is this: "Love Thy Neighbor". Who's to say that God didn't present us with this issue in order to test our faithfulness to his most important commandment?
Being in my profession, I've seen the worst of circumstances. There is precious little love in this world. My conscience directs me to support whatever kindness, gentleness and love that this world has to offer, regardless of form. And as a spouse in a traditional marriage, I wouldn't want to spend a lifetime loving and caring for someone who couldn't truly love me in return, who is only using me to "conform". The social pressure to conform to a heterosexual standard is not fair to them in the end, either.
Sorry for the rant. This is why people don't send me forwards.
posted by Beth at 8:56 PM
4 Comments:
I'm glad I do not live in California anymore, although I would have to agree with you. My spawn is one of those children who will be shortly asking the hard questions, as her father is gay. We were rather forced together as the situation was, but we still tried to make a go of it for her sake. But eventually I'm going to have to answer that question, and several more.
I'd rather she learn about it with love and the reality of what it is vs someone else's "this is morally wrong" standpoint. Excellent post!
You know my ex- is now "out," and so for me this Prop 8 issue becomes personal. I've seen the destructive effects of my daughters' dad's decision to come out of the closet and actively into the Lifestyle.
I also come at this as a Christian - part of that strange group of people descended, spiritually, from the Children of Israel. Out of a pagan world fraught with sexual license, this group had a sexual ethic of monogzmous, heterosexual marriage, mandated as a reflection of the God whose people they were.
I want those values still instilled in our children. It makes me furious to see our kids - especially young teens - coerced into thinking that normal developmental stages of their lives, where intense friendships form, are really the foundations of their "homosexuality." Our kids are being manipulated, socially herded into experiments that are imprinting them and shaping up an artificial sexual identity that will torture them for the remainder of their lives.
My daughters are scarred. Students at school are scarred. Women who have been married to gay men are deeply wounded - it's a lot more common than you would think.
Not even ancient Greece, where "the love of a man is better than the love of a woman" and standards of beauty discussed in Plato's Republic involved characteristics of boys, not of women, was marriage itself ever anything between same sex partners.
No! This is not healthy behavior. On an animalistic level it may be "normal" especially for males - but it isn't healthy. And I'd fight tooth and nail to protect my children if I knew - if I had known twenty years ago - what I have learned too late.
The defeat of Prop 8 - another socially engineered issue - was inevitable, at some point. The radicals had been defeated, what? twice already, and kept re-introducing it and would have continued to do until it eventually passed. (I wonder how many gays migrated to CA in order to vote for this issue?)
Sorry, LB - isn't it bad enough that our kids are being socialized about regular heterosexual activity - legally sexualized in ways that just a few years ago would have been considered criminal - in public school sex ed classes? And thanks to Slick Willie, it's commonplace to hear high school girls talking to one another about giving their boyfriends blow jobs, and what oral sex tastes like. These kids have been robbed of their innocence and their naivete far too soon, and it's wounding them.
The longer a girl postpones her first sexual encounter, the higher her self-respect, the better adjusted she is. We're robbing our kids blind, and calling it "enlightenment." I, for one, am not buying it. And if I'd been a parent of a first-grader in the SF class that went to see their teacher married to her lesbian partner, I'd have raised utter teetotal ....
It's not healthy. It's going to create whole new types of psychoses and neuroses and disorders and sorrows and sufferings... and ultimately, women are the losers.
Well, you asked...
Hey, Laura, you know I always appreciate your point of view, thanks for your thoughtful response. I think we're just at this from two different angles.
well i think i agree with you especially the stuff about being kind - thats all!
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