I've always felt that if the defenders of marriage really meant it, their defense of marriage laws wouldn't stop short in defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.
If they had their courage of their convictions, their definitions would go the whole hog: Marriage shall be between a man and a woman who shall stay married for life for the whole purpose of having and raising children.
Obviously, if they proposed this a whole lot of them would be defining themselves right out their own marriages, which is why they've been content with trying to make marriage a club gay people can't join.
But it turns out there is at least one conservative group who accepts the logical outcome of the defense of marriage argument. It's called The World Congress of Families. Nick Simmonds has the story over at his site, Neogaidaros.
You remember how when the gay marriage argument was picking up steam a couple years ago, a lot of conservatives argued that we couldn't let boys marry boys and girls marry girls because if we did, then we'd have to permit anybody to get married any which way they wanted and pretty soon we'd be allowing incest and polygomy?
That never made sense to me. Any move to re-set a fence line doesn't mean that fence should be torn down. Besides, doesn't the Bible justify polygomy?
Well, yes it does, and the World Congress heeds the word of God.
Nick's post is a good one. I especially liked his conclusion:
Let me add that this attempt bespeaks a deep need on the part of right-wing religious conservatives to blame someone else for the problems that they are having to confront. Discussion of marriage for the past two weeks has centered on the fact that divorce rates are much higher in conservative areas, but rather than examine themselves radical conservatives insist that they are being victimized by a liberal culture that practically forces them to get divorced. Nothing else will fit the victim metanarrative of American conservatism, that insistence that all evils are visited upon poor, normal white folks by the minorties, the homosexuals, and the race-and-sex-traitor liberals. The fact of the matter is that these social conservatives are more than complicit in their own problems, they are the cause.
The old Puritan strain rises. Since 1620 it's been an American characteristic to believe that evil comes from without never from within.
We're good, and how can good people behave badly, unless we've been tricked or forced into against our will.
The devil made us do it! There are witches among us! It's all their fault!
Comments