The Pink Menace

Love or hate it, it is all over the media.

The fair and balanced state of Texas has just recently banned the fostering of children by gay couples. The sunny positive state of Florida has strong anti-gay adoption laws. It is all done under the guise of protecting the children and defending the institution of marriage. Just what are we protecting them from?

Let’s address some of the misgivings of those that are opposed to homosexuals having any rights, be it for marriage or for establishing a semblance of a family through the fostering or adoption of children.

Gay marriage threatens the tradition of marriage.

How does gay couples getting married accomplish that exactly? To any who read this that are married, is your marriage going to be less of a marriage because Linda and Lisa decide they want to pursue a monogamous commitment to each other? Or that Jack and John want to hang up their dancing shoes because nothing else is more real to them than their relationship to one another? The fact that gay couples are getting married does not diminish the importance of your own marriage nor does it diminish the institution of marriage. People, gay or straight, are getting married for the same reasons, to demonstrate a commitment to each other that goes beyond words.

And as far as respect for the tradition of marriage goes, far more damage has been done to the institution by the heterosexuals it is purportedly supposed to serve. Anyone remember the 55 hr. marriage? Or how does the 50% divorce rate grab ya?

Marriage is between a man and a woman.

The bible would certainly imply this, but the debate that is raging in the US and Canada is not about religious marriage but rather secular marriage. I, for one, would not support forcing churches to carry out gay ceremonies or even forcing them to accept gay parishioners or clergy. Simply because why would you want to be part of a faith that says that something is wrong with you? So back to secular marriage, the reason why there is such a debate to begin with is because it is not defined in law that marriage is between “a man and a woman”, indeed it is a legal contract that can be entered into by consenting adults. Basically there is a fight going on in the US on a state-by-state basis that is trying to enshrine those words in the State Constitutions thereby barring any same sex unions.

Gay marriage is against the Bible.

Indeed the bible seems pretty clear on this. At least the Old Testament is. Jesus didn’t have very much to say on the subject. If you are a good Christian then you should abide by those rules. The dandy thing about the US is there is supposed to be a separation of Church and State, meaning that if you are going to establish laws then they have to be based on sound legal reasoning and not religious belief. Preventing gay marriage because it offends your religion is not reason enough to have a law against it. Another thing about the crafting of laws is that you can’t make a law that unfairly targets a person or an identifiable group of people; all laws should apply to everyone equally. I’ll speak more about this later.

Marriage is for procreation and gay people can’t procreate.

This is a popular legal argument to ban gay marriage. The only problem with this is that if you are going to use a “procreation test” for each marriage then sterile people couldn’t get married, neither could people past their child bearing years, nor the people that voluntarily decide not to have children. Gay couple’s have the same options as straight couples (all state laws aside) when it comes to adoption, or even in vitro fertilization.

Gay couples lead to gay kids.

This school of thought has been used to ban gay couples from adopting or fostering children. It is absurd on the face of it when you must recognize that gay people initially had to be born of straight parents. As for gay people molesting children, there is no more likelihood that a gay person will molest a child than would a straight person. Indeed, because homosexuality is a minority behaviour then the chances of finding a gay person who also molests children is smaller then finding a straight person who also molests children.

Homosexual activists are wrongly comparing their fight for civil rights to the struggle of blacks or women.

This statement is made in reference to the fact that laws cannot be crafted to target an identifiable group of persons. Both blacks and women are identifiable from birth, but gays, they argue, are not. This derives from the debate over whether homosexuality is a choice or not. Recent articles about gay men reacting to male pheromones much like straight women have surfaced in the media. Other articles refer to the relative sizes of the hippocampus in the brain of gay males being similar to the sizes of straight females.

All the science aside we could analyze the situation with common sense.

Why would anyone choose to adopt a lifestyle that would:

1. Get their ass kicked on a regular basis.
2. Make them hate themselves.
3. Get them cast out of their church and God’s love.
4. Get disowned by their family and friends.
5. See that they never have the same rights with their partner of 20 years that straight couples get after day 1 of marriage.
6. Have people constantly tell them that they’re going to hell.
7. Have the same people tell them that they’ll pray for their sins.

That’s just for starters. Basically it is your choice to become a pariah in your own society? Who would willingly choose that? Which leads me to another question.

When was the last time you choose to be straight? Do you wake up in the morning and think to yourself, “Yeah I’m really attracted to the opposite sex today! Yesterday was a fluke. I blame the beer.” Do you? I’ll tell you how often I think about it. Zero. Surprised? Don’t be. No one invests time in thinking about his or her orientation; it is just there, like the nose on your face.

Asking a gay person to be straight is like asking a straight person to be gay, you could force them to do it, but they wouldn’t like it and they wouldn’t be happy. You don’t have to like gay people or approve of their lifestyle but you should be big enough to treat them with the respect that any human being deserves. They should be able to get married and adopt or foster kids and have a chance at a family life that every straight person has a right to.