Gay Marriage- Who Cares?
It is hard to turn on cable news any more without having your senses assaulted by some ersatz conservative wailing like a bagpipe about the evils of gay marriage.
“We need to stop this from happening,” they say. “Marriage is one man and one woman. God-almighty Hisself said so.” And then there is the obligatory, nauseatingly redundant, “We need to protect the sanctity of the institution.”
Excuse me? The sanctity of the institution?
It makes me wonder if they have a rehab for this type of thinking.
Modern marriage, in case these Einsteins haven’t noticed, has all the sanctity of a ten dollar hooker. Matrimony has devolved into just another throwaway institution in a throwaway culture and it wasn‘t homosexuals that got us here. Nor will it be them that drives the final nail in the coffin.
As usual, we are not facilitating any real understanding with sound bites from talking heads. “One man and one woman,” no more illuminates the problems of modern marriage than nonsense like “my body, my choice,” illuminates the issue of abortion.
Worse yet, as any men’s rights advocate knows, marriage hasn’t been “one man and one woman” for a long time. The reality of the times is that men marry the state they live in. The woman just comes with the deal for a few years. When it’s fini with the woman, things really heat up with the state, shearing the man of his assets and adding a new, bizarre dimension to “till death do us part.”
And allowing gays into this fiasco is going to hurt the institution?
I wish I could corner a couple of these pundits and make them answer some questions. Maybe Hannity, or the anorexic looking chick with stringy bleached hair.
The questions would be simple. Where were you? And what are you doing about it now?
When the feminists pushed for and got no fault divorce, and the divorce rate consequently hit the stratosphere creating legions of dysfunctional, fatherless children, where were you? What are you doing about it now?
When feminist ideology spread like a malicious rumor though the media, academia, government and the culture, demonizing all things masculine and creating the fundamental rift between the sexes that plagues marriage to this day, where were you? What are you doing about it now?
When the family courts started taking Title IV-D money, turning benches into private fiefdoms, profit centers whose stock-in-trade became eviscerating the father-child bond, where were you? What are you doing about it now? And add to that another question. Do you even know what Title IV-D money is and how it makes it’s way from the federal government into family court coffers? Or would that take more information than you can squeeze in between Cialis commercials on Fox News?
Of course, the point is that we already know where these people were and where they are now. They’re in the place they have always been, crawling like roaches over every media news outlet that will call on them to say something profoundly meaningless about profoundly meaningless topics, in the name of plugging profoundly meaningless books.
These vultures want to protect the sanctity of marriage in the same way Courtney Love wants to protect chastity.
And those that caterwaul the loudest about the supposedly sinister prospect of gay marriage are the same ones that can’t stop wagging their tongues about the virtues of constitutional conservatism.
I’m fascinated by people that call themselves limited government conservatives, but sit by complacently like grinning, plastic bobble-heads, as long as the government is enforcing their religious and moral beliefs on the rest of the population.
News flash, that is not conservatism, it’s not even a cheap imitation. It’s theocracy. Ayatollah style. And it’s about as conducive to men’s rights as feminism.
I wouldn’t be bothered by this all that much if it were contained to media pinheads. I expect them to say a lot and understand little. It’s what they get rich doing.
But when I see MRA’s espousing this cause célèbre, it puts a spike in my “shoot-yourself-in-the-foot” detector.
Why, for the love of Pete, would men’s rights activists seek to protect the sanctity of an institution that is currently the most prolific source of oppressive discrimination against them?
But I see it all the time, from MRA’s, rather from patriarchs who think they are MRA’s.
Just as theocratic zealots shouldn’t confuse themselves with constitutional conservatives, patriarchs shouldn’t confuse themselves with MRA’s. In this writers opinion, our agendas are diametrically opposed.
Patriarchs want to return to the imagined days of chivalry and glory for men, when they were the heads of their homes and women did the dishes and pretty much anything else they were told. I’m sure it was a nice world for the control obsessive, but that toothpaste is out of the tube and is not going to be squeezed back in. And chivalry, in that it hinges on putting women first, has much more in common with feminism than it does with men’s rights.
MRA’s just want to escape the sexism and bias and treachery involved in marriage and every other institution that affects men. And that puts us, again in this writers opinion, in the ironic place of finishing what feminists started; an all out assault on marriage itself.
The feminists won this one. Game over. A shutout. What remains of marriage is not salvageable. It’s water that can’t be decontaminated; a cripple that can’t be healed. And the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery and start the whole shebang over from scratch. Hopefully that would be sometime after the culture has recovered from the damage of feminist doctrine and placed some sanity back on the table.
So if gay marriage erodes the sanctity of the institution, I say fine, let’s print them licenses by the truckload. I’ll spring for some rice.
There are plenty of real issues, the ones the pundits ignore, that need plenty of real attention. I won’t be bothered to invest in anything else, especially something that ultimately undermines men even more.
It was no doubt feminists that put marriage on life support. We should mourn that and look to the future for renewed hope that some day men and women will share life again with love and dignity. But today, MRA’s should do the decent thing with marriage and pull the plug.
Paul Elam is the editor of A Voice for Men.
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Stumble It!
Hi Harry,
Percentages speak volumes. Unless half of America is personality-disordered, there is no explanation for the nonmarriage, divorce rate, and/or illegitimacy rate. Humans have not changed in the last 50 years, our governmental systems have and feminism came into political prominence. Because of this, our family structures changed. Ultimately this resulted in the social disasters we see today.
In term of divorce: feminists claim that any kind of family disagreement or dissatisfaction is bad for children — that shotgun divorce is warranted — starting with a restraining order. The fact is this: children learn how to resolve conflict by watching their parents. When parents don’t do well at this, kids still learn how not to deal with life. In those situations kids decide they won’t grow up to act like mommy and/or daddy.
In terms of child abuse: marriage reduces child abuse and neglect because there are two parents to handle all the family responsibilities — neither parent is as likely to get totally stressed out. Secondly, if one parent tends to be excessively disciplinarian, this tends to be kept in check by the other parent. Having two parents doubles the chance kids will be raised both disciplined and feeling loved. In marriage-absence, one parent has to do everything. The chances that one parent can handle everything and have the nurturing and disciplinary skills necessary is substantially reduced.
Mothers do tend to be more nurturing, fathers tend to be better at maintaining discipline. Mothers teach kids to be careful. Dads teach kids to see how high they can climb on the jungle gym. Both these messages are necessary — and rarely delivered in marriage-absence.
The next time you see somebody yammering about domestic violence, child abuse, or child neglect, you have some strong ammunition to respond with.
Actually, when it comes to socially dysfunctional the rate may actually be higher.
1 in 5 Young Adults Has Personality Disorder, Study Finds
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2141910/posts
How many of these come from single mother homes? How many come from lesbian homes since these account for 80 percent of homosexual marriage homes?
The study was funded with grants from the National Institutes of Health the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the New York Psychiatric Institute.
Hello David
“Harry, take a look at this MND posting about fatal child abuse, and see how I worded it.”
Spot on.
And now, I quote my good self; …
… around 5% of the population are either socially and/or emotionally highly dysfunctional.
Therefore, where children are brought up by single parents, some 5% of these parents are going to be highly dysfunctional.
Indeed, because highly dysfunctional adults are the very ones most likely to end up as single parents, the percentage of those children with single parents who are highly dysfunctional must be quite high – probably many times higher than 5% …
Nevertheless, sticking with the overall 5% figure just to make the point, the probability of children ending up solely in the hands of dysfunctional parents drops from around 5% (for children of single parents) to around 0.5% when two parents are around.
As such – and to generalise – whatever dysfunctional traits, harmful to children, that one considers that parents might have, it is clearly the case that one of the very best ways of protecting children from the effects of them is for children to have TWO parents!
Jim, I think the DV industry will have a heyday with gay marriage and related DV issues. Their policy will be simple. When the couple is gay, both are perpetrators. When lesbian, both are victims.
Assuming an equal amount of gay and lesbian marriages, the resultant stats can be averaged in with heterosexual couples, pointing the finger at men all over again.
That was a joke, sort of.
Harry, take a look at this MND posting about fatal child abuse, and see how I worded it.
I beat down a huge effort by Missouri Bar Association feminists who threw symposiums all over the state to try to kill it.
All I did was to point out that 2/3 of fatal child abuse is caused by unstable single mothers who move around a lot from one place to another. I never even mentioned fathers rights. The moveaway law helps reduce serious and fatal child abuse. In Missouri, children are no longer chattel of one parent, nor can they be dragged around like furniture at the whim of the custodial parent.
This is one of many Marriage Values points that work the larger truths. Give it a try.
Thank you Denis.
Oh yes, David, I WILL give it a try.
I am always very keen to seek more effective ways in which to scupper the feminists, not only on the internet, but in personal conversations and in social chit-chat.
And, as you know, you have to be armed to the teeth when attacking feminism and PC, or you end up being ‘frozen out’ or mocked in some way.
My own advice to you would be this. Always point out how various groups actually PROFIT from all the misandry and anti-male agenda; e.g. as Prof Baskerville.
This opens the eyes of many to WHY and HOW they are being duped.
Best
Harry
In no way Harry have you wasted your time and energy. You have inspired and opened the eyes of a great many men. You are one of a very small number of “big names” leading the charge as a Thought Leader. You are an intellectual force-and some can’t play in your league.
Harry,
Truce accepted.
I’m not saying that MRA’s should drop everything. What I’m saying is that when dealing with the outside world, every one of our issues is much more strongly stated using Marriage Values principles.
I guarantee you it works. here are examples of two Missouri state laws we got passed that nobody else has been able to touch. They were both passed using early Marriage Values language, whereas before the legislature did not listen.
See:
Missouri Moveaway law, the toughest in the nation
Missouri statute requiring support modification for military reservists
But these laws only corral the problems — they don’t address the larger problems marriage absence causes for everyone. Contemporary marriage values language addresses all MRA issues from the indelible language of Marriage Values.
Give it a try, my friend. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Hello David
I call a truce.
No hard feelings, eh?
Harry