This either has to stop, or gamerunknown needs to put this signature in every single post.
Another problem with this line of argument is that dudes who want to marry other dudes and gals who want to marry other gals are, by and large, gay. If we don’t let them marry who they want, they aren’t just going to run out and happily marry members of the opposite sex and begin cranking out strong, healthy workers, peasants, and soldiers for the State. Nor do we want people who are, you know, homosexual to go out and get themselves into heterosexual marriages. That’s just a recipe for more horribly unhappy marriages, more divorce, more heartache, and if children do result, more “broken homes” and single (divorced) moms (and dads), kids getting shlepped back and forth on the weekends, (or having one of their parents completely shut out of their lives by the other parent), etc.
Really, at this point I am firmly convinced that only the closet cases are actually arguing any more that we need to keep gay marriage banned in order to somehow…keep people from being gay. The rest of us know perfectly good and well that (whether it’s genetic or prenatal or your Mommy was all butch and your Daddy was kind of mousy) people don’t just go out and choose their sexual orientation. Telling them “Well, have you tried not being attracted to members of the same sex?” doesn’t work. Conversely, no matter how many benefits will now be available to same-sex couples in Maine and Maryland and Washington state, dudes aren’t going to rush up there to marry other dudes unless said dudes were in fact gay to begin with. But of course, to the closet cases, that’s what they secretly WANT–gay sex! And maybe even, deep down, gay marriage, with a nice gay house with a gay picket fence around it. It’s just that, thanks to their religious upbringing or whatever, they can’t come out and admit it. And they think that the rest of us are probably also struggling against these deep dark “urges” to move to Boston and marry another dude; but for the vast majority of the population (90% or 95% or 97% or whatever the number is) that isn’t true and never will be. (I guess a few bisexuals here and there might go with the hetero half of theirselves if we continue to ban gay marriage, but now may decide to go for same-sex relationships since they’re on an equal basis.)
Gay marriage won’t lead to a “birth dearth” or a “population crash”. It won’t lead to civilization ending in an enormous gay orgy. There just aren’t enough people who want to have gay sex for there to be any danger that allowing gay sex will bring about the extinction of the human race, even apart from artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood and test-tube babies and all the rest. All gay marriage will do is lead to a few more people having an equal shot at happiness. (Or an equal shot at misery, if want to be cynical about marriage.)
Here in Massachusetts, slavery was ended in the same way same-sex marriage was legalized: the courts decided that the status quo in both cases was contrary to their interpretation of the state constitution, and in both cases there was a lack of political will to change the constitution to clarify that that wasn’t what it really meant. But maybe Bricker, down there in Virginia, just thinks his state’s method in either case is superior, because judicial activism is the greater evil.
Well, he might as well have spent it on that. If he had saved it, he’d just have to pay it out in settlements of sex abuse lawsuits. Just this afternoon, the radio reported that yet another of his priests has been convicted of crim sex conduct.
Sure an’ it’s better to have spent it attacking ‘the gays’ than to have had to pay it out to them wicked children who keep tempting our priests into sin.
Well, the diocese did spend a few thousand of church money arguing before the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board that as a church they were exempt from having to report their spending on political campaigns. And they were successful, so we’ll likely never know just how much church money was funneled to this campaign, or which account it came from.
They did spend about 3/4’s of a million on sending anti-gay-marriage DVD’s to every catholic home. But that was classified as ‘education’, and paid out of an account that contributors expect is usually used for parochial school funding. But I guess that isn’t the general fund, either.
Actually, I would consider that a general fund expenditure.