It's a Legal Matter - Doesn't hardly matter what I write about - abortion, guns, Mike Hatch, Music - but the thing that always gets me the most email is Gay Marriage.

I posted about this last week (I'd check, but my permalinks and archives are all hosed). I got quite a bit of response.

One letter came from regular reader EB, who wrote:

You miss the point entirely. Check your premises.

Contrary to popular opinion, the gay community is not just some benign collection of misarranged sexual preferences. For the most part, it consists of physically, sexually, and psychologically abused children who have found sanctuary with each other as adults in their shared sexual behaviors, which, in most cases, merely represent the repetition and compounding of earlier traumatizations in childhood.

There are as many theories about homosexuality as there are theorists about homosexuality. I personally trend toward Camille Paglia's theory - that homosexuality is an adaptation, rather than the still-nearly-evidence-free genetic explanation.

This explains why there exists an unusual degree of anonymous sex in public places, an extraordinary high rate of sexually-transmitted diseases, high-risk sexual practices, rampant substance abuse, promiscuity, and gay violence. Genuine homosexuals do not behave in this manner, but most of the "gay community" does.

True enough. And for purposes of equal protection, irrelevant.

Gay "marriage" offers no solution to these problems whatsoever, but instead compounds the issue by demanding that a universally accepted institution be distorted by aberrant sexual behavior in defiance of both public health standards and simple common sense. Even the Romans recognized homosexual behavior as a threat to public health and injurious to its governing institutions.

True - but I'm not talking about offering "marriage" in the sense that most religions recognize it.

I'm serious about that, actually. While I do believe gays should have access to contractrual civil unions, and that churches may decide for theological reasons to offer the sacrament of marriage to gays, I doubt I'd personally seek marriage in a church that recognized gay marriage as theologically sound. I doubt I'd even continue to worship there. That's not about bigotry, that's about faith, and having some basic standards. It may be the issue that finally runs me out of the Presbyterian Church, which, groaningly liberal as it is, is still (IMO) generally the most theologically sound denomination.

It is a completely misguided assumption that gay "marriage" has anything at all to do with the notion of spiritual union, religious or otherwise. It's about access to health care at a time when the gay community is being devastated by STDs and the AIDS epidemic, which is itself the product of gay political activism reaching all the way to the Pentagon.

You're right and wrong.

Marriage - or whatever you call the union - is about whatever the two people involved make it, consciously nor not (and as a divorced guy, I'm here to testify - the unconscious or denied part is just as much a factor as the part you really think about).

As to the business aspects - the health care coverage for high-risk behavior - that is nothing the market can't handle.

Assuming, of course, we let the market handle it. That is both a different topic and a crucial one. Let's tackle that one later, shall we?

The whole point of the "don't ask, don't tell" challenge to military policy was deliberately mischaracterized as the "right to serve." In fact, the military is replete with homosexuals and always has been. Who do you think started the USO?

Bob Hope?

If the issue were really about homosexual "unions," the gay community would find any contractual validation it seeks in common law. But that is not their intent. What they want is to use "marriage" as a gateway to the State and corporate health benefits of their employed sexual partners, which most could not otherwise obtain, and which they want the rest of us to pay for. If you think your health insurance premiums are high now, what do you think they will be by the time you're paying for 4 million dying AIDS patients every year, a plethora of epidemic diseases from Hepatitis C to syphilis, and endless trips to psychotherapy and emergency room facilities --all because a tiny vocal minority insists someone sticking an arm up someone else's anus or pulling a train all night with unprotected multiple partners and a headful of amyl nitrate is perfectly "normal behavior?"

Again - I think we can reconcile equal protection and high risk behavior, assuming the market is left to its devices.

I'd suspect that insurance companies, if allowed to operate under sound actuarial practice, would price insurance to gay couples commensurate with risk, which would enforce saner behavior.

And for those gays for whom "union" is, for whatever reason they believe, a genuine personal or even religious observance (and there are a few - I know a handful), I'd suspect society (given a healthy, unimpeded market) would be little worse off for allowing them to legally marry.

The suggestion that gay "marriage" would do anything to remedy the public health problem is laughable. To the contrary, aside from again mischaracterizing the issue, it would unfairly penalize and invalidate those in the majority of society who do not engage in repetitive, dangerous, promiscuous sexual behavior unequivocally associated with the spread of insidious disease and the solicitation of minors. What Sullivan refers to as "civil equality" is just lipstick on a pig.

Again, I invoke the market. "Marriage" itself won't regulate gay behavior, any more than it controls adultery, in and of itself. But I strongly believe that a free market response to the sorts of behaviors we're talking about here - a resopnse that only happens within the framework of a legal, domestic partnership situation, whether it's marriage or civil union whatever - is exactly what it'll take to moderate the behavior of those who can, in any case, be moderated.

To tell you the truth, my whole outlook on this issue is informed by the following:

• I'm straight, and have no personal interest in the issue.
• I have many gay friends who do, and I have a hard time seeing gays as a huge threat to society.
• I am a Christian, so I have a set view of what "marriage" is. Two people, two genders, family. I believe this is the majority view in this country.
• I'm a libertarian who believes that our government is as much set up to protect people from the majority view as to perpetuate it.
• That opposition to gay marriage is built on a number of logical inconsistencies which have little to do with religious faith.

This is, of course, a huge topic for Andrew Sullivan, a gay conservative Catholic (which makes him almost as much a fish-out-of-water as me, the stragiht Republican Presbyterian). He's written a lot - an awful lot - over the years about this subject, all of it worth a read. Today's post is no exception. Money quote:

Many simply do not acknowledge a need to make anything but religious arguments on this matter - or any other. They pick pieces of the Bible with which they agree (you won't find many members of the religious right decrying usury or personal wealth) and then insist that they be reflected in the civil law. They see zero distinction between religion and politics. Zero. Can you imagine Jonah quoting a fundamentalist Muslim who simply asserted that "many social conservatives in America believe there is one God who is Allah and a Koran that says that women have no right to vote."

I'd be the last to pretend I have all the answers - and nobody asked me, anyway.

What do you think?
posted by Mitch Berg 6/25/2003 12:52:49 AM