Have You the [Right] Wing?

I've commented before that the arguments put forth against gay rights -- especially marriage -- don't seem to be either rational or intelligent. Here's a couple of letters to the editor that appeared in a recent issue of The New York Post:

Children need a mother and a father to come into existence. Two women or two men cannot have children. It's discrimination to intentionally deny a child both parents. All people deserve to be treated with love and respect, but not all choices merit the same distinction. Perhaps some tax-code revisions are what's needed.

Mary-Cecilia Kelly
Rye, New York

Is this woman under the impression that we are lobbying for the legalization of impregnating gay men? Being capable of reproduction in no way guarantees that you make a good parent. Gay people have to really want children in order to get them, and have to satisfy state and local requirements to prove to adoption agencies that they're qualified and stable. Heterosexuals only have to forget to put on a condom. In fact, most gay couples are raising adopted children that you heterosexuals didn't want.

I love this new argument that gay people discriminate against children by "intentionally denying" them "both parents." (This also implies that single-parent families should be illegal, and ignores the fact that Jesus was essentially raised in a foster home.) She makes it sound like we're snatching babies away from loving, stable heterosexual homes so we can raise confused, maladjusted kids. But, as was revealed by President Bush's recent gaffe, scientific studies conclude that children raised by same-sex couples don't turn out any different than their peers. Amazing how suddenly it's the gay people who are the bigots. This is akin to the argument that any criticism of idiots like Condoleezza Rice must be motivated by racism.

Also, honestly, what does having children have to do with the right to marry? I'd like to have a committed relationship someday, but I don't have any intention at all of having children. A lot of heterosexuals can say the same, but no one would dare try to deny a straight couple the legal right to marry simply because they didn't plan on breeding. And doesn't the equal protection clause mean, in fact, that all choices do merit the same distinction? She says everyone deserves to be treated with love and respect, but then she argues for different rights for different people. What does "respect" mean to her? I guess it means a tax cut.

Marriage is not a "right," it is a sacrament defined in the Bible. It is the job of the government to protect rights, it is the job of the church to protect sacraments. If a couple — gay or not — is unwilling to live up to the biblical definitions (all of them, not just the gender specificity), then they should unite in a civil contractual agreement produced by government, with whatever rights citizens vote to attach. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's (rights), and render unto God what is God's (sacraments).

Carolina Garza
Sudbury, Mass.

She's almost on to something. I wonder if she'd be horrified to discover that her position basically aligns with Howard Dean, who said that he didn't think the federal government should recognize anything called a "marriage," and that everyone should have civil unions instead. He regards "marriage" as a purely religious term.

But if marriage is exclusively a sacrament defined by the Bible, then what of secularists or people of non-Judeo-Christian beliefs? You don't hear conservatives arguing that a heterosexual Buddhist couple shouldn't be allowed to marry, nor are they arguing that whatever their relationship might be, it shouldn't be called a marriage. She seems to be calling for federal civil union legislation that would define such a union as any relationship that doesn't meet sacramental standards. That might be hard to achieve, since defining marriage in that way would be a clear violation of the separation of church and state.

It's also more than slightly ironic that someone who insists that what constitutes a marriage be nationally defined by Christian standards would then commit the blasphemy of deliberately misrepresenting Scripture. In the passage she quotes, she fails to mention that Jewish leaders asked Jesus specifically, "Is it lawful to pay taxes?" (And Jesus said, yes, it sure is.) Her interpretation is categorically wrong.

I'd like to see her argue with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., that civil rights is not a religious issue.