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- Anyone who saw the live Ellen DeGeneres interview with John McCain after the California Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage, who has some kind of rudimentary understanding of the real underlying issues surrounding same-sex marriage, and who truly understands how high the stakes are in this on-going battle, would have been hard pressed to restrain
themselves from "laying hands" on Mr. McCain with far less than
religious intent. This is the “conservative” candidate for the
presidency of the United States, who cannot, when asked, give a clearly
articulated argument in favor of his foundational beliefs in the
institution of marriage? He is an embarrassment. And so are his
handlers, who allowed him to wander into "Ellen" territory ill-prepared.
Indeed, did they expect that he would make an appearance on a
television talk show hosted by a widely popular, openly lesbian
comedienne one week after a landmark California Supreme Court decision
to legalize same-sex marriage in that state and the issue would not be
raised?
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Columnist Paul Edwards analyzes the embarrassing spectacle Mr. McCain made of himself and makes the arguments Mr. McCain should
have been, and needs to be, apprised of before contemplating another
trek into gay rights territory:
". . . Rather than defend marriage on moral principle as the union of a
man and a woman for the purpose of procreation, the establishment of the
home as the basis of a civil society, and as a union entered 'before
God' in accordance with His laws, McCain offered a compromise,
emphasizing that, 'people should be able to enter into legal agreements'
for the purpose of sharing insurance and decision-making. He pointed
out that same-sex couples are not denied such legal benefits and should
be content with the legal status of civil unions. Such a position leaves
unstated all of the conservative principles relative to the defense of
traditional marriage, the first principle being that marriage is not
primarily a legal contract, but is fundamentally about reproduction,
valued by the state because it provides a context for the rearing of
children who have been birthed as a result of the sexual union of a man
and a woman, thus securing the future for a stable and free society.
Ellen
denies these fundamental principles of marriage, arguing for same-sex
marriage on the basis of erotic love, grounding her argument in the
mistaken idea that marriage is a civil right denied to gays and lesbians
in the same way this country denied the freedom of slaves and the
suffrage of blacks and women: 'I think that it is looked at—and some
people are saying the same—that blacks and women did not have the right
to vote. I mean, women just got the right to vote in 1920. Blacks
didn't have the right to vote until 1870, and it just feels like there
is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same. We are all the
same people—all of us. You’re no different than I am. Our love is the
same.'
There is absolutely no correlation between the
equality denied blacks and women and marriage being denied to gays and
lesbians. All humans, regardless of ethnic or gender differences, have
been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights on the
basis of their common humanity. When Ellen argues that 'we are all the
same people' she is absolutely correct that, in terms of our humanity,
we are all equal. But she misapplies the equality standard to sexuality,
insisting that there is no difference between the erotic love and
relational commitment of homosexual persons versus that of heterosexual
persons. She couldn’t be more wrong.
Love-making for same-sex
couples results only in physical and emotional satisfaction while the
same cannot be said of heterosexual love-making, which carries with it
the possibility of procreation. No such possibility exists in a
homosexual union.
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Ellen is equal to me in terms of personhood and
the individual human rights that accompany personhood. It is a
fundamental denial of the human person to deny blacks and women equal
status. But no one is denying Ellen and her lover status as persons or
the rights that inure to them as human persons by denying a right to
marriage. The rights of marriage are granted to those who can meet the
biological standard necessary for entering a physical union that, all
things being equal, can produce offspring. This is the fundamental
nature of marriage. Any other benefits of marriage are subordinate.
To
say that because we share the same rights as human persons we are the
same in nature, physicality and even sexuality is to deny reality. I am
not the same as Ellen in terms of human biology. She is a female and I
am a male, and as such there are fundamental differences between us that
are naturally innate which, even with radical surgery, cannot be
changed. As Michael Medved has said, ''Sex change' procedures do nothing
to alter the most important distinctions between males and females, and blur only a few external characteristics. Even advances in biotechnology have not succeeded in changing the basic
fact that the female body is capable of carrying and bringing to life
the seeds of reproduction, a feat the male body cannot accomplish. To
argue that marriage for those of same-sex attraction is a fundamental
human right in the same way as suffrage is nothing more than changing
the subject. John McCain allowed Ellen to change the subject and in
doing so demonstrated that he is a poor apologist for conservatism on
one of the key issues that really, really matters. . ."
In previous blog entries, we have highlighted how gay rights activists have mastered the art of the ad hominem argument, which obfuscates the substantive issues at hand by
effectively changing the subject. Essentially, such tactics further the
real, self-serving agenda
of the LGBT movement. But the intrinsic issue of gay marriage is
ultimately about whether or not we, as a society, will confer the moral
equivalence of heterosexual relationships to homosexual unions. As one
of the posters to our last blog entry — Anais65 — declared,
"Same-sex
marriage, as Ellen brought the debate between herself and McCain down
to, is not about 'my relationship' versus 'your relationship.' Public
policy is not about specific individuals. Likewise, public policy
regarding marriage is not about any couple in particular. Marriage is
about future generations, and about the ideal setting in which future
generations are raised. Sure, some same-sex couples can do a half-decent
job at raising kids, while some heterosexual couples screw-up their
kids royally. But again, public policy is broader than any specific
couples, and should be based on noble ideals that transcend all of
us—you, me...even Ellen and John McCain."
Anais65 gets it. So what's Mr. McCain's excuse? |
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RELATED ARTICLE: How America Went Gay Leadership U, by Charles W. Socarides, M.D.
.
. . Gays said they could "reinvent human nature, reinvent themselves."
To do this, these reinventors had to clear away one major obstacle. No,
they didn't go after the nation's clergy. They targeted the members of a
worldly priesthood, the psychiatric community, and neutralized them
with a radical redefinition of homosexuality itself. In 1972 and 1973
they co-opted the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association
and, through a series of political maneuvers, lies and outright
flim-flams, they "cured" homosexuality overnight-by fiat. They got the
A.P.A. to say that same-sex sex was "not a disorder." It was merely "a
condition"-as neutral as lefthandedness. This amounted to a full
approval of homosexuality. Those of us who did not go along with the
political redefinition were soon silenced at our own professional
meetings. Our lectures were canceled inside academe and our research
papers turned down in the learned journals. Worse things followed in the
culture at large. Television and movie producers began to do stories
promoting homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. A gay review board
told Hollywood how it should deal or not deal with homosexuality.
Mainstream publishers turned down books that objected to the gay
revolution. Gays and lesbians influenced sex education in our nation's
schools, and gay and lesbian libbers seized wide control of faculty
committees in our nations' colleges. State legislatures nullified laws
against sodomy. If the print media paid any attention at all, they
tended to hail the gay revolution, possibly because many of the
reporters on gay issues were themselves gay and open advocates for the
movement. And those reporters who were not gay seemed too intimidated by
groupthink to expose what was going on in their own newsrooms. . .
RELATED ARTICLE: Selling Homosexuality to America Regent University Law Review, By Paul E. Rondeau
This
article explores how gay rights activists use rhetoric, psychology,
social psychology, and the media--all the elements of modern
marketing--to position homosexuality in order to frame what is discussed
in the public arena and how it is discussed. . . . The economics and
education of homosexuals makes them prime players in a capitalistic
society. Money means power, and education means the knowledge to use
that power to gain more. Homosexuals have demonstrated they have access
to the leadership in media, government, education, business and other
centers of influence as well as access to capital. These are hardly
traits of an oppressed minority. . .
RELATED ARTICLE: Review Of 'Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study Of Religiously Mediated Change In Sexual Orientation' By George A. Rekers, Ph.D., N.A.R.T.H.
RELATED SITE: National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH)
RELATED SITE: Exodus International
The largest information and referral ministry in the world addressing homosexual issues
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