KIRK: Prop. 8: Arguing the obvious
21st October 2008
Injustice is good and justice is naivete. That's the proposition Socrates' irascible interlocutor put forward in The Republic ---- a viewpoint the Greek philosopher admitted was hard to counter because it fell so far outside the norms of ethical discourse.
The debate about gay marriage falls in the same category. Who would have thought 20 years ago that politicians and activists would seriously propose changing the definition of marriage? Who would have suspected that a state Supreme Court majority of one would equate inherently barren same-sex relationships with male-female unions whose reproductive consequences are typically enormous?
Who would have believed that rational individuals would repeatedly declare with a straight face that males and females are essentially identical when it comes to child-rearing ---- or that natural and obvious biological differences are as irrelevant as variations in skin pigmentation and eye color?
Yet same-sex unions are blindly said to be identical to unions for which marriage has been constituted (by promoting fidelity and ongoing responsibility to offspring) the greatest institutional protection for women and children.
Logically, if these two types of union are the same, then children and sexual fidelity can't be central to the definition of marriage. Instead, deconstructed marriage will become a mere matter of legal benefits between two or more individuals with amorous feelings toward each other.
Only people with constrained imaginations could assert that this radical redefinition won't significantly impact society. Indeed, it's already had an impact.
In San Francisco, first-graders in a public school were recently taken on a field trip to witness their teacher's lesbian wedding, another lesson in diversity by folks who assert, incredibly, that defenders of traditional marriage are injecting government into people's private lives.
Yet it was gay activists who "injected" their lifestyle into government via parades in which San Diego firefighters were ordered to participate. And it was a lesbian who sued a North County doctor for declining to participate in her insemination ---- thereby "injecting" government into the doctor's own conscience.
Indeed, were it not for an unprecedented judicial fiat, the issue of gay marriage wouldn't have been "injected" into politics at all.
Now this radical innovation is being advertised (thanks to Jerry Brown's linguistic revision of Prop. 8) as a "right" that presumably existed from eternity alongside the rights to life, liberty and abortion on demand. Other anti-Prop. 8 ads claim that same-sex marriage will have no educational consequences: Witness the first-grade field trip.
Anyone who believes that public schools won't take the defeat of Prop. 8 as a signal to aggressively promote a "King and King" educational agenda is also probably unaware of the $1 million donated by the California Teachers Association to oppose it.
Unfortunately, students in public school won't be the only casualties of calling black "white." Children throughout the state will also be victims ---- along with freedom of conscience.
Source: North Country Times