They have shown their hand in my local paper, the Lexington Herald Leader, in Lexington, KY. Contributing Editor, Mike Allen, summed up all the sick thinking of the religious right into a single foul op-ed in Sunday’s paper entitled "Broken links: sex, procreation, marriage" http://www.kentucky.com/...
Mr. Allen obviously seeks to play on people’s fear of gay marriage and even polygamy to claim contraception as immoral. He claims that the Anglican Church’s acceptance of the use of birth control in marriage in the 1930’s has caused sexual depravity leading to gay marriage by allowing couples to enjoy sex without threat of pregnancy.
If we straight couples had never been so immoral as to desire to love one another without constant pregnancy, too many children to care for, and health threats for the mother; than those pesky gay people would have never been inspired to demand the right to love one another either. In other words, sex is immoral, whether gay or straight. I always knew they believed this, at least now they are showing their hand.
Mr. Allen seems to mourn for the days when public opinion was against contraception:
With our modern view of contraception as the answer to sexual repression, gender inequality and overpopulation, it's hard to believe such a measured resolution would be groundbreaking. We forget that before 1930, public opinion largely viewed contraception as immoral........
Thus, reactions to the 1930 resolution, typified by the Washington Post quote, were as extreme as any protests offered against same-sex marriage. ...
http://www.kentucky.com/...
He neglects to mention that a great many people in the 1930’s also thought that Hitler had the right idea in his anti-Semitic views. Once again we have the far right lamenting the perfect moral world that never was, and never should have been, a world where people are robots, controlled by the Church. Where all human love is saved for their religious institution, rather than being wasted on one other so selfishly. How close can a straight couple be if in constant fear of pregnancy? How much love can a gay couple have if they are despised and harassed? I have believed for a long time that the Religious Right despised love between all couples because they wanted all devotion to be directed at the institution of religion. Selfish indeed!
This op-ed linked the personally empowering human rights advancements of contraception and gay marriage together in a call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. While lamenting our not following the public opinion of a bygone era, he derides public opinion swaying the Supreme Court in their upholding people’s right to privacy in more recent times:
Following public opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court now views marriage and, ultimately, consensual sexual behavior as private concerns in which society has no compelling interest. This view led to the reversal of anti-sodomy laws in 2003, paving the way to Massachusetts and California.
So typical of the far right, the court and public opinion are only to be respected when they are in favor of my narrow-minded views. His religious ideal trumps democracy, in his mind.
He goes on to conclude:
I had hoped that common sense would prevail and that we wouldn't need something as pedantic as a constitutional amendment defining marriage between one man and one woman. Thanks to our judicial system, I now believe we do.
We need a strong majority in the Supreme Court to protect people’s privacy and promote equality. My greatest fear is that we will somehow screw this election cycle up and elect John McCain, and the right will turn back the clock on so many freedoms we have come to take for granted.
I remember my grandmother sharing her earliest memory with me when I was a child. She was almost 6 years old, standing on the front porch where her mother’s wooden casket lay, waiting on the petite body of a beautiful, loving young mother who was taken from her five small children by birthing the sixth in short succession, a doomed baby who would live only days itself. Knowing my own mother almost died at my birth, I was grateful she only had two children and was very much alive.
We have a lot to loose. We have to elect Obama and maintain a rational Supreme Court. Nothing trumps this for me. Other issues may aggrivate me, but nothing is worth risking a right-wing Supreme Court. If we have no right to love one another without fear, we literally have nothing.