The "National Review," one of America's significant purveyors of right-wing ideology, let it out the bag today. Why same-sex marriage is simply wrong for America.
The Future of Marriage
In their lament of the creeping onslaught of the granting of either civil unions or same-sex marriage by certain states, they posture their criticism to even their more tolerant fellow conservatives:
"One still sometimes hear people make the allegedly "conservative" case for same-sex marriage that it will reduce promiscuity and encourage commitment among homosexuals. This prospect seems improbable, and in any case these do not strike us as important governmental goals."
Government goals. Government ? Goals?
And just what might be these government goals?
"Both as a social institution and as a public policy, marriage exists to foster connections between heterosexual sex and the rearing of children within stable households. "
Get that!
It is to be the "government goal" to foster connections between "heterosexual sex" and the "rearing of children" within "stable households."
The "National Review" editors state in their next paragraph:
"But to the extent same-sex marriage is normalized here [in jurisdictions that already grant and extend same-sex marriage rights], it will be harder for American culture and law to connect marriage and parenthood."
Marriage and parenthood.
Got that!
No parenthood . . . no marriage. Not only don't even bother with marriage, a parenthoodless-marriage would undercut American culture and law.
Sound just a little like the biblical book of Deuteronomy? A paradigm of male ownership of fields and wombs, penetration, implantation, guarding the paternity prerogative, theocratic enforcing the right and obligation for the man to bear his seed. A harem of wives and concubines to run the "stable household."
Yes, aren't the traditions of traditional marriage so wonderfully focused on parenthood? Even more so, on fatherhood? That so romantic quaint little notion of fatherhood!
Wouldn't that just be nice? Now wouldn't it?
And so what about those marriages were there are no children? Either by choice . . . or just bad luck. Well, the National Review's social institutions and government policy DO NOT condone or support or foster that fraud of a marriage.
What about those people who marry so they can adopt a child(ren)? Sorry. The heterosexual sex is not "fruitful," if there is sex at all. Those National Review social institutions and government DO NOT support that kind of a shame.
What about the widowed retired man (with E.D.) and the post-menopausal widow who marry to share their common interests and companionship and love? Damn it! If there is sex, it's not fruitful, and there are no pregnancies or kids! For certain, their marriage is to be out-right prohibited.
And the young man who gets "clipped" (vasectomy) has no business whatsoever to even think of marriage let alone to stay as a party in one. What a deceitful fraud against social institutions and the government in undermining the goal of equating marriage with parenthood that that little fiasco ends up being!
The conservative right, the religious right, the theocons . . . clinging, with their scratching fingernails, to the relic of a Deuteronomy theocratic constitution that flaunts the power and bravado of masculinity, with the emphasis on HIS role: reproduction. With women relegated to only three roles: (a) to submit to male authority; (b) to be destined for sex with men; (c) to be meant for maternity. A set of "laws" to not only repress the feminine, but to totally ignore the female experience at all. [The Queer Bible Commentary. Edited by Deryn guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohache. SCM Press.2006. From the chapter "Deuteronomy" by Deryn Guest, page 130.]
Yes, don't we love the nuances of biblical traditional marriage . . i.e. "conservative" marriage. And yes, how "biblical traditional marriage" should be the basis of our contemporary social institutions and government policy.
At least the "National Review" was honest and forthright. Marriage, and the social institutions and government policy based on the predicate of traditional marriage are all about male-driven sex.
Too bad when they look in the mirror, they are so smudged with their schmuck they can't see the bigots they are.