Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, is a big man with a big personality and a mountain of intolerance. He is a charismatic speaker who has a preacher's ability to cast what should be secular matters, like gun rights, as a religious imperative. And on no subject is this Bible thumper more small-minded than the LGBTQ+ community and gay ‘relationships’. (He says relationships, although I think he is referring to marriage. Not that it matters. The argument is the same in both cases)
To this fanatic, the only path to pursue when it comes to love and relationships is heteronormative. And that illustrates the essence of his hypocrisy. Like so many religious conservatives, he demands the freedom to enjoy his liberties, like gun ownership. And the right to marry the person he chooses. But when it comes to others, he presumes to pick their rights for them. I wonder if his position on relationships would be so religion-based if states still had anti-miscegenation laws — and he wanted to marry someone of a different race? After all, the justification for these laws was biblical. As was the justification for slavery. I suspect he has not addressed the issue.
Unsurprisingly, as he is not a man who lets logic, empathy, or common decency inform his social theories. Like all conservatives, he lacks empathy. In his latest broadside against gay unions, he argues that it is an inferior form of relationship because there is “no point to it.” Here is how Robinson phrased it,
“Will somebody please explain to me the purpose of homosexuality? Let’s get down to brass tacks. What is the purpose of homosexuality? What does it create? If homosexuality is of God, what purpose does it serve? What does it make? What does it create? It creates nothing.”
And just in case you didn’t know what he was talking about, he added that if you put a gay couple in one room and a straight couple in another room and then wait nine months, there will still be two people in the gay couple’s room whereas there will be three people in the heterosexual couple’s room.
But if procreation is the sole reason for ‘relationships’, then any post-menopausal woman would be denied the Institution. And should men be checked for ‘viability’? Would there be a time limit on childless marriages? If a couple hasn’t produced offspring, say within five years, must they get divorced?
And why can’t same-sex couples use IVF or surrogacy to have a genetic child? Or adopt to provide a home for a child that doesn’t have one. Or whose parents are not in a position to raise them?
And why does marriage have to be for procreation only? Why can’t two people who love each other want to be together? To have the intimacy that comes with a marriage. The quality of love doesn’t depend on your sexuality. But, of course, the procreation angle is a smokescreen — as Robinson reveals.
He makes the real reason for his objection to gay marriage very apparent,
“I can’t stand to turn that TV on. And I don’t want my grandkids watching that television because I don’t want to have to explain to my grandkids why two men are kissing. And I don’t care what anybody thinks about that. Get mad at me if you want to you. Ain’t no child got no business seeing no two men kiss. If they did, God would have made it that way! He didn’t!”
He doesn’t want gay marriage to be a thing because it makes him uncomfortable. But the law doesn’t exist to protect Robinson‘s feelings. It exists to provide a remedy for when one person hurts another. And gay marriage doesn’t hurt anybody. Robinson needs to grow up.
In the end, he plays what he thinks is his trump card — that God did not create gays. How does he know? In Christian philosophy, God created everything. Does Robinson presume to read God‘s mind? Of course he does. That is the point of all fundamentalist religions. It’s a man-made vehicle that allows bigots to give their bigotry a divine imprimatur.
A dispassionate review of marriage in America would not say that the biggest problem with marriage is same-sex couples. It would list abusive unions. And people who got married too young or too quickly — or were forced into marriage by pregnancy. And, ironically, gays who entered into straight marriages because of social pressure from the sanctimonious.
Freedom doesn’t mean that people have the liberty to do what I want them to do. It means they have the right to do what they want to do - as long as it doesn’t break the law. Which, let’s repeat, gay marriage does not.