{"id":684,"date":"2004-02-25T15:29:13","date_gmt":"2004-02-25T20:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/02\/strong_families\/"},"modified":"2004-02-25T15:29:13","modified_gmt":"2004-02-25T20:29:13","slug":"strong_families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/02\/strong_families\/","title":{"rendered":"Strong Families"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave is a co-sponsor of the most-frequently cited version of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would prevent gay couples from getting married.
\nDaniel of The Target Demographic checked out Musgrave’s website<\/a> and notes the irony of this<\/a> (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Keeping the government from unduly imposing burdens on the family<\/i> is one of Representative Musgrave’s greatest priorities in Congress. Despite the claims of many bureaucrats, parents are the best advocates for their children and know best how to raise them.
\nEmpowering parents, while keeping the government from intervening as much as possible<\/i>, is the best way the federal government can help parents build strong families to continue the strength of America’s society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keeping government interference out of families–now there’s a novel concept. I guess gay people don’t have families in Musgrave’s world.
\nUPDATE: jeff-perado (stutz[at]unlv.nevada[dot]edu) weighs in on the gay marriage debate:<\/p>\n

Bush today stated that he is in fact in favor of discrimination and turning certain U.S. law-abiding citizens into second class citizens not deserving the rights of other U.S. citizens (even convicted criminals can get married).
\nSince this issue keeps building, I must therefore keep on top of it, as I think it is critical to our future as a society. We have already had a civil war over a similar provision in our constitution that turned blacks into second class citizens and even in certain situations, property (slaves). Prohibition brought about organized crime and such American events as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and men like Al Capone. It is easy to see that if Republicans go down this path, we will be seeing this country set up for a third bloody encounter. Now I’m not suggesting that homosexuals across the country will take up arms, but rather just the opposite, this type of constitutional amendment will give hate-mongers the ammunition to abuse, demean, and even kill homosexuals, as they will not be full citizens anyway. We know this is true, as history has shown us during the strife the ensued over civil rights for blacks. That prejudice exists to this day in the courts. Black men get the death sentence much more for killing a white than whites do for killing a black. That is a real statistic.
\nBut all this is known and reasonably thinking people will never allow this to happen. The problem is that the “religious right” (why call them that? They are not right.) supports this, and they instill fear in their believers that allowing homosexuals the same dignity and rights will destroy the “sanctity of marriage.” Which to me is funny, as I was always under the (apparently mistaken) impression that wife abuse, alcohol abuse, child abuse, incest, adultery and venomous derision were the enemies to marriage, not true love towards your partner. They make the completely false argument that allowing marriage of same-sex couples will open the door to other illegal marriages, like bigamy and polygamy. I took those topics up last fall when Rick Santorum made that boneheaded comment about gay marriage being the same as rape, incest, bestiality and polygamy. But as I see that being an argument that will resurface in this brewing storm, I will return to the most complicated of those. Most crimes Rick referred to will remain illegal for their obviously damaging effects on individuals and society. So, I will focus on bigamy and polygamy.
\nFirst I think equating marriage based in a healthy and loving context, to bigamy or polygamy is deplorable. Both bigamy and polygamy are destructive to the spouses involved, their communities, and American society as a whole. Bigamy is (typically but not always) a man who is married to two or more women who do not know their husband has more than one wife. These situations often have children involved, and once the deception breaks down, much anger and hatred ensues. This also is very destructive for the children involved. This, as has been popularized in TV crime shows, can even result in murder. Since murder and what amounts to spousal and child abuse are both harmful, bigamy must remain illegal, and not equated to marriage of same sex couples. This is most true in that with bigamy there is deception involved.
\nPolygamy is not much better, but it does remove the deception issue, all the wives of the polygamist know about each other and quite frequently live under the same roof. Polygamy is most common in Utah and Arizona (thankfully, my Nevada has been largely spared of this scourge). The main issue with polygamy is not the intent of the wives and the polygamist. They have a tendency to have been brainwashed since birth to accept that. The main issue is one of support. This type of arrangement tends to produce a large number of children and unemployed wives. Since they are considered by the states to be single moms (polygamy is illegal and thus they are not legally wed), they qualify for — get this — welfare. Yes, even though the polygamist may be wealthy, there are certain mormon clans that own grocery store chains and such, yet their wives still collect welfare. Greed has no bounds after all, we see that in not only Republican ranks but Democrats as well. Since those women collecting welfare are draining valuable resources from all American taxpayers, this is not a constructive form of marriage to the spouses and to society. Furthermore, polygamy tends to be quite abusive, in that incest, and forced marriages of underage girls is common. Those can never be called beneficial.
\nThat is the distinction of bigamy and polygamy when compared to marriage of same-sex couples. Same sex couples are just as capable and loving as opposite sex couples when it comes to their commitment and their ability to raise children. I should point out one blatant falsehood used by the Pat Robertson’s and Dr. Dobson’s of this country. They make the ridiculous claim that gay parents will teach and raise their children to be gay. The is the most absurd argument of them all, gay couples will know THE BEST that one’s sexual orientation is one’s own business and should not be forced on them by another. Besides, isn’t that type of argument a bit silly, for parents have be taught their children to be heterosexual, and roughly 10% still turned out gay. This proving that children adopt the sexuality that suits their personality (and even genetic makeup to some degree).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree for the most part, though I don’t see this issue sparking a strong surge in anti-homosexual violence. I think a majority of Americans are tolerant towards homosexuality. They may not necessarily “approve” of it–hence the opposition to gay marriage. But I think they will accept with it without reviving the turmoil of the 1960s civil rights struggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave is a co-sponsor of the most-frequently cited version of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would prevent gay couples from getting married. Daniel of The Target Demographic checked out Musgrave’s website and notes the irony of this (emphasis added): Keeping the government from unduly imposing burdens on the family is one of Representative […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}