One of the arguments against the creation of gay marriage is that you can’t just re-define things to suit your preference. Marriage, is by definition, a union between a man and a woman (although historically, it has included one man and multiple women). You cannot call a union between two men or two women a marriage any more than I can validly call a rock a plant.
The problem with this argument is that we’ve already surrendered it on much more fundamental matters. For example, a guy or gal gets a sex change operation and everybody now calls them by the opposite sex. A local firefighter is being hailed as the “first” woman on the force because a guy changed his plumbing. If I were a woman, I’d be offended that he gets to claim being the “first” woman. The problem is that whatever outward changes you make, a guy still has X and Y chromosomes and a woman still has X-X chromosomes. And even if, in the far future, they develop technology to change that, ontologically, in your very being, you are what you are. But that doesn’t matter to our society. Now these guys in women’s clothesinto ladies bathrooms and fitting rooms and nobody’s supposed to care. Yet where is the outcry over this?
Shouldn’t we be at least as concerned at the damage done to society by undermining the essence of our being as we are concerned at the damage to be done by same-sex unions?
How about another pernicious re-definition: life? For all of human history, whenever someone saw a pregnant woman, it was recognized that she was carrying a baby inside, another human being. But now we have re-defined what it means to be alive and to be human. You are only human if the mother decides you are human. How about Terri Schiavo? Common-sense observation says she’s alive, but a judge, a death-angel lawyer, and a philandering husband can re-define the meaning to say that she’s not alive.
The gay marriage debate is only the latest battle line in the fight for civilization. But the root cause can be found in the fight to re-define sex. You see, sex is supposed to be a loving, completely self-giving act between a husband and a wife, but in the middle of the 20th century, the Supreme Court threw a monkey wrench into the works with its Griswold v. Connecticut decision that legalized contraception and created the “right to privacy” precedent at the heart of Roe v. Wade. Now, with sex cut off from its ultimate purpose, the sexual revolution was free to begin. Sex without consequences (so they thought), abortion, acceptance of homosexuality, no-fault divorce, euthanasia, and so on.
Unfortunately, “we” opened the door and now we can’t close it. “We” got the re-definitions we wanted, and now we’re trying to keep others from getting theirs. Until we start setting those things right that created the environment of re-definition in the first place, it’s only going to get worse. Maybe one day they’ll re-define freedom and citizen and life and we’ll find ourselves on the wrong side of that definition.
“‘I think it can be both a disorder and an orientation,” said Dr. Frederick Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. ‘“
He’s not talking about homosexuality, friends.
http://www.nj.com/specialprojects/expresstimes/index.ssf?/news/expresstimes/stories/molesters1_otherside.html
Words certainly do mean things. In a few years, if we’re still around, “pedophilia” is going to be defined as just another “orientation.”
Correction: in some circles, it already is an “orientation.”
And gee, why not?
Children have no choice, you indignantly claim? Au contraire, they sure as bleep do!
A child in many states needs parental permission to get her bleeping ears pierced, but needs none to get an abortion. Democracy in action!
The door’s been open, and has been open for a long time. I didn’t open it. But on the other hand, where the hell was I when it WAS opened?
And by the way. If you think the above is somehow outre, you might want to check out the discussion about it here:
http://mcj.bloghorn.com/605c
Read the whole thing, especially the comments, if you get a chance.
(Thanks to Mark Shea for this link.)
My God! (And I don’t mean that as a blasphemy, but as a prayer.) I see the same self-assurance in the pedophile that I do in those who defend homosexuality. And the argument is the same: It is genetic; God made me this way; society must accept it.
So all you people who defend homosexuality as genetic and thus must be accepted, what do we do about pedophiles who say the same thing? Tell me why the argument is different. Of course, they can’t and soon they’ll be arguing that the pedophile must be allowed his “orientation” and that age of consent laws are cultural constructs anyway and should be discarded.
And the intellectual midget who tells me that because I say that homosexuality is a disorientation it means I’m a closet homosexual will now say that I’m a closet pedophile because I opposed pedophilia.
Once again, words mean things.
And we used to have laws that said sodomy is an abomination before God, and look how society’s mind changed on that. Also, don’t forget that part of the homosexual agenda from the very beginning was the lowering of the age of consent. Look at the Gay Manifesto from 1968. Look at the effort in Britain to lower the age of consent for homosexuals to 15!
Then read the discussion at the MCJ link Kelly provided to see the twisted logice of the pedophile who shows up in the comments. Just one example: “Hey Mary was just 12 when God impregnated her.”
How about these? “What counts is not the ages of the people involved, but the quality of their relationships”. “Some ten-year olds are perfectly capable of reaching an informed decision on whether to have sexual relations, more so perhaps than many sixteen-year olds”. “Abuse is the problem, not age difference”. “In many primitive [read, ‘authentic, positive, wholesome, natural’] societies, sexual activity begins at a much younger age than has been the case in the West, with its antipathy towards sexuality deriving from centuries of Christian indoctrination”.
Think of all the things we said before that no one could possibly sanction and look at it now. the essence of the battle is the re-definition of words. This is another word that will be re-defined.
Yes, Pete, the pedophiles already say the same thing that homosexuals do now. This is my orientation and it can’t be changed. We know that disordered homosexual desires can be changed and so can pedophilic ones, but what we have is a movement that contradicts that and calls anyone who says it a hatemonger.
Just as the American Psychiatric Association changed the definition of homosexuality from a deviant disorder to a normal sexual orientation, there is already a movement afoot in the APA to do the same with pedophilia. It’s coming, people. Mark my words.
Joanne,
I’m not limiting this to homosexual pedophilia. I am saying that pedophiliacs of all stripes are going to use the same logic that homosexuals used to get acceptance of their deviancy. And you may think we won’t let them make the rules as to who’s of consenting age, but who would have thought we’d let them make the rules about what marriage is. All you need is one radical judge.
I’m not going to argue the point about whether homosexuals can change again. I know psychologists who say it can and has been done. I know at least one guy for whom it was done and there are reliable reports of hundreds of others. You can’t convince me from a negative position. Until someone provides evidence that homosexuality is genetic, then you can’t claim it is. And just because something might be congenital or genetic doesn’t mean it should be treated as normal or immune from treatment.
Like I said before, pedophiles claim their disorder is congenital or genetic. Does that mean we should accept their disorder as normal?
I agree completely with what you said, “1999”.