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In response to Maggie:

1.  I am a straight woman happily married to a man.  We will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary in 2 months.  We have chosen not to have children.  According to Maggie, apparently I'm not really married, right?  Because my marriage is not "for the purpose of creating children."  If that's not her position, then her claim about why straight marriage is okay but gay marriage is not, is false.

2.  It is true that lots of straight people get divorced.  It is also true that this is often harmful to children.  However, what does this have to do with gay marriage?  How does not allowing gay people to get married lower the divorce rate of straight people?  It's like saying, "Well, if we don't allow anybody who lives in Kentucky to get married, that will lower the divorce rate in Oregon."

3.  Her claim that making divorce "no fault" "slightly raised the divorce rate" may or may not be true, but it is a specious argument.  Before "no fault" divorce, people couldn't get divorced even if they wanted to -- even if they hated each other, unless there were "legal grounds."  So lots of people went on in miserable, hateful, abusive marriages because they COULDN'T get divorced.  Why is being in a miserable, hateful marriage simply because you cannot legally get out of it better than getting a divorce?  And once again, what does that have to do with gay people being able to get married?

4.  She has yet to articulate ONE practical, real reason for how letting gay people get married weakens straight marriages.  The only one she came up with in the entire segment was: "Lots of people like me don't believe that gay people should get married, and if we allow the definition of marriage to be expanded to include gay people in the public square, then people will call us bigots."  So, in other words, "I want to go on having opinions which many people consider bigoted, but I don't want to be labelled a bigot, so therefore the law shouldn't allow gay marriage so I can go on with my bigoted opinions without any public stigma."  Which is (a) astoundingly self-serving, (b) a ridiculously circular argument ("I don't believe gay people should be able to marry because I don't believe gay people should be able to marry") and (c) has nothing to do with "protecting straight marriage" OR "protecting children" and everything to do with "protecting my right to have bigoted opinions without any negative social repercussions."

posted 2 years, 4 months ago
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