Who are they lying to? Us? Or Themselves?

There’s a repetitive theme out there that tries to explain why Gay and Lesbian couples shouldn’t be allowed to get married. It is used over and again as if the more often it were cast out into the waters, more likely it would get a bite. It’s an argument that on the surface sounds as if it comes from a sincere concern, but when applied equally to both sides of the argument about gay marriage, it falls apart pitifully and questions the validity of not only gay marriages, but many heterosexual marriages as well.

Eric Hogue is a radio talk show host, and a syndicated columnist. He also calls himself a “contemporary cultural pastor”. On Crosswalk.com today, a for profit religious corporations web site, he has an article posted that argues once again that same sex marriage will somehow undermine heterosexual marriage. He argues that marriage is not about spousal happiness, but about one thing. Rearing children. He makes the argument that marriage has historically been about that one thing, and not the mutual happiness of the two people who desire to marry.

Overlooking the fact that children raised in same sex families do just as well as children raised in heterosexual marriages and that adoption does indeed allow same sex couples to raise children who would otherwise have no family at all, he maintains that there is no validity to the joining of two same sex individuals because of two things. We can’t procreate and we can’t provide both a male and female role model.

I’m sure that it makes religious extremists feel better to say they are discriminating against other American’s because of concern for the well-being of children, than to admit that they just don’t want to grant the same rights and protections to that they enjoy to people who they see as different from themselves. But if you apply that concern to both sides of the issue, it just doesn’t hold water.

If marriage is all about procreation, then what about those tens of thousands of infertile couples in America? If they can’t procreate, should they not be allowed to marry. If marriage is to be defined not by love, but by a couples ability to have and raise children then what reason do those heterosexual couples who can’t have children have to get married? If children can’t be raised in a home that doesn’t contain both a male and a female role model, what about the vast number of children currently being raised in single parent families? Should those single parents have their children taken away from them because they weren’t able to make a heterosexual marriage work? Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? It gets better. What about the elderly who can’t have children, or heterosexual couples who simply don’t want children?

My personal opinion is that the arguments they make are just sad attempts at hiding the truth from not us, but themselves. They don’t want to admit to themselves that they just don’t want to give gay and lesbian couples the right to marry, because they hate us. Deep down inside, they don’t want to share any of “their” rights with us because they don’t think we deserve to have them. They may say out loud that it isn’t hate or bigotry, but some altruistic concern for children. It makes you wonder who they are lying to. Is it to us, or to themselves, as a way of fooling themselves into believing that they aren’t denying the rights and protections of marriage to others simply because they don’t share their religious views? It doesn’t really matter who they are lying to, they’re the only ones who are buying the lies.