Tuesday Tantrum: Gay Marriage

With my pledge to blog every single day in November I’m doing some brainstorming to come up with ideas to keep me on track. I’ve thought about participating in some memes or regular features again to get back in to the groove. For example, I brought back the Sunday Linky Love (which I found to be quite fun and am now trying to remember why I stopped doing it). But what about the other six days of the week?

Then I remember. I’m opinionated. Therefore I rant. So why not pick a day for ranting. Or tantrums. And thus was born Tuesday Tantrum. A new feature I’ve started for the month of November. Enjoy!

With all the media hoopla over this year’s presidential election we’ve heard a lot about gay marriage. Where does your presidential candidate stand on the issue? How does your state legislature feel about the issue? What are your thoughts on the issue?

All eyes are on California today as voters go to the polls to not only vote for the next president, but also to vote on Proposition 8. We are waiting on pins and needles to see if citizens of the United States will actually vote to write discrimination in to their state constitution. Does anybody else find it odd that during the same election where people are asking for deregulation and no socialist health care, one state is seriously considering passing law to take rights away from their own citizens? Or is that just me?

This election year has been particularly painful because we’ve had to endure so much bigoted propaganda on the gay marriage debate. I can handle the radical rights and lefts on the economy, the war and health care. But when it comes to the venom that is spouted in the name of “restoring marriage” I really want to vomit all over my keyboard.

Recently a blogger I read linked to this filth on why it’s ok to discriminate against same sex couples. The letter (which I almost didn’t link to because I didn’t want spread this garbage, but it makes it difficult for me to rant if you can’t read it for yourself) states “It’s time to discriminate.” It says we discriminate every day. We have age discrimination when we don’t let somebody under 21 buy a handgun. We discriminate against women because we don’t let them use Viagra. And we discriminate against the disabled because we don’t let blind people drive.

Really?!? This is your argument? Blind people can’t drive so gay people shouldn’t marry? Comparing a blind person getting a driver’s license to two people of the same sex getting married seems a bit far fetched don’t you think? A blind person cannot get a driver’s license because he CAN’T SEE. When you can’t see and you are behind the wheel of a 2,000 pound motor vehicle flying along the roads at 50 mph you could get in to an accident and kill somebody. A man marrying another man isn’t going to kill anybody. But nice try.

Even the discrimination against a person who cannot buy a handgun until they are 21 is really no comparison. Many, many (have I mentioned many?) studies have shown that a person’s brain is not fully developed they are in their mid-twenties. That’s why teenagers are crazy…literally. Do you want a crazy person to carry a handgun? A handgun isn’t used for hunting. It’s a handgun. And again, a crazy teenager can kill somebody with a handgun. A woman marrying another woman? Not so much.

So why does this piece of literature garbage say it’s ok to discriminate against gay people. They say, “Same-sex marriage, by design, will always deny a child their mother or father.” Well so does some single parenting and absentee father situations. Where is your constitutional law to stop father’s or mother’s from leaving their children? Hell in Nebraska you can drop you 17-year-old kid off at a hospital and you’re protected under their safe haven law (at least for now). I don’t know if you’ve looked around lately, but the typical American family is no longer a mother and a father. It’s a mother. Or a father. Or a grandparent. Or step-parent. Or any number of other situations. And kids function very well in all of these situations as long as they have a loving support system.

“It also makes mothers and fathers interchangeable. So a mother offers no unique contribution to her children. She is just a warm body. A man could accomplish all her parenting functions just as well.” What the hell does this even mean? I was raised by my father so he did all of the typical mother duties. He cooked and cleaned and did my laundry. He took me to school and to the doctor. He went to my school conferences and my music programs. So fuck yes a man can accomplish all of a mother’s parenting function just as well as she can. And a woman can play football with her kids and horseplay and teach a boy to shave. What the hell is your point? Every parent makes a unique contribution to his/her children, whether you are a man or a woman. Your role does not have to be defined by your gender. Your role is defined by your love.

“For example, studies show that fatherless children suffer from higher incidents of mental illness, educational failure, substance abuse, criminal behavior, sexual abuse, and other problems.” I cannot stand it when people spout “studies” and don’t link to the data. You know they do this so they can skew the data in their favor. And here’s a prime example. Yes, some studies have shown that fatherless children do have troubles as they get older. But absentee fathers are not the only reason these children have issues. Without a two parent household there is a lot of strain on the mother. She may have to work two or three jobs just to pay her rent and put food on the table. She may be depressed. There may be custody disputes and/or continuing conflicts between the divorced mother and father. Some children may be upset about their parent dating or getting remarried. There are a number of different reasons why these children have issues as they age. None of which has any bearing on a happily married gay couple raising a happy child.

In fact, according to the APA, there is “three decades of research showing that children of gay or lesbian parents are just as mentally healthy as children with heterosexual parents.” Just like straight couples, gay couples can maintain long and healthy relationships. They can provide a stable two parent home. The well-being of a child has very little to do with the sexual orientation of the parent, but everything to do with the love provided by that parent.

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