Gay Marriage Debate

October 27th 2005 

Continued from page 1

4)  Gays are sick and disgusting; I can’t even stand to think about them. 

I’m sure you’re just as disgusting to them as they are to you, too.  Whenever I hear someone rant on and on about gays being sick, vile, “abominations of nature,” it’s almost always a six-packer that’s saying it.  Don’t know what a six-packer is?  He’s someone who’s a six pack away from waking up next to Francois.  He’s so sick and disgusted with them because he’s had too many “walks on the wild side” dreams and no matter how many times he states his feelings on gays, he can’t get make the fantasies go away.

5)  Gay marriage will have a detrimental effect on the institute of marriage.

And how is that, Einstein?  I’m married and actually have children and stuff, but I cannot understand how my marriage and my family are going to change if Bob and Doug tie the knot.  “Welp, we’re married and all, but now that the gays are doing it too, the holy state of matrimony is just not as special as it used to be. 

Why Katie won’t even tell people she’s married anymore cause when she does, they look at her like she just told them she kicks puppies for fun.  Damned homos!”   Yeah, I’m sure same sex marriage is going to bring an end to the sanctity of marriage; we heteros not having ever done anything to tarnish its image.  I bet a lot of marriages wouldn’t have been allowed to take place if they had been held up to a communal committee vote! If it were I doubt that Federline-Spears union would have occurred.

6)  Can’t gays just get a civil union and have the same rights as other traditional couples without calling it marriage?

Oh, so you support the idea of separate but equal laws, like the Jim Crow laws that provided separate but equal education for African-Americans?  Did our society collapse when blacks and whites were allowed to use the same water fountains, attend the same schools, and date each other?  Sure, Bennett and a lot of Republicans may quietly say that the Civil Rights Act was the beginning of the end for civilized society, but from the crime statistics I’ve read, if you’re going to use that as a measure of society, then we’re doing better now than we were prior to the Civil Rights movement.  It seems that this country is so bent on having someone to demonize, someone to blame for their problems, that they have to make sure there’s always someone else responsible for their woes, and every time the rights of another group are brought up to the level that the majority has, whether they are black, brown, yellow, female, or gay, there’s always going to be people who scream at the top of their lungs that the end of society is near.

7)  Next it’ll be legal to marry your child or the family dog.

This is by far my favorite argument, because not only is it ridiculous, it’s also a great window into the mind of the people who vocalize it.  Talking about a slippery slope!  First, Bob and Doug marry, which will make it legal for J.R. and J.R. Jr. to tie the knot, and the next thing you know Tammy is walking down the aisle with her poodle, Sparkles.  I’m sure this makes logical sense to someone, but I’d be afraid to be alone with that person, especially after a night of hard drinking, because if you can connect these together, there’s no telling what you’ll do once you’ve got enough joy juice in you.  Can someone say “Deliverance”?  Queue the banjos…

For me, the hardest thing to comprehend is why people would go out of their way to deny a group of people the same thing that another group has.  Why should I care if the two women living next door to me want and have decided that they are going to spend their lives together?  If the state recognizes their union and gives them the same legal power and benefits that my wife and I share, it doesn’t change my life.  I just don’t care,and I don’t understand why you should care either?  Change is  going to happen no matter how hard some of you fight this, because it is the right thing to do, and it’s only a matter of time before enough of the population either figures out that it doesn’t affect them or decides that it’s time to end this discrimination.  Recent surveys of college students find a much higher per cent of people in favor of same sex marriage than in the older generations.  These younger people are the voters of the future who will change the laws.  Only after this silliness is out of the way can we then discuss the legality of gay divorce.

By John Conrad
Mr. Conrad is a writer based in Southern California

Keywords and misspellings: republicon democrat dimocrat