Honesty and Same Sex Marriage

Good post about same sex marriage. How am I supposed to respect a system that claims to want "what's best for the children" and yet would deny custody to a woman over her murdering, molesting, ex-felon husband just because she's a lesbian? Whose rights are being protected there? Even if we were to accept that somehow being brought up by a gay or lesbian parent is somehow bad, how could anyone possibly say that it is worse to be brought up by a gay parent than by a violent molester?

And the fact that the theocrats would say exactly that is one of the reasons I so vehemently oppose them.

It's also the rank hypocrisy. Judge Moore, the Alabama Supreme Court Justice who got removed from office for refusing to take down a copy of the Ten Commandments from his courtroom, acted as if it was crazy for anyone to think that the display of the Commandments might indicate that he was more interesting in upholding God's law than the legislature's law. But then, we learn that in a concurring opinion on a custody case involving a lesbian parent, He wrote:

I write specially to state that the homosexual conduct of a parent --
conduct involving a sexual relationship between two persons of the same
gender
-- creates a strong presumption of unfitness that alone is sufficient
justification for denying that parent custody of his or her own children or
prohibiting the adoption of the children of others.

By what authority does being gay or lesbian "create a strong presumption of unfitness?" Oh, wait, he just tells us at the end. First he quotes Genesis and then:

The law of the Old Testament enforced this distinction between the genders
by stating that "[i]f a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of
them have committed an abomination." Leviticus 20:13 (King James).

But no, putting up the Ten Commandments shouldn't give anyone the impression that Judge Moore is in court to enforce God's law instead of the peoples' law, though neither the Alabama constitution nor any legislation passed by the Alabama legislature gave him the authority to decide that gays and lesbians are de facto unfit parents. No.

Where were the cries of "judicial activism" from the conservatives then?

I also ran across an interesting article by Jason Kuznicki involving Orson Scott Card's anti-gay bigotry has this fascinating admission:

And in a world not so far removed from our own, a straighter Jason would
lay the blame for all of this at the feet of the gays themselves. After all,
they--and not I--had broken nature's laws. In a world not so very different, it
would be easy for me to spend Christmas with my less tolerant biological
parents, who would still welcome a girlfriend or a fiancée, but who turn my
husband away at the door. In a world not so different, it would be so easy for
me to think in Card's terms. I suspect it would be easy for many of you,
too. Don't tell me that you and I are too intelligent for such homophobia, or
that we have some higher moral sense than a certain bigoted idiot.

This is an amazingly honest admission. It is also an admission that conservatives never make. Over and over, when I point out to conservatives that it is easy to condemn gay marriage, since, by chance, they happen not to be gay and therefore the banning of gay marriage doesn't affect them, they absolutely refuse to admit that their views would be different if they were gay. They are just absolutely certain that, if they had gay desires, they would still think those desires were wrong just as they do now.

But the proof is in the pudding: Is there any doubt, whatsoever, given the rest of Cheney's political views, that he would be a supporter of banning gay marriage were his own daughter not gay? And, were Cheney's daughter not gay, do you not think he would forcefully claim that gay marriage is an abomination, unnatural, and wrong, as do his political contemporaries without gay children?

Those who want to ban gay marriage are no different than someone who doesn't like pepperoni trying to get pepperoni banned so he or she won't ever have to see anyone else eating pepperoni either. You know that, if the winds of fate had caused that person to like pepperoni, he or she would be howling to the heavens about the injustice. But that same person cares nothing if the price of his or her comfort -- never seeing anyone eat pepperoni -- infringes on the rights of others to eat pepperoni. Unless they are themselves the target of discrimination they care nothing for the rights of those being discriminated against.

At least Jason is honest enough to admit that his support for gay rights is motivated by self-interest and can use that knowledge to make himself a better person. Would only that more conservatives were personally affected by the discrimination they preach, like Dick Cheney has been.

The debate would be a lot different then.