While browsing the internet today, I came across a well put together piece at The Catholic World Report by Mark Brumley. Among the arguments concerning marriage that I encounter on the World Wide Web are from more Libertarian friends who seem to think that 'government should get out of the marriage business altogether.' I will list some of the better points raised by Brumley (IMO) below..."Those libertarians and conservatives who argue in favor of so-called privatization of marriage do not adequately consider a key point regarding it: the public interest in government encouraging couples who engage in procreative kinds of acts publically and legally to commit themselves exclusively and permanently to one another and, by implication, to their offspring, should they have any. The legal institution of marriage encourages such commitment between sexually-active heterosexual couples.
Why does government have a stake in this? Because it has a stake in encouraging the parents to provide a stable, loving, committed relationship as the morally best environment for raising children. Government has a stake in encouraging couples together to raise their children and to provide examples for their children of parental relationship. Children, after all, are the future of the state. They provide the foundation for society’s future success or failure, so government has an interest in encourage certain behaviors in relation to children and in discouraging others."
Why does government have a stake in this? Because it has a stake in encouraging the parents to provide a stable, loving, committed relationship as the morally best environment for raising children. Government has a stake in encouraging couples together to raise their children and to provide examples for their children of parental relationship. Children, after all, are the future of the state. They provide the foundation for society’s future success or failure, so government has an interest in encourage certain behaviors in relation to children and in discouraging others."
The entire article is a good read and Brumley gets more into the child-rearing aspect further on in it. One of the most important first steps in taking on Leftist bigots who enjoy stifling rational discussion through feel-goody, appeal-to-emotional rhetoric is to immediately take emotional arguments off the table and get down to verifiable, empirical evidence. Once that occurs the anti-free speecher is then diminished to the poorly informed, mindless lemming that they are. That doesn't necssarily mean that they are bad people, just that they swallowed hook-line-and-sinker a poorly thought out position based on emotionalism rather than actually thinking the issue through to it's logical conclusion.
4 comments:
…a poorly thought out position based on emotionalism rather than actually thinking the issue through to it's logical conclusion.
………
As Mark Jordan has recently described in great detail, this instrumental use of non-religious rhetoric has led to a discursive slipperiness, leaving the keen observer wondering: What, exactly, is wrong with homosexuality? Opponents of equality often seem unable to respond consistently, instead attempting to marshal a variety of non-religious arguments to bolster what is at heart a religious condition…
Santorum and other homophobes cannot speak frankly because their real motivations are private, emotional, and incoherent. It’s not as though Santorum dispassionately selected Catholicism from a menu of religious ideologies. He believes because he feels.
And this is why we cannot argue with people who subscribe to this framework: there is simply too much at stake for them. They have wedded their fundamental sense of okay-ness to the truthfulness of a set of doctrines. Not only is sociology not at issue for Rick Santorum, Romans isn’t either. What is at stake is his very sense that the world is a good place, that things are basically okay, and that he himself is okay as a result. That may be expressed in a theological framework, but it is a psychological reality. If I marry my partner, therefore, Rick Santorum is not okay.
The rest is window dressing. The fake sociology, the religious doctrines of sin and salvation, all of it. Santorum and Chambers have had powerful religious experiences, and they avail themselves of such doctrines to articulate the inexpressible.
The fake secularism, the fake science, the bogus constructions of homosexuality—all of these are so transparently false because they are mere props. As one after another of them collapse, anti-gays will eventually be left only with their convictions, and the reasons why they have them. Perhaps only then, echoing Portnoy’s therapist, might we say “Now vee may perhaps to begin.”
—Source
JD, you wouldn't be "stifling rational discussion" by censoring posts, or not posting links to studies that affirm the capacity of lesbians to raise totally normal children, would you?
OH, I see. Only the comments that potentially paint me as combative get through.
Nice tactic.
Testing now.
One of the most important first steps in taking on Leftist bigots who enjoy stifling rational discussion through feel-goody, appeal-to-emotional rhetoric is to immediately take emotional arguments off the table and get down to verifiable, empirical evidence.
In that spirit, I submit this.
An October 2011 report by Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that, of gay and lesbian adoptions at more than 300 agencies, 10 percent of the kids placed were older than 6 — typically a very difficult age to adopt out. About 25 percent were older than 3. Sixty percent of gay and lesbian couples adopted across races, which is important given that minority children in the foster system tend to linger. More than half of the kids adopted by gays and lesbians had special needs.
…research suggests that gays and lesbians are more likely than heterosexuals to adopt older, special-needs and minority children, he said. Part of that could be their own preferences, and part could be because of discrimination by adoption agencies that puts more difficult children with what caseworkers see as "less desirable" parents.
Research has shown that the kids of same-sex couples — both adopted and biological kids — fare no worse than the kids of straight couples on mental health, social functioning, school performance and a variety of other life-success measures.
The bottom line, Stacey said, is that people who say children need both a father and a mother in the home are misrepresenting the research, most of which compares children of single parents to children of married couples. Two good parents are better than one good parent, Stacey said, but one good parent is better than two bad parents. And gender seems to make no difference. While you do find broad differences between how men and women parent on average, she said, there is much more diversity within the genders than between them.
You'll post this, I feel sure of it. Because I know you value truth and open debate.
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