Friday, October 15, 2010

A bad argument

I know I'm wading into murky waters here but I'm bugged. I need to hear a better argument than one I just heard. Legalizing gay marriage would not mean that we'd have to legalize polygamy, child marriage, or anything else. Endorsing LGBT equality is not the same as endorsing all lifestyles. It's just not. That is a logical fallacy. It's a bad argument.

Furthermore, a committed, monogamous same gender relation ship IS NOT comparable to a polygamous relationship, an pedophiliac relationship, a bestial relationship, or any other form of abuse. It isn't. A committed, monogamous same gender relationship is one entered into by two consenting adults. However you feel about homosexuality as a moral issue there's no abuse there. Polygamy is a misogynistic form of abuse. Yes, I'm sure women enter into those relationships voluntarily but the balance of power goes the other way. Pedophilia is abuse. A child can not, under any circumstances, consent to sex with an adult. Period. They're not old enough to get to make those decisions. Adults in those relationships are abusing them. Bestiality is animal cruelty. It's abusing animals.

You CAN NOT compare same gender relationships to these. It's a bad argument. Try something else. Sure, you could argue that it's not Biblical to have gay marriage. I have more sympathy for that position than the other. I think, by and large, it is held honestly by most of the people that hold it. But the day we start governing entirely from Levitical law is the day we make the Taliban look like a bunch of quite reasonable people. We'd end up stoning most of our citizens. There's a reason we don't do that.

There is a human cost to this prohibition. It's not an abstract argument. There are people who don't have the right to make end of life decisions of those they are most close to. There are people who don't have the right to even visit their most loved ones in the hospital or to say goodbye. There are those who have spent YEARS of their lives committed to their partners only to be left out in the cold in the end. Rights that we heterosexuals take for granted ever day are not protected by law for everyone. I think we fail to see that and the human cost of it sometimes. We too distracted trying to "win" the argument to see the cost of the fight.

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