Barely a fortnight has passed since the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was mired in a scandal in which confidential documents were disclosed to the public by Maine's judicial system advocating not only strategic race-baiting between ethnic minorities and the Gay community, but attempting to convince the Latin community to refrain from assimilating with American culture, and most sickeningly they admitted to paying an individual an annual salary of $120,000 to locate and exploit the dysfunctional children of Gay parents so that they might merely "air their concerns" over allowing Gay people to marry and to even raise children in a vicious attempt at anti-Gay propaganda! These were the main projects that NOM co-founder and former President/Chair, Maggie Gallagher, ended an interview with MSNBC's Thomas Roberts insisting that she was proud of all of NOM's "projects". The latter and most disgusting, however, has received minimal notice in the blogosphere, and none to my knowledge in either print or televised media. Given this memo, I sincerely hope that Maggie Gallagher is never again able to insist that she is even remotely tolerant of Gay families should she be asked to testify before Congress.
But, in these two weeks since, I was astonished to find waiting for me a letter from The Ruth Institute blaring to the world (and postal carriers) the message "Are you tired of being called a bigot?"! Included amid this letter, aside from the usual plea for money was a lengthy document that The Ruth Institute was billing as "[their] secret weapon", a "weapon" that they typically charge for with a "marriage protection packet" to be given out at hosted theofascist parties as the Ruth Inst. attempted to popularize earlier last year during a regular series of e-blasts! I believe that the Ruth Institute is reacting to the NOM-scandal in an effort to convince as many people that there might, very well, be authentic non-religious reasons to ensure sexual orientation apartheid into civil and secular marriage laws. Here are the guts of the pamphlet (in bold), with my responses... You are more than welcome to respond and supplement by own points.
77 Non-Religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage
The Essential Public Purpose of Marriage
1.) The essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another.
2.) Man/woman marriage allows children to know and be known by their biological parents. Same-sex marriage separates children from at least one parent.
3.) Man/woman marriage sets the foundation for children to have the same biological, legal and care-giving parents. Same-sex marriage separates these functions among different people.
4.) Man/woman marriage provides children with access to their genetic, cultural and social heritage.
5.) Though it's not always possible, children have the best life chances when they are raised by their biological married parents.
This first set of questions are Logically Fallacious and presumes to supplant the hearer's lack of knowledge with what their own ideals for how "traditional marriage" should be! They also, evidently, are presuming that those they are directing their message to will have a very poor knowledge of marriage in culture and history other than their own religious connotations that are quite malleable to these talking points. But, it is also evident that albeit Jennifer Roback Morse (whose as much of a "Dr." as Doctor Laura) is an adoptive motor, this document seems hostile to adoptive families at the outset (notice my first example, below).
The "institution" of marriage has, in no culture or historic epoch, legally bound children in love to their parents. If it did, then it would be evident in early American and ancient European history. Children and women, in particular, have had no legal rights to speak of until very recently on the world-stage. Dolley Madison, a former First Lady, nearly lost custody of her child when her first husband became sick and died. Indeed, had she not married James Madison exceptionally soon afterward, her child would have been forcibly taken from her as a ward of the state. This makes her marriage to Madison more of a convenience, but legal marriages of convenience seem to be fine as far as The Ruth Institute and Nom is generally concerned, so long as Gay people can't call their relationships a "marriage". What's more, however: Where was her child's alleged "right" to be known and loved by her as a consequence of her legal marriage to her first husband? Why was a second marriage necessary to ensure the continuance of those alleged "rights"?!
The Ruth Institute's 4th. point sounds rather aggressively racist and intended to evoke ethnic apartheid! Indeed, it reminds me of my study of the Eurasian hearth-cult in which I not only discerned that the origins of marriage customs and traditions--which revolve intrinsically around the domestic and civil hearth-cult--were proposed by a patrolocal and patriarchal society that sought to control the bodies of women and, by default, to preserve clan lineage from having any biological or cultural tie with neighboring tribes and clans. The virginity of females--in most cultures throughout Europe and the Circumpolar shamanic civilizations--were thought to embody and preserve clan identity, and it was the ancestral flame (tended by the virginal women of each house) who officiated over the rites of marriage. But, I've digressed...
Even in antiquity, children had no rights under marriage (the only public purpose it served even in its most remote and ancient forms was to pass on titles, lands, and properties to a legitimate male heir), otherwise the ancient Greeks would not have disposed of their sickly or malformed infants (likely a survival custom) before being introduced to the Ancestral Flame around which his or her parents were previously married, and in whose presence their marriage was consummated.
Some people say that research shows that children of same-sex couples do just as well as the children of opposite sex couple.
6.) The research in this area is preliminary. We don't have studies that last long enough to show the long-term impact of being raised in a same sex household.
7.) Much of the research in this area does not use a representative sample of same sex couples. People volunteer to be in the study. Volunteers are often more affluent, better educated, and more likely to be better parents regardless of sexual orientation.
8.) Each member of a same sex couple may be a fine parent. But two good mothers do not add up to a father.
Notice that The Ruth Institute refuses Gay parents the dignity of calling them that at the outset! The author of these talking points seem to presume that Gay parents (as well as the poor!) are innately harmful, even to a very minimal degree, to children. But, the argument side-steps the issue of adoption in general; heterosexuals often do not adopt nor foster children to the extent that a Gay couple might. If Gay people were legally prevented from adopting children (which is the follow-through of such an arguments logic!) who would adopt all those kids in need of a home? These kids would be in foster care which is already being stretched far too thin as any Social Worker could tell you. Can heterosexuals be trusted to step up? Not if my brother is to a sample of the American mind-set who is revolted by the thought of raising someone else's offspring. But, it is the last point which seems to be based upon enforcing out-dated gender stereotypes:
Within the context of marriage, it used to be that because the duties of a wife (who could not legally divorce her own husband!) involved keeping the house and providing a husband with his meals, her husband could sue another individual should they injured his wife and incapacitated her preventing her from fulfilling her marital duties. A wife could also not charge her husband with spousal rape because sex was part of a wife's duties. And, if a woman knew that she could not conceive a child before marriage, a husband could (and did) sue her for fraud! Even an article published in Psychology Today insists that we must re-define manhood from these out-dated gender stereotypes!
To be continued....
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