Marriage as Affirmative Action
November 20, 2003
Most folks are all too aware of the moral reasons why same-sex marriage is an unacceptable idea. But few have recognized the civil issues at stake, which provide overwhelming legal arguments opposing "same sex" marriage.
In the pure "civil" sense, marriage is the greatest "affirmative action" program in the history of modern civilization. It erases all social, sexual, and economic disparities between men and women. We know that marriage produces the best outcomes for men, women, and children. As we have seen in divorce, the disparities become major social problems for everyone involved.
Without racial affirmative action, blacks would still be segregated, uneducated, and disconnected from society. Proponents of same-sex marriage basically argue that "equality" means fatally magnifying the inequalities of the sexes to the maximum possible degree.
Nine out of ten single parent households are headed by a woman. Despite our belief that we are largely "egalitarian", most folks instinctively place the mother "naturally in charge" of the family. This is the present-day reality, even without handing women the right to marry each other in segregating the social and economic benefits of marriage solely for themselves.
If two mothers married each other, they would have with six sources of income: the earnings of both mothers, two sets of child support orders, and two sets of welfare and "marriage related" tax subsidies which inure to the benefit of married families with children. Since men cannot bear children, they will largely be excluded from civil society. If Goodridge is not reversed or nullified, we will see women marrying each other in relatively large numbers, having children and collecting child support from various hapless studs, and father-absence will explode along with all the social problems that go with it.
The National Organization of Women realized the above many years ago. It has been working hard to inject it into society, by attempting to "normalize" lesbianism and use them as a "victim class". N.O.W requires this of all feminists: "The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist." (National NOW Times, Jan.1988)
Readings of feminist papers reveal that their real political goal was to create the right for any two women to marry. This is why you see so many feminists, particularly in acadamia and law, who are not lesbians but who adamantly back the lesbian agenda. Most of the activism and legal work since the late 80's has been done by N.O.W. and its radical cohorts in law and acadamia. Homosexuals joined in simply because they wanted the same for themselves, and because N.O.W. wants it to "look" egalitarian.
We absolutely cannot allow America to become segregated along gender lines, even a little bit. Abe Lincoln was right, Douglas was wrong. The past thirty years of increasing gender-segregation urges an entirely different course of action: We must now grant to fathers the same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace. The very last thing we should do is create a perverse institution that would literally export millions of normal, good fathers to a modern-day equivelent of the "south forty".
Massachussetts has the most "anti-family" Supreme Court judges in the nation. Perhaps a billboard about this in the state capitol would wake them up.
