{"id":940,"date":"2004-06-30T04:51:55","date_gmt":"2004-06-30T12:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/06\/30\/i-finally-understand-the-anti-ssm-view\/"},"modified":"2004-06-30T04:51:55","modified_gmt":"2004-06-30T12:51:55","slug":"i-finally-understand-the-anti-ssm-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=940","title":{"rendered":"I finally understand the anti-SSM view!"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the barriers to communication between those who favor marriage equality and those who don’t is the whole issue of sterile heterosexual couples. Opponents of same-sex marriage (SSM) explain over and over that there is one and only one legitimate justification for marriage, and that’s providing the best possible environment for rearing children. Which is to say, a woman and a man.<\/p>\n

Just to show I’m not making this up, here’s a couple of representative quotes. First, one from a liberal, Susan “gay marriage is like a funeral for the living” Shell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Whatever else it may accomplish, marriage […] establishes a legal or quasi-legal relation of parenthood that draws on, even as it enhances and modifies, the primary human experience of generation and the claims and responsibilities to which it naturally gives rise. […] All other functions of marriage borrow from or build upon this one. Even marriage among those past child-rearing age or otherwise infertile draws on notions of partnership and mutual aid that has its primary roots in the experience of shared biological parenthood.<\/div>\n

Or as conservative columnist Eve “gays can’t marry because in the books I like men are men and women are women” Tushnet puts it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Marriage […] is inextricably linked to childbearing and childrearing, because marriage is about a future beyond the lives of the people gathered around the chuppa that day. Marriage is about a sense of continuity despite time and change, and a sense that the couple getting married is part of something much bigger than themselves–something bigger, even, than their love for one another. […] But those deep emotions make sense only in a child-centered, rather than couple-centered, understanding of marriage.<\/div>\n

Okay, I think I get it. So what we have is the Platonic Ideal environment for kids, which look something like this:<\/p>\n

\"happy<\/center><\/p>\n

To decide which infertile couples are allowed to get married, what we have to do is see which of them more resembles the Ideal you see above. So consider these two couples.<\/p>\n

\"happy and \"happy<\/center><\/p>\n

Now, most folks who favor same-sex marriage tend to be suspicious of this whole approach to deciding marriage rights. But when they go along with it for the sake of argument, they generally think “well, two gay parents and a child is more like two bio-parents and a child than it is like a childless couple.” In visual terms, people who want marriage equality see this:<\/p>\n

\"love
\n<\/center><\/p>\n

This shows just how immature and selfish pro-SSM people are. They’re clearly thinking only of themselves and are utterly ignoring the children. This is the COUPLE-CENTERED VIEW<\/b>.<\/p>\n

In contrast, people who are against same-sex marriage look at it this way:<\/p>\n

\"crotches<\/center><\/p>\n

See how focused on children this view is? Totally unlike those selfish, “pleasure for adults is the only thing that matters” people who favor same-sex-marriage, this view focuses on what really <\/i>matters. That’s why this is called the CHILD-CENTERED VIEW<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Gosh, I’m glad that’s <\/i>been all cleared up..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the barriers to communication between those who favor marriage equality and those who don’t is the whole issue of sterile heterosexual couples. Opponents of same-sex marriage (SSM) explain over and over that there is one and only one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}