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The Left pursued its gay marriage agenda without regard to public opinion, because proponents believed they were right. Such single-minded belief in one’s values is a powerful tool in politics, when so many people are weak-willed, have half-hearted beliefs, and their political representatives try to avoid the wrath of the true believers.
The lesson? We on the Right need to have the same single-mindedness, self-confidence, and courage to pursue our beliefs, even when they are not currently popular. This is the whole point of politics: to get power and change behavior, which in turn changes what is popular. Not everything we pursue will be equally popular, but presumably the double-digit inflation and the dementia patient in the White House will ensure a wave [Republican] victory …
The America First movement is an insurgent movement, and it is also a challenge to the fiscally conservative, socially liberal orthodoxy that has characterized the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan. Trump showed a different way, and while he did not emphasize the sexual morality issues of the culture war, he did emphasize the importance of being strong and tough and uncompromising. Real America First voters should not give the Left an inch, and we should be devoted to acquiring and using power to further our own agenda.
A good way to separate the brave from the timid would be to deal the Left a loss on the modern sacred cow of gay marriage.
If we want couples to have more babies and for couples to rear more children and for the unwanted children to be reared by a couple, the obvious agreement would be for more couples dedicated to that goal to be able to pursue it.
It is not gay or lesbian couples that are keeping such a goal at bay. It is heterosexual couples keeping that goal at bay.
Homosexual couples have a right to be a happy couple or be a dysfunctional couple. If they choose to rear a child, any child, a relative’s child, an unwanted child or a biologically related surrogate child in a reasonable household and struggle as any other parents do to find their way as the child becomes an adult…I am all for it.
They are not the ones who victimized the minute percentage of body dysmorphics and created a national culture war over their civil rights. It was the Left that did that. There are both homosexuals and heterosexuals that agree with the Left…and that disagree with the Left.
Leave Gay Marriage alone. Heterosexuals have no claim on that often problematic relationship that may ruin the next generation. Don’t blame gay marriage for the Right’s weakness in fighting the Left’s determined destruction of traditional conservatism. That is bigger by far than who can marry whom, or divorce whom, or abuse whom, or rear a child with whom.
Being married and a parent is a human problem to solve. Gay marriage is a legal document, just as Hetero marriage is a legal document.
You have given me to understand that you understand that the family, the begetting of children, the happy home is all important. What else is anywhere near as essential to the continuation of the human race? Sure it must be fed. There must be an economy of survival. And the best such economy is achieved by freedom. And freedom is best protected by law. But it is all for the continuance of the human race.
Should the human race survive? We cannot question whether the human race should or should not survive. The human race itself is the measure of all value.
Marriage is not a legal document. It is an ancient institution, begun to protect women and ensure the safe raising of children.
Of course homosexuals can live together, make legal contracts to suit themselves. But to pretend that is marriage is ridiculous.
Children need a mother and a father in a home. Some unfortunate children do not have one or the other, or are deprived of both. To be raised in adoption by two “fathers” or two “mothers” remains abnormal and a disadvantage, though far better of course than abandonment.
Homosexual marriage is a parody, like so much of life in our decaying civilization,
The Left is a creed of destruction. It destroys, defaces, ruins everything valuable in our civilization. It aims to destroy civilization itself. And human life.
It is a cult of sterility and barrenness.
Homosexual “marriage” is one of its ploys of destruction.
The absurd legalizing of “gay marriage” needs to be undone.
Yes, it is! Are heterosexual couples doing their duty? A happy home is what a family makes it.
The only real flaw in a “blended” family is when a girl child does not have significant time with her biological father. That time delays the onset of menarche and cannot be replaced with a non-biological father.
An adult creating a stable and safe home, loving the child, responsible for the child and creating significant opportunities for the child to engage with a loving and responsible adult of the opposite sex is what is needed. A village is not needed.
Both biological parents responsible for the child/children and creating a stable and safe home-life is the best. Multiple generations is even better. But screwed up is what families often get. Distance from each other is what they often get. Divorce, death, betrayal, handicapping diseases, disgrace, criminality, mental illnesses; that is what they often get.
I don’t care how the future gets responsible citizens. I care that we get them.
Married couples, whether homo or hetero are not giving up their own childhood in proper time and are not interested in caring for a child or an aging parent. Heck, some people don’t even want a relationship at all with another human being.
This is not the fault of gay marriage becoming legal.
Marriage is a parody for many married couples. Marriage Certificates are legal documents. Marriage allowed men to confiscate a woman’s property and to control her behavior in less enlightened eras or areas.
Yes, it ensured that a man’s offspring were his and no other man’s, when the families were patriarchal. That protection was offered. True, a pregnant and/or nursing mother was less able to protect herself…unless she was…but the true role of family was male dominance.
Why do you think that a woman without a man was scorned? Why do you think they were burned as witches? Why do you think Christians destroyed the pagan religions of the regions they conquered? The woman was powerful. She had the bloodline. She made decisions and owned property. She had to be destroyed, controlled and demeaned by the Christian Male or any patriarchal religion or society.
What have men done to be offered this deal, legal and otherwise?
What I see are good and healthy and reciprocally compassionate relationships. Some married, some not. That is what is important to make happy families.
Yes, heterosexual marriage can be very dysfunctional, but gay marriage is abnormal and thereby dysfunctional from the getgo.
The traditional “ideal” of it should still be the standard that we strive for.
But, I’ve always thought the government should stay out of marriage - why should they or the courts even be involved? If they weren’t, then gay marriage wouldn’t even be a political issue.
If gays want to marry, it would be their own business. But, I agree with Jillian that children in a gay family are at a disadvantage, and its not the ideal environment for them.
Also, that the Left has used gay rights as a political tool to destroy society.
Jeanne: Personal preferences, personal virtues, are nice. Cosy to live with. I don’t grudge you yours. Not in the least. How we conduct our private lives and what values we live by are important.
And the polity of our nation-state is important if we are to live as we like. If we are to live at all. America was founded, we all know, on a philosophy of freedom. We want it to stay that way. People can only be free under the rule of law. And what the law allows and what it forbids does matter. Law needs to take account of what people want, value. But can a legislature pass an act compelling “good and healthy and reciprocally compassionate relationships”? No. It can pass laws that time has proved are most likely to encourage and establish the best relationships for survival, continuance, even - broadly - happiness.
Jeanne again: I do not now understand the nature of your conservatism. Do you think of yourself as a conservative?
Your philosophy seems to me more libertarian.
I respect libertarianism. But I don’t think it can work - except as “libertarian conservatism”.
I am not trying to convince you of anything. Not trying to change your mind. I just disagree with your conclusions. And your argument is not closely reasoned. It is more a credo than an explanation.
“Conservatives believe that values, ideals, and institutions that lead to human flourishing should be preserved — and that includes marriage, the pre-political institution undergirding civilization. Apart from the shifting political winds, nothing has changed in the last seven years. Marriage is still the bedrock of a thriving society. Deep down, Republican senators know this, which is why they shouldn’t cave under progressive peer pressure.”
So you, Jillian, are fine with a legal contract just as long as the word is not “marriage?”
If it is two women raising their children within a civil contract relationship, they are dooming their children to an unhealthy family life?
Two men rearing one man’s nephew, adopting him and in a civil contract would be okay, but not if they were married? And, have they doomed their son/nephew to an unhealthy life?
Happy families are happy no matter who is in them. Unhappy families are unhappy no matter who is in them.
The law should be out of this, unless the family is abusive and dangerous for the children.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
My “Creator” is the Big Bang or on a more local level the nature of the planet.
My personal credo is that I take people as I find them, and do not assign attributes to them that are prejudiced. But…“peoples are peoples” and I tend to cut people a lot of slack, especially when considering the harsh realities of the struggle to live, to promote harmony over discord and to just get along as well as possible.
You may be correct, it is a credo more than an explanation of human nature. I fail to understand how it is possible to fully explain all of human nature, such that some humans are deemed less desirable as parents because of their sexual preference.
I do not know the statistics of healthy happiness among homosexual parenting and heterosexual parenting, but I would assume that they may be similar.
We do disagree. Homosexual “marriage” has been LEGALIZED. I am objecting to that, not to adults having sexual intercourse of whatever consensual kind they choose (though I don’t want to be forced to think about it), or people of the same sex living together. You say the law should be out of this, yet you approve of the LEGALIZATION of so-called “gay marriage”? When you say the law should be out of this you are agreeing with me, but in approving of “gay marriage” you are disagreeing with me!
As for the raising of children. There is the ideal - a stable home for children with two biological parents, one of either sex - and there is the reality that marriages break up for many reasons including desertion, divorce and death. No law can prevent that. I did not use the phrase “an unhealthy life”. All human life is somewhat unhealthy, I suppose. I said that a child raised by same-sex “parents” is an abnormality. It is not the best thing that can happen to a child, it is not necessarily a very bad thing. It is abnormal, and the making of laws to make it seem normal is in defiance of common sense. Two people of the same sex cannot in reality be “married”, even if they can be according to some silly law.
Births, Marriages and Deaths are legally matters of public record pretty well everywhere on earth because they have public significance. Marriages did, that is, when there were only two sexes. Now in America there are no “women” except transgendered men and supreme court judges (if they are also black) or vice president (ditto). People are not of this or that sex but of this or that sexual abnormality listed among a multitude of “genders” - meaning that they really enjoy this or that abnormal and in many cases dangerously perverted form of sex and they like to advertise the fact and force others to use a vocabulary of their choosing to allude to or describe them. Okay. It’s only the forcing I publicly object to. (Though the way I write about them, I admit, conveys my distaste.) And I hold the opinion that adults with that cast of mind are far from ideal nurturers, models, educators.
I would contend that Family is the bedrock, not marriage. The family unit is what gives consistency to community. Community gives consistency to the large unit of counties, states and the United States.
Promote harmony over discord in each of these to achieve “a more perfect union.”
Human beings can do this, no matter what their sexual preferences are, no matter what sex they are, no matter what color their skin is, no matter what religious beliefs they hold. This can be passed on to children, no matter whose children they are.
BTW, I have written that I am a Conservative Libertarian. But, mostly, I am an Optimistic Realist.
Gawd, the Moderator again is after me about posting too much…
I did not look to you to explain human nature. Only your own opinion. You tell me your moral philosophy. I do not doubt that you are virtuous according to your own criteria.
The “scholarly research” studies you provide the links to are prize bilge. All such studies are, and these are extra bilgy. Who can identify, survey and certify happiness - and grade it in degrees?
As for the legalization of homosexual marriage, it should have been left up to the states. But, it has been legalized by SCOTUS, and it is far, far different than legalizing the killing of the unborn. This, now, is about equal rights and the equal ability to pursue happiness with a partner in a legal contract, whether a religious ceremony is performed or not. That should not be taken away.
You contend that homosexuality is abnormal. I contend that it is a normal part of our species and of other species, as well. It is a natural part of our species, so how can it be abnormal. Most are not homosexual, so species may continue, but homosexuality is normal. Behavior is another thing altogether. There are a lot of abnormally behaved heterosexuals among us.
And the explanation of your opinion is very much like that of any monotheism.
The governments around the world identify, survey and certify happiness in many areas of life…and grade it. Why not in parenting relationships? Social Services is a big identifier in that category.
“The only real flaw in a “blended” family is when a girl child does not have significant time with her biological father. That time delays the onset of menarche and cannot be replaced with a non-biological father.”
Really? “Significant” time means what? This all sounds sounds highly dubious - if not bordering on yucky taboo. How does the girl’s body know the difference between bio- Dad and step-Dad or adoptive-Dad? Morphic resonance? Who discovered this and how?
