Brownback explains the dangers of gay marriage

September 6, 2007

I always enjoy listening to conservatives explain why they oppose gay marriage. Given the seriousness with which they take the issue, and their campaign for a constitutional amendment, you’d think they would have come up with some compelling reasons by now.

Except, in most instances, they’re surprisingly incoherent. Usually it comes down to an inherent problem with “redefining” marriage. That’s fine, but it’s only half an argument — what happens, exactly, if society redefines marriage to include same-sex couples? If this redefinition is dangerous, what are the consequences?

Last night, during the debate for Republican presidential hopefuls, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) offered an unexpectedly helpful explanation. Fox News’s Carl Cameron asked a woman in a New Hampshire coffee shop if the nation needs a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. She said, “Absolutely not. We’re the state of ‘Live Free or Die,’ and people should be able to marry the person they love.”

After a fair amount of applause from the audience, the question went to Brownback: “Should there be a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? And if so, why?”

Brownback said, “The answer to that is yes. And the reason is is this is a foundational institution.” After a combination of applause and boos, he explained his vision for what happens if gays are allowed to marry. It’s worth paying attention to, because it probably represents the opinions of most conservative opponents of equal rights.

Here’s Brownback’s response in its entirety:

“I understand this is a divided audience on this, and I understand we as a country are struggling with this question, but these issues aren’t done in a vacuum. I had a question earlier about family values, and I think this is important for us to rebuild the family structure. In countries that have redefined marriage, where they’ve said, okay, it’s not just a man and a woman, it can be two men, two women, the marriage rates in those countries have plummeted to where you have counties now in Northern Europe where 80 percent of the first-born children are born out of wedlock. We don’t need more children born out of wedlock; we need more children born into wedlock between a mom and a dad bonded together for life.

“When you do these vast social experiments — and that’s what this is, when you redefine marriage. It’s a vast social experiment. They’re not done in isolation. They impact the rest of the culture around you. When you take the sacredness out of marriage, you will drive the marriage rates down. And currently in this country, currently we’re at 36 percent of our children born out of wedlock. You can raise a good child in that setting, but we know the best place is between a mom and a dad bonded together for life. (Boos, cheers, applause.)”

In a matter of a few seconds, Brownback went from gay marriage to the scourge of children born out of wedlock. At first blush, it seemed like a classic non sequitur — what does allowing gay people to get married have to do with unwed parents?

And then you realize — Brownback seriously believes straight people will stop getting married if gay people start getting married. And if straight people remain single, there will be fewer kids in two-parent homes. And if there are fewer kids in two-parent homes, it undermines American culture. And if we undermine American culture, our institutions crumble.

Two quick thoughts. First, Brownback is mad as a hatter. His argument is absurd to the point of comedy.

Second, it went unsaid, but I’m fairly sure Brownback just made the case for a constitutional amendment banning divorce.

better yet, cb, how about a constitutional amendment banning straight marriage? it would make as much sense……

  • Brownback is mad as a hatter. His argument is absurd to the point of comedy.

    He’s got the facts on his side, CB. The experiment has been performed. These European countries have gay marriage, and have tiny rates of straight marriage. While I personally would regard these as having a common cause, rather than one causing the other, I don’t think he can be dismissed as simply as you do above. (I say this as a straight, married supporter of gay marriage.)

  • Good point, just bill: if there were no straight marriage, the divorce rate would fall to zero in no time!

  • So….

    He opposes “vast social experiments”, then to be intellectually consistent he must oppose “vast chemical experiments” where corporations dump pollutants poisoning said children, or “vast climatological experiments” where CO2 spews into the environment. Alas…

    Shouldn’t the GOP just officially change their motto to “Out of the Boardroom, into the Bedroom”?

  • Actually, the rise in out-of-wedlock births in northern Europe happened some time before some countries there allowed gay marriage. Somewhere between twenty and thirty years before. Maybe people despaired at what might happen 20-30 years in the future.

  • Allen K., marriage rates have been declining in Europe long before gay marriages were allowed in some European countries.

    There is no good argument against same-sex civil marriage, only pandering to prejudice as Brownback shows.

  • i also object to his conclusion that unmarried adults having children is inherently bad. i have two unmarried friends with two children, who have been together for almost 30 years, raising those children together. i also have married friends who are also raising children. and i have (now) divorced friends raising children together. one of these situations is inherently better than the other two? come on!

  • Northern European countries top the Global Peace Index. America is way down at position 96, next to Iran. I certainly know which region I’d prefer to live in as far as security, quality of life and moral decency are concerned. So, yes, Brownback (weird name, poor guy) and his ilk sure are mad as a hatters — and just plain wrong.

  • Even Brownback’s answer left the true rationale unspoken. It goes like this: Man + Woman = Law of God. If you tamper with that, everything is up for review, including the Most Important God-Law Of All: you need Jesus as your savior. If Adam can marry Steve, then maybe I don’t have to show up to church on Sunday. Then the church doesn’t fill the collection plate.

    It’s all about money, really.

  • First, Brownback is mad as a hatter. His argument is absurd to the point of comedy.

    It is not original to him and is taken very seriously by many or the anti-gay religious right of the repub base.

    Second, it went unsaid, but I’m fairly sure Brownback just made the case for a constitutional amendment banning divorce.

    And you don’t think that’s on some agendas? Maybe not a constitutional amendment at this point, but much greater legal restrictions on divorce. Look at the covenant marriage movement.

    They really do want the gov’t to make sex as unpleasant for everyone else as it is for them.

  • 10. On September 6th, 2007 at 11:37 am, phoebes said:
    I read somewhere that Brownback actually said the world was flat. Is that true?

    Yes. I heard it with my own ears.

  • When you take the sacredness out of marriage, you will drive the marriage rates down.

    Here’s the answers.com definition for “sacred”:

    sa·cred (sā’krĭd) pronunciation
    adj.

    1. Dedicated to or set apart for the worship of a deity.
    2. Worthy of religious veneration: the sacred teachings of the Buddha.
    3. Made or declared holy: sacred bread and wine.
    4. Dedicated or devoted exclusively to a single use, purpose, or person: sacred to the memory of her sister; a private office sacred to the President.
    5. Worthy of respect; venerable.
    6. Of or relating to religious objects, rites, or practices.

    Four of the six relate to religion – not that codifying religion into US law would be a “vast social experiment” or anything. The differences between Christian fundamentalists and Muslim fundamentalists are strictly geographic.

  • “Social Experiment” could also be used to describe any civil rights gains in the US, including the abolition of miscenegation [sic] laws. Jesus Christ on roller blades, does this dipshit know how stupid he sounds?

    Second, it went unsaid, but I’m fairly sure Brownback just made the case for a constitutional amendment banning divorce.

    I read some time ago of a small fundy group that thinks the proposed Protect Marriage amendment didn’t go far enough and wants to push an anti-divorce amendment. Maybe they’ll join ranks with Brownbacker, make a lot of noise and further embarrass the GOP.

  • Actually, the rise in out-of-wedlock births in northern Europe happened some time before some countries there allowed gay marriage. Somewhere between twenty and thirty years before.

    Thanks; this is exactly the sort of facts-based rebuttal I wanted to hear to counter Brownback’s theory.

  • Allen K:

    echoing what the others have said, marriage rates in northern (read: not devotedly Catholic like Italy and Spain) Europe have declined due to the lower effect of Christianity in daily life, and the decoupling of the financial benefits of marriage (tax deductions, payments for child care, etc.) from your marriage status.

    A similar trend is occurring in the US. As the real value of tax deductions have declined, and the “marriage penalty” on two-income families has become more prevalent, people marry later. They are doing what my wife and I joke about (we were about 30 when we married): we “skipped the first marriage and went straight to the second.”

  • Pingback: Brownback’s Gay Nup Explanation Defies Reality / Queerty

  • Apologies to Barry Maguire (Sung to the Tune Eve of Destruction)

    The Iraqi “War”, it is exploding
    Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
    You’re mad enough to kill, but not for goin’
    You really believe in war, so where’s that gun you should be totin’
    And even the Tigress River has bodies floatin’

    But you tell me
    Over and over and over again, my friend
    Ah, you’re only scared
    We’re on the eve
    of gay marriage.

    Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
    Can’t you feel the heat I’m feelin’ today?
    If the climate is fucked, there’s no runnin’ away
    There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
    [Take a look around ya boy, it’s bound to scare ya boy]

    And you tell me
    Over and over and over again, my friend
    Ah, you’re only scared
    We’re on the eve
    of gay marriage.

    Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
    I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
    I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
    A douche of a senator helps block investigation
    And FEMA can’t handle evacuation
    When the house market is disintegratin’
    This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

    And you tell me
    Over and over and over again, my friend
    Ah, you’re only scared
    We’re on the eve
    of gay marriage.

    Think of all the hate there is in ME
    Then take a look around to coal mines in northern Utah
    You may leave here for 4 days in space
    But when you return, it’s the same old place
    The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
    You can save your fetus, but don’t care about kids
    Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
    And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
    You’re only scared
    We’re on the eve
    of gay marriage
    Mm, no no, you’re only scared
    We’re on the eve
    of gay marriage.

  • Oh, for pity’s sake – if marriage between a man and a woman is so “foundational,” and so important to the proper rearing of children, why isn’t he fighting to ban divorce? It’s all well and good to talk about how it’s so much better for the children, but with divorce rates what they are today, there are a lot of kids being raised by single parents, who used to be married.

    “Marriage” is a religious term that has worked its way into the civil lexicon out of convenience or laziness or both. Proof of that is that even when people have no religious ceremony to unite them, but only have a civil ceremony, we consider them “married,” and they refer to themselves as “married.” The union of two people under the auspices of the government is a civil arrangement – the religious aspect is icing on the cake, but totally irrelevant to being afforded the rights and protections that come to those whom the state has united.

    I would like to know where and when it was decided that “marriage,” and the reasons people enter into it, has to conform to the definition of those who view it only through the lens of religion. Some marry for all those traditional reasons – love, children, etc. But the two 70-somethings aren’t marrying “for the children,” even if they are marrying for love. Sometimes, even for the elderly, it isn’t about love, either – but about the fear of being alone and wanting companionship. Under the Brownback guide to Marriage, those who cannot have kids, or who aren’t marrying for the foundational aspects, should not be allowed to marry, should they?

    As a married woman with 2 adult children, I can tell you that if Joe and John want to formalize their love by entering into a union that is recognized by the government, I do not feel that threatens my marriage, or the institution of marriage – it just doesn’t. My marriage is not weaker because 2 more people want to be married. If it’s so foundational, it would seem that the more people comprising the foundation, the better.

    I’m just really, really sick and tired of all these people who have nothing better to do than make sure that others conduct their personal lives according to their standards.

  • Hahaha, number 10. He did say that. I remember when he said that I thought, “What the f#%& is he talking about??”

  • Every commenter has pretty much nailed it, but Grumpy @ #12 got the brass ring. The talibangelists who want to impose their vision of a totalitarian state on the American public have been using gay marriage and abortion as stalking horses for decades, and there’s not sign of any letup.

    Brownback is simply another footsoldier in their shadow army, whether he even realizes it or not.

  • Serious question:

    What is a woman?

    I know someone who looks like a woman and has female body parts but was born with a Y chromone. Is she a woman?

    Some states say yes and some states say no.

    I believe that states such as Texas look at the birth certificate and say that my friend is a man. I believe states at California look at her and say she is a woman.

    I believe it means that she can marry anyone she wants.

  • To assuage Brownshirt and his ilk in their concerns for the sanctity of the institution of heterosexual marraige, I hereby propose the Federal Anti Trophy Wife Amendment, or “FATWA.” Under the FATWA, it shall be illegal for a man to leave his wife and marry a younger, prettier woman. Under this FATWA, Rudi Giuliani, John McCain, and Fred Thompson would be guilty of crimes and not worthy of leading this great nation.

  • I know someone who looks like a woman and has female body parts but was born with a Y chromone. Is she a woman?

    If there is a God, I am certain that it doesn’t care. Isn’t this the whole point of spiritualism; to transcend the body, its dependencies, its imperfections and its confines? Isn’t love supposed to be the vehicle by which we make this leap? And if the lady with the Y chromosome, the man with the high pitched voice, the bearded lady, or the person with a disconnect between his/her physical sexuality and his/her psychological makeup, want to spend their lives in a loving relationship with someone, why in the name of God would we want to stop them instead of rejoicing and celebrating the conquering power of love?

  • “He’s got the facts on his side, CB. The experiment has been performed. These European countries have gay marriage..”

    I would also like to point out that only a minority of European countries allow gays to marry.

  • Great solution Eeyore, only that push the scariest wingnuts to the head of the class. If a headcase like Brownback got the nomination, all but the craziest people would fight to put some distance between themselves and the GOP leaving the party in a smoking ruin…Ooooh!

    Very clever.

  • “When you take the sacredness out of marriage…”

    The trouble with this thinking is:

    1) as has been pointed out, sacredness is the realm of the churches, synagogues, mosques, not the civil government.
    2) He is assuming that what the state does affects whether marriage is sacred. It doesn’t.
    3) He is assuming that gay marriage cannot be sacred. Many religious people disagree. Moreover, it follows from his argument that religious recognition and blessing of gay unions will increase their success and help social cohesion
    4) If sacredness is the realm of religions and a civil marriage is not sacred, then he is really arguing against civil marriage as well as divorce

  • I can’t imagine myself saying “I’m not going to get married because gay people can now.” What does them getting married have to do with me?!

  • That’s ridiculous. Also, I’m tired of people like him, and some of the respondents here, saying things off the top of their heads which have no basis in fact. Want to get technical? The Netherlands were the first to introduce “gay marriage” in April 2001. (not partnerships/registries/etc. – actual marriage). That’s one of the few, save Belgium, countries that you’re going to have any real historical data on because the rest like Canada and Spain have been more recent. The others are also more recent and/or chose not to call it marriage.

    The Netherlands’ statline.cbs.nl site shows their historical data. Marriage rates, starting in 1950, went up in 1960, up in 1970, made a COLOSSAL drop by 1980, (note there was no gay marriage present then), went up in 1990, dropped again in 2000. (note gay marriage then started) By 2005 the rates dropped again, but rose slightly in 2006. They also introduced partner registrations around 2000 and thousands of straight couples either opted for that instead or, switched from marriage to that. I don’t see how you can do a cause-and-effect on something like gay marriage or any other single point.

    No, gay marriage is an offspring of social change, not a cause of it.

  • Maybe Brownback needs to study biology a little.

    1. Some proportion of children being raised out of wedlock, after all, result not from their biological parents’ choice, but despite their parents’ intentions (no criticism intended here of unmarried opposite-sex couples who choose to raise their kids without marrying — but they don’ t represent 100% of such children). Um, sex is like that: the generation of child seems to be entirely independent of the intentions of the man and woman who generate it, as long as they do certain things that most humans are generally eager to do. (Why this would be so in a world created as Brownback thinks it was created doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that’s a different argument).

    2. If you allow same-sex couples to marry, in contrast, the number of children being raised out of wedlock, logically, _must_ decrease. If two married men adopt a child, after all, that child is now being raised by a married couple, and was almost certainly not being so raised otherwise. Likewise, married women will continue to both have and to adopt kids, and allowing them to marry means that these kids, too, will be ‘in wedlock’. Logically, Brownback should therefore eagerly embrace same-sex marriage.

    3. Brownback doesn’t mean this, of course, though — he’d rather appeal to a vague (and, as pointed out above, almost certainly NOT causal) ‘correlation’ in Northern Europe, and insist it’s all the fault of gay marriage.

    4. But come now: this is a candidate who also insists that species were all created (6400 years ago?) exactly as they are, and that a nice collection of (occasionally) inspiring texts collected between about 500 BCE and 400 CE in the Middle East is in fact the inerrant, perfect word of an otherwise not visible omnipotent deity (even in English). What’s logic got to do with it?

  • Great thread and one dear to my heart. Quite inadvertently I became somewhat a marriage litmus test poster child for my confused fundie friends. On a sunny Tuesday, in Houston, in the year 1980, TK and I (both professionals) met at the county courthouse for lunch. We got married, and then returned to work. Neither of us ever had any intention of having children. Not that it mattered. Both of us are sterile. Ten years later we adopted my niece (40 years younger than me) thru private adoption due to a sudden family tragedy. Today my daughter is in college and proudly wears a T that proclaims “Be kind to me. One day I will be your doctor”. She also enjoys a very tight relationship with her birth mom (my sister). Unusual scenario? Damn right! A civil ceremony? What would you expect of an atheist? No possibility for natural children? Hey, even my lesbian friends have one up on me there. Unusual and unlikely adoption? Yea, I’ve even been called grandpa by my daughter’s friends. Bad outcome? Says who? Does my “marriage” pass the fundie validity test? Who cares!

  • He doesn’t have “the facts” on his side. He’s deliberately spinning things to create a functional lie.

    Actual marriage is a recent and rare thing, even in Europe. What has been around for a while, and what the studies he is (loosely) referencing deal with is not marriage, but domestic partnerships, which give people some of the benefits and some of the responsibilities of marriage, but are easier to get in and out of. Domestic partnerships, where they exist, are available to both gay and straight couples (because we can’t discriminate against straight people by letting gay people have anything they can’t, even though we CAN discriminate against the gay folks.)

    What the studies actually show is that lots of young straight people don’t marry, but do sign up for domestic partnerships or just live together until they have kids, and then they tend to formalize it. Notice how carefully Brownback mentions that FIRSTBORN children are born out of wedlock. Not second children, and the first ones are only born out of wedlock, not raised by unmarried parents.

    What he is citing is actually support FOR gay marriage. The social experiement is not marriage for gays, but domestic partnerships for straights. And all of the negative consequences he cites (if they are negative) are because straight people have the option of getting some of the benefits they need (as two career single young people) without the commitments of marriage.

    So he doesn’t have the facts. He has spin. And lies. And proof once again, that there is no such thing as a stick too short to use to bash gay people with.

  • Second, it went unsaid, but I’m fairly sure Brownback just made the case for a constitutional amendment banning divorce.

    If only a reporter or debate moderator or townhall questioner would follow-up on this exact point. The anti-gay marriage proponents will either squirm in their hypocrisy or they will agree that divorce should be banned.

    Oh how i would love to see either of those scenarios–especially if its one of the many-times married candidates.

  • I think you are missing the point. In order to make gay marriage equal to heterosexual marriage, marriage will be redefined in such a way that the link between marriage and child bearing is broken. After all, gays can never have their own children. I don’t believe the supporters of gay marriage want to re-define marriage. On the contrary, I think gay marriage supporters want to have equal marriage for everyone. However, natural law won’t allow it. This is why the equating of gay to heterosexual marriage is so insidious. No matter what the character, desire or experience of the people involved, or the government they live under, gays will never have their own children. There is no condition under which this will change. So heterosexual marriage will have to adapt to the parameters of gay marriage in order to be equal.

    One can make the argument that marriage takes personal behavior and extends into ‘idealized’ public behavior, i.e. responsible behavior to the society at large, and is the basis of a society. And I believe this is the motivation behind the gay marriage initiative. Even though many marriages fail, many people still attempt it. You can say that gays can raise children that are not from the marriage. And yes that can happen. But this doesn’t address the condition of a husband and wife raising their own children. I don’t think any society would be interested in supporting a form of marriage that doesn’t protect the procreation of children within the unit. After all a society has to be concerned about regeneration. Why would a society adopt laws in order to benefit gays, certainly a minority, with the result of leaving the nuclear family broken? There is no way to reconcile these two ends, if you truly want equality of marriage. (Blame cannot be laid upon any politician or interest group for this polemic. It is a condition of our human sexuality. Can a homosexual claim discrimination from the government because gay sex doesn’t produce children?)

    The bottom line is that gay marriage doesn’t work in the aggregate, i.e. for the regeneration of the social order within the institution of the nuclear family. So the debate comes down to the nuclear family and its importance. If a society were to toss the nuclear family out the window, what would replace it? Obviously, if the law didn’t recognize the nuclear family it wouldn’t disappear, i.e. meaning the society would promote a legal system that doesn’t reflect how most people live, either in reality or ideally. This makes a mockery of the law, which then has its own ramifications to the detriment of a civilized society.

    At this point it becomes a matter of who is in the majority and who is in the minority. You can talk about the protection of minority rights, however, protecting the minority in this case will effect the majority, some would same, to its destruction. I suppose if gay marriage could be legalized without effecting heterosexual marriage, there would be less concern about the nuclear family. I believe that scenario is called a civil union.

  • Second, it went unsaid, but I’m fairly sure Brownback just made the case for a constitutional amendment banning divorce.

    It sounded more to me like he was looking for an amendment against adultery in any form, because it has the potential to cause out of wedlock children.

    The previous commenter sounds like they are making a case against adoption in any form, because natural law doesn’t allow it. At least, according to whatever version of the Big Book of Christian Fairy Tales this individual is concerned with, I’m guessing. I don’t even want to begin to get into the unhinged lunacy inherent in that line of (cough) thought – but I would like to mention that it’s a good thing that humans (usually) don’t get burned at the stake any more for calling them full goose bozos. Whatever flavor their religious insanity is.

    I would also like to point out that one of the reasons that I have never been married is because I will not allow any of their superstitious nonsense into my life – and you pretty much have to, if you want to get married. I will not support their abuse of spirituality even to that limited extent. So, thanks to religious extremism in our society, another individual stays out of the ‘married’ column in the stats. Thanks, gawd squad!

  • Re: RdA @ #40

    First, that was about as eloquently and persuasively as I’ve ever heard the argument put. Having said that, there are still 2 very important points that aren’t addressed, one of which has been made repeatedly in this thread: just why a non-procreative marriage devalues a more traditional procreative one.

    Secondly, why is it not that, by the same token, a non-procreative marriage such as the one described by Chopin (#37), or a marriage such as my own where my wife (whom I love so much, I’m tearing up as I write this) cannot get pregnant, also a threat to procreative marriages?

    You make your argument with such conviction and eloquence, yet with such cold pragmatism, it actually breaks my heart to think that perhaps you’re right and my beloved wife and I are both worthless.

  • Whatever, CB. I’m a married man and really like being married, but I really don’t give a damn who it’s to. So if I’m allowed to chose from either sex, I’m just going to go with one of my buddies. We drink the same beer, watch the same shows, and we can spend all our time oggling women. That’d be awesome.

    And without a doubt, we’d both be doing the humpa-humpa with some of those women and couldn’t marry them because I’d already be married to my buddy. And hence, out of wedlock children. Damn, this stuff’s easy. Too bad Brownback’s already figured it out.

  • #40… man, that’s some sick stuff.

    What is “natural law”? Is it the same for you as for me?

    And where is it written–in a text that all of us honor and recognize, so religious writings are out–that the purpose of marriage is to have children?

    This is the key premise of your argument. I don’t think you can substantiate it without recourse to some moral rulebook that you might defer to (as is absolutely your right), but I would not.

    This isn’t just theoretical for me, by the way. My wife is 42; we got married the day she turned 40. It’s very, very unlikely that we’re going to have children, at least our own biological children. So why is my marriage worth less than the two 20 year olds who screw around in the backseat of the car, get pregnant and decide to “do the honorable thing”–never mind that they’re almost certainly less prepared to be either life partners or parents than many gay couples I know?

    Without whatever your religious text of choice is, your argument, like Brownshirt’s, crumbles into sand.

  • RdA, @40,

    How’s a baby born to an artificially inseminated woman — in a heterosexual marriage, but whose husband’s sperm-count is too low — any more “hers” or any more “natural” than Mary Cheney’s?

    Sure, the aim of any species is to procreate and to “regenerate” a species but where is it carved in stone, that *the same “unit”* which engenders a child is, necessarily, the one which should be raising it? And that it has to be composed of two, specifically-gendered members of the species? A marriage between one man and one woman as the means of continuing the species is limited, strictly, to the Bible. And its later addition (New Testament) at that…

    As a half-Jew, I object to the newcomers telling me what I can or cannot do, aaccording to some “natural law” embraced by that text. As an atheist, I object to *any* religious text dictating my behavious. As an — adopted — American, I insist on my — Constitutionally guaranteed — right to live in a country where someone elses’s superstitions are not imposed on me by someone whose brain has been corroded by same. Even in the “red regime” Poland where I grew up, I was allowed that much freedom — to believe or not.

  • Here’s the thing – we don’t all have to believe the same things. We don’t all have to believe that marriage is reserved only for one man and one woman, because we aren’t all put together in exactly the same way. For some, love and desire are about someone of the same sex. For some, love will not equal marriage. For some, love will lead to marriage, but it won’t lead to children. For some, love will lead to marriage, and then that marriage will break, or love will end. For some, marriage will happen for reasons that have nothing to do with love, nothing to do with children, everything to do their history, with peer pressure, with the feeling that it’s what is just supposed to come next.

    We are all mysteries unto ourselves, and none of us can say what tomorrow will bring, how life will change us, what directions we will go in. Life and love are affected by so many things, it is impossible to predict that if A happens, B will follow.

    What we have are structures, foundations, building blocks. That we can get married in accordance with the government’s structure doesn’t mean we have to. That we can be married in the eyes of God, doesn’t mean we have to.

    I’m not suggesting that I think someone should be able to marry their dog, or that marriage could consist of more than 2 people.

    What I am saying is that with some kind of defined structure, it should then be up to us to decide what marriage will mean for us.

    This is the thing that makes me the craziest – that some people seem to think that their definition of love and marriage should define it for all of us. No, sorry – that’s up to me to decide for me, and for others to decide for themselves.

  • How many children can 2 gays produce? “O”
    How many children can 4 produce? “O”
    strong families = strong America

  • Hey #47, asshole, two gay people can produce children. Just like every other typical winger your a total fucking idiot. What don’t you understand about procreation? A gay man and a gay woman can produce children. I feel sorry for your children if you are lucky enough to have them. They probably got taken away from you because you’re totally ‘I am Sam’. You can’t produce children by sitting in front of your computer all day jerkin’ it to gay porn either. So put down your baby penis and take the butt plug out of your ass and go suck off karl rove some more. Go spew your fucking stupidity at the family research council’s website.

  • If marriage is about having children, then those who are sterile, those who are past their childbearing years and those who don’t intend to have children should not be allowed to marry, right? And if a marriage has not produced children within some specified time period, maybe the state should dissolve that marriage.

    If marriage in and of itself conferred strength and stability, there would be no divorce, which makes me think that you don’t know much about people, or marriage.

    Of course, I knew you didn’t know much about people when I saw that you think a gay couple cannot have children. As long as someone has a functioning reproductive system, he or she is capable of creating children – it’s not like marriage is the thing that triggers one’s ability to reproduce.

    Tell you what – you marry for the reasons that matter to you, and allow everyone else to have the same freedom.

  • sam brownback is a fool — just ask all the tens of people who attend his rallies. his whole deal is beyond ridiculous, and i refuse to believe that someone who has been successful enough in life to be elected to the united states senate can’t see the double standard that he’s preaching. lies and liars. so it goes. welcome to america.

    wake up loser, you’re not in kansas anymore.

  • Look, this is what I am saying:

    1) The gay marriage debate takes the discussion to a level of considering the social implications of the law.

    2) It is the state, through its laws, that promotes what is valuable or worthy to the society.

    3) Currently with heterosexual marriage as the basis of our marriage laws we have:

    a. The protection of the nuclear family.
    b. The protection of the non-procreative heterosexual marriage.
    c. The illegality of homosexual marriage.

    4) If marriage laws include homosexual marriage, equating heterosexual and homosexual marriage, we have:

    a) The protection of the homosexual marriage
    b) The protection of the non-procreative heterosexual marriage.
    c) The legal nullification of the nuclear family.*
    *This happens because homosexual sex is barren – within the marriage –
    universally.

    Does this mean that the day after gay marriage is legalized, the authorities are going to round up and put away members of nuclear families!! Absolutely not. The nuclear family will not be declared illegal (as gay marriage is now). However, it will have no legal status – because it is no longer linked to marriage. So the nuclear family becomes vulnerable – not by anyone’s intention, mind you.

    So through this vulnerability, the nuclear family is no longer a foundational intuition of society, not even as an ideal, it will become devalued, hence people will no longer enter into it. (I believe this is Brownback’s argument).

    So the debate is ultimately and necessarily about the nuclear family.

    And I will say openly that all the leading presidential candidates, none of whom support gay marriage and are (Oh Surprise!) all lawyers, could open their mouths and explain these cumbersome legal arguments to a dumb **** like me who only know how to ask questions and not answer them. At least, at least Brownback has the balls to put some meat to his position and lead the debate to what is legally and socially relevant. You don’t have to agree with him that this will lead to a ‘bad’ result, but it has to be acknowledged that he is correct in his assessment that this is truly a vast social experiment. So I’ll give him that. You can call him names, but he is the only politician addressing the constituency with intelligence to take this issue seriously and the other candidates are what, counting their money.

    You know why couldn’t the media get a couple of family law lawyers to discuss, not politicize, what it means to say the nuclear family is legally nullified. What the hell does that mean? And really, we really have to close the book on all this sweet, sentimental crap, you know, you can have anything you want in society – I’ll marry whom I want and you marry whom you want. We are talking about the changing the LAW, folks – get it, the LAW!

    The ultimate question becomes what is it that a gay couple will gain legally by being married as opposed to being part of a civil union and how does this benefit society: the first threatens the nuclear family and the second doesn’t. (The threat comes from what the society sanctions as law, not that my neighbors are gay.) With what will the society replace the nuclear family? The supporters of gay marriage need to answer these questions. And then there is just that small item that the majority of people are straight and will continue to have children. What will happen to them in relation to the state?

    VAST SOCIAL EXPERIMENT? Your d*mn right! And where is your presidential candidate on this topic?

    If you think this is an argument from a bigoted fool take notice of the 2004 Arizona Supreme Court ruling which favored the ban on same-sex marriage because ‘it found that the state had a rational basis for prohibiting same-sex marriage because of goals related to procreation and child-rearing’.

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  • Brownback is a hypocrite who claims to be pro life and pro (heterosexual) marriage but has shown he will compromise his stated beliefs to try and get elected.

    He was the key speaker at the annual fundraiser for the Tahirih Justice Center, which is a radical Iranian religious extremist feminist group based in America with a very strong pro-abortion/anti-family/anti- Christian agenda.
    Brownback worked with Tahirih Justice Center sponsoring the International Marriage Broker Regulation act, an unconstitutional law that requires a background check in order for American matchmaking clients to communicate with a foreigner.
    Even mainstream feminists think Brownback romance law is wacko
    http://www.butterbach.net/wendy/w134.htm

    The Tahirh Justice Center receives large Federal grants, spending some helping women but spending GREATLY on Lobbyists and Public Advocacy (suspiciously) not itemized in their annual report.
    http://www.newswithviews.com/Usher/david

    On January 27, 2007 Brownback and Tahirih Justice Center manipulated Radio Vatican with a one sided radical feminist broadcast with shocking lies and hysterical anecdotes. They slandered Americans who date foreigners as often sexual predators, rapists or even pedophiles, “many are premeditated torturers”. Two days after the broadcast began Radio Vatican scratched the broadcast after learning of numerous inaccuracies and false hysteria.

    If Senator Brownback was willing to deceive the Vatican one wonders how much he is trying to deceive the public and media during his presidential campaign.
    Dave Root

  • Yea… you people take marriage to a new level. Back then marriage, or religious cerimonies were for having children; All the Henry(s) , Kings and Queens, Native Americans, Romans, Greeks, ect., ect., ect. And yes marriages and/or religious ceremonies did and still do unite two people, people who choose to stay together ’til death do them part and have children, that is what it was and should all be about. Why do people have to take such a valuable, beautiful tradition and turn it into something that is a show for others? Yes, think about it, it is not those two virtuous young girl and boy being friends in the beginning and then figuring out that they love eachother some time later, then can’t wait to get married/ hitched, and live happily ever after stories you hear anymore, nop; something much more discusting, people being too graphic about their sex lives everytime they talk to their friends, or sometimes parents or others, who carse ehat goes on, it is and should be secret. People are currupted and discusting these days, and not natural. Obviously, as stated before by others and duh… gays and lesbos cannot create a child together, so why do people get married who are of the same sex? To unite them, no, they cannot unite together, not like a man and women can…(know what I mean?) And hello, AIDS is a natural defense against humans and animals to control population. So why do gays get it, when they stick their #$%^% into the poop whole of another man, that is not what that is meant for, honestly. There is a disease for them. Ha, HAA! Their fault. And AIDS are also in
    Africa, there are many of them and mother-nature controlls them, not people, not the government. They ar eon their own. You gay and lesbo lovers get emotional, and if we were not as civalized as we humans are now, almost as if we were cave-men, we would not survive. Our ancesters relied on instincts and some thinking and communication, if there were any gays then, I am guessing they were dead. Or disease got the better of them. People and animals were always at war and still are, and if anyone is weak, why live, it is just hurting our species? Gay is Mother-nature’s way of cutting-out the weak. : ) LOVE! You people have no value, no morals, no way of life, nature’s way of reproducing and a species staying strong, not by way of guy-guy, nor women-women. ! PEACE!

  • Seriously, being taught in the medical field, gay is not healthy, and not safe, but go on ahead, who’s stopping ya? Sick-ooos! (No respect for human kind what-so-ever!)

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