Diary of a Wolfeman

Once again, commenter Casey has gone completely off the mark. To wit:

Comparing gay marriage to inter-racial marriage is not only ignorant, it’s offensive to people of color like myself. Banning inter-racial marriages was wrong not because it was unfair to people who wanted to marry across ethnic lines, but because ethnicity is an inherent, genetic characteristic trait that cannot be discriminated against by definition of the Constitution.

Homosexuality, however, doesn’t enjoy such a luxury. There is no such thing as a gay gene. There is no such thing as being born gay. Contrary to what you might read in Willamette Week or the Mercury, being gay is not an inherent, genetic characteristic. It’s a result of nurture and environmental factors.

HOWEVER… Measure 36 isn’t about a sexual consideration, it’s about what’s best for Oregon families. Homosexuality is another topic of discussion altogether. If Measure 36 doesn’t pass, we’re one court case away from legalized same-sex marriage, and the majority of families around Oregon don’t feel the same way about same-sex marriage as they do in Northwest Portland.

Traditionalists in Pendleton, The Dalles, Coos Bay, Klamath Falls, Burns, Vale, Medford, La Grande, Sisters, Ontario or elsewhere around the state do not want downtown Portland values shoved down their throats. People around the state think it’s pretty arrogant of four Portland Commissioners to decide for them what’s best for Oregon families. That’s what (Amendment) 36 is about. It gives Oregonians a chance to voice their opinion, something Diane Linn and her girlfriends didn’t want to make available to them.

What you’re saying about not wanting government choosing services for you is so accurately in line with my point. Diane Linn should leave the moral decision-making up to Oregonians.

Actually, the gay / lesbian and inter-racial marriage issues are very much alike. Sure, being ethnic is genetic, but it was a matter of choice that they wanted to marry outside their ethnicity. The same goes for gays and lesbians – no matter what the cause of their choice in lifestyle, it is still a choice for them to want to marry inside their gender.

So, with inter-racial marriage, we had two groups of people, one saying to the other: “No, you can’t do this because we don’t like the moral considerations.” Most likely, most if not all of the friends and family of the inter-racial couples involved supported the union, but the people who didn’t even know the couple were all against it on principle.

Here, we have much the same situation. We have the two groups of people, and one group says to the other: “No, you can’t do that because we don’t like the moral considerations.” Those that have gay friends or family are in favor of gay marriage, while those people who do not know or in any real way relate with or even see gay people are against the unions on principle. Not because there is any proof that this will somehow be detrimental to society, but just because they don’t like it.

Quite honestly, how would same-sex marriage or plural “group” marriages affect you on a daily basis? I have already shown how your economic concerns are baseless. Gay couples aren’t likely to have children, so it’s not like your kids will meet theirs in school or at the park. Aside from seing a gay couple on the street wearing matching rings and holding hands, chances are that even know. It’s not like they’re going to dance around the neighborhood shouting “We’re married!” at the top of their lungs.

As for the group marriages that you seem even more against, once again, your voice of opinion comes too late, because it is not illegal to date more than one person. I know several polyamorous ‘groupings’ where there are children involved, and the opinions of the kids run about 50-50 as to whether or not they would pursue a similar lifestyle. For these groupings to be able to marry wouldn’t change your life in the slightest. (Unless you are a Mormon, in which case it would simply re-instate a church policy that had to be changed due to legal considerations.)

You say that the people of the more rural regions of Oregon don’t like having Portland values shoved down their throats? Well, the problem you have there is that roughly half of all Oregonians live in the Portland Metro. Half. Having grown up in and around Grants Pass, I can tell you that of Josephine county voters, about 25% of them couldn’t care less if gays or groups got married.

The ones who are actively in favor of this have moved to Portland or other larger cities already. Frankly, if you’re worried about family values in your kids, you’d get more mileage from a measure that defines a blowjob as a sex act.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 25th, 2004 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.