Blandus Rex

Jewel in the Rough

Making all kinds of national conservative waves recently is a fellow church member, Jewel Graham. Brought to prominence in this article by a famous evangelical leader, her name is now popping up here and there in the blogosphere. What did she do? She wrote an opinion piece for her college paper (on-line version Dawgnet)that was not pro-gay and was vilified for it. To show my solidarity, I am posting a bit of an article I wrote back in my college days. Keep at it, Jewel. We need some straight thinkers out there....

Recently passed by both Houses of Congress and sitting on the President's desk is a bill that will restrict the assumed "rights" of homosexuals. It is called the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Basically this bill defines marriage as "the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife", establishing a standard of recognition by which to grant federal tax benefits and such to married citizens. It is important to understand that the bill does not prevent homosexuals from getting married. Let me explain.

No one person in America has the "right" to just go and do absolutely anything they want to do. We all have freedoms, but those freedoms fall within boundaries our society deems necessary or appropriate. For example, we, as a nation, have determined that it is wrong take another person's property, even if you think you have a "right" to it. We have determined that physical abuse, drug use, tax evasion, extortion, and murder are all wrong. One could suggest that in these instances, one group is imposing its ideals on another group and that this should not be. A common question is: "Who are you to decide what is right or wrong for me?" The simple answer is: "Part of the American public with all of the rights and privileges to be involved in the decisions of government as anybody else." That is the way it was meant to be. People governing themselves. Polls show that most Americans are against so-called "homosexual marriages". We have decided, as a nation, that a legal and social recognition of this type of sexual union as normal is wrong. Therefore, everyone, without regard to sexual behavior, may enter into a normal marriage but is prohibited from "marrying" a person of the same gender.

But, you may ask, why do people think "homosexual marriage" is wrong? The answer to this one is not so easy, as many people have many different reasons for what they believe. One reason involves the implications of redefining marriage to mean something it has never meant before. If two men or two women can be married solely on the basis of their supposed love, then certainly we could say that three men could be together. After all, if they love each other why should numbers matter? Indeed, if a declaration of love is the only requisite for marriage, then we could marry a man and a harem, three men and two women, a fishing boat crew, or man and his daughter. Sound impossible? Lesbian activist Roberta Achtenberg, the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, chaired a Mayor's Task Force on Family Policy. Their final report described a family as a "unit of interdependent and interacting persons, related together over time by strong social and emotional bonds and/or by ties of marriage, birth, and adoption." This definition not only would include all of the above examples, but would give people who are not even married a claim to the rights of a married couple.

Another reason involves the religions of the people. In a nation predominately Christian, Jewish, and Islamic -- all of which teach that homosexuality is immoral -- it is not surprising that our culture would adopt a "same-sex is wrong" attitude. We should never say, as a nation, that our religious heritage should be abandoned and forget all it has taught us. Certainly, not all men claiming to be pious have acted for the people, but the majority of social laws in this country's history were based on the teachings of religious men and women working for the common good. This nation passed the laws because the ideas were good and made sense. Only in the last forty years has a liberal trend started to tear down what our predecessors had established. Our nation should not cast off its cultural philosophy simply because it has its roots in religion. The truth is that natural marriage helps society. Research by Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin revealed that almost all political revolutions leading to societal collapse were preceded by sexual revolutions in which marriage and family were no longer given premiere status. As the views of normal marriage and traditional families were swept away, so were the social restraints learned in those families. In healthy families, children learn about acceptable behavior by example. But children are shown incorrect modes of sexual behavior in a "homosexual family". Former homosexual William Aaron explains that a "part of the compulsion of homosexuality seems to be a need on the part of the homophile to 'absorb' masculinity from [many] sexual partners" so that "the most successful homophile 'marriages' are those where there is an arrangement between the two to have affairs on the side while maintaining the semblance of permanence in their living arrangement." Children of homosexuals learn, by example, to act in a way that is unsafe with promiscuity and deviant sexual behavior as the norm. Studies conducted by gay and lesbian groups show that children in homosexual households are four times more likely to get involved in homosexual behavior than children raised in even single parent households. Other studies show that children develop better emotionally, psychologically, and physically under the care of two opposite sex parents. The best thing for a healthy society is the raising of healthy children. This is best accomplished in traditional homes and not by so-called "gay marriages".