Cool Gay Marriage Pamphlet

After posting about gay marriage again yesterday, it occured to me that it's the perfect topic for discussion section next week. We're supposed to be talking about rhetorical evasion strategies, and I'm long-term on record for believing that both sides of the gay marriage debate are disingenuous (to a greater degree than you find with most issues, I mean).

So I've been doing some snooping on the net for discussion material. Ideally I'd like an outrageous essay from each side - one from the gay side saying it's about equal rights (when really it's about enforcing acceptance of their lifestyle) and another from the religious right saying its about preventing the erosion of marriage as an institution (when really it's about keeping their religion in the lawbooks).

Anyway - this is probably old news, but I found this cool link of easy counterarguments to all of the religious right's points. Of course, not all of the analogies work, but here are some I liked:

• Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.


• Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.


• Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.

HA! Classic. I laugh especially hard at the last one. I mean, of all the dumb arguments against gay marriage - c'mon people, bestiality? Do you honestly think that legal gay marriage will lead to bestiality? Talk about a bad slippery slope argument.

But this is what I mean about both sides being disingenuous. What's left out of that point is polygamy, which gay leaders are at pains to say gay marriage will not lead to. Of course, gay marriage will lead to legal polygamy. There's no bad slippery slope here. If gay people expect us to recognize their love as equally legitimate, and marriage is "an evolving paradigm" (to quote the Massachussetts State Supreme Court) ... well, I see no claims here that polygamists can't also make.

I'm upfront about it: polygamy should be legal too. Any sort of such arrangement between consenting adults of legal standing (i.e. no dogs or kids) should be allowed. What galls me about the gay lobby is that they claim to be victims of discrimination (which they surely are) but feel no sympathy with equal victims of the same type of discrimination (polygamists). I therefore have no use for them. But that doesn't mean they aren't sometimes entertaining!