Saturday, June 26, 2004
Muddled thinking and Family Values
Jack Ryan is, it's true, out of the race for Illinois' US Senate seat ... but what it says on his campaign website re: same-sex marriage is so typical of the Republican position that it's worth noting:
When opponents of same-sex marriage talk about preserving the "sanctity" of marriage, they are couching it in religious terms (what is "sancitity," after all, but a religious concept). Since this is an explicitly civil legal issue, in a country defined by the rule of law - not individuals, not God, but law - there's no civil legal reason to preclude this. Sanctity is entirely beside the point.
Of course Ryan's web page also has one of the funnier paragraphs I've seen lately:
Jack Ryan is, it's true, out of the race for Illinois' US Senate seat ... but what it says on his campaign website re: same-sex marriage is so typical of the Republican position that it's worth noting:
I believe that marriage can only be defined as that union between one man and one woman. I am opposed to same-sex marriages, civil unions, and registries.The self-contradiction here is stunning. Aren't the criteria - 1) marriage can only be defined as that union between one man and one woman, and 2) we are all equal before God and should be before the law - mutually exclusive? Isn't marriage, with its many associated legal privileges, reserved exclusively for a union of "one man and one woman?" I.e., a special right based on sexual behavior???
I believe that we are all equal before God and should be before the law. Homosexuals deserve the same constitutional protections, safeguards, and human dignity as every American, but they should not be entitled to special rights based on their sexual behavior.
When opponents of same-sex marriage talk about preserving the "sanctity" of marriage, they are couching it in religious terms (what is "sancitity," after all, but a religious concept). Since this is an explicitly civil legal issue, in a country defined by the rule of law - not individuals, not God, but law - there's no civil legal reason to preclude this. Sanctity is entirely beside the point.
Of course Ryan's web page also has one of the funnier paragraphs I've seen lately:
The breakdown of the family over the past 35 years is one of the root causes of some of our society’s most intractable social problems-criminal activity, illegitimacy, and the cyclical nature of poverty.This from a guy who got divorced because his wife wouldn't, as he requested, have sex with strangers, in public, while he and other people watched. Good solid Republican Heartland family values...
