More nonsense from the pro-gaymarriage lobby

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/mps-must-ask-what-they-can-do-for-their-country-20090623-cvcm.html

Mr. Meney’s letter in yesterday’s Herald has evoked quite a response from that paper’s readers, published under the heading “Society won't collapse if we allow same-sex marriage” in today’s edition. Let’s have a look at the arguments advanced by these marital positivists (no defences of the truth about marriage were published today). The first letter was from one Samantha Chung of Randwick (small-type, indented-paragraph text is from the Herald letters, regularly-formatted text is my response):

Chris Meney (Letters, June 23) lays much emphasis on the longevity of marriage as a social institution and views same-sex marriage as a "transient societal whim". However, marriage has always evolved to adapt to "societal whims".

So for her, marriage can never be anything other than the product of positive, rather than natural, law, contained in customs, legislation, and so on; there is, for her, no immutable essence discernable by the light of natural reason.

We no longer view women as property

That was never essential to marriage.

nor marriage solely as a vehicle for two families to amalgamate their wealth

That was never essential to marriage.

We no longer believe women must be eternally subservient to their husbands

A family is not a two-headed monster; it has one head—the husband—and one heart—the wife. And servility is antithetical to true obedience anyway.

or that husbands are entitled to beat and rape their wives.

That was never essential to marriage.

We no longer condemn interracial marriages

That was never essential to marriage.

or discriminate against "illegitimate" children.

That isn’t even relevant!

These changes fundamentally altered the nature of marriage

No they didn’t; marriage was, from the beginning, and is to this day a conjugal union of a man and a woman. All the things she listed were either abuses of the nature of marriage or were not essential to it, with the exception of a wife’s obedience to her husband, which Ms Chung misrepresented anyway.

We now accept that same-sex attraction is not a crime

Yes, but sodomy should be.

or a mental illness

That depends on whom you ask. Some in the ‘G.L.B.T. community’ resent the suggestion, whereas those covered by the initial "T” tend to welcome the notion that transsexuality involves ‘feminised’ or ‘masculinised’ brains in male or female bodies, respectively, and clearly this theorised brain/body mismatch is a defect of nature, an illness, if not, by clinical criteria, a mental illness (with homosexuality differing from transsexuality in degree rather than in kind according to this theory—gays and lesbians would be regarded as having brain ‘masculinisation’ or ‘feminisation’ but to a lesser degree than with transsexuals. Understandably though, gays aren’t too keen on the notion that they have ‘feminised’ brains, or vice versa for lesbians.).

and that same-sex couples exist.

So do incestuous couples. Shall we ‘celebrate’ their ‘love’ too?

Some of those couples would like the privilege heterosexuals take for granted. This does not detract from heterosexual couplings, nor will it lead to a reduction in such relationships.

That’s not the point; it’s not primarily a question of the consequences, it’s primarily a question of whether two individuals of the same sex are even capable of consummating a marriage, which, of course, they aren’t.

The letter concludes with a laughable non sequitur:

The opposition to same-sex marriage appears to stem from a view that the basis of heterosexuality is marriage, and without it everyone would declare themselves to be same-sex attracted.

The next letter was even worse (if you can believe that), and hardly needs any additional comment:

What on Earth can the Catholic Church offer us on the topic of normal societal relationships, when it forces its representatives into an unnatural lifelong denial of their sexuality? What wisdom can it volunteer on parenthood, when its officers are institutionally denied that experience? What can it contribute on children's "natural rights", when it has been revealed around the world to have fostered an environment in which its representatives abused and defiled children, and to have shamelessly attempted to cover it up?

Chris Meney talks about damaging children and society - this at least is a topic in which his organisation can claim expertise.

Graham Price Waterloo

The striking irony, of course, is that the Church’s “representative” in this instance, namely Mr. Meney, is a married man with a good-sized family who, as is well-known, has much “wisdom” to “volunteer on parenthood”, both from experience and from research. And one doesn’t need to be married or have children in order to understand the natural law; the willingness to follow natural reason rather than positivist illogic suffices.

Now for the next letter:

So, Chris Meney, does this mean infertile couples should be denied marriage?

Not necessarily, because infertility with opposite-sex couples is a defect in their respective, or collective, natures, whereas with same-sex couples it is the very nature itself of the relationship which is sterile. Though of course, if the opposite-sex infertility is because of impotence on the part of either prospective spouse or both prospective spouses together then clearly they cannot marry.

Should the process of getting one's tubes tied or a vasectomy automatically annul marriage if there are no children?

Presumably by ‘annul’ he means ‘dissolve’, and the answer then is no if the marriage has been consummated.

Should people who lose their spouse through illness, injury or divorce have their children taken away?

No, because they did not set out from the beginning to deprive their respective children of a father or a mother, which is what same-sex couples do.

All Meney's arguments would mean a yes to those questions.

James Crawley Macquarie Park

Er, no.

The following letter at least had the virtue of confining itself to a single logical fallacy:

Chris Meney sees marriage as a pillar of society holding up all moral fabric, so sacred that to allow same-sex couples to enter would belittle its meaning. I would be interested to hear him argue how Britney Spears's first marriage (which lasted 55 hours) or Elizabeth Taylor's eight marriages make a positive contribution.

Matthew Dunn Cronulla

So Mr. Dunn picks two completely unrepresentative pieces of data—rather than doing something like, say, taking an average based on a large, randomly-selected sample—and proposing them as some kind of counter-evidence for Mr. Meney’s arguments. The folly of this is obvious. But perhaps more to the point: where did Mr. Meney ever say that either of these examples signifies a “positive contribution” to society?

Now for the last letter on this topic:

Chris Meney seems to think "redefining" marriage would damage society. I would like to know what evidence he has. In Scandinavia, where gay marriage has been allowed since 1989, studies by William Eskridge and Darren Spedale indicate that, far from being a threat to heterosexual marriages, it has strengthened understanding of the relationship. There have been more heterosexual marriages and the divorce rate has dropped significantly.

It is Meney's bleak and narrow-minded interpretation of ancient religious texts, resulting in the denial of basic human rights to a significant minority, that is damaging to any civilised society.

Ian Matthews Bondi

Right, so gaymarriage actually increases “understanding of the relationship”. Not changes by substance, but actually increases by degree. How does that work?! What, precisely, did the authors of this study report in their findings? And not only does it improve our “understanding of the relationship”, gaymarriage is also some sort of panacea for problems involving opposite-sex marriages!

There have been more heterosexual marriages and the divorce rate has dropped significantly.

Wonderful! We really can destroy the institution in order to save it! Seriously though, isn’t that just a textbook case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy? How is gaymarriage supposed to improve a society’s real-marriage situation? Where is the causality? Can someone explain this to us poor, benighted religionists? Speaking of religion though, Mr. Matthews, by mentioning "ancient religious texts", has, like all these correspondents, failed to grasp that marriage is fundamentally a matter of natural law, not Divine positive law, or any other positive law for that matter.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, A.D. 2009