Yet more nonsense from the pro-gaymarriage lobby

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/letters/concern-over-burqa-should-not-trump-tolerance-20090624-cwpn.html?page=-1

The Herald has published another four letters on the topic of gaymarriage in today’s edition of the paper—three for, one against. Here’s the first one (small-type, indented-paragraph text is from the Herald letters, regularly-formatted text is what I have to say):

I was born in the mid 1970s to an unmarried teenage mother, father unknown. I was adopted by a couple who were unable to have children of their own. When I was four my adoptive mother died and from then on I was raised by my father, who afforded me all the intellectual, physical and spiritual nourishment and love any child could hope for.

Chris Meney (Letters, June 22) has grave misgivings for children who do not know their biological parents or who grow up without both a mother and father. But the provision of love, nurturing and guidance is surely what defines good parenting; it has nothing to do with the gender or sexuality of the people involved.

Come on, even an ardent feminist like Ms Naomi Wolf can see that men and women tend to have different parenting styles and that “[o]ne can see the advantages to children of having both parenting styles” (source). Furthermore, the fundamental requirement (after the basics like providing food, clothing, shelter) for loving one’s children is to instruct them, by word and example, in the natural law; the end of the law is love, after all. Any “guidance” towards defiance of the natural law, which is what same-sex couples do at least by example, and probably by word too, is a betrayal of one’s parental duties.

Once the red herring of parenthood is cast aside,

Marriage usually entails a civil right to adoption, so parenthood is no “red herring”.

Meney's attempt to dictate the "proper role of the state" in denying full equality to same-sex couples reeks of religious dogma and intolerance.

More to the point, what it “reeks of” is natural law, and this is what really terrifies the Sodomites’ League—in an ultra-secular country like Australia it’s easy turn people against something by linking it with “religious dogma and intolerance”, but most people’s natural reason has not yet been so crippled by positivism that they can’t see, when it’s pointed out, that children ought to have a mum and a dad and that a marriage based on sodomy is no marriage at all. The problem is that they’re too apathetic to do anything about it. Mr. Mark Latham once remarked that ‘multiculturalism’ owes its success (I use the term advisedly) to the apathy of the Australian populace, and I fear that this same apathy will lead to the triumph of gaymarriage and same-sex adoption.

No one is demanding that religious groups bless same-sex unions;

Really? So when a pair of Rainbow Sash Catholic blokes demand a Church wedding the relevant Ecclesiastical authority will be free to reject the demand with impunity, despite the fact that it’s a civil right?

simply that they stop meddling so vocally in what should be a secular debate.

Stephen Gray Erskineville

So Catholics can participate in public discourse so long as they betray their principles. Got it.

Please let us be clear on the difference between marriage and procreation. Chris Meney's description of heterosexual marriage neglects the obvious - the next generation of Australians were not necessarily conceived in a married relationship. Clearly procreation cannot be used as an argument to exclude same-sex couples from state-approved marriages.

Alicia Zikan Invergowrie

What?! How does the conclusion in the second sentence follow from the preceding observation?! Procreation is the primary end of marriage, and marriage is the best environment in which to raise the products of procreation. How does the fact that some children are born out of wedlock disprove either of these two things?

I agree with Chris Meney: we must protect the sanctity of divorce.

Byron Kelly North Epping

Some kind of attempt at wit, I suppose. There’s truth in there, though: given the well-known homosexual aversion to fidelity the divorce rate is sure to go up once gaymarriage is legalised.

The Herald did at least allow one refugee from the dictatorship of relativism to have his say, though:

The headline on yesterday's letters page says: "Society won't collapse if we allow same-sex marriage". True enough. The fact that such a ludicrous and unnatural notion is even on the agenda shows there is no need to blow the trumpets, for the walls have already collapsed.

Reverend Peter Barnes Revesby

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. William, Abbot, A.D. 2009