The Monarchist 1.0
Defending the British Crown Commonwealth and the English-Speaking Peoples
[+] HONOURING OUR PATRON, SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, VICTOR OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES
[+] HONOURING OUR QUEEN, ELIZABETH THE SECOND, ON THE 80TH YEAR OF HER BIRTH (1926 - 2006)
[+] HONOURING OUR KING, SAINT EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, ON THE 1000TH YEAR OF HIS BIRTH (1005 - 2005)
[+] HONOURING OUR HERO, LORD NELSON, ON THE BICENTENNIAL OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR (1805 - 2005)
[+] HONOURING OUR SONS, THE QUEEN'S COMMONWEALTH SOLDIERS KILLED IN THE 'WAR ON TERROR'
Chief Warrant Officer Robert Girouard, 46, Royal Canadian Regiment, Nov 27, 2006 (Afstan)
Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, 34, Intelligence Corps, Nov 12, 2006 (Iraq)
Private Jacob B. Kovco, 25, Royal Australian Regiment, April 21, 2006
[+] HONOURING OUR VETS ON THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VICTORIA CROSS (1856 - 2006)
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Debunking the militants on SSM
It may come across as a surprise to hear a living, breathing anachronism admit this, but as a traditionalist I'm decidedly mainstream on the issue of same-sex marriage. A mainstreamer being not so much a hardcore advocate for either side, as a hardcore skeptic through and through.
All traditionalists fret over the consequences to society that will come about as a result of changing this and that; that's what they do. That's what we all should do. What we should not do is label them as bigots, since we pretty much know what happens to the quality of debate when we do, don't we. We pretty much know how one damned thing after the next can quickly degenerate into one bigot after the next. Because... Lord knows, there's a lot of us out there.
Jay Currie, socially liberal Conservative, is by no means a unique example of this. He is part of a large band of vocal, militant egalitarianists sweeping across Canada, demanding radical change to our social fabric behind a chorus of lower ranking courts and the Charter, whilst shouting down those who dare oppose it as dumb and ignorant. He may not be as militant as some -- he can live with benign indifference (which I from time to time lapse into) on the SSM issue -- but skeptics, those who by definition are active non-believers, he has nothing but scorn for. We are all, in his view, engaged in the politics of pandering to the baseless homophobic fears of the largely ignorant electorate.
Which brings me to what this issue has been portrayed to be principally about: the equality of marriage. How can anyone be against equality, right? After all, what we are merely talking about here is the equality of homosexuals to be granted the same rights before the law as heterosexuals for state-sanctioned marriages. What societal consequence is there in that?
As it already turns out, plenty. What it means in the larger scheme of things is a society without distinction, and the longer term inability to refer to each other as man and woman, husband and wife, brother and sister etc, the deliberate extinction of familial nomenclature..as evidenced by this and this. And just to deflate the laughing assertion that there is no slippery slope here, what will surely follow SSM is SSA, i.e., same-sex adoption, and the also necessary statutory removal of mother and father from the lexicon of politically correct legislation. Gays and lesbians cannot fulfill the dual role of mother and father, so the rest of us can't too. Such is the tyrannous nature of state-enforced equality.
There's a way out of this madness, but disturbingly nobody seems to have the where-with-all to lead us there. You don't have to undermine the beliefs of the majority in order to satisfy the will of a minority. The government could simply have said that it will only sponsor state-sanctioned "civil unions", no matter the sexual persuasion of the couple, and that all religious-sponsored marriages, again no matter the sexual persuasion of the couple, would also have to register themselves as a civil union. That way everybody is happy, marriage is not redefined and the government is not resorting to mass coercion and group think.
It's called freedom, stupid. If only the bigot slanderers could understand this, we'd all be a lot better off.
__________________________________________________________________
Update: After belatedly reading Jay Currie's various articles on this subject going back to 2003, I must admit that his default position on SSM is virtually identical to my own. Absent that choice though, he would rather opt for Liberal state coercion over the Tory position of improving the status quo through the adoption of civil unions for gays. One choice ends any possibility of revisiting it later, while the other at least holds out the possibility of improving on it in the future. One is impatient, the other prudent. And that, the name-calling aside, is the big difference here.
POSTED BY: The Monarchist AT 11:13 a.m. | LINKS |
It may come across as a surprise to hear a living, breathing anachronism admit this, but as a traditionalist I'm decidedly mainstream on the issue of same-sex marriage. A mainstreamer being not so much a hardcore advocate for either side, as a hardcore skeptic through and through.
All traditionalists fret over the consequences to society that will come about as a result of changing this and that; that's what they do. That's what we all should do. What we should not do is label them as bigots, since we pretty much know what happens to the quality of debate when we do, don't we. We pretty much know how one damned thing after the next can quickly degenerate into one bigot after the next. Because... Lord knows, there's a lot of us out there.
Jay Currie, socially liberal Conservative, is by no means a unique example of this. He is part of a large band of vocal, militant egalitarianists sweeping across Canada, demanding radical change to our social fabric behind a chorus of lower ranking courts and the Charter, whilst shouting down those who dare oppose it as dumb and ignorant. He may not be as militant as some -- he can live with benign indifference (which I from time to time lapse into) on the SSM issue -- but skeptics, those who by definition are active non-believers, he has nothing but scorn for. We are all, in his view, engaged in the politics of pandering to the baseless homophobic fears of the largely ignorant electorate.
Which brings me to what this issue has been portrayed to be principally about: the equality of marriage. How can anyone be against equality, right? After all, what we are merely talking about here is the equality of homosexuals to be granted the same rights before the law as heterosexuals for state-sanctioned marriages. What societal consequence is there in that?
As it already turns out, plenty. What it means in the larger scheme of things is a society without distinction, and the longer term inability to refer to each other as man and woman, husband and wife, brother and sister etc, the deliberate extinction of familial nomenclature..as evidenced by this and this. And just to deflate the laughing assertion that there is no slippery slope here, what will surely follow SSM is SSA, i.e., same-sex adoption, and the also necessary statutory removal of mother and father from the lexicon of politically correct legislation. Gays and lesbians cannot fulfill the dual role of mother and father, so the rest of us can't too. Such is the tyrannous nature of state-enforced equality.
There's a way out of this madness, but disturbingly nobody seems to have the where-with-all to lead us there. You don't have to undermine the beliefs of the majority in order to satisfy the will of a minority. The government could simply have said that it will only sponsor state-sanctioned "civil unions", no matter the sexual persuasion of the couple, and that all religious-sponsored marriages, again no matter the sexual persuasion of the couple, would also have to register themselves as a civil union. That way everybody is happy, marriage is not redefined and the government is not resorting to mass coercion and group think.
It's called freedom, stupid. If only the bigot slanderers could understand this, we'd all be a lot better off.
__________________________________________________________________
Update: After belatedly reading Jay Currie's various articles on this subject going back to 2003, I must admit that his default position on SSM is virtually identical to my own. Absent that choice though, he would rather opt for Liberal state coercion over the Tory position of improving the status quo through the adoption of civil unions for gays. One choice ends any possibility of revisiting it later, while the other at least holds out the possibility of improving on it in the future. One is impatient, the other prudent. And that, the name-calling aside, is the big difference here.
POSTED BY: The Monarchist AT 11:13 a.m. | LINKS |
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