Posted by
TheChair on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 4:23:07 AM
Common sense tells us that, more often than not, passion blinds lovers and therefore luck often plays as much of a role as judgment (maybe more) when two people commit to each other. Experience teaches, "the older, the better," with visible means of support and a lot in common. Thus, a sensible reaction to the advertisement that has been appearing on our television screens about the thwarted bride should be skepticism. In the segment which appears, a young and beautiful bride is seemingly thwarted at every step she makes toward the altar. The final straw occurs when someone puts a cane in the aisle and throws the sweet young thing to the floor. Then, viewers are asked, "How would you like if someone tried to prevent you from marrying the one you love?" Paid for by Equality California, an opponent of Proposition 8, the constitutional initiative that would declare, in opposition to the California Supreme Court's June ruling that mandated same-sex marriage, that only marriage between a man and woman is valid in California, it conveniently leaves out the relevant facts and appeals strictly to our emotions. That puts the ad on a level with the weakest candidates for life-long marriage.
It speaks volumes that the only way that supporters of same-sex marriage can argue, at least now, against Proposition 8, is by a rank emotional appeal. People sympathize with the beleaguered bride in the ad precisely because she is marrying a man, and not a woman. This is moral relativism in action. Of course, the end result of this moral relativism is moral reversal. The success of same-sex marriage spells the doom of marriage as it has been understood for millenia: as an institution that not incidentally results often in the begetting of children, not to mention legal obligations of husband and wife to each other. It helps that marriage is cemented by the powerful pull of the natural attraction of men and women for each other. Mutual complementarity of the couple and role models for the children are the basis for human civilization, not to mention ensuring that a nation survives into the future through its citizens' progeny.
Richard Reeb