Lee Bockhorn, associate editor at The Weekly Standard, summarizes the predicament of the anti-gay-marriage movement:
In the upcoming battle, defenders of marriage must find a public
voice–someone (probably, though not necessarily, a politician) who isn’t
afraid to suffer the disdain of the cognoscenti or be smeared as a
“homophobe”; someone both able and willing to set forth the reasoned
arguments and crucial distinctions that a successful defense of marriage
will require; someone with the patience and fortitude to argue tirelessly
that we can respect the dignity of homosexuals while still maintaining the
institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. And last but
not least, we need someone resolutely unwilling to accept gay marriage as
inevitable.
Finding someone who respects the dignity of homosexuals, while meeting all the other criteria, may be exceedingly difficult.
Stanley Kurtz demonstrates this in his response, which assumes gay people are incapable of monogamy and unable to raise children. Kurtz also envisions a strangely configured slippery slope, in which his prejudices elevate him to high ground.
This conservative Christian Science Monitor opinion is a bit more balanced — and it is tolerant of gay marriage.
Addendum: In a May 2004 article in Slate, Prof. M.V. Lee Badgett thoroughly refutes Morrison’s hero of the moment, Stanley Kurtz, who had claimed that gay marriage is somehow to blame for a (non-existent) collapse of the traditional family in Scandinavia. In fact, heterosexual marriage is doing quite well in Scandinavia, Badgett says, and parenthood within marriage is still the norm.
I respect our homosexual community, i really do feel for them, but a lot is at stake here, I know this may seem irrelevant but we are a nation under God , and God made Man for Woman. Allowing this will only lead to us having to legalize so many other things like animal sacrificing, human sacrificing, sodomy. This will just be an open door for America to get out of control. We have not forbidden them to unite with one another in public, but marriage is just going to far.
Gay indivuals ARE capable of monogamous relationships, as much so as heterosexuals are in relationships and marriage.
America is out of control already on more important issues than this!
Allowing this will only lead to us having to legalize so many other things like animal sacrificing, human sacrificing, sodomy.
Well, one would imagine that any remaining sodomy laws will be off the books if gay marriage is at some point legalized. I hope you realize that “sodomy laws” are about consenting adults having sex, and not about the issue of child molestation. That is an entirely different thing altogether (that is pedophilia/incest/child abuse, etc)!
Also, there’s an enormous difference between allowing two consenting adults to marry and legalizing animal and human sacrificing (or adult-child sex, or whatever else people think up). The most basic difference is that the gay marriage issue involves two consenting adults persuing a loving relationship and wanting that to be legally recognized. Human or animal sacrifice (or child abuse) is really no comparison.