That makes sense, I suppose, though I wouldn’t have pegged Rep. Scott Boyd, chief sponsor of the bill to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution, as the type of guy to head up this particular parade. But I suppose that if you’ve been elected to office in Lancaster County, you need to remember which side of your bread gets the butter; if you’re not an extremist, you need to play one on TV, or else you might be looking for a new line of work come the next election.
Our story last week was filled with all the usual rhetoric: Pennsylvania needs to head off “activist judges” at the pass lest they undercut the traditional family, blah blah blah. You’ve heard it all before; over the course of the next few months, you’ll hear it all again.
Thing is, I understand why proponents of revising the state constitution are doing this. When you come right down to it, they’re afraid, afraid of change, afraid that redefining what has been a cultural norm for thousands of years might harm not just marriage but society itself, in that marriage has been a fundamental building block of civil society.
I understand that apprehension, though I nevertheless believe it to be utterly misplaced.
For the assumption is that permitting gays access to the legal protections afforded married couples automatically undermines marriage as an institution.
The reality is that heterosexuals have already undermined the institution.
The culture of divorce and the all-too-frequent abandonment of parental responsibility has frayed the very bonds that made civil society possible. Marriage has been important because it has provided stability for both individuals and, ultimately, entire communities. Couples marry, buy or build homes, have kids and necessarily take an interest in those kids’ lives. This commitment to one another ultimately translates into a commitment to society as a whole; it makes our neighborhoods, our schools, better places to be. This is the key contribution of marriage as an institution; this is the real importance of marriage to society. And it has nothing to do with the sex of the participants.
Indeed, the sex of the participants has only been important in that men and women can have children, and gay couples couldn’t, that is, until same-sex couples began adopting kids.
Are we to say that their commitment to such children, to their communities or schools, is somehow less valid or valuable than that of heterosexuals? And in a society where half of marriages end in divorce, where the number of kids born out of wedlock has skyrocketed, can we really afford to bar the door to those who wish to make the very commitment without which civil society might never have evolved?
Doing so does nothing to strengthen marriage as an institution, nor society as a whole.
You might argue that it weakens both.
Of course, the culture warriors aren’t buying it. For in this debate, reason is relegated to the back seat while fear and dogmatism ride up front.
But what I want to know is this: How is banning gay marriage going to drive down the divorce rate? What is it going to do to ensure that wayward parents honor their obligations to their children?
Exactly how will this measure “protect marriage,” or strengthen society?
Or is all of that secondary to punishing those uppity queers and keeping second-class citizens in their place?
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com or phone 291-8817.
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