Officious Pedant on Gay Marriage

Our beloved Officious Pedant, in a reply to the "Gay Marriage Is Centrist" entry at The Mighty Middle, has laid out what I think is the world's best rebuttal to gay marriage opponents. It's been highlighted at TMM, and it clearly deserves front-paging here as well. Enjoy:

For those of you who oppose gay marriage, let me just say that's fine with me. Oppose it all you like, but do so honestly.

There are two elements of the opposition argument I pay no attention to whatsoever. Traditionalism and religion. Tradition is a crap reason because significant changes in tradition are endemic to human society. Blind obedience to tradition does not somehow enoble it. And significant changes, often good, can come of it. Example: the shift from the Roman calendar to the Gregorian (tradition didn't matter worth a damn when you needed to know what fucking day it was). And religion is the weakest of the bunch. I am not a believer, and I need more than your assertion that the invisible man in the sky said so. YOU are free to observe whatever you like, but you are not free to decide for *ME*.

The other arguments range from the less than valid to the truly ridiculous. Given the other long winded posts in this thread, I decided to go ahead and elucidate.

One of the big ones, and most devoid of logic or common sense, is that of the slippery slope. If you have to be told what prevents marrying your pet, you need to be kept in a secure facility where someone can teach you critical thinking with a cattle prod. The reason is that no pet, not even a talking parrot, can give consent to be wed. The same is true of children because they can't give consent either.

Polyandry and polygamy are also favorites of mine. The Bible, the Koran, and the Torah are rife with stories about kings and their *WIVES*. If every person is a consenting adult, what's the problem? That they'll have more fun than you? Why the need to say that one man can only love one woman, or vice versa. As far as I'm concerned, if a man or woman can convince multiple people of the same or opposite gender to share him or her, they deserve a fucking parade. And let's not forget that in order to have a group marriage, you must first have a group that can get along. That's a huge hurdle. But then, none of this is any of your fucking business, anyway.

My least favorite argument is the one that insists that marriage will be somehow watered down or made less valuable. I just don't see it. Are we making it illegal because some shallow asshole might decide to skip marriage because "faggots can do it too"? What crap. Anyone that uses gay marriage to insist that marriage is worthless is hiding some deep personal angst about marriage. Marriage has whatever value we assign it, from the star crossed lovers to the gold diggers, and any devaluation of your marriage is entirely on your shoulders.

And now we come to the argument that is a large part of this thread. Gay marriage is a civil right for the simple fact that they cannot do domething that is legal for everyone else. Period. Full stop. They are not asking to have marriage created specially for them. Marriage already exists, and anyone can do it. Unless you want to do it with someone of the same gender. That's discrimination. You are barring someone from something simply because they are different.

The comeback argument is that black people didn't choose to be black, they are black by genetic imperative. Absolutely true. The argument can be made that homosexuality is a choice. Also true (though I think that unlikely), and totally irrelevant. People choose to get tattoos, and drink alcohol, and join churches. Can we then bar them from societal, emotional, and economic benefits because of those choices? Can we ban the tattoo recient from marriage, too? What about the alcoholic? Hell, in various prisons around this country some of the worst prisoners have married someone *WHILE IN PRISON*. No one says "Boo!" to that, but the very idea that two (three, four, ten) men love each other and want to get married, and the bigots fall all over themselves to protect marriage.

Where's the amendment that requires you to be married for more than 55 hours? Where's the amendment that requires you to marry for more than monetary gain? Where is the amendment that requires you to procreate (the purpose of marriage, no few people have said)?

And for those of you so bothered by the wantonness of the gay community, I refer you to the, well, 60's(free love), the 70's(Looking for Mr Goodbar), and the 80's (wanna snort coke out of my bellybutton?) on the hetero side of the equation, and it is also irrelevant. Wanting to get laid 24/7 with someone different is *NOT ILLEGAL*. And it certainly doesn't prevent some hetero turbo slut from marrying the man of her dreams *WITH THE BLESSING OF THE FUCKING CHURCH*. Hell, the Catholic church provides the ability to declare the marriage as never having taken place, she can fuck like a rabbit for some indeterminate time, and then get married, for the first time, again.

Homosexuality disgusts you, and you have every right to feel that way, but please don't think that these flimsy little arguments of yours have even a passing acquaintance with reasoned argument. Do us the courtesy of simply admitting that your disgust is the crux of your argument, and admitting that your disgust is no reason at all to deny the same rights you enjoy to another.