Right Wing Blogging
I have a hard time figuring out what's right and left anymore. Most Liberals sound like Pat Buchanen to me today. So I don't call myself one anymore.
If you think I'm right wing, here's an argument for Gay Marriage. Not civil unions or the kind of waffling around Rich found among the Democratic candidates in the 6th district but plain old marriage (with two partners) where each commits to caring for one another in sickness and in health.
Google for Loyola's Tony Barbado's announcement of Loyola's Hospital expansion. You'll read the new beds he's adding will have room for family members to spend the night.
Most new Hospital Beds are constructed that way now. The rooms are bigger and it's a more expensive. Medical Centers invest in them not to be friendly, but because they're expecting your family to provide care. Hospitals can't hire enough Nurses to do the job. It's going to get worse and they're expecting families to pick up the slack.
So you're going to want a family and at a time when demographers tell us most of us will spend the majority of our lives single, either as surviving spouses or never having married in the first place.
Governor Blagojevich announced a plan yesterday to increase the number of Nurses in Illnois. There are some good things there although you have to wonder about adding another level of government here,
A Center for Nursing would be established within the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, charged with goals such as developing a strategic plan for nursing manpower in Illinois, maintaining a database on nursing supply and demand, and creating nursing retention and recruitment initiatives.But it's not going to be enough. You're going to need Family. They're important economically. Anyone who talks Family Values understands how important.
But they'll have to recognize Illinois is going to need to redefine a family, in part because folks like Tony Barbado and the Health Care industry are expecting those families to do work.
Gay activists are going to have to understand marriage isn't a right. It's a relationship licensed by the government and it defines commitments. Maybe commitments that should be harder to break.
Sorry to ramble. A little early in the AM. But you get the gist of my thinking.
Somehow I think today's Conservatives more likely to appreciate these thoughts simply because they talk about family much more, and speak more often of commitment and personal responsibility.
Most of my conversations with Liberals end when I say marriage isn't a right and that's when I'm told I'm an ally of the gay bashers. Conversation is finished.
Maybe right wing. But people are all over the place on issues today. Including me..
7 comments:
Another right wing reason to allow "gay marriage" is to subject it to "gay divorce". Once gay divorce attorneys get into the equation, and gays are subject to palimony, division of property, etc., enthusiasm for gay marriage will decline.
Yes, I imagine at the end of the era where planned marriages were the norm this argument was used to describe marriages made for love.
Do you really, really think that gay marriage is being driven by people who haven't already considered these things?
My parents started dating in high school and are still married over 40 years later but you better sure as heck believe I had considered divorce etc. when I got married even though I did not grow up in a divorced family.
Nice try though.
I get the feeling most people driving Gay Marriage have no intention of getting married.
Instead they seek acceptance of their life style and think the government licensing same sex marriages creates acceptance.
I think they're wrong.
"Somehow I think today's Conservatives more likely to appreciate these thoughts simply because they talk about family much more"
"Talk" is the operative word, here.
Bill-
I support gay marriage wholeheartedly, even though I have no intention of marrying a man even if I divorced my wife.
I don't care if people accept the gay lifestyle or not. I do care that they insist on the government providing any form of recognition/benefit to one group while not extending it to another.
I look at it this way. I think rascists are scum but you better be damn sure I'll support the right of the KKK to meet at the capitol just as I would support the right of the Anti-Defamation League to do so. I could care less what the individual lifestyles/beliefs etc are but if one group is allowed to do something then the other better be able to also.
-Gish
Bill,
As a gay man (and a conservative one at that), I agree with most of your post. You're totally right that people need to discuss this issue in terms of the responsibilities that come with marriage, not just "Rights" of marriage. Many of my friends are in long term committed relationships, share bank accounts and, yes, are even raising families.
My partner and I are no different than many of my straight friends. He has two sons that were teenagers when we met. They are now productive young adults. This is my family. I don't need any laws to say that and it's not going to change regardless of what anyone says. If the state recognized our relationship, we will share some benefits, our filing status for taxes would change and the death tax would eat up our estate if one of us died.
For others, it goes much deeper than your example of hospital visitation or taxes. I know gay couples who want families, have the means to provide a safe, loving and secure household and would be wonderful parents, but are afraid to adopt because they might move to a state where they legally can't be adoptive parents. When you have thousands of kids in need of good homes, these couples must go through the extra effort to have a blood tie to their family. All of this is out of necessity to keep their family together at all costs.
What make no sense to me is that the harshest critics on the far right argue that gays are promiscuous, and spread HIV/AIDS. However, they don't want to support or encourage stable and healthy relationships that marriage is supposed to promote. Why not hold gays and lesbians to the same standard of monogamy that we hold all marriages?
You may be right about the number of people that will actually seek out marriage. Many long term committed couples will but if you ask most gay people if they thought ten years ago that they'd see the day when same sex marriages are recognized, they'd probably say no. The concept is still very new to everyone, including many gays and lesbians.
Oh, yeah, about gay divorce? Yes, it will happen. In Massachusetts, the "gay" divorce rate is 1%. Granted, gays and lesbians have only been allowed to marry for almost 2 year now. Time will tell if it will hit the 50% divorce rate that heterosexual marriages but I think that's pretty good for a start.
But in a society where Britney Spears or Paris Hilton can have 48 hour marriages, where most champions of a "protecting marriage" amendment are on their seond or third marriage, maybe we need to hold the mirror up to all marriages?
I've seen the phrase "gay lifestyle" bandied around about here quite a bit, and I have to say something, because I find that phrase incredibly offensive. I consider it code for the mistaken belief that being gay is a choice and that, therefore, gays and lesbians are not entitled to equality under the law. Being a gay man or lesbian is not a "lifestyle," nor is it a choice. The only choice gays and lesbians have is whether to be true to themselves.
Anyone is free to take a crack at describing what this supposed monolithic gay lifestyle consists of. I'll happily debunk it.
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