Dear Hank and John,
The idea for this letter was originally conceived when Hank posted his video on May 11. Since I lacked both the
time and the technology to make a video response, I did the next best thing: write. However, when John posted his own video that
Tuesday, I had to do some extensive revisions.
So here it is finally, extremely belated, but hopefully still useful.
John, regarding what you said about marriage (at least, in the contemporary
sense), I did agree with most of what you said.
However, there was something that went unaddressed in both your and
Hank’s videos: an issue that is not only integral to marriage, but also,
ultimately, the very thing which marriage is and always has been about. I speak, of course, of childbearing.
When you gave your history/explanation of marriage, you did a marvelous job
of giving us an idea of what marriage has been throughout the years; you
described how most of the time, it was often just an intrinsically personal
affair, and, not infrequently in ancient times, it was not monogamous at
all. However, in addition to the pledge of lifelong commitment, the
primary purpose of marriage (especially in those times) was not political
reasons, or emotional, or what-have-you, but having children and bringing new family
members into the world to continue with family trade, noble/royal lineage,
etc. There was often much abuse toward this end, especially regarding the
polygamy in those times, but the simple fact is that marriage - whether between
a lower commoner and his one wife, or a king and his hundreds of wives - has
always been about procreation.
Even King Solomon, whom you mentioned in your video, did not have his 700
wives and 300 concubines solely for the sex; it was also for the continuation
of his line. And, if you want to keep citing the Bible, even the most
perverse stories (Lot's daughters committing incest with their own father;
Jacob, Rachel and Leah using each other for their own ends; Abraham's ambiguous
adultery) were toward the end of having children. Depending on your
tolerance/credibility for the Bible, it's not a coincidence that Lot's
daughters (kind of) got away with their incest, and conversely, that Onan was
zapped into oblivion for his masturbation, and Sodom and Gomorrah were
incinerated for their citizens' homosexual acts. Those latter two
divorced the concept of childbearing from sex; Lot's daughters, perverse as
they were, did the exact opposite.
However, all those cases represent that opposite extreme, of having children
with absolutely no thought for the other person. Of all the things that
can be said about marriage, there is one that can positively be agreed upon:
that it is supposed to be a voluntary and loving commitment to the other
person. Even when the thingmajigs and
whoziwhats were married in the olden times, they stayed with each other and
made things work because they had pledged themselves to each other, and had
promised to love and care for the other person in a way that was exclusive to
everyone else but them. That’s why the
traditional definition of marriage really has been monogamy; a person can’t
really pledge himself wholly to another person if there’s a third party
involved in the same way, or a fourth, or fifth, etc.
Things haven’t changed to this day: marriage still carries that aspect of
selfless, lifelong love; it still places a high value on the other person’s
welfare; and, above all, it’s still about starting a family. It’s why men and women were joined in a
lifelong union for generations, it’s why they still do it today, and yes, it’s
also why gay couples adopt.
However, Hank, that is also precisely the reason why homosexual unions can
never be considered “marriage.” Even if they do love each other, even if they
do sincerely wish to pledge themselves to one another for life, gay people can
never be considered “married,” because marriage is an indissoluble union
between a man and a woman, from which a new person is then produced. A gay couple can never start a family of
their own; they don’t even have the potential to start a family of their
own. Even if they adopted (as many "traditional" families do), theirs would not truly be a family, because in one scenario the child would have no mother-figure, and in the other the child would have no father-figure. What they would instead have is a woman pretending to be father, or a man pretending to be mother, which is not only a form of deception, but also just simply does not work. Even overlooking all the technical difficulties that this would entail, there are some things that
only a mom (being a woman) can teach and provide that a dad never could, just as a dad (being a man)
is responsible for some part of a kid’s upbringing that a mom could never
substitute for; I’m sure both of you could relate to this. As much as the ACLU would probably disagree,
a kid needs both the male and female influence of two genuinely loving parents
in their lives; and to put them in any other environment would simply be depriving them of that.
Hank and John, no matter how much “traditional” marriage may differ from
what has happened over all the turbulent years of human history, it’s an
undeniable fact that marriage has always been about the kids, and that procreation
has always been brought about through the union of one man and one woman. All family units have been based on this
model since time immemorial, and for a gay couple to say or think that they can
replicate it by “marrying” and then adopting is simply self-deception. A man cannot play mother to a child, nor can
a woman play father. Even should the
courts change the “traditional” definition and throw procreation out altogether,
and just call marriage a loving and lifelong commitment, a union between a gay
couple still wouldn’t be a proper marriage, because any real relationship off the street between
any two people, married or unmarried, could be loving and lifelong. What makes marriage so special is that
something is produced from this particular union – and that’s something the
courts can’t deny.
Conservative people (and the state of North Carolina) are not demonstrating
hate or violating a civil right when they put a ban on gay marriage; they’re
stating the fact that such a thing simply does not exist, and for them to
change the definition of something that should be so concrete would be as
absurd as changing the definition of the word “human.” I understand that there have been some
terrible atrocities and discrimination against gay people, and I wholeheartedly
agree that any such thing directed toward another human being is wrong. However, it is not discrimination to state
the truth and live by it; and the truth is that there really is no such thing
as gay marriage, and it is not a civil right to request an official legal
change stating that there is. Civil
rights exist to protect a citizen’s dignity and freedom; they do not extend to
the distortion of truth so that the citizen can live according to the
dictations of their libido.
...and that, Hank, is not an invalid argument.
Sincerely,
Valkyrie
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