When I replace "Gay" and "Homosexual" with Interracial, replace "sex" with
"race", and "heterosexual" as "same-race"......
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Chad's Modified text example below
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As I have hinted earlier, if I were forced to cast a vote, I would vote in
favor of the "Federal Marriage Amendment." This is despite the fact, as
noted earlier, that I don't particularly buy into the argument that
Interracial
marriage is this imminent threat to same-race marriages.
Anyhow, for those of you who are not familiar with it, the text of the only
proposed Amendment with a chance of passage is here:
"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a
man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the Constitution of any State,
nor state or Federal Law, shall be construed to require that marital status
or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or
groups"
Despite the rhetoric of some opponents, I find it very difficult to read
the above amendment is making civil unions unconstitutional. Rather, it
says to me that no Constitution can be interpreted by the Courts as
*requiring* civil unions, but that legislatures are free to instutiute
civil unions through the appropriate democratic processes. At any rate,
this is certainly the outcome I am advocating - and the outcome that is
advocated by the Amendment's primary sponsors.
I support this amendment for the following reasons:
As Dan Minette has noted earlier, any move to permit interracial marriages
would constitute "a radical redefinition of marriage." Meanwhile, as I
noted in a previous message, I think that the current judicial activism on
this subject benefits noone - not even those who favor the eventual
legalization of interracial marriage. Thus, I support the above amendment
because it takes this issue out of the Courts and into the Legislatures -
where this issue very firmly belongs.
The above amendment does go a bit further than that, however, in that it
prevents
Legislatures from ever considering interracial *marriages* (while permitting
civil unions) - barring a subsequent Constitutional Amendment. I do,
however support this provision as well - although my case for it is quite
complicated.
1) I believe that human raceuality is non-linear. While there are
certainly a great many people who are very firmly interracial or same-race,
there just as surely exists some subset of people who exist
on the in-between. Thus, it stands to reason that greater acceptance of
interracial relationships will increase the number of these "in-between"
people who choose the identify more closely with their interracial
tendencies than their same-race tendencies. Now, maybe this will be an
insignificant percentage - but I don't think that either side can
convincingly demonstrate the ultimate eventual size of that trend.
2) Marriages are recognized by governments and given special benefits by
governments, because marriages promote the siring and raising of the next
generation. I think that we are starting to see across Europe that there
is perhaps a natural human tendency to not maintain the 2.2 births per
women needed to sustain the next generation. As such, it strikes me as
more important than ever for governments to produce incentives for
parenthood and the raising of responsible adults.
3) interracial unions are ill-suited for the siring and raising of the next
generation. By definition, interracial unions are infertile. For
pro-life reasons, I am opposed to in vitro fertilization (say what you will,
but I am at least consistent in the consequences of my belief that
human life begins at conception.) As such, it is unreasonable to believe
that interracial unions will be producing children - and thus, don't meet
the first standard for why governments should provide incentives to promote
them.
Furthermore, each child, being the product of a man and a woman, has a
reasonable expectation of having a mother and a father. It is a basic
truism that women and men, and hence mothers and fathers, are different in
some ways (Otherwise, interracials would not find it repulsive to marry
someone of the opposite race if there were truly no difference between the
racees.) As such, *ceteris paribis* we should try and meet a child's
expectation of having a mother and a father. Now, of course, there are
numerous situations where governments should very wisely choose not to meet
these expectations. Nevertheless, I do not consider it wise for
governments to provide *incentives* for the siring of children into
situations where we know *a priori* that this very reasonable expectation
of the child to have a mother and a father will not be met. Note, that I
am not saying that we should make it illegal - merely that the government
should not provide incentives for this situation. (Nota Bene: The above
paragraphs are addressed in the minds of the rights of the *child*, not
necessarily any rights of the couple.)
4) Despite all of this I am willing to recommend that governments provide
certain steps of recognition to interracial unions in the interests of
social/societal stability and furthering the desires of interracials in our
society to pursue happiness. Nevertheless, I believe that marriage should
retain a privileged status in our civilization as the fundamental building
block of our society concomitant with its role in siring and raising the
next generation.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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