Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe columnist, continues to hold back. Today ("Love, marriage, and the baby carriage") he comments on the proposal in Washington state by homosexual extremists -- which we discussed two weeks ago -- to confine marriage to heterosexual couples who have children within three years of marriage. The homosexual activists are tring to make a point that "it is only fair because they are being denied the right to marry because they cannot have children." Jacoby tries to shoot this down by saying that no "mainstream opponent" of homosexual "marriage" focuses just on the "raising children" argument.
But as we pointed out, an exclusive focus on children has been Mitt Romney's line (and even Massachusetts Family Institute/VoteOnMarriage, before they switched to "let the people vote"). When Romney, for instance, says we must protect traditional marriage, he gives only one reason: "because every child deserves a mother and a father." So Jacoby is wrong when he says "No mainstream opponent of same-sex marriage claims that having children is the sole purpose of wedlock."
These "mainstreamers" never do discuss the other reasons for real "marriage", because they know that they could apply equally to homosexual couples, or even polygamous arrangements. With one exception. In Jacoby's long list of marriage purposes, only one -- "having a legitimate sexual outlet" -- would not apply to homosexual couples.
It's nice to know that Jacoby still thinks there's such a thing as "legitimate" and "illegitimate" sexuality. But if homosexual sex is "illegitimate", why does Jacoby never himself write of this problem with homosexual "marriage" -- that it's based on sexual perversion, and therefore illegitimate? How odd that Romney, VoteOnMarriage, the Mass. Family Institute, et al. also never bring this up as a reason to oppose homosexual "marriage". Why is that? What are they afraid of?
Jacoby wrote:
... activists are assaulting a straw man. No mainstream opponent of same-sex marriage claims that having children is the sole purpose of wedlock. Marriages can serve any number of purposes -- cementing the bond between partners, guaranteeing financial security, having a legitimate sexual outlet, ensuring companionship, and so on. People get married for various reasons; the desire to raise a family is only one of them.
What makes marriage a public institution, however -- the reason it is regulated by law and given an elevated legal status -- is that it provides something no healthy society can do without: a stable environment in which men and women can create and bring up the next generation, and in which children can enter the world with mothers and fathers committed to their well-being.
