Something From Home

I forgot to mention something that really burned me up yesterday. This woman is the conservative columnist who has a more liberal counterpoint. Shaunti apparently stays at home, writes her venom, and pops out babies for her husband because, after all, that IS a woman's role. She has crossed a line with this article though. Seeking equal treatment before the law is in NO WAY comparable to the rise of Hilter's Nazi death machine in the 1930s, but she compares gay marriage to it. Here in Zimbabwe, I must keep the fact I'm gay quiet or risk arrest by the police...and now I'm reminded of the venom I receive at home for daring to ask that I be treated just like my heterosexual fellow citizens. It's sheer and utter madness, but my only hope is that as the venom gets worse the close we get to election day and the vote on gay marriage, the more of a backlash it will create among fair minded people who may not be comfortable with gay marriage, but value human rights even more.

Here is the article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:


Wage war on gay threat to marriage

By SHAUNTI FELDHAHN
Published on: 07/06/04


The importance of next week's Senate vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment - the proposal that we amend the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as one man and one woman - is difficult to overstate.

It may not seem like such a big thing - just one vote in one chamber about one important initiative among many - but the key pivot points of history often don't loom particularly large at the time. Sun Tzu observed that wars are actually quietly won or lost in the temples of leadership before the battle is joined.


And although you can't see the battle to protect marriage as you can a military war, its cultural ramifications may be just as radical. In his new book, "Marriage Under Fire," James Dobson notes that, "This struggle is not being fought with guns and bombs, but with ideas, with creative uses of the law . . . It is a battle for the very soul of the nation."

Many of us feel discomfort at confronting this issue. I sure don't like writing about it. Shouldn't we live and let live? But as Dobson points out, history demonstrates that initial appeasement just worsens the eventual ramifications.

When the countries of pre-World War II Europe noticed Adolf Hitler's emerging aggression, they said, "It's not my business." But, as we now know, it was their business. How much sorrow might have been prevented had they recognized that burying their head in the sand wouldn't help?

Today, we are facing a Pandora-like threat that - once allowed to escape - can never be put back in the box. With activist judges rewriting the will of the people, it's only a matter of time before gay marriages are declared legal nationwide. And then what are we going to do to restore the will of the people - void marriages that have been solidified during those years? Rip apart families who have built their lives around their legal union? It is one thing to fight out the cultural decision now and prevent gay marriages. It is quite another to rescind that right once granted.

If we are going to confront this cultural decision, we need to do it now. That's why, on July 12, the Senate leadership will bypass the usual lengthy committee process and ask for a vote on whether to begin the process of amending the Constitution. A Senate source recently told me that no one in leadership really wants to tackle this issue: It's too politically costly, too divisive. But because of judicial excess, "We can't not act," he said. "Our hand is being forced."

It is important to note that the danger to marriage comes not from gay individuals (as opposed to gay activists), who just want what they see as a civil right. Rather, it comes from not protecting a definition of marriage that has served as the foundation of society for millennia. In areas of Norway allowing de facto gay marriage, the regular institution has inevitably lost its meaning, so most children live in an unmarried home. And since the average gay marriage among men in Scandinavia lasts 1.5 years, most of their children will experience a broken home many times over.

As I have noted before, nearly all social problems - from poverty to crime to drug use - are caused by family breakdown. As much as we want to be compassionate, and live and let live, we simply cannot afford appeasement. Redefining marriage would not just legalize alternative marriages, but would negatively impact the traditional ones that are the backbone of our society.

• Shaunti Feldhahn of Norcross is the author of several books. Her column appears Wednesdays.