Skip to main content

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.


It's time. The living room, Geilston Bay. July 2012.

Sunday Top Five time and today I venture into what I am told is controversial territory (it generally isn't in the circles I frequent): My Top Five List Of The Most Stupid Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage!

  • Marriage has been this way for thousands of years, so why change it now? Yes, in much the same way that we’ve not accepted change in the area of equal rights for women or property rights for slaveholders, institutions never change.

  • Heterosexual marriages are valid because they are primarily about furthering the species (i.e. producing children). Yes, much like the laws that we have around forbidding infertile couples from wedding and the compulsory divorces once menopause kicks in.

  • The Bible doesn’t allow it. In the same way as we don’t allow bowl cuts (Leviticus 19:27, "You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads); tattoos (Leviticus 19:28, "You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord."); polyester (Leviticus 19:19, "You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together"); and eating lobsters (Leviticus 11:10 reads, "But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the teeming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you"), it would be a terrible affront to break that rule…

  • Gay marriage undermines traditional marriage. Oddly enough, we’re doing a reasonable job of that without the gays getting in on the act. I struggle to understand why, with straight couples seemingly less interested in getting (and staying) married than ever before, why proponents of marriage want to be locking people who really want to be in the club out.

  • Same-sex parents will raise gay (or problematic) children, for want of duel gender role models. This one is obvious, in the same way that straight parents only raise straight, wholesome and adjusted children. That can also be extended to single parents.

Comments

smudgeon said…
Bravo, Kris.

I also wonder why it is some institutions think they run the book on marriage. Don't like it? Then stay out of it. If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married...
Kris McCracken said…
There was a bloke I know of - successful, 40-odd - very recently kill himself. Struggled with his sexuality. Poor bugger. His family still telling lies about 'the accident'.

2012 and people killing themselves from the shame. The rest of us should be ashamed.

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...