Two op-ed columns in the Winona Daily News provide a snapshot of the debate over the freedom to marry. In one, WDN associate editor Jerome Christenson acknowledges that when LGBT came out of the closet, their committed relationships did so as well.
The more you know, the more the freedom to marry simply looks like honored values like fairness and respect.
In the secondcolumn, Justin Kramer of St. Charles warns that same-sex marriage will lead to the legalization of polygamy, bigamy and incest. The latter will lead to the birth of children living with genetic defects, Kramer claims. Not only will the hills be full of frac sand, they'll have eyes, too. Heckova a narrative.
Christenson writes in Gay marriage? A done deal:
The Supremes may as well pack up their gavels and go home. They can rule yes or no, but the verdict will come down the same. Sure as they put on plays in Fountain City, Wis., ... it’s a done deal.
Gay marriage ... same-sex marriage ... gender-neutral marriage ... marriage designed by Satan specifically to send the entire human race directly to the pits of perdition ... call it what you like.
It’s a done deal.
I have seen the future, and it was on stage at the Fountain City city auditorium last weekend.
Playing to packed houses.
Getting lots of laughs and applause.
Look — if half a hundred rural Wisconsin senior citizens can watch two men kiss on the community theater stage and not choke on their popcorn ... for good or ill, the millennium has arrived.
I have to salute director Judee Brone for having the artistic and theatrical courage to stage “My Big Gay Italian Wedding.” It took tremendous confidence in the area community to cast such a culturally challenging production.
Where would she find convincing Brooklyn Italians in country full of -ands, -unds, -skis and -sons? A place where Franco-American is still considered ethnic? How would she keep them from saying uff-da on stage?
The gay part? No problem. There have always been a lot more gay people around here than Italians.
’Course, they say uff-da too.
The LGBT community was invisible until people started coming out. Christenson continues:
. . .Oh, looking back, well, hindsight is 20-20, and it’s pretty clear that those two spinsters were more than just roommates, just like J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson were a lot more than colleagues in fighting crime. We didn’t see what was right in front of us, or sitting in the pew next to us.
... Until somebody turned around and said, “Hey, look at me. I’m here.”
And from Rock Hudson to Mary Cheney to the kid who cut your neighbor’s grass, people were saying, “I’m here.”
And because there are so many, eventually, it was somebody we knew. Somebody we cared about. Somebody too real, too human, too good to be barred from contact with decent people, their children and their pets. Slowly, oh so slowly, we realized they were decent people too, and minds and hearts were — are — changed.
That's pretty much how it is, Bluestem agrees.
Not in the Craven imagination of Justin Kramer, however. Let the cute boys marry, and pretty soon the polygamists will want in and the bigamists will come out, and aha! it's time for brother-sister marriage, Kramer muses in Bigamy, polygamy and the redefinition of marriage:
. . .Virtually every single argument used in favor of same-sex marriage will be easily adapted to support the polygamist cause. Polygamy will also cover group marriages or cases such as two lesbians and a gay male intermarrying each other. Such setups, albeit unrecognized by law, already exist today. Those opposing polygamy will be branded as intolerant, hateful bigots, with accusations of polyphobia becoming as commonplace as screams of homophobia.
Adultery will be redefined, with extramarital affairs permitted. In 2010, The New York Times wrote it’s an “open secret” in the LGBT community that “open relationships” are perfectly normal, and reported half of homosexual couples were in one.
Younger heterosexual couples are also seeing an increase in the practice. People imitate societal expectations and social convention; with the rise in acceptance of nonexclusive relationships and polygamy, the norm of monogamous fidelity will become a relic of the past.
That's right: gay people invented adultery. Goodness. But Kramer goes on, asserting that legalizing incest is next:
After polygamy, incest will be legalized. Concerns of genetic deformity? That argument will die because adults with dominant, hereditary genetic deformities are not banned from marrying unrelated adults. Such couples, unlike incestuous couples, are guaranteed to have children with genetic defects. Besides, gay marriage will have established marriage has nothing to do with having sexual relations for biological reproduction. Love is love, right?
We're surprised he didn't throw in box turtle love or cats and dogs living together. Truth is, the threadbare nature of arguments against marriage freedom are forcing some of its opponents to reach deep into the closets of their imaginations and pull out a horror show like this fear-mongering letter writer.
Photo: Goggle from the Hills Have Eyes. Now we can blame remakes of Wes Craven horror flicks on marriage equality, too. Or something.
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