THE legalization of same-sex “marriage” by New York lawmakers yesterday was a sad and sordid event in American history. What can we say about a people so oblivious and insensitive to the young and so disdainful of the institution that unites the sexes but that New York is one of the most decadent republics that ever existed, a modern Sodom that prides itself on its decay.

The marriage revolutionaries represent the culmination of the liberal project to remake human nature and to create an infantile, selfish people so lost in their private emotions and pleasures, they cannot lift their heads to gaze at tomorrow. When leftists lost their effort to make everyone alike in material acquisitions, they turned to making everyone alike in the cultural sphere, and to leveling the family, the realm where unfairness reigns and where unfairness will always reign, the sphere where one can never escape the raw fact that we are not all the same.

Just as liberals have replaced the beauty of dresses and suits with the ugly uniformity of denim and T-shirts, they have made marriage a dull and lifeless institution, dependent not on character and fortitude, or the ties that link the generations, but on personal predilection, on the passing passions and impulses of the hopelessly infantilized. Real marriage requires heroism. Same-sex “marriage” requires an adolescent grudge against authority. What have those dancing in the streets in New York yesterday won? The right to look on history with contempt and to remain teenagers even into their seventies and eighties.

Same sex “marriage” is the most divisive issue since slavery and as with slavery, it cannot remain in the hands of the states. The whole country must approve same sex “marriage” or the whole country must reject it. The inevitable child custody disputes guarantee that. New York has not smoothed over differences, but heightened them.

Senator Mark J. Grisanti, one of four Republicans who voted for the New York bill, said, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.” We would have to rewrite all of history so that “mother” and “father,” “husband” and “wife” are removed from human consciousness – and actively teach children to be homosexual – before the two unions are “equal.”

And that is what will happen with this bill. Children will not just be taught that homosexuality is an acceptable choice. As evil and profoundly wrong as that lesson is, they will be taught far worse – that homosexuality is good.  

 

                                                                                                 — Comments —

Andrea writes

After looking at the photo that accompanied the New York Times article I couldn’t help but think of the piece you ran by the priest a few weeks ago on authority. These men did not look like the kind of masculine authority that I had in mind while reading the article. I am just so saddened and angry about what this will do to so many confused young men and women. I come from a Catholic family and I have a homosexual younger brother and he is so confused. This will just add to it. I could go on and on, but you know.

Alissa writes:

From a post on “tyrannical atheism” at VFR: 

Tim W. writes: 

Normal human societies may vary in many ways, but some things are universal. Preference for one’s own people and recognition of gender differences among them. It’s doubtful that it would be possible to suppress such natural inclinations without mass brainwashing and the use of force at levels previously impossible to achieve due to technological limitations. Faith is another of those universal attributes of civilization. To the best of my knowledge there has never been an atheist civilization, even though there may have always been atheists. But the modern left thinks it can create one, and that it can launch its brave new dystopia by suppressing our historic faith, just as it seeks to suppress our racial feelings and our gender distinctions.

MarkyMark writes:

Gay marriage would never have gotten anywhere if straight people (especially women, since the initiate 2/3 of all divorces) didn’t mess it up to the point that the institution was meaningless.

Laura writes:

Modern divorce radically redefined marriage. The purpose of marriage is not personal satisfaction but the creation and rearing of the next generation. But, the fact that marriage has been severely weakened by married heterosexuals does not make same-sex “marriage” any less insane and destructive, as some people say it does.

By the way, divorce is initiated by women in less than two-thirds of all divorces. It’s about 60 percent.

Alex from England writes:

In Senator Grisanti’s pathetic opinion, his emotive list of supplicants cannot be denied “the same rights as I have with my wife.” Of course he was talking about the right to marry and found a family. That neither of these human satisfactions are possible for people in a same-sex relationship makes no difference in the senator’s view.

But making same-sex “marriage” legal builds on a concept of marriage so elastic as to be meaningless. While the venerable institution of marriage has been sabotaged by feminism and a mania of immature self-gratification, there is, at the same time, an increasingly strident demand for the recognition of mock marriage for homosexuals.

How should we explain this contradiction? If marriage is a destructive institution best avoided or escaped from, then why are homosexuals clamouring to get “married”? On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense.

Consistency, however, doesn’t come into the reckoning because making same-sex “marriage” legal is merely another step on the road to a brave new world which every thoughtful man and woman should fear and loathe.

Laura writes:

Thats right. Do any of the marriage revolutionaries object to modern divorce even though they insist that without this right to”marriage,” all is worthless? If marriage is so central to identity why don’t they vociferously object to unilateral divorce, which denies people who are married the right to be married?

No, they don’t. That’s because they don’t believe in the sanctity of marriage but in the sanctity of their own desires.

Diana writes:

Allow me a few observations about how the NY State Legislature legalized SSM without consulting the will of the people.

New York is a famously dysfunctional state. The legislature is dysfunctional. Nothing gets done without the most squalid quid pro quo arrangements. Such was the case with this legislation. SSM was decided in the same legislative session as a variety of other, totally non-related items, including rent-regulation for New York City apartments. Seemingly dull details like these are vitally important to keep in mind when understanding what happened.

“Just before the marriage vote,” writes the New York Times,  “lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly approved a broad package of major legislation that constituted the remainder of their agenda for the year. The bills included a cap on local property tax increases and a strengthening of New York’s rent regulation laws, as well as a five-year tuition increase at the State University of New York and the City University of New York.”

The Dems saw that the Repubs were fanatic on property taxes, the Repubs saw that the Dems were fanatic on rent regulation laws (the trend in recent years was to loosen, not strengthen, them) …and both sides compromised on tuition increases. This had nothing to do with conscience, it had to do with two parties whipsawing each other. You give me SSM, I give you property taxes….

Into this mix, enter Governor Cuomo, Barack Obama’s handpicked boy.

Although this appears to be a strictly local New York State issue, I think it’s a grave mistake to look at it that way. The Obama Administration had an active hand in this. Its teethmarks were all over this legislation. This comes at the end of a cycle, all pushed overtly or covertly by Obama: the dropping of DADT at the end of the last, ignominious Congress (the “shellacked” one, remember), and the quiet Friday afternoon order by Obama to drop all Justice Department legal defenses of DOMA. The latter two have something in common: they were both done very stealthily, like a reptile slithering in the night.

Remember that Andrew Cuomo is Obama’s boy in Albany. Obama took an intense and personal dislike to David Paterson. I’m not enough of a political junkie to know why, but I know he did. At least two years ago Obama outrageously inserted himself into NY State’s internal affairs by mocking Paterson and favoring Cuomo. Paterson responded by blisteringly pointing out that a year into a term, most Presidents had some accomplishments to point to, whereas Obama had none. (This was before the dubious “accomplishment” of Obamacare.) He tried to hang on but with the leader of your party in the White House, Paterson was dead meat.

I bring this up because Cuomo owes Obama big time. It’s impossible for me to believe that Obama didn’t intervene behind the scenes in threatening the four Republicans who voted in favor of this
abomination with cut-offs of Federal funding. Remember that NY State is utterly dysfunctional and depends heavily on Federal funds.

They were: Mark Grisanti, Buffalo; James Alesi, suburban Rochester; Stephen Saland: east side of Hudson, Poughkeepsie; Roy MacDonald – Albany, Glens Falls (possibly the worst of the lot,
See this.

These are all large, upstate districts with bad economies. I believe that they are heavily dependent on both state and Federal funds. I am sure that Cuomo and Obama used the barest of bare-knuckle tactics on these invertebrates, and they folded.

A couple of final observations. Recall that Mitt Romney, the current Republican party front runner, signed the SSM bill into law in Massachusetts. His opponents are using Romneycare as a stick to beat him with, but they are staying suspiciously silent about his part in being the first governor to sign SSM into state law. Also, never forget that the Stonewall Inn, endlessly talked about as the site of the birth of the “gay rights” movement, was a bar for drag queens. Can you imagine being proud of that?

In short, the will of the people indeed. A dysfunctional state passed SSM as part of a crude package involving payola and political blackmail. Meanwhile, the union is bankrupt. There are economically solvent states, but garbage cans like NY State (and California) will drag them into the “widening gyre.”

Kendra writes:

Laura writes:

Real marriage requires heroism. Same-sex “marriage” requires an adolescent grudge against authority.

I met my lesbian half-sister as for the first time as an adult. She was very “butch,” as the gays might say, wearing short spiked hair and men’s clothing. She came out to me after a few days, and I just laughed at her for thinking that it had not yet occurred to me. She and her girlfriends used to call heterosexual married couples “breeders,” a derisive term used by homosexuals to demean heterosexuals. This hatred of the normal is their grudge against our society. They are a bunch of rejects and misfits who clump together for protection from the intolerant. Like all extremist groups, they appeal to the lowest common denominator and proclaim their victimhood.

These gay women operated a very closed clique of women, hated men, yet tried very hard to look like men, and they avoided interactions with heterosexual couples like the plague. I have lost contact with my sister because of her lifestyle and her anti-family stance. I did not want my children exposed to it.

The growing gay subculture has its own codes and language, its own gay-run businesses, women’s studies programs, and its own festivals and celebrations. They believe straight is boring, and that the traditional family unit should be destroyed. They demand to be recognized and validated.

Who in the world do gays think are going to produce the babies and children whom they plan to adopt for their patchwork families? This is just another consequence of liberalism, and shows a degree of mental illness to me.

Rebecca writes:

I live in upstate New York. Once again, the will of the majority has been overcome by a loud minority with the aid and support of the liberal press. Now I strongly agree with much of what Diana said – i.e., that we are a garbage-can state and that the legislature is dysfunctional – right on Diana! Those are both undeniable truths. Add in politicians who would kill their own mothers to be re-elected and you get the passage of same sex marriage. However, I must take exception to the following: 

Remember that NY State …. depends heavily on Federal funds.

This, friends, is not the case. New York is 35th (from the lastest data available) in receipt of federal aid per dollar of federal taxes paid. We receive 93 cents in aid for every $1 in federal taxes paid. In other words, we subsidize other states. (See this document, page 32.) This is a direct result of the fact that New York consistently elects liberal democrats (i.e. Schumer, Gillibrand) to federal posts. These politicians in turn advocate for higher federal taxes on the relatively well off (i.e., living in NYC), which perpetuates this subsidy to other states. HOW STUPID ARE WE HERE? Note also that when there is a democrat in the white house, NY gets even less aid because any democratic president knows that NYers will vote for him no matter what he does to this state. It’s a simple political calculation. Again I ask, ARE WE IDIOTS? 

And if you know anything about the economy here in NY, you would know that we cannot afford this. The press conveniently ignores the fact that the economy is devastated and that there are no jobs. That tax rates and unemployment are causing people to lose their homes in record numbers. Aas an example, there are currently five houses for sale in our small development, two of which I know are foreclosures. (The other three might be also; I don’t know.) 

To add insult to injury, newspapers acoss the state focus all of their attention on gay marriage and gay rights, ignoring the real issues/supporting the democratic governor. One more time – ARE WE STUPID?!! We must be. Something in the water? What else can I say? For the record, I am thoroughly disgusted with all of it. Thanks for letting me vent. Good day.

Rebecca adds:

By the way, you can bet your last dollar that Grisanti’s vote was a political one – i.e. it has nothing to do with any principle or conviction. If he maintained a moral stance on anything, he’d be out of a job in short order. I’ll give you an example: Senator Bill Stachowski, who was against same sex marriage morally, lost his seat because he was one of eight Democratic state senators to vote against same-sex marriage legislation, which failed to pass the Senate, in 2009. 

Senator G is just doing what he thinks will keep him in power, no more no less. Like I said, they’d kill their own mother to keep their jobs. Same goes for the other Republicans who voted yes.

Rebecca writes:

Yes, MarkyMark, it’s all the fault of women. You run with that. What a ridiculous statement.

Diana writes:

A quick note in response to Rebecca. The fact that New York state gives more than it gets from the Feds doesn’t contradict my statement that “NY State is dysfunctional and depends heavily on Federal funds.” I was thinking of Medicaid, which is about half funded by the Federal government.

The Medicaid system in NY State is a ramshackle bankrupt shambles.

As a result of that (and other forms of financial mismanagement) the state is “functionally bankrupt.” We will not get out of this hole without massive Federal aid. (Which we may not get, but that’s another story.)

Also, a good deal of the depressed economy upstate is taxpayer funded. In some counties, the biggest employer is the correctional system. Some of that is Federally underwritten. And pretty much all agriculture at some point and in some form or fashion, is supported by the Feds.

That’s what I meant about NY State being heavily dependent on Federal funds.

Rebecca writes:

Oh my, I must correct myself. Ninety-three cents per dollar was 1982 – as of 2005, we get 79 cents per dollar collected from the Feds, putting us at Number 42, not 35. In terms of dollar value, New York pays $30 billion plus more in federal taxes than it receives in federal aid each year. With that money, we’d have no state deficit. Respectfully, I think this does clearly contradict Diana’s statement. We are NOT dependent on the Feds – other states are subsidized by us. And this will continue because of the asinine liberals that we continue to elect. (Schumer, Gillibrand, WIENER!) 

Don’t get me wrong, Diana and I are on the same page. As I said, I vehemently agree with most of what she wrote: Medicaid is too big and corrupt and the state welfare system spends far too much on too many. Albany is a disaster and the legislature is a seedy game of horse trades. Yes, the prisons are the only upstate economic development that we have in many areas – and it’s the taxes and regulations that have driven businesses out of New York that have made it this way. Sad, SO VERY SAD! 

As an aside, McDonald is my Senator – boy am I proud! (Not.)

Alissa writes;

Laura writes:

But, the fact that marriage has been severely weakened by married heterosexuals does not make same-sex “marriage” any less insane and destructive, as some people say it does.

Agreed. By the way I’ll translate “married heterosexuals” to liberal heterosexuals. 

Alex writes:

How should we explain this contradiction? If marriage is a destructive institution best avoided or escaped from, then why are homosexuals clamouring to get “married”? On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense. 

I just think liberals want to destroy traditional morality in any format. It’s like a child’s tantrum. They don’t care about being consistent and just want things to get done with.

MarkyMark writes:

Here’s my source for the fact that women file for divorce 2/3 of the time. NOW says (jubilantly, I might add) that women initiate between 70%-90% of the divorces; that includes women who act badly, thus goading their husbands to file first. Even if we use your figure of women filing for divorce 60% of the time, that still constitutes a sizable majority. Ergo, my original point stands.

MarkyMark adds:

I have a question for Rebecca: what did I say that was so ridiculous? Isn’t it true that women file for divorce a majority of the time? Regardless if we use the 2/3 figure I cited or the 60% Laura cited, doesn’t either figure constitute a majority? Since women file for divorce most of the time, would it not also be true that women are more responsible than men for ruining marriage? Did I say something that was untrue? I think not.

Laura writes:

In one sense, it is fair to say women have been more responsible for the marriage revolution. They initiate divorce much more often than men and support homosexual “marriage” more than men. However, the people who approved the bill in New York were overwhelmingly male, as were the legislators who enacted no-fault divorce laws years ago.

Rebecca writes:

Mark said:

Since women file for divorce most of the time, would it not also be true that women are more responsible than men for ruining marriage?

No Mark, this would not necessarily be true. The facts, details, and circumstances of any given divorce are not reflected in this statistic. In other words, the party that files may or may not be the one “at fault” – we simply cannot say. Therefore, your conclusion that women are more responsible for ruining marriages based on this statistic is unsupported and erroneous.

Laura writes:

These statistics do indeed say who is more at fault for ending marriages. Women have ended marriages in the last forty years at least twice as often as men. The enormous rise in divorce in the 70s and 80s was not due to women responding to serious mistreatment. After all, before no-fault divorce women could divorce their husbands in the event of physical abuse and serious infidelity. The growth in divorce was overwhelmingly due to “life satisfaction” divorces, people divorcing because they were unhappy. The National Marriage Project has documented the growth in divorces due to personal dissatisfaction. I am surprised Rebecca is not aware of this phenomenon as it is obvious if one knows any significant number of married people. Feminism has encouraged women to divorce and to view marriage as an oppressive institution. Elizabeth Gilbert’s wildly popular books are more recent proof that many women view marriage as unfair. I know a very long list of women who have left decent men and have viewed leaving as a form of liberation. Most recently, a woman I know very well who has been married for 22 years and has two children left a kind and loving husband for another man. I know quite a few men whose lives have been overturned by unexpected divorce initiated by their wives. There are three such men on my block alone. As I have said a number of times before, female-initiated divorce is one of the most significant and devastating social phenomena of the last fifty years – and it is not a result of a significant growth in physical abuse or prolonged infidelity.

MarkMark is absolutely correct that women bear a much greater responsibility for redefining the institution of marriage. Nevertheless, it was not women who enacted no-fault divorce laws and many men, including the clergy, have been complicit in the divorce culture.  

Rebecca writes:

Would you agree that husbands cheat more than wives do? 

And no, I’ve never seen any quantitave study of who leaves who and for what reason. I’ve only read that there is no reliable quantitave data. 

“Quality of Life” issues for women? This is why they leave? No, I am not aware of this. Most of the women I know: (1) Husband left for secretary, babysitter, whoever (2) woman is struggling with decision as to whether to endure abuse or become a single mother. There is no “quality” either way and no easy answer. What’s better for the child? NEITHER! This is liberating? 

I’ve never seen any study showing that women left to be liberated. Supporting kids on your own is not liberating – I know this firsthand; I grew up this way. My mother didn’t want it this way and I’ve never known a single mother who was happy to be a single mother. Not one. It must be that I live under a rock? 

NOW, Feminism, liberalism…I laugh now at all the garbage that I learned in college that took me 10 years to unlearn. I think most people eventually come to this same conclusion, unless of course they go into academia. (Academics don’t live in the real world – so they stay that way forever, in my opinion. ) Here is something funny: when I was in college, I believed that all othe world’s problems would be solved if everyone became a vegetarian. Meat consumption was the single greatest problem in the world according to me, once upon a time. Hilarious, yes? 

But, back to the subject at hand. 

To be clear: if a woman is physically abused and she files for divorce, is it her fault for ending the marriage? I think you’d say yes, from what you’ve written. But I’d say no, it’s his. In the same way that if I pushed you off a roof and you fell on Mark’s car and wrecked it. Who is responsible for wrecking Mark’s car? You or me? I’d say me. What do you think Laura?

Laura writes:

Do husbands cheat more often? Yes, but infidelity is not automatic justification for divorce. There are other alternatives, including physical or emotional separation. Is it a woman’s fault if a marriage dissolves at her initiation after serious, life-threatening physical abuse or abandonment? No.

I’ve never known a single mother who was happy to be a single mother.

Many women hope to remarry when they divorce and women do often take their children with them when they divorce, which provides a measure of happiness. Women may not like being single mothers but in many cases they seem to prefer that to living with real men. I’m not saying men are not often responsible for a great deal of unhappiness or that a small percentage of women don’t have such serious hardship that they cannot continue to live with their husbands because of physical harm  or that many men have not dissolved marriages by filing for divorce too, but let’s remember that marriage is a voluntary association, in which the partners choose whom they marry and it is not a vow conditional on lack of hardship. Rebecca speaks of marriage as if husbands were chosen for women and aggressors dumped upon them without their consent. Is marriage a vow to remain married to a person no matter what they are like, or is it not?

There are certainly women who are physically assaulted by their husbands to the point where their lives are in danger, but this is a relatively small percentage of those who divorce. I recommend Maggie Gallagher’s book The Abolition of Marriage for a look at the “culture of divorce,” which has spawned millions of frivolous divorces.  Below is a table of the historical divorce rates in the United States, from 1921-3 to 2007-9. The divorce rates are calculated for 3 year groupings so that yearly fluctuations can be averaged out, providing more reliable divorce rates. The divorce rate in the United States almost doubled between 1968 and 1977, the period when cultural feminism was in its ascendancy. Is Rebecca saying there was a sudden, unprecedented surge in male infidelity and physical abuse in that period that cut across all classes? Again, remember that women could divorce for these reasons before no-fault divorce was enacted in the seventies. It was the fact that the grounds for divorce were suddenly limitless that led to the increase in divorce, which is definite evidence that the dramatic increase had nothing to do with the problems that would previously have justified divorce. 

Historical Divorce Rates for the United States

1921 to 1923	13.4%
1930 to 1932	17.3%
1939 to 1941	17.2%
1948 to 1950	23.5%
1957 to 1959	25.6%
1966 to 1968	27.4%
1975 to 1977	49.7%
1984 to 1986	48.5%
1993 to 1995	50%
2002 to 2004	49%
2007 to 2009	50%
1966 to 1968	27.4%
1969 to 1971	32.4%
1972 to 1974	40.1%
1975 to 1977	49.7%

Rebecca writes:

NOW, Feminism, liberalism…I laugh now at all the garbage that I learned in college that took me 10 years to unlearn. I think most people eventually come to this same conclusion, unless of course they go into academia.

As I said, Rebecca appears to live outside the sweeping phenomenon of frivolous divorce. That’s great that there are places in America where the widespread divorce rate has not occurred. I have seen many, many divorces and almost all of them have been initiated by women for reasons other than infidelity and physical assault. That is not to deny your experience with women whose lives were in danger or that a significant percentage of divorces include these problems.

I have discussed this issue before, but it’s worth discussing in the future again.