REFLECTIONS

Looking at the viscous attacks some gay groups have launched against the Mormons and other churches had Gaypatriot.org wondering if homosexuals are ready for the responsibility of marriage.  It is only fair, since the election I have wondered if heterosexuals are responsible for marriage.

On the same day that the majority of voters in California voted to restore traditional marriage, they voted that doctors can perform surgery on young girls without informing those girls’ parents, as long as that surgery is an abortion.  The same voters required traditional marriage while rejecting the traditional requirement that adults care for their children.  The dichotomy of rejecting one traditional duty while insisting on a traditional benefit has made me wish a pox on all their houses. 

(For the sake of this post, and only this post, when I refer to children I will only be talking about the born.  Specifically those born 15 or 16 years ago or, God help us, 12 or 13 years ago.  When I talk about protecting children I am now going to only refer to those children the entire state recognize as human beings with certain rights and need for protection.  (Or at least that the state likes to pretend we are protecting.))

A teenage girl in this state can not get an aspirin without her parent’s permission.  She can not get her ears pierced without her parents permission.  Ear piercings can get infected, not a serious or life threatening condition, but nevertheless one that needs to be monitored by a responsible adult. The complications from an abortion can leave a girl infertile, or dead.  Yet for this far more dangerous procedure the parent’s of California have said “we don’t want to know, just don’t tell us.”   They insist their rights as a traditional married couple be preserved.  But refuse to monitor the health and life of the fruits of that marriage. 

We have insured the sacred right to an institution without the most important sacred duty of that institution.  In deliberately choosing traditional marriage, while deliberately refusing traditional responsibilities we have shown ourselves to be unworthy of the institution.

We might as well allow gay marriage and polygamous marriage and inter-species marriage for that matter.  What was saved on November 4 in California was not the institution of marriage, but its hollow shell.