Some Goober Named Jim Spencer Thinks Most Americans Are Ignorant, Fearful Bigots

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode LXX

A delightful — I mean that quite sincerely — a simply delightful column in yesterday's Denver Post, by somebody who surely still wonders how in the world Ronald Reagan ever managed to beat both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

My gut tells me to look for and publicize the failings in the married lives of the individuals pushing so hard for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

My heart tells me that if I do, I'll be as bigoted and self-righteous as they are.

My head tells me it wouldn't matter anyway.

This debate, spearheaded by bills introduced in Congress by Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard and by lobbying campaigns by groups such as Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, defies anything as transparent as personal hypocrisy.

As we head into an election year, many conservative politicians and religious groups vow to make opposition to gay marriage an abortion-like litmus test in national, state and local votes.

These groups would like you to believe this issue is about saving families.

It's not. For gay people, marriage and child-rearing are about the same things that matter to heterosexuals - love and commitment.

If gay marriage is allowed to wag the dog in this election season, it will do so because some people equate homosexuality with deviance.

The thought of men making love to men and women making love to women makes a lot of Americans uncomfortable. Some 49 percent of those surveyed in a recent New York Times poll believed homosexual relations between adults should not be legal. Roughly 61 percent favored laws banning homosexual marriages and 55 percent supported a constitutional amendment to that effect.

The poll clearly shows disapproval, but that feeling pales next to the other emotion at work here.

Fear.

Some of us look at gay couples and ask, "Could this be me? Could this be my children?"

It doesn't matter how many doctors say sexuality is the product of science rather than socialization. In the end, too much of our reaction to homosexuality is visceral and negative. That means it is easily exploited.

The gay marriage amendment promises a solution to our ambivalence that it cannot deliver.

Constitutional amendments are rare, simply because they are so important. Musgrave and Allard and their willing accomplices, guys like Colorado congressmen Bob Beauprez and Tom Tancredo and organizations such as Focus on the Family, are trifling with the foundation of a document that finds its greatness in including, not excluding, minorities.

But the real problem for the gay marriage bashers is that the U.S. Constitution won't protect families any better than the laws passed by dozens of states, including Colorado, enshrining marriage as the union between and a man and a woman.

Musgrave has bragged to conservative publications about her role in getting Colorado to adopt that legal definition.

So how good is family life in Colorado and around the country?

Fewer than 10 percent of all Americans are divorced. In Colorado, it's 11 percent.

Nationally, the 2000 census found 1.2 million Americans who said they lived with a same-sex partner. That same enumeration discovered 21.5 million divorced Americans and 9.7 million heterosexuals living together out of wedlock.

Two weeks ago, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that "the number of births to unmarried women reached a record high of 1,365,966 in 2002."

The numbers show we need constitutional amendments to ban divorce, co-habitation and unmarried motherhood long before we need a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

But the point here is the futility of any such moral arbitration.

One of the best parents I know is a twice artificially inseminated lesbian.

Sometimes I forget about her sexual orientation. But there's no way to overlook her love and commitment to her two boys.

The children have the kind of home training that ought to be the envy of anyone who claims to revere "traditional values."

Meanwhile, American soldiers die in Iraq.

Osama's still out there.

North Korea has The Bomb.

So do India and Pakistan. And they hate each other enough to use it.

American tech jobs fly to foreign countries faster than you can say overseas outsourcing, while illegal immigrants fleeing poverty need temporary work visas to draw them into the U.S. tax system.

Tens of millions of people in this country have no way to pay for health care.

Public colleges and universities teeter on bankruptcy because of budget cuts.

Too many Johnnies still can't read.

And yet, conservative politicians and religious groups hope to convince us that what matters most this year when we cast our vote is sexual insecurity.

Shame on us if we let them.

Jim Spencer's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in The Denver Post. Contact him at jspencer@denverpost.com or 303-820-1771.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Let's take it one step at a time, as far as I can stomach to go.

Does Spencer's "gut" tell him that, for instance, when filthy rich Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Jay Rockefeller rail against tax-rate cuts for everybody because it will hurt government spending for the poor that he should investigate the personal lives of Sens. Kennedy and Rockefeller and determine where their money comes from and where it goes? And why?

These groups would like you to believe this issue is about saving families. It's not.... Gee. Who appointed this goober the arbiter of what issues are about?

The thought of men making love to men and women making love to women makes a lot of Americans uncomfortable. Some 49 percent of those surveyed in a recent New York Times poll believed homosexual relations between adults should not be legal. Roughly 61 percent favored laws banning homosexual marriages and 55 percent supported a constitutional amendment to that effect.

How... quaint. The moral, theological, philosophical, and medical considerations that have guided society's views of marriage for millennia are dismissed as... discomfort. The thought that a man of this intellectual magnitude actually has a column in a large newspaper makes me uncomfortable. How about you?

The gay marriage amendment promises a solution to our ambivalence that it cannot deliver. What ambivalence is this goober talking about? By his own statistics, he admits that a clear and decided majority of Americans oppose "gay" "marriage". He probably thinks Reagan's 49-state-electoral-sweep was the result of widespread indecision on the part of the electorate.

Oooooh. Get ready, Faithful Reader. Here it comes: some of the most shameless, mindless intellectual hypocrisy you're going to see. Today, at any rate.

So how good is family life in Colorado and around the country? Fewer than 10 percent of all Americans are divorced. In Colorado, it's 11 percent. Nationally, the 2000 census found 1.2 million Americans who said they lived with a same-sex partner. That same enumeration discovered 21.5 million divorced Americans and 9.7 million heterosexuals living together out of wedlock. Two weeks ago, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that "the number of births to unmarried women reached a record high of 1,365,966 in 2002." The numbers show we need constitutional amendments to ban divorce, co-habitation and unmarried motherhood long before we need a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Wow. Did you catch that? Banning "gay" "marriage" won't help marriage because marriage is already in such trouble because of divorce, "cohabitation", and single parenthood. But... but... but... haven't liberals been telling us for 25, 30, 35, 40 years and more that what this country really needed to make marriages better was.... easier divorce, less "rigid" sexual "taboos", and individual freedom? Now, the end results of what liberals argued for, and fought for, and legislated (often from the bench) for, are finally admitted to be — not the solutions they were trumpted as — but the problems they actually are. And that is why we shouldn't have a "ban" on "gay" "marriage"!

This is bald intellectual dishonesty. And it's really, really dumb, too, to admit that your side has been the wrong side for so long. (But he probably doesn't even see that he has done so.)

Well, all I can say now is — Goober, keep it coming!

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 12/31/03 02:31:01 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.