Malcolm Cutchins: The intolerant no more special than anyone

Malcolm,

Are you that desperate?  It’s really unbecoming for a man of your intelligence (who during his career was one of the people responsible for raising Auburn’s engineering program from a 3rd rate program to a solid 2nd tier program) to not understand parental v. marital issues.

The parental relationship establishes kinship, not the marital relationship.  My children have two dads.  We are both listed on the birth certificate.  My children have a life full of kinship relationships.  Since they were baptized in the Church, they have godparents.  Additionally, they have grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

I have no problem limiting the term “marriage” to men and women so long as an equal yet parallel system is created for same sex couples.  I’m quite happy with my domestic partnership and the legal protections it affords me.  I don’t feel compelled to define my relationship using heterosexual terms.  Through no default divorce and the normalization of “shacking-up”, heterosexuals have so cheapened the term marriage that it’s almost lost its significance.  Since my two children are heterosexual, this saddens me.  I’m working hard to instill the values and morals that will hopefully lead them to become honest, ethical, and monogamous husbands, fathers, and citizens. 

Back to your example, let’s say Tina and Bill marry then divorce.  Bill remarries and has a son.  There’s no incest prohibition to keep Bill’s son from marrying Tina, his father’s ex-wife.  (Our true focus should be preventing divorce.)

If same-sex marriage violates your personal or religious beliefs, that’s a reasonable position.  But, attacking same-sex families (or any family) does little more except degrade the attacker.

Murraba and Dr. Cutchins must be unaware that gay and lesbian couples are responsible for the creation of life and the perpetuation of the species.  Lesbian couples decide to have children via sperm donation and gay couples opt to have children via surrogates.  Their children would not exist and be alive today if it weren’t for the same sex couple opting to have a family.

If disease prevention is your justification for denying recognition of certain relationships, then lesbians should be the only people allowed to marry.

Murraba and Dr. Cutchins apparently ascribe to the Bill “I’m a Liar” Clinton definition of sex.  They act as if penetration is the only form of sex that exists.  It’s this absurd definition that’s resulted in teenagers claiming to be virgins even though they’ve engaged in oral sex.  Gay and lesbian couples can and do have satisfying sexual relationships that don’t involve penetration. 

While I certainly think it’s reasonable for each State to define their own version of “marriage”, I would hope that murraba and Dr. Cutchins don’t advocate denying same sex couples their parentage rights.  In the event they do, thankfully the US Constitution protects parentage judgments (but not marriage statutes) under the Full Faith and Credit clause.  Every state whether it allows gay people to adopt or not must honor an adoption decree issued by another State.

Considering that only 3% of the population is homosexual, I still believe that our society spends way too much time on this topic.  Alabama has banned recognition of same sex marriages so it’s really time to move on.

There are many fine, upstanding people who can serve as role models for the concept of heterosexual marriage.  I’d rather those folks were the public image of heterosexual marriage instead of a 21 year old beauty queen who lacks the self confidence to recognize that she was beautiful and didn’t need breast augmentation.  Or a 21 year old beauty queen whose own parents are divorced.  That’s not being intolerant.  That’s saying let’s get a better spokesperson.  My grandparents were married for 75 years and raised 7 children.  I’d much rather take moral advice from them than Miss Prejean.

The illegitimacy percentage is now 40% in this country.  So, while we sit back and pass amendments to ban relationship recognition for approximately 3% of the population, we are allowing heterosexual breeders to deny the importance of marriage.  This denial results in significant economic cost to American taxpayers and irreparable damage to children.  Sadly, as is often the case, a majority is often unwilling to accept blame where due and work to correct the problem.  Instead, a majority tends to look for scapegoats.

I appreciate murraba supplying the CDC links as I bet they’ll provide a better quality of scholarship that whatever convinced him/her the average gay men doesn’t make it into their forties. 

However, digging into all these figures is just too hard for tonight.  Perhaps later?

I , however, found the CDC’s “Trends in Reportable Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the United States, 2007” at http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats07/trends.htm that I spent some time with.

Scary in some ways and yet I found this supporting my belief that we must have a vigorous comprehensive, rather than mere prayers for abstinence, sex education program for our young people. 

The intimacy of homosexual men is not just limited to the “extraordinarily fragile tissues”.  I could go into more yet I’ll err on the side of assuming this to be a G-rated resource.

I can understand an engineer using the plumbing parts analogy while at the same time I look at human sexuality as much less “mechanical” and much more magical. 

When murraba wrote, “...that humans are designed for sexual intercourse as the means by which our species will continue.“, I wonder if he/she would consider than an evolutionary result or is it that God had a sense of humor and/or a voyeuristic bent?

As to murraba’s claim that the gay leads to all sorts of nasty diseases, HPV is found among the vast majority of sexually active adults, be they the gay or decent people just matching up the proper connections.

Also, the claim “The life expectancy of homosexual males is 39 years” merits further explanation.  Perhaps if international epidemics (made all the worse by Bu$hCo and other conservatives condom and education policies) are factored in the number gets closer but I’m betting murraba is working off Paul Cameron and/or Bill Bennett’s misinformation. 

Slate’s Walter Olson gives us the story from back in 1997 on how Mr. Virtue dabbled in phony statistics. The link is http://www.slate.com/id/2098/

As a contributor to the “Best Editorial Page” among small dailies in Alabama, I appreciate the diverse discussions in reaction to my column and others who have posted. I do not claim that disagreement with my opinion is a “negative post.” What I was referring to was, for example, the personal attacks – possibly being a “misogynist,” ignoring “real dangers to society,” engaging in a “rant,” “not doing research,” “hiding the real dilemmas facing our country,” striving “to keep everyone’s eyes focused on gay marriage,” promoting the “mistreat(ment) of all gay people,” “demonizing all gay people,” “obsessed w/ homosexuals,” using the same technique as Dowdell. None of these are true.
  I have been surprised that my reference to “misfit marriages” has been interpreted incorrectly. I called no persons misfits. In plumbing, in electronics, etc. there are male and female connections. Other ways of connections do not fit, hence the term, misfit. Also, “mating” does not necessarily always result in birth. Mating scenes are shown all the time on nature shows. There was certainly no intent to imply that a marriage between a man and a woman that did not result in having children was any kind of bad thing. My second marriage – after losing my first wife – will not result in any children.
  I rarely use “cut & paste.” Sorry. And I have used Rushdooney only once in the last year. I do try to reference knowledgeable sources probably more often than other writers, the engineer in me, I guess. Readers should also keep in mind that I do not choose headlines and some of what I submit is often left out due to space limitations. Such omissions can alter slightly how things come across.
  On the original subject, readers would be wise to explore the health problems related to homosexual activities. They are not benign and are far more dangerous than those associated with monogamous, heterosexual relationships. 
M. Cutchins
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