Children in the Message Path: Sauce for the Same-Sex Goose

Arline Isaacson is upset today, according to a Boston radio station.

Apparently, the prominent same-sex marriage advocate thinks that a Catholic organization shouldn't give political petitions to children in Catholic schools.  These petitions are being sent home for parents and household adults to sign.  The group seeks some sort of repeal of the decision that the Commonwealth's Constitution gives equal marriage rights to same-sex couples.

My viewpoint on the larger issue has been made clear to many people.  I was appalled at the attempt to beat up Massachusetts' judiciary for being fair and following some clear Constitutional language.  I've been appalled that narrow-minded people can't live and let live.  Though I'm heterosexual, I'm not afraid that I'll be forced to marry another man against my will, or that my live-and-let-live attitude will damn my immortal soul to Hell.  Heck, I have far more serious sins on my conscience than accepting that some people truly prefer their own gender's company, while I continue to actively pursue the elusive "perfect woman."

But Ms. Isaacson has stepped too far on this one by scolding the group for involving children in the fight.  In fact, she has stepped into the same dog doo-doo of hypocrisy that has turned my stomach from the day the two elected branches of Massachusetts government announced that five wrong-headed justices of the Supreme Judicial Court needed to be hung from the highest yardarm of the Boston Tea Party Boat.

The fact is that the same-sex community has put its children into the public debate over this issue from the start.  Many of the rights provided by the civil contract of marriage deal with the legal status of children and parents.  Marriage creates legal obligations to support children of the marriage, and gives rights to custody and visitation if divorce occurs.  Marriage creates unified, stable families.  Marriage, even of same-sex couples, is good for children of such couples.  Yes, Ms. Isaacson, you and many others have said these things.

When the rights were won in court, and when the debate raged on, news stories included photos and video of children interacting with their same-sex parents.  When the marriages finally occurred, many months after the Court ordered the Commonwealth to go forward, children were again shown.  It helped greatly that the children were normal and not self-conscious.  They were part of the events.

But, Ms. Isaacson, the children were used.  Admit it or not, their parents allowed these public displays at least in part because it would help the cause.   These pictures and videos made your valid point more clearly than court documents and editorials ever could.  Thus, displaying the children was a form of persuasion for public consumption.

Please remember that I agree with you about same-sex marriage.

I strongly disagree that any religion should have a say in determining the legal contract rights of individuals, especially when the rights implicit in the legal contract of valid ceremonial marriage are so all-encompassing.  As I have said before, Catholics, Mormons, charismatic Christians, and many others should sit back and remember when religious intolerance left them without real rights.  They should all remember the Boston, Massachusetts signs saying, "No Irish [i.e., Catholics] need apply," and the unlawful Missouri "Extermination Order" of 1838.  The religious groups that think their views of sexual morality should be law should all sit back and accept that other religions and many non-affiliated individuals in this nation see no evil in same-sex love and civil marriage.  They should sit back and remember that many of their churches once suggested that interracial and interfaith couples were all Hellfire-bound. 

The "my creed should be law" crowd must remember that intolerance cuts both ways.  In fact, it must remember some time last week, or the week before, or at most last year, one religious person or another claimed that religious bigotry reared its ugly head in some newspaper or reported comment.  Heck, they'll say that this harangue is anti-Catholic, anti-Mormon, anti-Charismatic, and anti-God.

That having been said, I cannot find fault that children are becoming couriers in a civil debate.  I hate to admit it, but I agree with the group behind the petitions that this is a good education in politics, even though I rue that it's also a good lesson in gay-bashing. 

I can disapprove of the intolerance and even raw hate behind the civil debate, just as I disapprove of the raw hate still shown by those against racially or religiously "mixed" marriages.  I can even loathe the intolerant message that the parents are giving these "couriers."  I can hope that the children will see beyond the intolerance of those organizing the drive.  I can even laugh at a comment by a spokesman for the Boston Archdiocese that it is blissfully unaware of the distribution of these petitions within its schools.

Despite all, Ms. Isaacson, sauce for the same-sex goose is sauce for the homophobic gander.  Hateful politicking is, unfortunately, as legal today as it was for the infamous Governor George Wallace. 

Let's just hope that those behind the petition drive learn from Wallace and recant their  hate before they have to explain it at the "Pearly Gates."