Scarlet Jewels: 12 reasons same-sex marriage will ruin society
The NewsLog of Julie Solheim-Roe
 12 reasons same-sex marriage will ruin society12 comments
picture 2004-03-22 09:59, by Julie Solheim-Roe

1) Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.

2) Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.

3) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.
...


4) Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears's 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.

5) Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.

6) Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.

7) Gay marriage is not supportd by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That's why we only have one religion in America.

8) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.

9) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.

10) Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.

11) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.

12) Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages will for gays & lesbians.

- - -

(I got this in an email from my gay aunt. She got it from someone, who got it from someone's blog!)

For something a bit more serious, click MORE and read Bette Midler's letter to GW:
Dear President Bush,

Today you called upon Congress to move quickly to amend the US Constitution, and set in Federal stone a legal definition of marriage. I would like to know why.

In your speech, you stated that this Amendment would serve to protect marriage in America, which I must confess confuses me. Like you, I believe in the importance of marriage and I feel that we as a society take the institution far too lightly. In my circle of family, friends and acquaintances, the vast majority have married and divorced - some more than once. Still, I believe in marriage. I believe that there is something fundamental about finding another person on this planet with whom you want to build a life and family, and make a positive contribution to society. I believe that we need more positive role models for successful marriage in this country - something to counteract the images we get bombarded with in popular culture. When we are assaulted with images of celebrities of varying genres, be it actors, sports figures, socialites, or even politicians who shrug marriage on and off like the latest fashion, it is vitally important to the face of our nation, for our children and our future, that we have a balance of commitment and fidelity with which to stave off the negativity. I search for these examples to show my own daughter, so that she can see that marriage is more than a disposable whim, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

As a father, I'm sure you have faced these same concerns and difficulties in raising your own daughters. Therefore I can also imagine that you must understand how thrilled I have been over the past few weeks to come home and turn on the news with my family. To finally have concrete examples of true commitment, honest love, and steadfast fidelity was such a relief and a joy.

Instead of speaking in the hypothetical, I was finally able to point to these men and women, standing together for hours in the pouring rain, and tell my child that this is what its all abou t. Forget Britney. Forget Kobe. Forget Strom. Forget about all the people that we know who have taken so frivolously the pure and simple beauty of love and tarnished it so consistently. Look instead at the joy in the beautiful faces of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon - 51 years together! I mean, honestly Mr. President - how many couples do you know who are together for 51 years? I'm sure you agree that this love story provides a wonderful opportunity to teach our children about the true meaning and value of marriage. On the steps of San Francisco City Hall, rose petals and champagne, suits and veils, horns honking and elation in the streets; a celebration of love the likes of which this society has never seen.

This morning, however, my joy turned to sadness, my relief transformed into outrage, and my peace became anger. This morning, I watched you stand before this nation and belittle these women, the thousands who stood with them, and the countless millions who wish to follow them. How could you do that, Mr. President? How could you take something so beautiful - a clear and defining example of the true nature of commitment - and declare it to be anything less? What is it that validates your marriage which somehow doesn't apply to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon? By what power, what authority are you so divinely imbued that you can stand before me and this nation and hold their love to a higher standard?

Don't speak to me about homosexuality, Mr. President. Don't tell me that the difference lies in the bedroom. I would never presume to ask you or your wife how it is you choose to physically express your love for one another, and I defy you to stand before Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and ask them to do the same. It is none of my business, as it is none of yours, and it has nothing to do with the "sanctity of marriage". I'm sure you would agree that marriage is far more than sexual expression, and its high time we all started focusing on all the other aspects of a relationship which hold it together over the course of a lifetime. Therefore, with the mechanics of sex set aside, I ask you again - what makes a marriage? I firmly believe that whatever definition you derive, there are thousands upon thousands of shining examples for you to embrace.

You want to protect marriage. I admire and support that, Mr. President. Together, as a nation, let us find and celebrate examples of what a marriage should be. Together, let us take couples who embody the principles of commitment, fidelity, sacrifice and love, and hold them up before our children as role models for their own futures. Together, let us reinforce the concept that love is about far more than sex, despite what popular culture would like them to believe.

Please, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our society, for the sake of our future, do not take us down this road. Under the guise of protection, do not support divisiveness. Under the guise of unity, do not endorse discrimination. Under the guise of sanctity, do not devalue commitment. Under the guise of democracy, do not encourage this amendment.

Bette Midler


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12 comments

22 Mar 2004 @ 11:05 by martha : thanks Julie
enjoyed both the reasons and the letter from Bette. You would think with all the killing and hate going on the world that the President, fundamentalists and most conservatives might think twice about regulating LOVE.  

22 Mar 2004 @ 20:42 by vibrani : Great letter
from Bette, but I did a little search on this and up came urban myths and legends web site with the following:
Bette Midler Letter to President Bush on Gay Marriage

Netlore Archive: A widely circulated email criticizing President Bush's stance on gay marriage is falsely attributed to Bette Midler

Description: Email flier
Status: Falsely attributed
Circulating since: Feb. 2004
Analysis: See below

Email example contributed by Jack W., 5 Feb. 2004:

Comments: For all we know, Bette Midler agrees with some or all of what's written above — she has a heavily gay fan base with whom she presumably sympathizes and has been known to take jabs at conservative politicians — but she did not write it.

The text was authored by blogger Stephanie Finnegan, who originally posted it in a LiveJournal entry dated February 24, 2004. The piece made no mention of Bette Midler nor was it connected with the singer in any way until another person copied and pasted it into a posting on a Bette Midler discussion board the next day. Though it was still not directly attributed to her, some readers evidently came to believe Bette Midler herself had written the letter, and within a week or so it broke into general email circulation under her name.

A March 5 notice on BootlegBetty.com, an unofficial Midler site whose Webmaster says he checked the authenticity of the letter "with people who would know," confirmed that Ms. Midler, who is currently touring, neither wrote the letter nor handed it out at recent concerts, as some people have claimed.
{http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_bette_midler.htm}  

23 Mar 2004 @ 12:20 by Emily Vonnessa @69.33.46.10 : The struggle for equal rights continues
Interesting, great letter indeed, whoever wrote it, the author sure deserves a round of applauses. It hits the proverbial nail right on the xhead, don't you agree?

People are speaking up: {link:http://iths.altschools.org/leun2545/clothes.html|"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"}

Read below Barbra Streisand's acceptance speech (good for her!) upon her receipt of the Human Rights Campaign "Humanitarian Award" on March 6th, 2004:

I have been fortunate to receive a few awards in my lifetime, and I always appreciate them, but I must say that this is a very special one because the gay community has supported me from the very beginning. I know that this is a challenging moment in your history. So I am very proud to accept this award from the Human Rights Campaign at this time. You are on the frontlines in the struggle for equal rights, even as continued prejudice stands in the way.

The American Constitution is a magical document that has evolved over 200 plus years. While we revere it, it did not start out as a perfect document. This Republic was founded with a Constitution that counted slaves as three-fifths human. It took decades and a Civil War, the deadliest in U.S. history, to erase that stain upon our country. It took over 100 years to bring women into the political system by giving them the right to vote. Interracial marriage was illegal in some states until 1967. Now the Bush Administration wants to change the positive inclusive direction of our Constitution by calling for an amendment that authorizes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Well, I say, no way. Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. We must always go forward, towards greater liberty and greater equality, not backward.

You know, for me, the realization that two people should have the right to form a sacred union regardless of their gender was strengthened when I saw a performance of the play The Normal Heart in 1985. After feeling the love those two men had for each other, I dare anybody not to want them to get married by the end.

The law cannot dictate matters of the heart. When two people form a deep bond, there is usually a soul connection, and the soul has no gender. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental rights in this country. Happiness can be many things - a good meal, a good friend, a warm puppy, and certainly...love. How can anyone legislate who you can love? That is a human right, the right to love and be loved.

And when you love someone, whether you're in a heterosexual or same-gender relationship, shouldn't you be able to visit them in the hospital when they're sick or dying? Shouldn't everyone have the right to enter into a loving, legally binding, committed relationship that takes on special responsibilities and obligations?

Current civil union legislation doesn't go far enough in protecting equal rights. We must not deny gay families many of the benefits that help keep families strong...social security, pensions, veteran's support, inheritance, the right to take unpaid leave to care for a spouse...the list goes on and on.

Instead of helping families, this president wants to spend a billion and a half dollars to bolster marriage. Turning government into a marriage counselor is a joke...a waste of time and money. It's not a policy; it's a diversion.

But this administration regularly uses the politics of diversion to their advantage. They cleverly use divisive cultural issues to avoid talking about other serious problems, such as unemployment and healthcare. They go after Saddam because they can't find bin Ladin ... They want to send missions to Mars instead of protecting the Earth... Tax cuts for the wealthy instead of assisting the poor...

You have to look at what Bush does, not what he says. Talk is cheap. He expresses empathy for military families and then cuts their benefits...He names a proposal "The Clear Skies Initiative" that pollutes the planet...He says he'll be a uniter and then drives us apart...He steals the slogan "No Child Left Behind" and then breaks his promise to fund his reforms.

Truly, I stand here flabbergasted at what is going on in today's world. Never in my life have I witnessed a president and an administration that is so out of step with the needs of the country, so threatening to our future and so abusive in its use of power.

The Clinton administration left this country with a budget surplus, and also a surplus in the goodwill we shared with our allies. Now we have a deficit in both.

Before the war in Iraq, I went to hear Scott Ritter speak - he had been a weapons inspector for seven years. He told us there was no imminent threat to the United States, that the program to develop nuclear weapons had been dormant since 1998. There was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda (one is a secular society and the other fundamentalist), that chemical weapons have a short shelf life and wouldn't be usable today...in short, everything Scott Ritter told us has turned out to be the truth.

But this president (the only one to cut taxes during a war) made terrorism a partisan cause. He charged Democrats with being soft on terror, a lie. He appointed John Ashcroft to trample our civil liberties as Attorney General, and, from a human rights point of view, his use of Guantanamo Bay has roused international protest.

Now as the president gears up for his re-election campaign, the right wing propaganda machine is ready to take the skin off of John Kerry, the Democratic Party's nominee. I've never seen anything as ruthless or as relentless as this. They can take a slur hatched at the Republican National Committee or a lie huckstered by the Heritage Foundation, repeat it on Fox, hit it on Limbaugh, print it in the Wall Street Journal, until it's coming out of every media outlet imaginable. Repeating lies over and over doesn't make them any more true. But it does make people believe the lies a little more until finally they stop demanding the truth.

I've seen their ferocity up close, as I witnessed the astounding assault on the CBS movie about Ronald Reagan, in which my husband starred and Craig and Neil produced. They attacked that movie and drove it off network television before any of them had ever seen it.

The Right Wing is very well-organized. They fight dirty. They project their own nastiness onto their opposition. Remember how they accused the Democrats of stealing the election in Florida, while they themselves were doing just that!

We're now in a period that whenever you say something that's critical of the government, you are accused of being unpatriotic. Bush even lent himself to an utterly despicable campaign in Georgia that impugned the patriotism of Senator Max Cleland, who had sacrificed three limbs in the same Vietnam War that the president ducked. Talking about patriotism, let's never forget Bush's fellow Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who in 1918 said, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Indeed, this country now faces a fundamental choice. Multilateral security or pre-emptive wars. Closing or widening the gaps between the haves and the have nots. Facing the truth or accepting the lies. The public taking an interest or tuning out. Extending our rights or turning them back.

Mr. Bush will dress himself up as a compassionate conservative once more for the election, but he has embraced a remarkably radical policy, which I pray the public finally sees. The mishandling of national and economic security. The shameless politics of special interests and crony capitalists. (And when you talk about special interests it's important to differentiate between public interests that benefit the larger good of the people, like protecting the environment or finding a cure for cancer, versus the special interests that are limited to a particular industry or corporation, like Enron or Halliburton).

Bush recently pushed through a prescription drug bill that actually gives a better deal to the drug companies than to the seniors who need the drugs. And what about the new energy plan that actually increases our dependence on Persian Gulf oil (even though he recently said just the opposite in his State of the Union speech).

The Republicans will try to win the election by convincing the American public that they are the father figures who can keep us safe. But the facts contradict the myth. Two and a half years after the largest attack on American soil, our borders remain easily penetrable. We have the capacity to inspect only 2% of cargo containers coming into our country. Local law enforcement has been weakened by spending cuts, and our intelligence lacks manpower and updated technology. And which party's budget provides the most for homeland security? The Democrats!

This president is so transparent. The only way he would agree to investigations of the mishandling of intelligence leading up to the Iraqi war, is if we wait until after the election to get the reports. Has this administration no shame? What job are we not doing that has allowed them to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people?

But...there is hope. It's starting to turn. I can feel it. The media is finally asking the president and his staff the tougher questions, and looking into the issues that should have been investigated years ago. The people are speaking out at all levels from the grassroots to Washington. All of the good work so many people are doing is finally making a dent. We won't be scared into submission.

What should scare us is that we have no checks and balances on this administration. They control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court. All we have is each other. So each of us must do what we can to create positive change in November. I know the Human Rights Campaign will be at the center of the struggle for equality. And let's be smart...Let's be pragmatic...Let's not allow the Republicans to use gay marriage as a political tool in this election year. Truth and justice eventually wins out.

I am proud to stand with you tonight as the recipient of this prestigious award. Together we can and we will win the fight.  

23 Mar 2004 @ 15:01 by Enki @69.33.46.10 : Barbra...
To think that an actor or a singer has the requisite knowledge of the facts and the savvy to determine appropriate national policy is laughable. Having the right to an opinion, and the right to express it, does not equate having unrestricted special access to express it simply because you have some other random talent.  

23 Mar 2004 @ 15:32 by Emily Vonnessa @69.33.46.10 : LOL
Wished someone had say that to Arnold Schwarzenegger (or Charlton Heston) and, hey, didn't we elect an actor (albeit a pretty awful one) president of this country not once, but twice!! Seriously darlin....whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or neither...isn't this president starting to scare the shit out of you...just a little? hmm?  

23 Mar 2004 @ 18:17 by Julie @81.86.69.168 : What?
Barbara Streisand -- and Bette Midler, for that matter -- is a VERY politically savvy woman, and an activist, and has been so her whole career. She makes money from her talent, and then uses her money/ wealth... for good causes and rights that are very left. No, I think she has ever right. As a woman, as someone who is deeply passionate, and just as a citizen!!!!!!!!  

24 Mar 2004 @ 18:16 by Emily Vonnessa @69.33.46.10 : Thank you Julie!
Barbra IS an activist, and she must be doing something right because she has been coming under a lot of {link:http://www.barbrastreisand.com/truthalerts_archive.html|fire} for the stand she took and she knows what she is talking about when she says that she has "never seen anything as ruthless or as relentless" as the right wing propaganda machine.  

30 Mar 2004 @ 22:38 by Gator Gay-Straight Alliance @24.170.204.221 : 12 Reasons Author
The 12 reasons list was written by members of the Gator Gay-Straight Alliance at the University of Florida for a Valentine's Day project. We are still happily tracing it all over the internet. Please link to us at www.12reasons.com Thanks! :)  

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