I have to again assert, here, that I'd planned on stating my old-fashioned reasonings in support of Proposition 8, losing the election, being relegated to the dust-bin of history, and moving on.

But Life sometimes does not go as we expected, so here I am, attempting to Articulate the general position of the average Proposition 8 supporter, so that our opponents can better understand us.

Mr. Olbermann's original editorial is here; Part 1 of my response here.

This is part

(2) THE ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE "RE-DEFINING" OF MARRIAGE

Mr. Olbermann sidesteps now to:

"I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people."

Here, unfortunately, Mr. Olbermann misses the debate mark in two ways:

• This country "re-defining" marriage doesn't address the traditional view(s) of marriage nearly deeply enough. The USA did NOT establish the original definition of a "marriage," so any definitions on-board during the country's existence are themselves likely modifications of historical definitions going back TO THE PRE-HISTORY OF MAN.
• Mr. Olbermann, as is common, is about to conflate RACE with SEX, as if they are equally abstract constructs. But a few minutes' thought might disperse that idea.

We let Mr. Olbermann state his case first:

"But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

But what if the supporters of Proposition 8 agree with the idea that slavery and its attendant institutionalized controls were morally evil? What is the relevance of this argument? Is Mr. Olbermann asserting that homosexuals are regarded by state or federal law as property of heterosexuals? Does Mr. Olbermann assert that heterosexuals are denying homosexuals the right to breed in an uncontrolled manner?

MORE TO THE POINT — Mr. Olbermann is using the roughly 3-century-old American definition of marriage as the original definition. I again note: THE DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE PREDATES THE UNITED STATES BY THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

And this is true whether you are religious or not. It is as true for atheists as it is for devout Christians. It is as true for Russians, Chinese, Americans, Greeks, what-have-you.

The definition of "marriage" is NOT a religious construct. It predates religion, both according to religious texts and scientific models.


*** *** SIDEBAR!

How can we tell that the laws prohibiting slave marriages and interracial marriages were not in accord with the original Definition of Marriage? Is there an easy test?

Yes! Merely let slaves marry, or people of different races marry, and see if they can breed. Is the result of the vast majority of slave and/or interracial marriages genetic mixing? The production and raising of children genetically related, but not identical, to the parents? Yes?

Then — I assert that laws prohibiting inter-racial or inter-religious marriages are not in compliance with the original definition.

Indeed — in the case of inter-religious marriages, we can know immediately that such prohibitions are societal constructs, because MARRIAGE PREDATES RELIGION.

*** *** END SIDEBAR


Mr. Olbermann shifts gears:

"uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing — centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman... "

"Uncountable," unfortunately, does not guarantee that there were a large amount of such marriages, especially weighted against the billions of traditional marriages occuring over any comparable timespan. I'll let you pick.

Note also the drip-drip-drip of the re-defining of marriage by Mr. Olbermann and his crowd: "marriage" does not equal sexual intercourse, but it is meant to include it. That's why a man can't "marry" a man, in the traditional sense, because a penis doesn't go into a penis. "We" didn't say that, anymore than "we" said that gravity pulls things down to the ground, or that cats are warm-blooded. Such things as nature contains are not there because "we" had anything to say about them. And a sex-change operation, or dressing like the opposite sex, doesn't make the problem go away. And one can have one's genitals re-arranged, but one cannot have one's chromosome set replaced, an XY for an XX, an XX for an XY. If you could, would you? At that level of change, you would actually become the opposite sex — and be able to marry in the traditional sense!

This is NOT a religious argument.

"Marriage," in the traditional, centuries-old sense, IMPLIES A POTENTIAL FOR BREEDING AND RAISING ONE'S OWN GENETIC CHILDREN.

Homosexual "marriage" is a pale imitation of marriage, not just according to the religious, but according to anyone who believes in biology, paleontology, anthropology, evolution, etc. etc. The "problem" Mr. Olbermann and his allies face is buried much, much deeper than the origins of religion.

It is not a question of semantics. To suggest it is, is to demean the debate.

Many supporters maintain that the definition of "marriage" isn't ours to change.

Many of us think it is far too old for us to take ownership of it.

Next Time:


(3) OLBERMANN'S CLOSING ARGUMENTS FROM PRIVACY (M.Y.O.B.) AND RELIGION