“Jennifer Thieme is the Director of Finance for the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund.”
That’s according to the Ruth Institute’s website. Jennifer is frustrated with libertarians who support same-sex marriage, and especially those who think the government should get out of marriage altogether. Her arguments are so astounding that I cannot understand them. I can only be entertained by them. For instance:
First, I do not think it is realistic to believe the government will actually get out of marriage, especially once the definition of marriage becomes sexless (genderless) as a widespread policy. Sexless marriage as a policy is what must happen in order to allow gay couples to marry. It wasn’t fair that only straight women could be brides, and only straight men could be grooms. So now no woman gets to be a bride, and no man gets to be a groom in same sex marriage states. The state will not likely give up the increased power it gets over individuals, children, and the church as this change gains traction.
That was like a tour through an Escher drawing. Here’s another bit:
Fourth, and perhaps most important to my claim that its a red herring: no legislator is proposing any policy to get the government out of marriage. It’s not on the table anywhere, that I am aware. So people who are otherwise articulate and intelligent are being distracted from the real issue. What is being proposed and implemented is to make marriage sexless as a policy. And without sex, traditional marriage ceases to exist. This answers the question sometimes posed by gay marriage supporters:
“How does gay marriage affect YOUR marriage?”
That was akin to a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, shouting TA DA!, only to find nothing there, and looking so deep into the hat that she falls in and disappears.
But my favorite is this:
Furthermore, father of Marxist thought Friedrich Engels was against traditional marriage. It is not possible to know what sort of stand he would take on the sexless marriage issue. I think it’s very fair to say that his modern day followers support it. It frustrates me that some prominent libertarians refuse to engage an important social policy that socialists support. Does it occur to them why socialists support it?
On second thought, I only like the last one because I can at least follow the faulty reasoning. The first two, though, are such marvels of non sequitur, and offered with such conviction, that it seems they must exist on some surreal plane parallel to our own.
I can’t refute those first two quotes because I can’t analyze them; all I can do is stare at them like hypnotic sparkly lights. So enjoy. And if part of your pleasure is schadenfreude at the sight of our opponents reduced to a bubbly, assertive incoherence, I won’t judge you.