Huffington Post Editors Prove My Point on Marriage
This week I reached out to Michelangelo Signorile, a well-known gay activist, Huffington Post journalist and national radio host, inviting him to have a civil and respectful debate on the question of redefining marriage, prompted by our radically different perspectives on the Kim Davis situation.
He replied to me on Twitter saying, “Nothing to discuss. We’ve gained our rights. NOW you want civil discussion, after you crusaded vs. us for years?”
I responded, “My position has remained the same for years. I’ve always called for discussion. In any case, we’re not going in the closet.”
His response was to send me this article written by two Huffington Post editors, Noah Michelson, Editorial Director of HuffPost’s Gay Voices section, and Sara Boboltz, an Associate Editor of Viral Content.
The article is titled “Here Is All You Need To Prove Bigots Wrong About ‘Traditional Marriage’,” and it purports to show “just a few of the ways that marriage has been radically redefined throughout history.”
Unfortunately for The Huffington Post, the article demonstrates the very point I made in my appeal to Mike Signorile, namely that “for marriage to be marriage, it must include a man and a woman, just as it has for virtually all recorded history across every culture and nation.” (Michelson and Boboltz actually quote this verbatim in their article.)
The editors provide a plethora of examples of different kinds of marriages throughout history, including:
- “Ancient Greece: Marriage is for making babies” (Interestingly, they claim there that “homosexual partnerships” were considered to be the “most ideal union” for societal elites, meaning that even though same-sex relationships were common and celebrated, they were not called marriage.)
- “Indigenous peoples around the world: Life is hard, so marry whomever you need to” (Among the varied examples offered here, only one involves same-sex couples, specifically “two-spirit” people among Native American tribes who could marry someone of the same or opposite sex.)
- “Ancient China: Why restrict marriage to the living?” (This is a deflection from the real issue, since these “ghost marriages” certainly did not displace the purpose of marriage in Chinese culture. Even so, where is the evidence that these “ghost marriages” were same-sex?)
- “Ancient Rome: Let’s use our wives as political currency” (Again, this confirms my point that, “for virtually all recorded history across every culture and nation” marriage included a man and a woman.”)
- “Early Christians: Marital sex is a necessary evil” (This is a simplistic, exaggerated and misleading statement, but even so, there’s no denying the fact that for early Christians, marriage was only the union of a male and female.)
- “Medieval Europe: Life is still hard, and marriage makes business sense” (Same point again; marriage is not the union of any two people but the union of a man and woman – which is getting a little redundant at this point, wouldn’t you say?)
- “16th Century: Marriage is now a sacrament” (ditto)
- “Enlightenment: Love in marriage is kind of important, too” (Ditto; this is like shooting fish in a barrel, although in the article’s defense, the graphics provided by the editors are terrific.)
- “Victorian Era: Good wives belong to the ‘cult of purity’” (I can assure you that those wives were women, not men.)
- “Early 20th Century: Married people should have good sex” (And who, pray tell, were those married people if not a man and a woman?)
- “1950s: Nuclear families are the best families” (You guessed it: the graphic shows a typical nuclear family out for a ride in the car, consisting of Mom and Dad and their two kids, not Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad; you can also be pretty sure that those kids were assumed to be the biological offspring of that Mom and Dad.)
- “Late 20th Century: Marriage is a human right” (And still, right up to the end of the 20th century, marriage around the world required a male and female; it is not until the final line of the article that we get this radical redefinition on any wide scale: “In 2001, the Netherlands became the first in a growing number of nations to grant same-sex couples the right to marry.”
It is with good reason that the fourth principle of my new book Outlasting the Gay Revolution is “Refuse to redefine marriage,” since the moment we redefine it in this radical new way, we render it meaningless.
To that effect, I cited the famed New Testament and classical scholar N. T. Wright who noted, “It’s like a government voting that black should be white. Sorry, you can vote that if you like, you can pass it by a total majority, but it isn’t actually going to change the reality.”
All that being said, thanks, Noah and Sara for taking the time to reply, thanks for the research, thanks for the graphics, and thanks for confirming that “for marriage to be marriage, it must include a man and a woman, just as it has for virtually all recorded history across every culture and nation.”
What I find highly unfortunate (all the more so when Mike Signorile defended it via Twitter) is the fact that you insist on referring to people like me as “bigots,” as if the only reason we oppose the redefinition of marriage is because of personal animus or religious bigotry.
Perhaps you could take some time to reflect on this? Perhaps there are sound reasons for people, religious or not, to believe that marriage is the union of a woman and man, that the opposite sexes were uniquely designed for one another, that there’s something to biology, and that it’s best not to willfully separate a child from either its mother or father?
It is sad but ironic that those who have been bullied and vilified for so many years find it so easy to bully and vilify others, which is all the more reason that civil interaction and dialogue is called for in the midst of our very deep and wide differences.
The door is still open on my end.