Why Gay Marriage is Not Really About Gay People

The gay marriage debate isn't really about whether or not gays should be allowed to participate in the civil or religious ceremony known as marriage. Rather, it is about the ideologically driven movement to undermine and marginalize traditional marriage as a social institution for the raising of children, the protection of women, and the provision of care to the elderly. At the risk of hurting their feelings, gays are just a useful prop in the progressive-socialist effort to destroy the existing social safety net of marriage, and replace it with a state controlled system of government dependence and control.   

To contextualize the debate, for thousands of years mankind has recognized that the most stable, most successful model for the rearing of children was the two parent, male/female, model. Other models, such as shared parenting, single or mostly single parenting, or even militarized parenting, have been tried, and found to be evolutionary dead ends. Societies that embraced them have failed over time as their children failed to compete successfully against children raised under the two parent model. 

With this understanding, marriage can be viewed as a social construct designed to recognize and reinforce that model. Not because it is particularly good for the adults involved, but rather because it is good for the long-term survival of the greater society. 

But even though the well being of the adults is not the primary purpose, married couples and women, in particular, benefit as well. Studies show that married couples, assumed to be more or less monogamous, live longer, have lower overall health care costs, and tend to be happier than singles of either sex, the divorced, or the widowed. Studies also show married women and their children are less likely to be victims of violence

So, if marriage is so good for children, women, and the elderly, why is it being attacked?  The answer is because it is too good. Children raised in stable, two parent families are 50% more likely to be successful than their counterparts raised by single parents.  Children raised under the two parent model are less likely to be involved with drugs, end up living in poverty, or be involved with crime, than their single parent counterparts. 

Women who are married are 400% safer than their unmarried or divorced counterparts, and are 60% less likely to be living in poverty. Marriage also provides benefits to the elderly, with elderly married adults being less likely to require expensive health care and extensive government services as they age. 

But, for progressives, the effectiveness of marriage in providing protection and support are obstacles to their political objectives. Children raised in two parent families are less likely to need or demand a larger, more powerful government in order to receive more government services, and elderly couples that can take care of themselves are less likely to vote for the politicians that want them to trade their freedom for more services.  Simply put, progressives see the destruction of the traditional marriage as the key to establishing the progressive state. 

That is the reason why progressive socialists have been waging a war on marriage for more than 60 years. From Johnson's Great Society, which destroyed the black family by offering copious benefits if black men would just abandon their wives and children, to the feminist movement, which cast marriage as a form of slavery for women, even though women and their children benefit in multiple ways from traditional marriage, to the no-fault divorce laws of the 1970s, to the gay marriage movement of today. Progressives want to diminish the role of marriage as a social institution, and elevate the dependence of children and the elderly on the state for protection and support. The purpose, of course, isn't to provide better protection and support, but rather to establish control over these groups and enforce the dictates of the progressive agenda. 

So, to our gay friends, we're sorry but you are being used as pawns in a larger conflict. It really isn't about you. It's about marriage and whether it will continue as an institution that protects women, children, the elderly, and society overall, or whether progressive socialists will be successful in redefining it so as to promote their agenda of larger, more pervasive, government.