Ruth Institute Blog

Dear Dr. Morse,

I’m an out gay college student, and I was just wondering a few things about your website and arguments:

1) Don’t you think it’s intellectually and morally dishonest to pretend to your audience that your opposition to gay rights has nothing whatsoever to do with your belief, in accordance with Catholic teachings, that being gay is “intrinsically evil” and “objectively disordered?”

2) I saw a clip on YouTube of you appearing before a Prop 8 inquiry, where you were posed an interesting question: would you support extending the name and benefits of marriage to elderly gay couples, who have no prospect of raising children, if indeed your opposition to gay marriage is all about “protecting children? You seemed to evade the question on that clip, and I was wondering if you’d support allowing gay seniors to wed.

3) Marriage used to be (and still is, in some places) an institution whereby a woman was transferred from the custody of her father to the custody of a man she had never met before, who was most likely a lot older than her and was not expected to be sexually faithful to her or to find intellectual or emotional stimulation in her. Now, in the West, at least, marriage is an institution whereby a man and a woman unite as equal, voluntary partners in a union that is often brought about by love, not economic or social or political interests. Do you not believe that this transformation constituted a radical “redefinition” of marriage? If so, why is allowing two people of the same sex to marry somehow an unacceptable “redefinition,” while the former redefinition isn’t?

4) You’ve mentioned in several posts that domestic partnerships/civil unions “do the job,” and that full marriage rights for gay couples isn’t necessary. Would you be willing to formally, unconditionally state your support, as a matter of fairness and decency, for civil unions nationwide that provide the economic benefits of marriage? You state that you aren’t opposed to gay and lesbian people living their lives; are you willing to state unconditionally that you support legislation to ban firing employees on the basis of their sexual orientation, with exceptions for religious organizations? Are you willing to affirm your support for the ability of high school students to freely organize GSA’s to provide support to gay youth who are still coming to terms with their sexuality, as I once was?

Sincerely,
Alex

Alex, What about the right of a state and its voters to choose this for themselves and the future of their state? Why should we be forced to change our laws to suit the lifestyle of a very tiny, albeit wealthy and VERY vocal, minority? To me this is like a small group of bullies coming in with lawbooks instead of baseball bats to force all the other kids off the playing field in order to change the rules so only THEY can win – or even play! That’s just wrong. Besides that, I’m sure you know full well that this push for gay ‘marriage’ isnt’ about marriage at all, but about trying to force any semblance of religious faith out of the picture and to force the acceptance of the entire gay agenda on this country, AGAINST OUR WILL! The laws you described to protect so-called religious organizations would absolutely NOT be sufficient to protect, say, a Christian wedding photographer from being sued if he didn’t want to photograph a gay ‘wedding.’ Nor did it protect a medical clinic from being successfully sude by two lesbians because they doctors didn’t believe providing fertilization services to this ‘couple’ was right or in the best interests of any child that may be conceived. THAT’s what I’m talking about when it comes to using lawbooks as baseball bats. And as a country, wherever we have been allowed to vote on this issue, we have said we will draw the line at gay marriage. Whatever our personal reasons, we have said NO time and time again! This is just something that is not going to change because we know better, as a society, than to change it! The reason gay marriage will not be accepted is because, whether you think it’s okay or not, we have CHOSEN not to accept it. Each person has his or her own reason for how they vote on this issue. In other words, no matter what justification is given here for the support for traditional marriage (and there are absolutely several good ones) , the point is more that as a society, we have chosen to support it. We just GET IT that we were created as basically two genders and that it takes those two genders to produce our children naturally. That is, the only union that can produce children naturally is the union of a man and a woman. Because of that very simple biological fact, our society as developed laws and protections for that union and the children it may or may not produce. As a society, we protect the union of one man and one woman because it is the ONLY union that can produce children naturally. It doesn’t matter whether it actually does or not in individual cases. What does matter is that NO OTHER union CAN produce children. This is not rocket science, but simple biology.

I’d like to respond to just a few points in the preceding post that stood out at me. I’d like to hear Dr. Morse’s position on these issues. First of all, it’s a very common slur against the gay community that we’re a “tiny” group of “wealthy” and “powerful” people. This country was set up specifically to protect the rights of disfavored minorities, no matter how “tiny,” against discrimination from the majority. As to the accusation that we’re “wealthy,” I don’t see what the statistical fact that gays TEND to be slightly richer than straight people has to do with the reality of discrimination that we face. Jews also tend to be relatively wealthy, but no one would deny that antisemitism is a huge problem facing Jews across the world. And as for “powerful,” how exactly is a 16 year-old kid who’s bullied for being gay, and terrified to go to school, “powerful?” Gay people aren’t some sort of clique–we exist in all ages and social and economic and religious and ethnic groups, and we have existed as long as humans have. We live in every state, in the cities and suburbs and rural areas, and some of us have political clout, and many don’t. As for the whole “biology” argument, well, gay people still exist. Always have, and always will. Clearly our psyches and relationships are as biologically rooted as those of our straight counterparts.
Finally, I’d like to know whether Dr. Morse believes that, given the existence of millions of orphaned children, it would be better for those children to live their lives without any parents than with a loving and supportive same-sex couple. You can talk about the “needs of children” as much as you want, but the fact is, there are more kids out there than there are heterosexual couples to adopt them. So I’d like to know if you really care about the interests of children, and would thus be willing to set aside your animus against gay relationships for the well-being of those children.