by Kluwe, Chris
Why?
Why do we place so much emphasis on one chromosome? Why have we, for so long, decided that this one chromosome is the only way to judge a person’s worth? What is it about having a dick that makes so many people act like one?
I’ll tell you why. It’s because we value strength over empathy. We think that the ability to apply physical force is the defining measure of humanity, when in fact it’s our ability to work together and protect the value of the mind no matter the body it resides in that has made us the dominant species on the planet.
Any jackass can apply the threat of violent coercion. It doesn’t take intelligence to menace someone with a club, to point a gun and demand submission. It takes intelligence to realize why doing so is ultimately harmful to the fabric of society, that without the protection of freedom and life, we will all drag ourselves back down to rocks and sticks.
Don’t buy into the hype. Don’t think that because you happened to be born a man, you somehow have the right to tell other people what to do. Don’t think that a single chromosome gives you the right to invalidate someone else’s free will, to take away anyone’s choices and opportunities.
XX, XY, XYZ, and beyond—none of it makes a single bit of difference when compared to how someone acts, how someone behaves, how someone reveals his or her true identity time and time again. Man, woman, or whatever the future may hold—nothing gives you the right to enslave someone else.
One chromosome. What is that, when weighed against your very humanity?
Motes and Beams
Dear Archbishop Nienstedt and Pope Benedict XVI,1
“Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
I read your views on gay marriage in the Star Tribune, Archbishop Nienstedt, and it fills me with great sadness and regret that a steward of the Catholic Church on this Earth feels the need to take a stance of oppression, intolerance, and fear. Surely, is this not what Jesus spoke of when he said, “Either make the tree good and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit”?
How can we reconcile our vision of the Catholic Church as salvation to the sick, the needy, and the poor with this demonstration of the Catholic Church as oppressor, tormentor, and executioner? Where in all of Jesus’s teachings did he ever say to deny the humanity of other human beings? Where did the Son of God proclaim that mortal man knew God’s will? Where, pray tell, did Jesus ever say one should harden his heart against those who may not be exactly the same as him?
I say to you—nowhere. Nowhere does Jesus preach hate, or intolerance, or loathing. Nowhere does Jesus say, “You shall deny the humanity of gay people because they make you feel uncomfortable.” Nowhere does Jesus say, “And the mortal men of the Church shall be the sole conduits of the Word of God, for they are perfect and infallible.” Nowhere in all of the recorded teachings of Jesus does it say anything about discrimination or prejudice.
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
Millions of children are being raised in the Catholic faith. Some of these children will be gay, not through any choice of their own, but because that is how God created them. What does it say to those children when the head of their religion in this diocese, a man who claims to “explain and defend the teaching of the Church because I have been ordained to do so and I believe those teachings with all my heart,” a man acting under the auspices of the pope himself, tells them that they are less worthy than some others, even though they believe in the teachings of Jesus? What will these children think as they suffer the barbed insults of their classmates and teachers? I ask you, sir, what will these children think as they are belittled and tormented due to teachings you espouse? What judgment will be passed on your soul when yet another poor child reaches for the knife or the noose to end the earthly torment he or she has been subjected to because of your example?
Do you presume to speak for God, Archbishop Nienstedt? Will you tell these children, faithful children who attend Sunday school and earnestly pray every day, that they are somehow less than others in God’s eyes? Will you grasp that millstone, Archbishop Nienstedt, clasp it all the way to the bottom, clutching at the heavy weight of earthly power and influence, even as it drags you down?
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
“Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
Tell me, Archbishop, Pope, what purpose does it serve for the Church to attempt to influence the affairs of a secular state? The federal benefits under law that are currently denied gay couples certainly fall under the realm of things that are Caesar’s, don’t they? No one is forcing the Catholic Church to marry gay couples if that is not the Church’s wish. You can keep the sanctity of Catholic marriage solely between heterosexual couples if you feel that is what’s required (again, though, I caution you on the dangers of presumed infallibility). All I am asking is for you to extend the open hand of tolerance, not the closed fist of fear and hate. As American citizens, we respect everyone’s right to practice whatever religion (if any) he or she chooses to. Haven’t we learned enough from the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Talibans of the world? What does it benefit the Church to attempt to influence secular policy in this country, especially when that policy is a denial of some people’s basic human rights? Will you now assume Caesar’s throne, grasping the ephemera of worldly power and control while forsaking the eternal kingdom of Heaven?
All I ask of you, Archbishop Nienstedt, and of you, Pope Benedict XVI, is that you practice that most basic teaching found in the Bible—empathy. If you strike me, I shall turn the other cheek. If you ask me to walk with you for a mile, I will go with you two. If you ask me to respect your faith, your beliefs, then all I ask is that you do the same for everyone else. For is that not the most pertinent of Jesus’s teachings, and one that everyone, no matter his religion, can strive to achieve?
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Some Other People Have Even More Trouble with Logic
This piece was originally written in response to an opinion letter penned to the Minneapolis Star Tribune by one Mr. Riley Balling, an attorney (I’m assuming he has paperwork to back up that claim somewhere).
Balling’s point can be summed up in the following paragraph from his editorial: “For many of us who favor traditional marriage, marriage is about raising children in a healthy environment. Thus, any change to the definition of marriage affects our marriage. Our ‘traditional’ marriages and the children they produce are our greatest source of happiness, and we desire that our children will live in a world that will promote their ability to make the same choices that brought us happiness.”
You can find this piece at http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/171613511.html. If you don’t want to bother looking it up (and I don’t blame you if you don’t), he basically said, “WARGLEBLARGLE GAY PEOPLES ARE RUININ’ MY MARRIAGES” and then forgot to provide examples.
Dear Mr. Balling,
I read your opinion piece in today’s Star Tribune, and I would like to take a brief moment to offer you some assistance in your
future writing endeavors. I can only assume that you’ve never been trained in classical logic, debate techniques, or basic empathy, so I will humbly offer my own meager knowledge in these fields as it relates to your literary masterpiece “Why Same-Sex Marriage Affects My Marriage.”
You start off strong, with an opening salvo ostensibly proclaiming that every group has the right to its own views (if we ignore the fearmongering subhead of the article, “The goal is to move society—in this case, away from a safe environment for children”), but then, much like a Michael Bay plot, your argument starts careening off the rails. Your first mistake is what is termed a mind-projection fallacy—the assumption that the way you see the world is the way the world really is.
You state, “As we have seen, and understandably so, people in homosexual relationships are trying to change society to more readily embrace and promote their view of their identity. This is possible largely due to the disassociation between sexual relationships and procreation.” But what you’re really saying is “Those gay people do sex things that I find icky, and we should oppress them because they can’t have babies.” You completely ignore the fact that homosexual people are trying to change society not just because they want to have teh butt secks (or rise and grind, for the ladies), but also because they want to avoid, oh, I don’t know, things like homosexuals being tortured and tied to a fence post until they die (Matthew Shepard), shot to death while attending school (Lawrence King), shot to death for being transgender (Moses King), committing suicide by hanging due to repeated bullying and taunting (Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover), shot to death and burned while standing military guard (Seaman August Provost), and stabbed to death after serving in the Vietnam War (James Zappalorti). Every single one of these attacks occurred because of the victim’s sexuality. Let’s not even get into the over eleven hundred federal benefits gay couples are legally unable to obtain in the state of Minnesota because they can’t get married—things like health care, survivor benefits, and legacies to pass on to their families (including children).
Deep breath.
Moving on, we come to the next little pearl of wisdom hidden in your manifesto, that hoary old chestnut of traditional marriage. In this case, you’ve made the logic error of the etymological fallacy: the assumption that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its current meaning.
Which version of the term traditional marriage would you like to use, Mr. Balling? Should we go back to ancient Israel and practice polygamy, in which the only right a woman had was the right to own her own tent? Or should we use the ancient Greek definition of marriage, one more concerned with inheritance than with love, one that forced a woman to divorce her current husband and marry a sibling if that was required to continue the family? Should we force a brother to marry his dead sibling’s wife? Or perhaps we should make arranged marriages with child brides; that’s certainly traditional enough. Wait, I know, let’s go with the one where you have to pay three goats and a cow in order to ensure the woman is yours to keep forever, and you can stone her to death if she cheats on you. That one sounds terrific!
You see, Mr. Balling, since you don’t actually provide a definition of the term traditional marriage, I think your definition of it boils down to “I want to make people who believe differently than I do miserable by taking away their free will, so I’ll cloak my hate in the guise of tradition and history without knowing what those words really mean,” and, well, I’m not really okay with that. Also, traditional marriage has traditionally been rather tough on 50 percent of the human population, what with the whole enslavement and forced-childbearing and stoning-to-death thing (I’m talking about women, if you haven’t figured it out [sorry to the people who figured it out like five minutes ago, but I wanted to make sure he got it]), and I’m not really okay with that either.
Deep breath.
Your third logic fallacy—and, oh boy, does this one crop up a lot—is that of cum hoc, ergo propter hoc. Now, I’m guessing your Latin may be a little rusty (although it may not be, in which case, well done!), so if you need help, I’d like to ask the entire class to say it along with me: CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION.
You can’t make the statement “Bless the single parents who try, but there is a direct correlation between single homes and crimes of all types” and not expect every moderately intelligent person to jump all over it. Single-parent homes don’t cause crime. That’s like saying, “I rode my bicycle to work today, and it rained, therefore my bicycle causes rain.” There are a multitude of factors related to crime, including income, residence location, public resources available, education, education available, age demographics, police presence, temperature patterns, et cetera, ad nauseam, ad infinitum (which means I could go on for a while [also, way to take a giant steaming literary dump on every single parent, infertile couple, and those people who choose not to have kids; you’re making all sorts of friends today]). To single out single parents is, to put it bluntly, absolutely absurd.
And then, to make it even better, you manage to link an unsafe environment for children (somehow caused by single parents?) to same-sex marriage by claiming same-sex marriage “reinforces changes to the marital definition.” Hoo-boy. Tell me: Were you worried about the children when all those colored folks started marrying the white people? Because that sure was a change to the “marital definition,” and, funnily enough, there were a bunch of people using this same argument back then. Or how about when women started working? Are the kids unsafe now because Mom wanted to actually do something with her life instead of putting on a plastic smile and tending to the kitchen all day? (No offense to any stay-at-home moms or dads who choose to do so; I know that’s a full-time job in itself, and you have my respect.) What happened when the “marital definition” changed to allow divorce and remarrying? Should we pass some constitutional amendments preventing those? C’mon, don’t stop with the gays; go oppress a bunch of other people too!
AND THEN, to make it even more betterer (grammars!), you return to the mind-projection fallacy by claiming, “Currently, as a society, we have wavered from this traditional motivation, and many, not all, view marriage as a venue for self-fulfillment.” It’s so nice of you, Mr. Balling, to define my and countless others’ marriages as a “venue for self-fulfillment.” Oddly, though, I don’t remember you ever hanging out with my family and me, or with our neighbors, so I don’t see how you could provide any sort of factual information to back up your claim. (And if you say that I need to provide evidence so you can disprove it, that’s called onus probandi, in case you were interested.) The only fact that I’ve been able to glean from your entire ill-constructed argument is that you don’t know how to construct an argument. You know, with facts and stuff. (The basis of your argument is what’s called an appeal to emotion—more specifically, it’s an appeal to fear—if you wanted that for future reference.)
Deep breath. <1 percent, don’t wipe now!>
Frankly, sir, your blatant attempt to sway people by using the “OH MAH GAWD, THINK OF THE CHILDREN” argument is tiresome, bothersome, and insulting, and anyone who has the slightest interest in doing so can pull aside your curtain of self-satisfied drivel and expose the ugliness underneath. Furthermore, you never made any sort of logical attempt to explain how same-sex marriage affects your marriage in any concrete way, instead offering up vague generalizations with no proof. When it comes to the children, I can assure you that I am thinking of my children, and not just my children but all the children they will come in contact with and all the adults they will someday be, and it is my sincerest wish as a parent that I can raise them to be tolerant, to respect the free will of others, and, above all, to be able to see beneath the smug bigotry and oppression of those who would enslave the world to satisfy their own ugly lust for control. If you have any children, it is my hope that they enjoy a peaceful life, one free of tyranny.
Aaaaaaaaand fin.
Somebody Think of the Children
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I would like to share some of the things I thought were important from the Vote No gathering I recently attended.
Gay people are exactly the same as straight people. They laughed, they yelled, they congratulated me on the Vikings winning, they told me they rooted for the Saints, they spilled beer on the floor and apologized for doing so. They asked for autographs, shook my hand, posed for pictures, and introduced me to their significant others. They talked about how excited they were for the Vikings’ season this year, told me how long they’ve been season-ticket holders, and asked if I thought that Ponder kid was going to be any good (I said yes). At no point was I excessively fondled and at no time did a bacchanalian riot threaten the chastity of my pants fasteners. In short, it was American citizens doing American activities in a quintessentially American way.
Gay people are not treated as American citizens. The number of individuals who came up and thanked Brendon and me for taking a stand was staggering and, frankly, depressing. I use the word depressing because if so many have to thank us for showing basic empathy, thank us for recognizing that they are human beings just like everyone else, that means that many, many other people have not. What that says about our society makes me ill, and it means that we are failing the American dream. America is supposed to be where people go to escape oppression, to escape persecution, to escape tyranny; sure, we haven’t always gotten it right over the years, but we should always strive for that elusive goal of equality. Right now, we’re just not getting it done.
One conversation that I had will stick with me for the rest of my life. It involved a local high school teacher and coach. He walked up, introduced himself, shook my hand, and said these exact words: “I want to thank you for speaking up. What you did will save children’s lives.”
