Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Matt Birk Defends Freedom of Speech

Baltimore Raven Matt Birk defends the rights of those who oppose same-sex marriage because they think society needs to try to discourage the behavior:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/171850721.html?clmob=y&c=n&refer=y&refer=y

Note that the Minneapolis Star Tribune web page is under attack, so you may have difficulty reading Birk's article. (Oh, it really wins respect for a cause when the loud-mouthed advocates of the cause sabotage web pages that publish opposition views. We know that the ability to hack somebody else's web page proves that you're right. NOT!) Billy Hallowell quotes heavily from Birk's article, as well as from former teammate Chris Kluwe's rebuttal, in his Blaze post:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/nfl-player-mark-birk-pens-anti-gay-marriage-article-silencing-those-opposed-to-same-sex-marriage-is-un-american/

Hallowell asks whether readers think NFL players should be so vocal about public issues. I'm not much of a fan, so I don't know whether my opinion counts, but for what it's worth, I say absolutely yes. There's a perception that football players are "big dumb ox" types. When my brother was eleven years old he got into a crossfire between a coach who saw him as football material and other adults who thought his intellectual career could be adversely affected by any involvement with football. Where did we get this idea that some guys are big and tough, and some guys are smart, and that these are two different groups of men who don't even need to talk to each other? Why shouldn't football players be as well qualified to think and talk as other young men are?

I'm also disheartened by the comments on Hallowell's article. How can so many people fall for this stupid false dichotomy? If you don't favor same-sex marriage, you hate homosexual people--bosh. I think the case could be made that those who do use that line of "reasoning" hate homosexual people, consciously or not, because bogus reasoning makes homosexuals and their supporters look bad.

This web site does not favor same-sex marriage, because we see the whole issue of same-sex marriage as basically a cover-up for interference with the individual rights of seniors and disabled people (most of whom are nonsexual).

This web site was not set up for the purpose of trying to enlighten homosexuals about anything, but we do think that homosexuals could greatly improve their collective image by getting behind a cause all Americans should support, instead of letting themselves be seduced onto the wrong side by the opportunity it gives them to publicize their private affairs.

Specifically, we think that instead of blathering about same-sex "marriage," same-sex couples should defend the rights of individuals to choose anyone they may choose as their heirs and personal care givers, without having to publicize how or why they chose those individuals.

Maybe the person you or I will want to have with us all the time, during our last illness, will be a professional nurse we've recruited from some agency that used to send her or him to visit us for eight dollars an hour.

Maybe it will be the person an increasingly greedy probate system has grudgingly agreed to recognize as our "natural heir," a spouse or child. (Don't count on this: 49.99% of all people who stay married will become widows, and many people outlive their children.)

Maybe we'll be blessed with a second cousin who is healthier than our spouse and more congenial than our children. Or maybe it will be a neighbor, or someone who's worked with us for many years and feels as if s/he were a blood relative.

Currently, the system denies rights to all sorts of "chosen family members" who are consciously chosen to be someone's heir and/or care giver. If you want to guarantee that the person you love and trust most will be with you during your final illness, the alternative to marriage is legal adoption...but of course neither of these procedures allows for the possibility that both you and your caretaker of choice may have spouses and/or parents, who may be disabled but are still alive, or for any number of other possibilities.

Public squawking about same-sex marriage annoys people who've never thought about their own old age because most of the squawkers are trying to call attention to private personal tastes that disgust most other people. This description does not apply exclusively to homosexuals. Most of us can think of a few people who are legally married, whose sex lives are not something we care to think about.

Public squawking about same-sex marriage annoys people who have thought about their own old age, or have been close to their own elders, because the squawkers are deliberately ignoring the concerns of most of the people who actually need the right to choose their heirs and care givers.

A friend used to rent out a room to an older woman who, after my friend's divorce, helped my friend care for a disabled child, and came to take the emotional place in the family that had been left by my friend's departed mother. When the older woman became really "old" and the younger one became ill, the old lady became a ward of the state, which placed her in a nursing home where, among other things, she was drafted for use by medical students who "needed" to practice a surgical operation the old lady didn't need. My friend was told she had no legal right to protest on the old lady's behalf, because she was not a "natural heir" or "next of kin."

If the homosexual lobby could shut up about their little private gross-outs, and join forces with people of good will who are protesting abuses like that, then there would be no need to blather about "same-sex marriage." Homosexual couples who were in fact committed to each other's well-being would enjoy the same rights as friends, cousins, grandchildren, and sincerely concerned hired nurses, who are in fact committed to the well-being of disabled individuals. And no person of good will could possibly have a problem with that.

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