Who will think about the children?
Android said:
Why should people whose values don't accept homosexuality be forced to have it in their communities? We've already got enough gay communities.
Last I heard, the United States of America is supposed to be a "free" country. Why should people whose values don't accept homosexuality matter any more than anyone else?
Yesterday, for the first time in over a decade, I entered a Wal-Mart. Inasmuch as there exists an argument about "corporate America" destroying family-owned and locally-run enterprises, I think what bugs me about that is the apparent glee with which many of the same people who bemoan the diminishing of "small-town", or "Middle American", or "family" values being assaulted by "Hollywood elite", "morally bankrupt" musicians, "liberal elititist" authors, or even "liberal" Christianity seem to cheer the advance of conglomerate and corporate culture; much like how many of the same people who fretted over Communism's potential to suck the "diversity" out of life (Utopia, if achieved, is just too frightfully boring an idea for some) seem to cheer the same issues they pretend to fear when corporations undertake the same notions (e.g. health, education, retirement).
But this doesn't have much to do with gay marriage, does it? Stay with me, then.
No, my complaint with Wal-Mart has very little to do with the usual corporate-ugliness argument. Instead, it is enough to say that Wal-Mart, so aptly satirized in
King of the Hill (as "MegaLoMart"), is unquestionably the worst customer experience I have ever endured. Dingy, narrow aisles lend sensations of both claustrophobia and pure chaos, although the latter is partially the result of the density of frighteningly stupid people patronizing the establishment. The foil-attired, stark white, sterilie quietude serving as a poster child for the let's-all-fear-Utopia-to-death crowd seems paradisaical compared to a trip to Wal-Mart. Truly, I found myself appreciating antidepressants; a cigarette--actually,
half a cigarette, given the rain and my desire to get the hell out of there--calmed me, whereas without an SSRI permeating my brain, I might have simply curled up in the backseat and trembled quietly for a half-hour or so. I mean, for all the technology devoted to expediting the check-out process, how could it possibly be so slow? In addition, listening to these two women in front of me in line chatter about some event they were planning, and doing so by reviewing the things they had seen in Wal-Mart that they wanted to buy ... it would not have been so bad except that it took several minutes for the checker to process a light cartload. And for heaven's sake--and if we're going to be simply petty about prejudices--why do those truly pear-shaped women
insist on wearing tight pants? To borrow and paraphrase, why should people whose values don't appreciate terminal hostility toward aesthetics be forced to see those two great whales suffocating in black denim? And then there was the
other woman ... "Look, ladies: just
don't."
Really, I'm working toward the point. If you can't see it coming, though ....
Now, I'm all behind certain groups and services like
Vadis Northwest, who work to help people with certain disabilities--including and especially the developmental--be productive both for themselves and society. But in addition to the noticeable presence of developmental disability among Wal-Mart's labor force, this store was thick with employees who qualify as what many Americans colloquially refer to as "retards". You know, not those who have something wrong with this or that chromosome, but those for whom the idiot-gene is not only dominant, but hyperactive. This brand of "retard", those folks who have no genetic disability or have suffered a crime or accident diminishing their brain capacity, in other words, people who have no excuse for their stupidity, not only made up the majority of the Wal-Mart human presence they were also the primary patronage. You could tell the remaining customer minority easily: they were visibly frightened or embarrassed. Personally, I had a hard time keeping my jaw closed. In all my advocacy of communitarian responses to poverty, I cannot recall ever having imagined things were
this bad. It is nearly ineffable.
"Nothing shocks me," I used to say. That holds true for recent disasters: Hurricane Katrina, the Indonesia tsunami, the 2004 general election in the United States, and even 9/11. But the tales I tell elsewhere at Sciforums of the state of my personal life have broken that motto. And so, frankly, does Wal-Mart.
So what is my point? (Who still doesn't know what's coming?)
Look, we know from examining issues of poverty both in the United States and around the world that the poor tend to reproduce more than other economic strata. We also know from examining issues of sexuality and birth control that the uneducated reproduce more than other educational strata. To be blunt, look the f@ck at Africa. Insidious birth rates, sickening infant mortality. It's an economic black hole right now. And there still persists in many communities devastating superstitions about sexual intercourse, sexual reproduction, and sexually-transmitted diseases. Show of hands: If the cure for AIDS really was to have sex with a virgin, who wouldn't want to get the disease? (I grew up in an American culture that regarded sex with a virgin female as a holy grail of sorts, so maybe I'm overstating the point in that dimension.)
But seriously, look at poor communities in the United States, if you want.
The poor and uneducated are the burden of any government, and also of the world's leading religious movements. And yet, with or without the capitalist pig-dogs making it harder on them, the poor and uneducated are simply breeding faster than society is yet prepared to accommodate.
Perhaps I should be writing, "the poor, and the uneducated". Because more than the poor who are uneducated, I fear those who, simply, are stupid. Those, as such, who don't have an excuse.
And, quite frankly, folks can whine about the "impact" of gay marriage for however much they think their cowardice is worth, but we simply cannot ignore the adverse effects of irresponsible reproduction. Nor can we ignore the fact that every human reproduction--and that includes the irresponsible, for those who actually need reminding--is the result of a
heterosexual union. Sperm, egg. Male, female. XY, XX. Period. Yes, it is reported in recent years that we can engineer reproduction in a test tube with material from two ova, but we can make an issue out of that when the first
les baby is born.
So, for now, why should
anyone have to tolerate the ill results of heterosexual unions? We've already got enough stupid people.
What? Who didn't see it coming? Show of hands?
