‘Healthy marriage’ plan is anything but
Healthy is one of the new buzzwords in Washington, D.C., but
this healthy has nothing to do with a new dieting fad or workout
routine. It has to do with marriage.
The Bush administration has proposed a plan to promote marriage
by spending $1.5 billion on helping couples, especially low-income
couples, develop interpersonal skills that maintain “healthy
marriages,” according to a New York Times story last week.
But given Bush’s comments regarding same-sex marriages in this
week’s State of the Union address, I think we all know what he
defines a “healthy” marriage as – one between a man and a woman.
There has been a lot of talk the past couple weeks about the Bush
administration banning homosexual marriages.
But there’s an inconsistency in this. On the one hand, the
administration is working to increase the number of long-lasting,
successful marriages – a noble effort indeed – and on the other
hand it wants to prevent certain segments of the population from
having those same long-lasting, successful marriages.
It appears the United States is making an effort to keep some
people married and at the same time is making an effort to keep
other people from marrying.
Whatever happened to “All men are created equal?”
“This is a way for the president to address the concerns of
conservatives and to solidify his conservative base,” one of Bush’s
advisers said in the New York Times story.
Ah, now we get it.
But should that really be his main concern?
It may be naivety on this writer’s part, but shouldn’t $1.5
billion be spent on something that is the right thing to do, not
because it helps a politician’s reelection chances?
The problem with the same-sex marriage debate lies in the fact
that there is no reason for a debate at all. One couple’s marriage
shouldn’t bother you if YOU don’t let it.
There’s no sense in arguing whether homosexuality is right.
That’s a whole other issue. The issue at hand is that in a free
society, as ours purports to be, one person should be allowed to do
whatever he/she wants as long as it does not hinder or harm another
person. It’s a matter of basic civil rights.
John Stuart Mill once wrote that the “only purpose for which
power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized
community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
Who can honestly say that what two people do in the privacy of
their own home has any effect on the outside world? If you think
you can, you’re kidding yourself.
“Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage,” President
Bush said in his State of the Union address Tuesday.
But what gives him the right to define the “sanctity of
marriage?”
The American Heritage College Dictionary defines the word
sanctity as “the quality or condition of being considered sacred;
inviolability.” Ask any homosexual couple whether they would
satisfy this definition if given the opportunity to marry. Most
likely they would say yes.
We like to think that we’ve come so far from when our schools
were segregated and different races had to use different bathrooms
and drinking fountains. Some of us are astonished that such
narrow-minded and pigheaded thinking could have occurred in the
past 60 years.
Unfortunately, this could be what our children and grandchildren
think about us in the future.
Interesting side note: This controversy over same-sex marriages
has come about largely because of the recent Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court decision ruling it unconstitutional to ban gay
marriages. Many have pressured Bush to pursue a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriages.
Bush answered this question last month by saying, “The position
of this administration is that whatever legal arrangements people
want to make, they’re allowed to make, so long as it’s embraced by
the state, or does start at the state level,” according to ABC
News.
Well the Massachusetts ruling did start at the state level, so
what exactly is the problem?
I guess it’s just more inconsistency.
Kyle is the campus editor for The Collegian. He is a junior
studying technical journalism.
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