Law school warps your mind in to an endless debate about where to draw lines. So I put this out to the gay community:

• Would gay rights advocates support a minority of murderers who believe they have a "fundamental right to kill people" and are therefore being discriminated against by people whose morals dictate that murder is wrong?
• Would it be wrong for those who believe murder is immoral to seek passage of laws to outlaw murder in their society if they believe it to be wrong?
• Would seeking passage of anti-murder laws amount to "hate" of murderers?

I can see the counter argument: murder affects the rights of another person, whereas gay marriage does not affect the rights of anybody but the gay couple.

In actual practice, however, gay marriage has been shown to affect the rights of parents to dictate the values their children are taught in school, the rights of doctors to refuse to artificially inseminate lesbian couples based on contrary religious values, and the rights of religious based adoption agencies to refuse adopting to homosexual parents based on the church’s religiously based opposition to homosexuality.

The end result is the same. Murder impinges on the right of the killed. Gay marriage impinges on the free exercise of religion and on the right of parents to choose what values their children are taught.

These are important rights to religious folks and parents, and must be part of the equation.

** Aside: I can’t help but wonder if gay marriage would come out differently if (1) gays would agree with notification to parents of all gay rights materials distributed and taught in schools and allow parents to remove their children when objectionable values were discussed (or at least be notified and have the opportunity to instill different values to their children, (2) leave small children out of the equation and, if gay rights must be discussed, do it at an age-appropriate level where a child is mature enough to have the sexuality discussion, and (3) allow for religious based values to be respected when those with religious values and gay rights come into direct conflict.

I work with a gay man. He has always been very nice to me, and from what I observe, nice to people generally. He is also very much against Prop. 8 (marriage defined as only between a man and a woman). This morning, I was thinking about what is motivating the gay marriage arguments.

The gays claim that their motivation is only about equality. I addressed this argument in an earlier post. It occurred to me, however, that the gay marriage issue is largely about perpetuation of gay ideology. Given gays cannot have children of their own, how do they perpetuate their ideology for future generations?

Gays have two fundamental problems related to perpetuation of their ideology that gay marriage helps to solve. The problems:

1. Religious morality teaches homosexuality is wrong and ought to be rejected; and
2. Because they can have no progeny of their own, their position is untenable in the long-term without government intervention. In other words, I can teach my children that marriage is only between a man and a woman. My children are likely to grow up reflecting this position (I can hear it now — I am indoctrinating my children… you bet I am indoctrinating my children with my values!! I rather indoctrinate my children with my values than have you indoctrinate my children with your values). Thus, absent government intervention, gays are not passing their ideology on to any further generations — their ideology dies with them.

Gay marriage helps solve both these problems.

First, gay marriage is a direct assault on religious values. It forces people who object ideologically to be trumped by the government. For example, doctors in California who objected to artificially inseminating lesbian couples for religious reasons have been sued and lost . They were told that they must perform insemination irrespective of sexual orientation. In other words, the doctor’s objections on religious grounds were snuffed out by a pro-gay marriage government. Similar occurrences have cropped up in Massachusetts, where Catholic adoption agencies are closing their doors so as not be be forced to promote gay adoption .

Gay marriage is an effective tool, therefore, in solving issue number one. By having the government take a position on gay marriage that affirms it as morally acceptable, objections on moral grounds are trumped by the state.

Second, because gays can have no children of their own, they are unable to perpetuate their ideology to future generations like heterosexual families. For their cause to succeed, they must perpetuate the ideology. It is difficult to change the minds of adults, but not so hard to change the minds of young children or worse yet, to instill the ideology as a matter of first impression before their parents choose teach the children about sexual morality.

Teaching children at an early age about gay ideology makes instilling a parent’s own, different values much more difficult. Children must learn (i.e., be indoctrinated) from somebody. As anybody with children will attest, nature has designed children to learn. They observe and reflect what their parents, siblings, and other authority figures teach them by instinct. Learning is born into us.

So who decides what children learn? Parents or society? Perpetuation of gay rights requires that society, not parents, do the teaching (indoctrination) of children, particularly young children. Case in point: where have gays primarily fought hard to make inroads: schools and broadcast media and the arts. In other words, the two most influential sources of learning for children outside of a child’s family. Indeed, the goal is to use these vehicles to usurp the parent’s ability to decide what a child learns.

But what about all those children who are taught to support gay rights from their parents? When and where did their parents come to accept gay rights? Go back a generation and you will find the same societal-based indoctrination of gay rights as today, just less pronounced. And it has been effective in building the momentum of gay rights.

As I mentioned before, I am not against gays. Frankly, I don’t care what a person’s sexual orientation is. But I do care what my children learn. And I do care about the free practice of religious belief. And I do believe people should be able to live their lives according to the dictates of their conscience as it relates to family issues: adoption, teaching, etc. I am all for giving homosexuals all the legal rights that married couples have to the extent that people with a differing view on the morality of the situation be allowed to voice and live by their moral convictions.

If homosexuals want to perpetuate their issue, persuade adults based on the strength of the argument. Don’t presume to indoctrinate our children with your beliefs; that is my job. Have your own children if you want a child to indoctrinate.

The next installment will be why homosexuality doesn’t fall under the penumbra of civil rights.