4 - RECOGNIZING STRATEGIC DEFEAT IN THE MORALITY WARS OVER WHAT CONSTITUTES RIGHT AND WRONG

Feminist Diana Alstad calls the ideological struggle against heterosexism the “planetary battle” or the “morality wars” over “who has the right to decide what’s right?” [1] A homosexist state will no longer entertain the voice of “heterosexist” morality because in the state’s new worldview there is no ideal.  In homosexism morality is situational and experiential, not absolute, certainly not religious.  The guiding principles are taken from homosexual culture - non-judgmentalism (amoralism), liberalism, experimentalism, inclusiveness, and indifference.  The intent of obtaining zero discrimination requires that there be no social standard or model. 

Melinda Ledden Sidak of Independent Women’s Forum describes the setbacks already endured by social conservatives well before the same-sex marriage defeat:  “Women, the traditional enforcers of sexual morality, abandoned their posts in the 1960s and 1970s under the onslaught of the sexual revolution…Due to woman’s ‘promiscuity,’ man no longer has any reason to respect her or treat her well.  Instead he succumbs to his basest instincts, sleeping with her and rejecting the consequences, refusing to marry or cheating on her when he does, and eventually divorcing her guiltlessly to seek out younger prey.  Clearly, marriage cannot survive without premarital virginity, chaste womanhood, chivalrous maleness, a return to traditional gender roles within marriage, and public vilification of every alternative.  In short, marriage cannot exist without every advance of the women’s movement systematically reversed.”[2]  If nothing else, the redefinition of marriage says to society and more specifically our youth – “Nuts to traditional marriage.  Nuts to the conservative argument voiced over all these years.  Nuts to religion.” 

According to feminist Dalma Heyn, the victorious heterosexual liberated woman acts like this: “The average young woman – working, assertive personally and professionally – is comfortable with independence, employment, autonomy, and multiple sexual relationships.  She began having sex, according to the newest Kinsey Institute Report, between the (median) ages of sixteen and seventeen.  If she marries at the age of twenty-seven, then, she will have been making love – with one man or several, simultaneously or serially, alone or cohabitating – for a decade.  She is used to pleasure as to pleasing, and envisions having both in equal measure in an egalitarian marital relationship.”[3]  And in Together Forever: Gay and Lesbian Marriage, author Eric Marcus acknowledges that society is at a strategic crossroads over marriage redefinition.  After rejecting “those who believe that granting gay and lesbian people the legal right to marry will somehow destroy family life,”[4] he simply claims marriage access as a constitutional right.  Ironically, his earlier book The Male Couple’s Guide: Finding a Man, Making a Home, Building a Life exposes the paradoxical notion of marriage in homosexual culture.  He promotes promiscuity and monogamy in the same breath: “Relationships change, circumstances change, people change.  Men who entered relationships planning to be monogamous may not find that the arrangement suits them.  Men who started a relationship agreeing to nonmonogamy may find over time that that arrangement isn’t working out.  That’s why it’s important to leave the door open to discussion about the ground rules of your relationship.”[5]  He sets out examples of grounds rules which entreat a unique definition of same-sex union and against marriage redefinition: “(1) Sex with other partners is allowed, but must be kept secret.  (2) Sex with other partners is allowed, but must be discussed.  (3) Sex is not permitted with mutual friends.  (4) Only anonymous sexual encounters are permitted.  (5) Sex is permitted only when one partner is out of town.  (6) Sex with other partners is not permitted at home.  (7) Sex with other partners is permitted at home, but not in the couple’s bedroom.  (8) Outside sex is permitted, but only when both partners choose a third to join them.”[6] 

Maggie Gallagher, author of Abolition of Marriage, summarizes the strategic victory for what should be labeled “homosexism” and <“state sponsored indifference”>: “Over the past thirty years, American family law has been rewritten to dilute both the rights and obligations of marriage, while at the same time placing other relationships, from adulterous liaisons to homosexual partnerships, on a legal par with marriage in some respects.  To put it another way, by expanding the definition of marriage to the point of meaninglessness, courts are gradually redefining marriage out of existence.”[7]