At the same time the political point that crucial tactical alliances on single issues are necessarily and possible with people with whom we disgaree on fundamentals. If the libertarians (who oppose the war) and the Prolifers for Peace (a real group) and the Homophobes Against Imperialism (not a real group) will work with us against the war, what are we supposed to do, say Go Away? We can do the anti-war work together and argue with each other about the other issues.
The point is especially important in this conrtext because we need the support of working class, military, and minority constitutencies that overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage.
jks
--- Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The "money shot" of this homophobic bigot in Left
> drag.
> >...The main point, however, is that reasonable and
> well-intentioned
> people can obviously hold divergent views on this
> question that
> involves society's responsibility to children.
> People opposed to
> same-sex marriage are not, merely for that reason,
> reactionary or
> bigoted, as the Left leaders of the anti-war
> movement declare. Only
> the warmongering ruling class benefits from an
> anti-war leadership
> that isolates the movement from a large part of the
> population (many
> of whom oppose the warmongering as much as anybody)
> by wrongly
> attacking these people as "homophobic" bigots. And
> maybe this is why
> The Nation and Harpers Magazine--the largest
> circulation anti-war
> weekly and monthly magazines, respectively, in the
> U.S.--which are
> both edited by members of the elite Council on
> Foreign Relations work
> so hard to handcuff the anti-war movement to support
> for same-sex
> marriage and condemnation of those opposed to it.
>
> --John
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: John Spritzler <spritzler at comcast.net>
> Date: Nov 29, 2005 9:36 AM
> Subject: [anti-allawi-group] The anti-war movement
> and same-sex marriage
> To: "Spritzler, John (Comcast)"
> <spritzler at comcast.net>
>
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> I recently sent some of you an article [
> http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/Antiwar.htm ] by
> Dave Stratman
> criticizing the Left anti-war leaders for making
> opposition to
> same-sex marriage a litmus test for who is welcome
> in their anti-war
> movement. This raises the question, of course, of
> whether people who
> oppose same-sex marriage are indeed reactionary
> bigots, and whether it
> is right and proper for good people everywhere (not
> just the anti-war
> movement) to condemn them as such (as the Left
> seems to feel.)
>
> Below is a recent article that relates to this
> question. It is about a
> young boy whose mother used sperm from an anonymous
> donor to conceive
> him, and how (and more importantly for our
> discussion, why) the boy
> tracked down his biological father. We aren't told
> anything about
> what kind of relationship the boy's mother was in
> -- married to an
> infertile man perhaps, maybe a single mom with no
> partner, or
> possibly in a lesbian relationship. But lesbian
> couples commonly use
> anonymous sperm donors to "have a child of their
> own" and this is one
> reason why there has been a large growth in
> companies that provide
> such sperm. The flip side of the coin is gay
> couples hiring
> surrogate mothers to provide an egg and a womb and
> then to disappear
> after the birth so the gay couple can "have a child
> of their own."
> The degree to which society endorses these
> practices (by, for
> example, making same-sex marriage legal and
> promoting the notion that
> homosexuality is as good a basis for a family as
> heterosexuality)
> will largely determine the degree to which children
> like the young
> boy in this article will come into the world
> without having the
> experience of being raised by both their biological
> father and
> biological mother.
>
> Some might say, so what? What difference does it
> make so long as the
> person or couple who raise the child are loving?
>
> Reading this article, however, makes it apparent
> that many children,
> even those adopted by very loving couples, feel they
> are missing
> something very important in not having a close
> relationship with
> their natural mother and father. The article says:
> "Like many
> children whose mothers used an anonymous sperm
> donor, the 15-year-old
> boy longed for any shred of information about his
> biological father."
> Children, as they grow up, want to know where they
> came from, in the
> way that children raised by their natural parents
> take for granted,
> but other children long for. Children at a certain
> age feel hurt by
> the idea that the person who is their true mother
> or father had no
> love for them and no desire to raise them. A
> person's sense of self,
> who they are, do they belong, is intimately
> connected to the relation
> they do or do not have with their natural mother
> and father. This is
> true no matter how loving are the single parents or
> couples who
> actually raise the child.
>
> When the issue of same-sex marriage is debated, what
> is at stake is
> whether society will promote or discourage the
> practice of bringing
> children into the world with an anonymous
> biological parent. The
> proponents of same-sex marriage like to deflect
> attention away from
> this question, but it is--implicitly if not
> explicitly--at the heart
> of the matter for many people who oppose same-sex
> marriage.
>
> Proponents of same-sex marriage like to frame the
> question merely in
> terms of the civil rights of two adults, the same
> way opponents of Jim
> Crow laws banning inter-racial marriage did. But
> the difference here
> is fundamental when the perspective of the children
> from such
> marriages is taken into account. Children of
> inter-racial marriages
> are raised by their natural mother and father, but
> children of a
> homosexual couple necessarily are not.
>
> Proponents of same-sex marriage sometimes argue that
> the position I'm
> taking here must be wrong because by my logic it
> would be a bad thing
> when a loving couple adopts a baby, who will then
> necessarily not be
> raised by its natural mother and father. This
> argument might sound
> reasonable at first blush, but it is not. There is
> a big difference
> between a couple (homosexual or hetersexual)
> adopting a child and a
> couple (homosexual or hetersexual) conceiving one
> with another man's
> sperm or another woman's egg. When a couple adopts
> a child, they are
> (from the child's perspective) attempting to make
> an extremely
> unfortunate and bad situation better. Adoption is
> only a good thing
> when something bad has already happened elsewhere
> -- the child's
> natural mother or father or both are for some
> reason unable to care
> for and raise the child, due perhaps to death,
> mental or physical
> incapacity, or possibly extreme poverty -- all
> things which we know
> are bad. Nobody, for example, would say to a
> perfectly fit and
> competent couple who just had a baby, "Oh, you
> should put your baby
> up for adoption because adoption is a very good
> thing."
>
> When a couple brings a child into the world with an
> anonymous (to the
> child) sperm or egg donor, the separation of the
> child from its
> natural parent is again the result of an
> unfortunate and bad
> situation. But in this case the bad
> situation--infertility--is
>
=== message truncated ===
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com