Well I left home just a week before And I'd never ever kissed a woman before But Lola smiled and took me by the hand And said dear boy I'm gonna make you a man
"For sheer cultural illiteracy and intellectual vacuity, nothing can top the debate over the meaning of marriage taking place in the United States of America in the early years of the 21st century." So says David Blankenhorn in his striking new book, "The Future of Marriage", and he should know.
For 20 years, David Blankenhorn has been at the forefront of our national conversation about marriage. His first book, "Fatherless America", named a new problem: When adults embrace for themselves the right to choose any family form they want, children lose their fathers.
"The Future of Marriage" can be read as a cry of frustration at how gay marriage has hijacked the marriage debate. (Full disclosure: David was my boss for a decade.) Gay marriage appears to make even very smart people pretty stupid about marriage itself. In a court brief recently, 30 professors of history and family law told judges that marriages are "committed, interdependent partnerships between consenting adults". Gee, how does that definition differ from, say, a law firm? Or a co-op, for that matter?
Oh let's just stop right here and ask the obvious:
How does a gay man "marrying" another gay man somehow deprive a child of a father? Is there some kind of National Sperm Reserve that is dangerously low and threatens Michelle Duggar's ability to crank lil Duggars like a Baby Pez dispenser? Have we hit Hubbert's Sperm Peak because we have been wasting literally gallons of baby batter in bad online porn fiction, particularly the ones where husbands take their wives out dancing and they meet handsome rugged manly men named Dirk or Lance or Cock O'Plenty ?
One thing is for sure, gay marriage does make even very smart people pretty stupid.
