Gay marriage violates the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, David Blankenhorn announced in the face of general audience disapproval in a lecture and discussion sponsored by the Vermont Marriage Advisory Council on Sunday evening. Blankenhorn told the approximately 30 students, College staff and community members gathered in Dartmouth Hall that same-sex marriage infringes on every child's fundamental right to know and be with his or her biological parents.
This is so infuriatingly stupid, I hardly know where to begin, but let's start with this: does adoption also violate the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? do foster homes? do single parents? No, of course not--only gays violate human rights, because gays are icky.
Now, who says that a child has a "fundamental right to know and be with his or her biological parents"? I'd say that a child has a fundamental right to be raised by fit and loving adults, which is sometimes at odds with the former supposed right.
One audience member, who acknowledged she was raised by her biological mother and her mother's same sex partner, brought up that she was ineligible to receive reduced tuition and other benefits from her mother's partner's employer because the pair could not be legally married. Blankenhorn agreed that was one among many valid reasons to support gay marriage, but said the fundamental rights of a child outlined by the Declaration of Human Rights and Declaration of the Rights of the Child outweigh these considerations.
"The most important reason in my mind to be in favor of same-sex marriage is for those children already in such a family structure," he said. "If children were dropped down in bags by storks, I'd be for same sex marriages, but marriage is not a baby producing machine — it exists so that every child can have a male and a female parent."
This is vapid nonsense. Gay people have children! Preventing gay people from getting married is not going to make those children disappear, or going to make them suddenly be adopted by opposite-sex couples; it's not going to do anything but hurt gay people and their children. If you gave a damn about children, you'd be in favor of gay marriage. But you're only interested in discriminating against gay people.
Blankenhorn side-stepped one audience member's accusation that he had "grossly lied" about the Declaration of Human Rights. The audience member's claim that the document does not mention the right to have a male and female parent or to live with one's natural parents garnered applause from the audience.
Judge for yourself: here's the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which, I should note, states numerous times that people have equal rights--funny how he's not concerned about applying that to gays), and here's the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Neither say anything about children having the right to live with male and female biological parents.
"I am against [gay marriage], against it strongly, but I am against it because of the depth of conviction I feel about marriage being a gift to children," Blankenhorn said in response.
Yes, you feel so strongly about marriage being a gift to children that you feel you must deny it to the children of gay couples. That makes perfect sense.
1 comment:
Obviously this discriminatory argument doesn't hold any water because, as you pointed out, it negates adoption and other "non-standard" but undeniably beneficial family models.
In addition, I think a much stronger argument can be made that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights GUARANTEES gay marriage as a human right.
Not only does Article 16 say "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry",
but article 2 says that, "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."
Thus, article 16 outlines marriage as a human right, and article 2 says ALL rights apply to everyone, without distinction of any kind, regardless of whether or not the specific article addresses a distinction. And therefore, marriage cannot be ethically withheld from individuals on the basis of sex.
Now its just too bad the UN doesn't have the teeth to do something about it!
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