Bill Maher says: “Everyone deserves equal rights. That’s why they’re called “equal” and “rights”, which, as far as it goes, is certainly the goal of the American culture. But beyond the sound bite where the real thinking takes place, it’s painfully obvious that there’s no such thing as absolute equality.
Nor should there be. Society reserves the right to define for itself what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behavior, legal and illegal.
Pseudo-thinkers are fond of saying, “You can’t legislate morality” when current or pending law threatens a pet action. That is a completely false statement – the law is nothing more or less than a codification of the minimally acceptable standard of morality.
Serial killers do not have the right to commit the heinous crimes they perpetrate under our definition of morality. Neither do drug pushers have the right to pursue their choice of business venture under our law. All peoples and governments discriminate in every thought, act, and decision they make. This thing we call life will never be any other way. The question is, are we making the right choices, rewarding the good and just and punishing or stigmatizing the bad?
Referring to Maher’s embrace of gay marriage, in this country homosexuals are permitted to do virtually anything they wish. They are a protected group, in fact, in regards to employment, housing, speech and other areas of life, nearly on a par with black Americans in that regard.
In fact the only thing homosexuals are not permitted to do in America is redefine marriage to include their unions. I’m sure this seems unfair to them. Unfortunately it is perfectly within society’s rights to keep this restriction in place until homosexual behavior is demonstrably sanctioned by a majority of Americans.
That could happen sooner rather than later. The Gay Patriot points to a Pew Research poll that indicates a majority of Americans “supports civil unions ‘allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements with each other that would give them many of the same rights as married couples‘”.
The reverse of this number is that 53% oppose gay marriage itself and 49% believe that homosexual acts are morally wrong.
GP wonders:
Does that mean that at least 6% of Americans think it’s fine for us to enter into relationships, but would rather we didn’t have sex?
No, it means that the vast, vast majority of Americans recognize gays’ right to associate with the people of their choice – period – even as the majority recognizes their behavior both undesirable and tolerable, the latter of which is a good thing.
ht memeorandum