Lileks on gay marriage.

In his zeal for a brave new world, this fellow managed to insult and demean everyone. And I mean everyone. Moms? Any guy can do your job. Dads? Your son or daughter doesn�t need to grow up with a male role model in his or her daily life. It�s the sort of pernicious nonsense that thinks gender is an arbitrary social construct. It�s not enough, apparently, to say that gay couples can be great parents. You have to insist that heterosexual couples have no inherent advantages. It�s not enough to say that kids raised by gay couples can grow up well-adjusted. You have to deny the advantages of growing up in a family where the child is exposed to both male and female role models on a molecular level.

The free thinkers in the universities would never admit that the new lifestyle du jour was anything but healthy. But having a child makes you think otherwise.

I think that the best reason for opposing gay rights is that it offers adolescents an alternative to dealing with the opposite sex. They're already going through a traumatic time, wondering where they fit in the world, feeling like outsiders and geeks. What they don't need is the welcoming arms of a sub-society that says "Come here, Honeychile. You don't need to get over your isolation or work out those fears and doubts!"

By claiming that being queer is a refuge, they deprive young people of a lot of life's meaning and offer cheesy imitations of what the rest of society is doing, and then demand in the name of tolerance that those imitations be made equivalent by law. So they build their crackerbox palaces and want to move in, rather than seek any kind of help. It used to be that homosexuality was considered a neurosis, a form of mental disorder. Then, the America Psychological Association took a vote that changed all that.

What's next, depression or hearing voices is just an alternate reality? "You don't need help. You just need to embrace your screwed up perceptions as normal." I have a better idea. Get rid of psychologists. Let them do research, but don't let them near patients, because they tend to tell them to deal with their problems by giving up.

This is what dismays me: no matter how much I may support gay rights,
in the final analysis my belief that my daughter needs a dad brands me
as a reactionary.

Of course! It has to. The goal is validation, and the illusion won't work as long as anybody else insists that they're normal and you aren't. That's why tolerance only goes one way for the left. They grant no value to traditional beliefs and practices. Nobody who believes that kids need a loving home with parents to model their sexual roles can be be left alone. They must submit!