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It Doesn't
Take My Training as an M.D. to Recognize that the Essence of Marriage Is Reflected in the Neat Division of Mankind into Male and Female
"Stating the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."
George Orwell
By John Diggs, Jr., M.D., South Hadley
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Marriage is a natural institution that has stood in
all nations around the globe across the centuries. Although I am a physician,
it doesn't take my training or knowledge to recognize that the essence
of marriage is reflected in the very neat division of mankind into male
and female, and in the unique union of these two opposites needed to produce
children, the legacy that insures the continuity of mankind.
The sublime paradox that males and females are both human, so different
yet complementary to each other, has fascinated philosophers, poets, artists
and us everyday folks. The tension, ease, and fruitfulness with which
males and females relate are tributes to the structure, the function and
the purpose of marriage. It is unparalleled by any other formula for human
mating.
Research consistently shows the natural family is the
best environment in which to raise children. Moreover, it provides a structure
that benefits the welfare of multiple generations.
Recent judicial decisions require a restatement of the
self-evident - marriage unites only a man and a woman. A fiat from the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) has forced the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts to issue marriage licenses that create a legal reality
that conflicts with actual reality. Same sex couples do not meet the bare
minimum requirements for marriage.
Appeals to "social justice" have been used
to temporarily disable the accumulated wisdom of civilizations. This has
been an especially effective tactic against Americans, who have a natural
affinity for social justice. In this case, our benevolent instincts are
being used against us as in a judo match. The appeal to social justice
relies on false claims and redirects our goodwill, to make it support
a self-destructive notion.
Homosex is harmful
Two persons of the same sex are not capable of having
coitus with each other. Vain attempts to create a new order of things
require inconvenient invention. Homosex requires a perversion of the natural
usage of body parts. The medical consequences of homosexual acts have
been studied by professionals but could have been easily anticipated by
lay persons.
One common homosexual act attempts to use the alimentary
canal, designed to absorb nutrients and expel wastes, as a genital. The
Latin core of the word "genital" is gignere meaning to beget,
as in genesis, generation, genealogy. That one's genitals would be mixed
with the bacteria-laden organ used for waste disposal is too ironic to
conceive (pun intended). While most people are repulsed by this rupture
of natural order, homosexual activists pride themselves on tearing down
barriers, even those that are protective. "Gay" author Gabriel
Rotello notes the perspective of many "gays" that:
Gay liberation was founded … on a "sexual
brotherhood of promiscuity," and any abandonment of that promiscuity
would amount to a communal betrayal of gargantuan proportions.
With the tearing down of protective barriers come
foreseeable outbreaks of disease. Homosexual acts result in extraordinary
rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) that outdistance any comparison
to coitus. These include HIV/AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, human herpes virus
8 and hepatitis A, B and C. As recently as April 2004, the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) reported "the rate of drug-resistant gonorrhea
more than doubled nationally from 2002 to 2003, and this stubborn sexually
transmitted disease was 12 times more prevalent among homosexual and bisexual
men than heterosexual men, federal health officials said yesterday."
Human anatomy and physiology reveal that the rectum
was not designed to accommodate a penis. The vagina has natural lubricants
and is composed of a mucus membrane with a multi-layer stratified squamous
epithelium that allows it to endure friction without damage and to resist
the immunological actions of semen and sperm. In contrast, the anus is
a delicate mechanism of small muscles that comprise an "exit-only"
passage, lined with simple cuboidal cells. Repeated trauma, friction and
stretching, lead to high rates of blood exposure, tears and disease transmission.
It is almost as if an intelligent designer designated sexual penetration
of the anus as the best way to transmit STDs.
On the other end of the alimentary canal the CDC estimates
that 8% of HIV contracted by male homosex fans is passed by way of oral
copulation.
Extraordinary promiscuity is evident with 74% of male homosexuals reporting
more than 100 partners, according to Bell and Weinberg.
Not unexpectedly, these banes lead to early death. An
epidemiologic study in Vancouver estimates twenty years of life are lost
by participation in homosexual lifestyles. By comparison, the New England
Journal of Medicine estimates seven years of life are lost due to smoking.
Public price for private behavior
Justification of these dangerous practices on the basis
of 'privacy' is inadequate and contrary to the rigorous practice of public
health protection. Each of us pays a price for these privately performed
dangerous acts: higher insurance costs, imperiled blood supply and research
diverted from common diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and heart
disease. Until the advent of AIDS, correct public health interventions
were offered for STDs. Premarital syphilis testing resulted in syphilis
being a minor player in the STD epidemic. However, the radical political
cause of 'normalizing' homosexuality led public health agencies to ignore
the wisdom gathered in the battles against tuberculosis, gonorrhea, syphilis
and smallpox, and instead treat HIV as a cause celebre, a disease to be
danced with rather than combated.
Homosexual activists intimidated public health officials
into treating HIV as a political issue rather than a public health menace,
a costly surrender.
How is it that we have mandatory, premarital testing for syphilis, which
is curable, but no such standard for incurable HIV? Why am I prohibited
by law from warning a spouse that a patient has HIV? Imagine the suffering
imposed on thousands of children because officials have been slow to require
pregnant women be tested for HIV.
Tennis champion Arthur Ashe, distinguished as the first
black man to win Wimbledon, died from AIDS in 1992 because of contaminated
blood he received in the course of a heart operation in 1983. He and his
family paid the highest personal cost because of someone else's "private"
behavior. In the wake of the World Trade Center attack, the "Harvard
Crimson" reported the following student recommendation: "On
the Red Cross form, you will be asked: 'Are you a man who has had sexual
contact with another man since 1973?' This applies to many of you. You
should lie."
In another episode, an outbreak of eighty-four cases
of HIV at North Carolina colleges was reported. All were contracted through
male homosex but 28 admitted to also having sex with women. The news article
states that the high rates of black female HIV are likely related to unrecognized
bisexual activity of black men.
It bears repeating that male homosex is the most efficient sexual manner
of spreading HIV.
The plight of heterosexual black women, the fastest
growing demographic of new HIV cases, gets press attention, but the homosexual
fuel for the epidemic's spread in America has now been given the Massachusetts
"stamp of approval." Black women are paying a personal cost
for "against nature" private behavior.
The yearly cost of AIDS treatment was between $27,000 and $38,000 per
patient in 1990. Those costs are undoubtedly higher now.
Children are at risk. Once again, the propensity of the homosexual lifestyle
to break barriers shows itself. Although homosexuals constitute only 2%
of the adult male population, 30% of child molestations are committed
against boys by men. Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal
of the homosexual movement. In 1972, the National Coalition of Gay Organizations
adopted a "Gay Rights Platform" that includes the following
demand: "Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent."
The lack of HIV testing for pregnant women causes children
to acquire HIV congenitally and to die, through no fault of their own.
A dollar's worth of medicine given at the right time can protect a child
from getting HIV from its mother. Instead, activists blocked prudent public
health interventions, preferring good "p.r." for sodomy over
life for infants. They feared mandatory testing for pregnant women might
arouse public health officials to follow time-tested public health interventions
which would include testing of avowed homosexuals. Suffer the children.
Social Justice
A number of "social justice" claims are deceitfully
brought forth to advance the drive for same-sex marriage.
Discrimination
While opposition to same sex marriage is decried as
"discrimination," it is worth remembering that the purpose of
education, actually, is to teach discrimination, i.e., the ability to
discriminate between the good and the bad. What we as a society abhor
is not discrimination per se, but discrimination on an irrational basis.
Since sodomy and other homosexual acts are measurably harmful, both to
the individuals who engage in them and to the public health as a whole,
it is reasonable, rational and even intelligent to design public policy
so as to discourage sodomy and all homosexual acts. The time-tested wisdom
of this stance is demonstrated in the opposite-sex requirement for marriage
documented throughout history and across cultures.
Love
It is often claimed, "We should be able to marry
whomever we love." It sounds reasonable at first blush, but this
is not and has never been sufficient criteria for marriage. Otherwise,
we could marry our parents, our siblings, or several people at once since
most of us have many people whom we love. While sentimental, love alone
is insufficient grounds for marriage.
Massachusetts legislator Ben Swan said he would vote
against any protection of marriage amendment because he does not want
to remove rights. When asked to identify which rights are removed by confirming
marriage is heterosexual, he refused to explicitly identify even one.
Mr. Swan recognized the hollowness of the common answer -- the right of
each of us to marry whomever he or she loves. Unable or unwilling to admit
this aloud, Swan left empty air. Tragically, however, homosexual activists
are plunging forward in the moral and intellectual vacuum left by weak-willed
politicians.
Sexual orientation
There are many sexual orientations: Some are to children,
some to animals and some to cadavers. The existence of an orientation
does not confer its protection under law. In fact, most paraphilias remain
punishable under law for good reasons. While sexual orientation may fluctuate
over a lifetime as "ex-gays" attest, one's sex is not malleable
or elective. Human beings are neatly and irretrievably divided into male
and female.
The concept of a "transgendered or transsexual
person" does not contradict this fact. For example, a person who
was male before sexual reassignment surgery (breast implants, hormonal
treatment, and removal of the genitals) remains a male after the surgery,
although now genitally mutilated and hormonally manipulated. Every cell
in his body continues to proclaim maleness.
Civil Rights
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said, "[h]omosexuality
is not an immutable characteristic, it is behavioral and hence is fundamentally
different from such traits as race, gender, or alienage."
Swedish and Dutch statistics show only a tiny fraction
of homosexually attracted persons choose to form legal ties confirming
that the core of "gay" identity is about sexual liberation,
not family formation. Moreover, same sex couples are short-lived. In Sweden,
same-sex legal ties rupture more often than heterosexual counterparts:
50% higher with men and 167% (more than two times) higher with women.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who fought the civil rights battle and died in
its service, said,
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but
by the content of their character.
Certainly, one's sexual behavior is a component of
character, and is, therefore, a valid basis for making judgments. Furthermore,
were Dr. King homosexually coupled, he would not have had four little
children for whom to dream.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts
was accomplished against the will of the people. To achieve it, the legislature
un-Constitutionally ignored the petition of the Massachusetts Citizens
for Marriage in 2002 signed by 130,000 courageous people, and then the
SJC un-Constitutionally snatched power it does not have.
While same-sex licenses have been rendered with the
assent of the SJC since May 17, 2004, this rendering defies the reality
of marriage which is always between a man and a woman. The Court's action
contradicts common sense, the public good and public health. Appeals to
social justice and comparisons to the discrimination against civil rights
movements of black Americans are invalid.
Free-thinking people who believe that the six million
citizens of Massachusetts should themselves, or through their elected
representatives, determine the laws of the land rather than four unelected
judges must continue their struggle for liberty and justice. One key to
freedom has always been the balance of power.
Removal of Margaret Marshall and the three concurring
judges, Judith Cowin, John Greaney and Roderick Ireland will go a long
way towards restoring the balance of powers.
The way to remove the judges is through a Bill of Address.
This requires the consent of the Representatives. Failing to convince
our legislature of the obvious, the next step is to replace them with
brave souls who still remember that "freedom ain't free." If
you, dear reader, are too apathetic to fight for your birthright or if
you actually prefer being ruled by a "gang of four," then you
should learn to live as serfs.
America will only be the "land of the free" as long as there
are those willing to be "the brave."
Massachusetts Citizens for Marriage
Post Office Box 5882
Holliston, MA 01746
781-237-2772
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