Despite the closeness of her relationships, Clune admitted that the hyper-emotional world of a female-to-female sexual bond was “exhausting.” “The women I went out with were by and large more inclined to be insecure and to need reassurance and I found myself in the male role of endlessly reassuring my girlfriends,” she wrote. “The subtle mood changes of everyday life would be picked over inexhaustibly.”
Clune describes how one lover was so jealous and insecure that “every single time we enjoyed a night out … we would have a row and have to leave.” “Back home, we would then spend the next four hours arguing about our relationship and my feelings of loyalty, fidelity and so on,” she wrote. “It was never-ending.”
“Can you imagine waking up beside a woman when you’ve both got raging PMT (premenstrual tension)?” she added.
Ultimately, she said, the emotional rollercoaster forced her to reconsider her lesbian plunge – something she clearly says she “chose,” and was not born into. “Unlike most men, women, of course, offer each other endless support and there’s hardly ever any lack of communication,” she said. “But – bizarre as it may seem – I found myself longing for exactly the opposite.”
Following “a calculated decision to try men again,” Clune says that she found in her future husband Richard a “quiet kindness” and “lack of neediness” that appealed to her. “I felt we were walking alongside each other rather than spending life locked in face-to-face intimacy or combat,” she wrote. “It felt natural and not at all scary. He was sanguine about my past and never suffered the insecurities I had come to expect.”
I learned a lot from reading this. I was surprised that women are this emotional. Is this true? I remember Dr. Morse said in that Acton Institute interview I posted that lesbian couples have a lot more domestic violence. Now I see why!
I actually think that it is a lot easier for Christians to make a coherent argument in favor of opposite-sex relationships and traditional marriage when they have read case studies and statistics on same-sex relationships. You need to understand the differences to say whether one is better than the other, and to include the needs of children in the comparison.
I noticed that Lex Communis linked to a Mercator Net article that summarizes some fairly recent research on same-sex couples. The author of the post is a professor, and the research he cites is published and peer-reviewed.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse defends marriage at Columbia University in this short hour-long exchange. This is your chance to hear how anti-child advocates of same-sex marriage really are. And Dr. J links SSM to unilateral divorce at the end of the Q&A, too. Awesome! This debate really needed to go for twice the time, and I look forward to hearing MORE debates from Dr. J.
Details:
Columbia University’s Federalist Society hosts a debate between Dr J and Professor Katherine Franke based on the question “Is Marriage Equality Possible?” About an hour of audio includes opening position (Dr J), arguments (Prof. Franke), and rebuttal (Dr J), as well as a brief question-and-answer period.
1) same-sex marriage is not the equivalent of traditional marriage
2) if we legislate that they are equal, then we are really redefining marriage by changing the essential purpose of marriage
A case study from Ireland:
a known sperm donor for a lesbian couple was excluded from having a relationship with the child he conceived
after the child was born, the sperm donor wanted regular contact with the child, but the women opposed giving him access
same-sex marriage requires that courts are able to assign parental rights instead of having rights assigned biologically, as with traditional marriage
That is why SSM is different from TM
What is the purpose of marriage?
Marriage is about attaching mothers and fathers to children, and mothers and fathers to one another
Children are born helpless from two opposite-sex parents and they need parental guidance and care during development
In TM, there is no third party needed in order to have a child
In TM, the biological parents have rights and responsibilities for the child
TM is about providing the child with justice
Every child is entitled a relationship to both biological parents, and is entitled to care, protection and nourishment from both parents, and every child is entitled to a stable family environment
the problem is that children don’t have standing to sue for these rights in court
so the purpose of marriage is that we have a social construct to provide these rights to children naturally, without the state having to intervene
The purpose of marriage according to SSM?
In SSM, the essential child-centered purpose marriage is replaced with new purposes like pooling resources and having same-sex couples recognized by society
SSM redefines marriage in four ways:
it diminishes the entitlement of children to a relationship with both biological parents
it diminishes the identification of parental roles with biology
it requires the state to determine parental relationships, instead of recognizing biological parents
it enshrines the idea that mothers and fathers are interchangeable, that children don’t really need mothers AND fathers
Dr. Franke’s opening speech (20 min.)
Hard cases make bad law 1: the presumption of paternity
consider the case where a mother is married and has an affair resulting in a child
the Supreme Court has ruled that the father of the child has no right of contact
this is a case where marriage gets in the way of biological parents having a relationship with the child
so it can be the case where marriage is in conflict with the relationships to biological parents
Hard cases make bad law 2: the purpose of marriage can be changed
marriages was used to keep peace between families and communities
marriage used to be about trading and trafficking of women
so the concern for offspring was not always the greatest concern
TM and SSM are both equally able to create stability for children:
same-sex unions are just as stable for children as TM marriages
Same-sex unions do provide justice for the child:
giving the adults in same-sex couples the social recognition that opposite sex married couples have is good for children
Children can sue in court
children can use guardians to sue their parents in court to get their rights
Opposing SSM is racism
opposing same-sex marriage is equivalent to racism
we could abolish marriage completely and let individuals form private contracts, then the state would really be neutral on marriage
Dr. J’s rebuttal speech (5 min.)
The state cannot be neutral on marriage
what the deinstutionalization of marriage means is that the private contracts are made by adults and children will have no consideration in those contracts
Regarding the adultery case
the presumption of paternity is there to protect the marriage
such borderline cases almost never happen with TM, whereas in SSM these third party problems occur in 100% of the cases
Children are not happy being separated from their biological parents
adults do not have a right to exclude a child’s biological parents from having a relationship with them, and children are often not happy being excluded from their biological parents