Does Legalizing Gay Marriage Take Away Personal Freedoms From Others?

(Warning: contains controversial material!)

Advocates for gay rights seem to think that their rights and opinions (and that of homosexual citizens, of course) are the only ones that matter, that satisfying minority groups in the name of equality is more important than maintaining the rights that already exist. I recently had a brief discussion on Facebook about how legalizing gay marriage affects the rights of everyone else. A friend of mine posted the following quote (I don’t know where she got it from) on her status:

“When the gay community is granted personal freedoms, ours get taken away. How? Shhhhh."

Although this remark was surely meant to be rhetorical, I thought that I would give a couple good (at least I thought) examples of how our personal freedoms get taken away “when the gay community is granted” more, particularly in the case of legalizing gay marriage. I made the following comment:

"You don't think that legalizing gay marriage takes away other's freedoms? How about parents' rights to control what their children are taught? When gay marriage is legalized, the public school has to teach that gay marriage is normal, and they don't have to notify the parents when that is being done. What if I don't want my children taught that? .Tough luck. Adoption agencies have to consider same sex couples when placing children. LDS family services actually closed down in California until Proposition 8 passed because they refused to do this. When a parent places a child up for adoption, shouldn't they have some say in where that child goes? Just because they don't feel ready to have a child doesn't mean they lose all interest in the future and upbringing of that child. I'm sure there must be other ways that legalizing gay marriage affects other people. These are just two that come to mind right away."

Some time later, I checked the strand again, and found the following response from another user:

"Parents shouldn't have total control over everything their children are taught. Perhaps, though, we could segregate the schools so gay people can go to one school, and straight people could go to another? You are welcome to teach your children what you would like at home; the earth is 6000 years old, cookies come from elves, and gay = bad. Also, it's strange that someone wouldn't want their child to be adopted into a happy family just because the structure of that family doesn't fit in with their traditional values. Perhaps parents who put their children up for adoption should be able to prevent interracial couples or even couples of another race from adopting them if they think that is wrong?"

Now, my argument was that legalizing gay marriage did in fact take away rights of other people, not whether you believe that I actually deserve those rights. That is moving into completely different territory. I understand that if I am to send my kids to public school, that I relinquish some control over everything they are taught. However, as a parent I should have some control. If there is something that I don’t want my child to learn, I should be able to have the option to take them out of school for the time that it is being taught, whether it is Darwinism, sex education, foot fungus, or gay marriage as a normal family unit.

As the system stands before legalizing gay marriage, homosexuality is not taught as bad. In fact, heterosexuality is not taught as good. It just isn’t taught. If a picture of a family is shown, then it the parents are a man and a woman. If you want to teach your children that homosexuality is acceptable, then you are welcome to teach your children what you would like at home. There shouldn’t be any ideas taught at school that you have to fight against when the kids get home. If teachers teach that "gay equals bad," then that is inappropriate and there are steps that you can take to resolve the issue. However, if homosexuality is actually being taught at school as normal (and it is in states where homosexual marriage is legalized), then I have to actually work to counteract those concepts at home if I want to teach my children that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

Once again, I really don’t care if you think that I am an intolerant, narrow-minded, prejudiced bigot and don’t deserve those rights. The fact is that I do have those rights and legalizing gay marriage takes those rights away. Do you want the government to regulate what you teach your children? If you take away parents’ control over their children’s education and leave all the teaching to a standardized public school system, we are one step closer to a socialist government.

As for placing a baby up for adoption, the point is usually that the mother wants to provide her child the chance to be raised in a family environment that she can’t provide yet. Often that means being raised in a home with traditional values. A family could be happy smoking pot and drinking beer all day, but that does not mean it is the best environment for a child. There is more to a family than just being happy.

Again, this is straying from the point. As laws stand before gay marriage is legalized, a mother can place her child in whichever kind of home she deems fit—Caucasian, Asian, heterosexual, homosexual, single parent, upper class, hippy, whatever. She can go through an agency, she can find connections among her friends, she can even place an ad in the paper. “Mother looking for an upper class, Caucasian, heterosexual married couple to adopt her newborn daughter, preferably people with blonde hair and blue eyes with an artistic flair.” If a woman has the right to kill her unborn child (which I don’t agree with), why shouldn’t she have the right to choose who will raise her child if she is unselfish enough to carry the baby full term and deliver it?

Adoption agencies are around to help the mother find a family who she would be comfortable with raising her child. Adoption agencies are businesses geared to the desires of their customers. A mother wishing to place her child for adoption will go through the agency that meets her needs and wishes. If a mother wishes her child to be raised in a liberal home that teaches progressive values—like homosexuality as a normal and acceptable lifestyle or abortion as a woman’s right—then she will go through an agency that considers homosexual couples as an acceptable option for adoptive parents. If a mother would prefer her child to be brought up in a Christian home with traditional values, then she will go with a more conservative adoption agency—like LDS Family Services. Regulating adoption agencies takes away commercialism and free enterprise, the basis of the American economy and the U.S. as a country.

When did we start deciding which freedoms are important and which ones others can do without simply because you don’t agree with how they use them even if they don’t harm other people? I am not homophobic. I believe in letting others make choices and still loving them as a person. Homosexuals are free to choose their life partner and live together and have a family, and they should not be discriminated against. However, they also need to be prepared to live with the consequences and not expect everyone else to tiptoe around them and give them everything they want. America was built on Christian ideals. It is a democracy and a majority of Americans are heterosexual Christians who believe that marriage can only be defined as existing between one man and one woman. Nobody is saying that homosexual couples can’t be together. No one is denying them the right to hold their own commitment ceremony. We are simply saying that they do not meet the requirements for marriage. Families with a father (actually being male) and a mother (a female) who are actually married are more likely to promote well-balanced children who are a benefit to society; government was established to support families; thus, families (and I do mean it in the traditional sense of a man and woman legally and lawfully married) receive more benefits from the government. I would not have it any other way.