He Has A Point

First of all, I am not a Rick Santorum fan. I think that he's a little too gung-ho on too many Christian fundamental issues and I really don't think that those sorts of things should have much of a part in determining American policies and politics. Besides, it just opens the door for other sorts of fundamental religious groups to start acting like nutjobs. And they do it so well that the very thought kind of frightens me. But back to Mr. Santorum. Even though I think that he's kind of a tool, I think that I did find something that him and I might agree on. Actually, it's more of a theoretical agreement if anything, but it does lend credence to the fact that you would really be surprised at the things that you have in common with people that you don't particularly care for.

Here's the thing: According to USA Today, Mr. Santorum was doing a little town hall meeting in Concord, New Hampshire and he got booed by a bunch of college students when he brought up what I feel is a realistic and logical argument. Now, Mr. Santorum is against same-sex marriage, also known as a gayrriage. (Well, known here as a gayrriage.) And one of the students said to him, "How you justify your belief based on these morals you have about all men being created equal when two men who want to marry the person that they love ..." That is when Rick interrupted and asked, "What about three men?" Needless to say, this wasn't well received among the oh-so-worldly (in their own minds) college students, who began booing him.

The woman who had posed the original question responded with the equivalent "I know you are but what am I?" Or maybe "I'm rubber and you're glue." She answered, "That's not what I'm talking about." It might not be what you're talking about, but it is something that is going to need to be addressed at some point as I don't see how you can argue that gayrriage is OK, but plural marriage is not. If you're going to take what is known as a 'traditional marriage' and start making an addendum to it, you're going to have to take other things into consideration. And I don't really see how, on a basic level, you would be able to deny plural marriage to people if you're going to allow gayrriage for people. If you think that this isn't a reasonable discussion to have, then you're simply being intellectually dishonest.

Mr. Santorum went on to say "Reason says that if you think it's OK for two, you have to differentiate with me why it's not OK for three." I agree. The students did not. They booed him. But he still was able to add, "Let's just have a discussion about what that means. If she reflects the values that marriage can be for anybody or any group of people, as many as is necessary, any two people or any three or four, marriage really means whatever you want it to mean." From what I can tell from the article (which really did an extremely poor job of summing up how the discussion actually went after Rick asked his question), the discussion went nowhere and the students booed Rick as he left. Good Lord, people.

I respect the man for wanting to have a reasonable discussion about this issue. What I don't respect are a bunch of self-righteous college students who think that they have everything all figured out, but aren't even willing to engage in a reasonable discussion about a subject that they are so blindly passionate in favor of that they won't even entertain the possibility that there is more to it than they think. Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to gay marriage. And I don't really think that I'm opposed to polygamy either. (Regular polygamy, that is. None of that FLDS nonsense.) I think it's a bit weird (I can barely manage ONE relationship at a time, let alone several) and it's definitely not for me, but I'm not quite certain that it's hurting anything. But I do think that the polygamy question is one that has to be answered, as I don't see it being any fundamentally different than a gayrriage. And I was really disappointed that I don't know how those students feel about polygamy and, if they're against it, their reasoning for that position. Very disappointed indeed.

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