WFYI Hates Me (as Well as Traditional Marriage)

Our local public radio station, WFYI, 90.1 FM, www.wfyi.org, held another discussion today of the relative merits of HR3 and same-sex marriage.

The focus today was on the relative sanity and economic sense of same-sex marriage, or something close to that.  The guests were a psychologist who studied homes with children, and an HR person from Lilly.  Their basic thrusts, respectively, were that children grow up just fine in same-sex-couple homes, and that opposition to same-sex marriage costs Eli Lilly Co. (the city’s largest employer) jobs and money. 

People were invited to call, email or post questions on Facebook.

Callers were welcomed by first name, emailers “submitted” and Facebookers “posted.”  There were occasionally mysterious appearances from “a listener who didn’t want to appear on air.” 

It struck after a few calls, posts and submissions how biased the show’s host, guests and participants were in favor of same-sex marriage. I got the sense of a foregone conclusion that same-sex marriages were just fine and opposition was not only illogical, but costly to the State and its businesses. It was only occasionally that the sinister “listener who didn’t want to appear on air” would offer a quip or note that traditional marriages fostered strong, growing families; or that it didn’t deter anyone who really wanted a job from moving here.

About half-way through the show, I decided to offer what I understood has been the time-tested basis for heterosexual marriages: to foster a productive citizenry in perpetuity.

Without kids, the state dies.

Without productive citizens, the state starves.
Historically, it seemed to me, that the BEST formula to achieve both goals was through fostering long-term reproductive family units to bring up children.

So, naively, it turns out, I joined the emailers who “submitted,” and offered this:

“I have always been under the impression that the basic justification of a bias in favor of traditional marriage lies with the state’s interest in the production of reliable citizens.

Given the long recognized parens patriae doctrine that a state has a legitimate interest in its children, and that a state cannot exist without productive citizens; history has shown that the best environment that serves those objectives is a married fertile heterosexual couple.

 

 

Has this long-held belief been conclusively refuted?”

 I was sitting at the computer listening and clearing-out spam  when the host announced the intrusion of another of those ignorant brutes who didn’t want to appear on-air:

“I have always been under the impression that the basic justification … .”

A chill ran down my back as I struggled not to fall out of my chair.

Why wasn’t I an email “submitter?  How did I become the apparently-ashamed anonymous rube?

When the host, a lecturer, publisher and former educator who stumbled and mangled and gargled a little Latin phrase as he read with gritted teeth, finished, he said: “this one’s for you Dr.”

“What do you think?”

The psychologist grabbed my example by the throat, and choked the life out of it and related how course children can grow up well-adjusted with single parents, same-sex parents, or traditional families. He failed to throw-in “Well, Duh,” mercifully.

But that wasn’t what I asked; I asked whether history has taught us that traditional families were BEST?

Of course, when a (planted?) emailer wondered whether same-sex families can produce well-adjusted children who contribute to society, the control room shuddered with excitement.

But they never answered my question; and the host cast me and my proposition as so backward and embarrassing that I refused to identify myself.  I guess I should’ve known.

 

Wait ‘til they hear what I think of “Universal Pre-K.”

 

jw