A Stand I Make

I've decided that I will come back into the public policy area providing commentary that can be seen as insightful or myopic.  It will be what it will be.

Today I want to make a quick note regarding the MN state legislature and the Governor's hard drive to legalize same-sex marriages.  To be blunt, I call it legalized sodomy and I am opposed to it.  I oppose it not only through my Christian faith, but also for the societal and public costs such a policy would entail.

The societal costs are notable.  If (and looks more like when) sodomy is legalized in Minnesota, what costs would that entail. 

• One would be that monogamous relationships would be less likely.  For example, in the Netherlands where sodomy is ingrained in societal acceptance, a  homosexual who averages eight partners per year would seen as having a "steady partner."   

• If monogamous relationships are less likely, the occurrence of marriage would like decline as well.  In a society where monogamous heterosexual relationships are losing value, legalizing sodomy would only further disintegrate  the value of any monogamous relationship, let alone the value of marriage.  Therefore, fewer couples will marry.  This is borne out by facts such as in Massachusetts that half of sodomite couples do end up as married and that figure is only one out of eight in the Netherlands.

• More children would grow up fatherless is another obvious cost of legalized sodomy.  Fatherless children are more likely to grow up in poverty, more likely to be incarcerated and more likely to be part of a "broken home" later in life.  

Birth rates would fall.  Mother and father are needed to create children.  A declining birth rate harms society due to a shrinking taxpayer base to support a growing aging population as well as the growing demand for public services of the existing society.  That's just a fact.  Look at a country like Japan that has a quickly aging population but a low birth rate to see the fiscal troubles it is creating.

That's a couple of the societal costs, how about the public health costs.

• Sodomite make up more than half of new HIV/AIDS infections according to HIVandHepatitis.com.  There is notable evidence from the CDC that sodomites make up nearly two out of three new cases of syphilis. According to the CDC, sexually transmitted like these make up $16 billion of straight medical costs.

• Sodomite men on average live 20 years shorter than the average of all men.  This means that is 20 years less than they could of had to contribute to society as a taxpayer and a human being.  

• Sodomite men are 50 percent more likely to suffer depression based on an article written in BMC Psychiatry (a UK outfit)

These are just a few of the costs that I haven't heard about in this debate, which is really disgraceful in my myopic opinion.  But as Bob Dylan says, "The Times are a Changin"  no matter if we like it or not.