It was not the arguments of pro-choice advocates which caused me to shift my view on abortion, no longer favoring laws banning the practice out right. I found it all too easy to tune out the case they made as all too many dismissed the arguments of their pro-life adversaries as “anti-woman” or “rooted in the past.” Or some such. Ironic that they’d label a movement overwhelmingly female as “anti-woman.” Guess those pro-life women are really, to borrow an expression from Gloria Steinem, just plain ol’ “female impersonators“.
It was in talking to women who had abortions that I began to understand the complexity of the issue.
And so it was with gay marriage, at least as it relates to my vote on popular initiatives in the Golden State. As I have expressed frequently on this blog, I’m pretty ambivalent on the issue, content with domestic partnerships, not beholden to having the state call our unions “marriage.”
Ever since the proposition which would come to be numbered as 8 qualified for the California ballot, I expected I would vote against it. While opposed to the state Supreme Court’s decision mandating state recognition of same-sex unions, I also did not think it appropriate for a state constitution to define marriage. In large part because of my ambivalence on the issue and the mean-spirited attacks of gay marriage advocates on the Proposition’s proponents, I did waver in the last few weeks before the election.
My resolve to defeat the proposition strengthened when I saw two friends of mine together, lesbians who gotten married in the window between the court’s decision and Election Day. I knew from following their example (and that of another lesbian couple) that they understood what marriage meant. I voted, “No.”
In many ways, the attacks of the gay marriage advocates on their adversaries resemble those of the pro-choice zealots. Each side bristles at any expression of opposition to their cause Via Mark Tapscott, we learn of another example of pro-choice zealotry. The National Organization for Women (NOW) is “mounting a campaign to force . . . off the air” a TV spot slated for the Super Bowl telecast where University of Florida football star Tim Tebow and his mother talk “about the fact he might have been aborted had she listened to a doctor who encouraged her to have an abortion due to complications in her pregnancy.”
They are, says Tapscott, paraphrasing CBS News legal reporter Jan Crawford, “trying to stifle debate on an important issue“.
Sounds a lot like gay marriage zealots who have “hounded, threatened,blacklisted, beaten, and forced to resign from their jobs” their adversaries for the mere crime of “exercising their political free speech.”
On social issues, some on the left betray an incredible intolerance of open debate. And that’s unfortunate. Had pro-abortion zealots been more tolerant of their ideological adversaries, they might have seen me shift my views long before I actually did. How many others stand where I once stood, open to persuasion if respect is shown for ideological adversaries and the right argument is made?
And how many people might flip on gay marriage in similar circumstances.
As I have said, pro-life is a gay issue–I want to prevent unborn gays from being aborted simply because their parents don’t want to have a gay child. As the biology of homosexuality becomes more clear, I believe that there will be genetic markers which will allow parents to “choose” to abort children who might be born gay. I don’t see how a gay person could not be pro-life given this situation.
Ah, but for some of us the issue (abortion) is not so complex. Though I have to admit that for years I was that most unattractive of pro-choicers – the foaming at the mouth “my body, my choice” type. I can’t say what ultimately persuaded me to become pro-life, though getting knocked up at 30(and unmarrried, I was kind of a slut) and walking out of a clinic after seeing a couple with a “real” baby on their laps certainly helped. Now, as a mom of two, it is a very simple issue for me…life begins at conception, and you make your choice when you decide to have sex. Persuasive, no? ; ) Though I should state that I do not judge or condemn any woman who has an abortion…for the girls I know that have done it, it was a difficult decision and not done lightly.
Oddly enough, the older and more conservative I get on the pro-life issue, the less conservative I get on gay marriage. Again, I find it simple – if two people who love each other want to create that stable social unit, I can only see a benefit to society.
I rarely listen to Dr. Laura because I dislike how she harangues her poor callers, but I caught 3 good minutes of her last night. She was talking about the Tebow controversy. One of her points was that a society in which *not* aborting is somehow controversial, is a society which has gone far, far down.
I caught the same part of Ingraham’s show you did, ILC. She’s right about their being a lack of “choice” among so-called pro-choicers and no respect for freedom of speech. As Ingraham kept pointing out, Planned Parenthood or NARAL are free to pay for ads too. If we are to really have “choice”, what’s the harm in trying to persuade women NOT to choose abortion? I despise FoF for other reasons but on this one I wish them the best.