[Gay marriage doesn't solve the problem it's designed to solve. In fact it makes it worse.]
I honestly believe I learned more as a teacher than my students did from the experience, which is not an admittance of shame or remorse. To the contrary I think it's as it should be. Any teacher who doesn't learn more from the experience of teaching than the students do from being taught should find a new job. Teachers start with a good student's knowledge of their subjects but before they can explain their subjects to their students they must come to an even deeper level of insight. But that's just the beginning of why teachers learn more. It's being in charge of people and observing human behavior patterns in a setting where the directions those patterns move directly effect the achievement of goals.
I started out teaching with my feet squarely planted in the behaviorist school of psychology. I believed that all I needed to do was introduce the right set of rewards and punishments and I would inevitably end up with a well behaved group of students.
By my last teaching day I had been completely converted to what they call the humanist school of psychology. Human beings, unlike rats and other animals the behaviorists experimented on, cherish their freedom to make decisions so much they are willing to forgo great rewards and endure much punishment just so they can say to themselves, "I made my own choices and not the ones people pushed me towards".
Another thing I learned as a teacher is that people naturally pick at anomalies. Big word, "anomaly", I know. I use it because it's general and it's in the general sense that this is true. Pass out a bunch of books where one is a little warn for ware and I guarantee you that book will be the most likely to see further abuse. Slowly walk a thousand students with minimal supervision past two walls. One wall with no flaws and the other with a tiny hole in its paint and once again I can practically guarantee you the hole in the paint will become a hole in the drywall if not worse, while the wall that started with no flaws will remain that way. It is human nature to pick at anomalies. Most of us, I hope, learn to restrain ourselves as we grow up but still far too many of us don't grow up fast enough to keep us from destroying things and hurting people because of it.
This brings me to the subject of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples and what I believe is the key issue behind it. Why do people wish to redefine a civil institution? Does the history of marriage and its purpose in civil society lead us to this? Is marriage no longer tied to natural procreation? Has artificial means become so common that keeping the definition we've had since the beginning of recorded history no longer practical? I think not. There is something else to it that has little if anything to do with the family unit and its role in civil society.
The primary argument as I see it for re-defining marriage is that society discriminates against gay people. Now what does the tendency of human beings to pick at holes in walls have to do with this? Everything. Gay people have and still do suffer much in nations all around the world. It doesn't matter how progressive the nation may be that they live in, they are discriminated against, attacked, beaten up, and sometimes even killed. It's reprehensible human behavior, human beings behaving at their basest levels. People who haven't grown up enough to realize that picking at anomalies only makes things worse.
So does redefining marriage help with this problem? If every book you pass out to students is badly worn, all of them come back much more badly worn. If you slightly cut each students' shirt before walking them by the walls, there will be a bunch of completely torn up clothes as well as a hole in the drywall when you're done. And if you redefine the fundamental civil institutions of marriage and family so as to include a social anomaly, you achieve nothing positive and potentially a great deal negative. It's the wrong solution to a none the less very real problem.
I personally am a person with many many social and other sorts of anomalies about me. Thus there are a lot of reasons why a lot of people would want to pick on me, and they have, some times even violently. Not because they have anything personal against me but because they're human beings who happen not to have matured enough to realize how stupid their reactions are.
So what do I do about it? Well being a defiant sort I go out of my way at times to advertise some of my anomalies, like not liking sweets or warm climates (so what are you going to do about it?). But knowing and appreciating human nature as I do, I keep most of them , the most likely to really stand out, between myself and those who may share or appreciate those things about me. To use the hole in the wall analogy, I keep those things out of sight so as not to tempt the base human natures of others that may thoughtlessly do me harm.
I'm not saying I deny who and what I am. Anyone who knows me can tell you I'm not normal and have little interest in being so. Even many people who see me in public would tell you I'm not normal, from the car I drive, to the clothes I wear, I am very much me and not normal.
There is, as Homer kept trying to tell us, a balance that should be reached in most things. In the case of how to protect ourselves from the natural human tendency to pick on anomalies, we should pick and choose with care what we expose and what we are discrete about. Walk into your typical college fraternity for example and announce your commitment to not having sex before marriage and you will be attacked and achieve nothing. Now keep that same passion between yourself and those who you first befriend and you may just work miracles.
Likewise, as in the cause of celibacy, in the cause of gay rights, an aggressive stance, especially one that redefines an anciently sufficient and fundamental civil institution is a bad tact. Instead of persuading people to perhaps grow up about the issue, this tact just encourages them to wallow in their own base tendency to pick on anomalies. And even worse in this case where marriage is becoming less and less common, the next anomaly to be picked on may be marriage itself.
I know this issue seems very complicated to some and overly simple to others, so I'll sum my point up here as succinctly as I can. Gay marriage doesn't solve the problem it's designed to solve. In fact it makes it worse.
I honestly believe I learned more as a teacher than my students did from the experience, which is not an admittance of shame or remorse. To the contrary I think it's as it should be. Any teacher who doesn't learn more from the experience of teaching than the students do from being taught should find a new job. Teachers start with a good student's knowledge of their subjects but before they can explain their subjects to their students they must come to an even deeper level of insight. But that's just the beginning of why teachers learn more. It's being in charge of people and observing human behavior patterns in a setting where the directions those patterns move directly effect the achievement of goals.
I started out teaching with my feet squarely planted in the behaviorist school of psychology. I believed that all I needed to do was introduce the right set of rewards and punishments and I would inevitably end up with a well behaved group of students.
By my last teaching day I had been completely converted to what they call the humanist school of psychology. Human beings, unlike rats and other animals the behaviorists experimented on, cherish their freedom to make decisions so much they are willing to forgo great rewards and endure much punishment just so they can say to themselves, "I made my own choices and not the ones people pushed me towards".
Another thing I learned as a teacher is that people naturally pick at anomalies. Big word, "anomaly", I know. I use it because it's general and it's in the general sense that this is true. Pass out a bunch of books where one is a little warn for ware and I guarantee you that book will be the most likely to see further abuse. Slowly walk a thousand students with minimal supervision past two walls. One wall with no flaws and the other with a tiny hole in its paint and once again I can practically guarantee you the hole in the paint will become a hole in the drywall if not worse, while the wall that started with no flaws will remain that way. It is human nature to pick at anomalies. Most of us, I hope, learn to restrain ourselves as we grow up but still far too many of us don't grow up fast enough to keep us from destroying things and hurting people because of it.
This brings me to the subject of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples and what I believe is the key issue behind it. Why do people wish to redefine a civil institution? Does the history of marriage and its purpose in civil society lead us to this? Is marriage no longer tied to natural procreation? Has artificial means become so common that keeping the definition we've had since the beginning of recorded history no longer practical? I think not. There is something else to it that has little if anything to do with the family unit and its role in civil society.
The primary argument as I see it for re-defining marriage is that society discriminates against gay people. Now what does the tendency of human beings to pick at holes in walls have to do with this? Everything. Gay people have and still do suffer much in nations all around the world. It doesn't matter how progressive the nation may be that they live in, they are discriminated against, attacked, beaten up, and sometimes even killed. It's reprehensible human behavior, human beings behaving at their basest levels. People who haven't grown up enough to realize that picking at anomalies only makes things worse.
So does redefining marriage help with this problem? If every book you pass out to students is badly worn, all of them come back much more badly worn. If you slightly cut each students' shirt before walking them by the walls, there will be a bunch of completely torn up clothes as well as a hole in the drywall when you're done. And if you redefine the fundamental civil institutions of marriage and family so as to include a social anomaly, you achieve nothing positive and potentially a great deal negative. It's the wrong solution to a none the less very real problem.
I personally am a person with many many social and other sorts of anomalies about me. Thus there are a lot of reasons why a lot of people would want to pick on me, and they have, some times even violently. Not because they have anything personal against me but because they're human beings who happen not to have matured enough to realize how stupid their reactions are.
So what do I do about it? Well being a defiant sort I go out of my way at times to advertise some of my anomalies, like not liking sweets or warm climates (so what are you going to do about it?). But knowing and appreciating human nature as I do, I keep most of them , the most likely to really stand out, between myself and those who may share or appreciate those things about me. To use the hole in the wall analogy, I keep those things out of sight so as not to tempt the base human natures of others that may thoughtlessly do me harm.
I'm not saying I deny who and what I am. Anyone who knows me can tell you I'm not normal and have little interest in being so. Even many people who see me in public would tell you I'm not normal, from the car I drive, to the clothes I wear, I am very much me and not normal.
There is, as Homer kept trying to tell us, a balance that should be reached in most things. In the case of how to protect ourselves from the natural human tendency to pick on anomalies, we should pick and choose with care what we expose and what we are discrete about. Walk into your typical college fraternity for example and announce your commitment to not having sex before marriage and you will be attacked and achieve nothing. Now keep that same passion between yourself and those who you first befriend and you may just work miracles.
Likewise, as in the cause of celibacy, in the cause of gay rights, an aggressive stance, especially one that redefines an anciently sufficient and fundamental civil institution is a bad tact. Instead of persuading people to perhaps grow up about the issue, this tact just encourages them to wallow in their own base tendency to pick on anomalies. And even worse in this case where marriage is becoming less and less common, the next anomaly to be picked on may be marriage itself.
I know this issue seems very complicated to some and overly simple to others, so I'll sum my point up here as succinctly as I can. Gay marriage doesn't solve the problem it's designed to solve. In fact it makes it worse.
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