An editorial by actor Michael Gross (best known as the dad in Family Ties) appears in today’s Houston Chronicle. Excerpt:
Affixed to our refrigerator door is a photo of my wife and several of her friends: five attractive, intelligent suburban women, some professionals, some housewives, many of them friends for more than 20 years. Among the many things they have in common is the fact that they all experienced marriages put to the torch by husbands who once publicly avowed to stand by their spouses until death did them part.
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… [I]n our zeal to defend the institution of marriage, I can’t help wondering whether a constitutional ban on gay marriage may just be shifting the blame.
I admit that blame-shifting does have its rewards. Nothing could be more satisfying than to think that gay men and lesbians — not we — are responsible for the shameful rate of failed marriages in the United States. …
But the first casualty of shifting the blame is often common sense: the rapist blaming his crime on the immodest dress of his victim; a defense lawyer assigning his client’s murder spree to a Twinkies diet; or a Talib concluding that his obsession with a woman’s bare ankle is best addressed by blowing up a pair of 1,500-year-old Buddhas.
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I understand the moral outrage of those who invoke the biblical injunctions against homosexuality, but if we’re not going to observe its equally no-nonsense penalties for adultery (i.e., stoning to death), maybe the fairest thing to do would be to leave the homosexuals to themselves while we put our own houses in order. I can’t imagine they’d botch the job any more than some of us have.
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