The New Scary Thing

Douglas Kmiec, in the San Francisco Chronicle, comes up with this:

Separating marriage from procreation may also have other remote, but frightening, ill consequences. Society should be skeptical of wider use of asexual procreation. An earlier dark moment in U.S. history employed eugenics to forcibly sterilize the mentally disabled. The push for artificial wombs and the genetic manipulation of intelligence already peppers scientific literature - a push that would no doubt grow, accommodating even the minimal same-sex desire for simulating natural child birth - claimed to be of interest for 20-30 percent of same-sex couples. When carefully assessed, the acquisition of unnatural reproductive means often advances the interests of the very affluent through a libertarian exercise that would threaten all hope of democratic equality.

In a depopulating world, the claim that there is a universal right to marry regardless of gender becomes a frightening ally of a claimed universal right to access to genetically engineered children. People should reject this claim by returning traditional marriage to its rightful place.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there it is: artificial babies. That's what we can expect from same-sex marriage. (Oh, and don't forget to link it to eugenics. I'm surprised that he didn't work in a slam at evolution while he was at it.)

In the previous paragraph he introduces a gloss on Stanley Kurtz' completely specious "studies" of declining marriage in Europe by insisting that same-sex marriage will contribute to declining birth rates -- and trend that, by the way, he doesn't substantiate. I suppose he means declining birth rates among white, upper-middle class law professors. It doesn't seem to penetrate that one of our most severe global problems for that past generation or more has been overpopulation. It would be interesting to know what groups he's including in this; perhaps he should talk to someone from Africa or Asia or South America about declining birth rates.

(As an aside, I've been reading science fiction since I was in grade school. It's sort of interesting to see it making its way into the OpEd pages. I guess there's some validation there, somewhere.)

Kmiec is a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, a noted conservative, and a devout Catholic, which should give you a hint as to his attitude toward gay issues. The whole piece is badly flawed, starting from assertions that are in themselves questionable and making a couple of conceptual leaps that would garner wild cheers in a performance by Barnum & Bailey/Ringling Brothers.

Sorry, boys and girls, but I have little patience with this sort of thing. It's deja vu all over again: the same tired arguments backed by the same assertions. And every time I see something like this, I think "Well, we're still waiting for a rational argument against SSM."