An article in today's Star Tribune newspaper makes the point that Republicans, having voted to put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on this fall's statewide ballot, are almost mom on the issue as they fight to maintain their legislative majorities. Democrats running in outstate districts are similarly reserved, so we're lucky to have NFL players to take up the slack. I recently called attention to Viking punter Chris Kluwe's full-thoated support of gay marriage. Today on the paper's editorial page former Viking, current Baltimore Raven, Matt Birk answers. You will recall that Kluwe's now famous letter was in response to a Maryland lawmaker who didn't want to hear the contrary opinion of a football player. Before relieving himself of his own opinion, Birk allows it's okay for him to have one. Very gracious.
Birk's opposition to gay marriage has to do with children, but one searches in vain for a logical argument. He does not say that homosexuals shouldn't be parents. Kids deserve two parents, he says--before admitting in his next breath that it's not on account of gay marriage that many don't. His emphasis on the child-rearing function of "traditional" marriage raises the question of whether heterosexual septuagenarians who meet at senior mixers should be permitted to wed. Birk doesn't say.
His argument, if that is what you want to call it, reminds me of the old Goodyear commercial featuring a baby sitting inside a tire and looking over its shoulder at the camera. "If you like babies, buy Goodyear." That pretty much sums up Birk's case, too. He's an offensive lineman, and one is tempted to speculate that he has perhaps suffered a surfeit of concussive blows, especially compared to a punter. But it's not as if the usual suspects, such as Catholic churchmen, are making a stronger case.
