The ‘Institution’ of Marriage
Marriage is one of the most basic and long standing of human rights. One can argue that it is the emotional bonds that unite one person to another that have provided the very building blocks and foundation to every society that humanity has formed.
Prohibitions on marriage have always been a culture’s way to keep outsiders, undesirables, inferiors, “subhumans” apart from the main body of society. At one time blacks and whites were once barred from being wed, because such a union was thought to taint the purity and sanctity of race, and now laws are being to drawn up to keep homosexuals from joining in wedlock because such a union will taint the purity and sanctity of marriage.
Why is this thought to be so? For many Americans it is because they believe that the single unchanging biblical interpretation of marriage has always been a man and a wife. Yet the modern view of marriage differs quite a bit from what was practiced throughout most of the Old Testament where the practice of polygamy seemed to have been the norm. To believe that marriage has always been one unchanging thing is to be blind to the truth.
Marriage does not mean the same thing today as it did during the time of Abraham and his three wives, and to be honest it has changed quite a bit over the past century, and it will continue to change so long as society changes.
Another common argument is that allowing homosexual couples to marry will lead to a gradual deterioration of the institution, or the “slippery slope” argument. If we allow this, then what will keep us from stopping such socially unacceptable practices as bestiality. To compare a man’s desire to marry another man to that that of wanting to, say, marry a goldfish, is at its core just a way to dehumanize homosexuals and to mock the emotional bonds that they form, and say that what they feel is not “love,” or it is at best some pale imitation of the “real” human emotions that a heterosexual couple feel for one another. It is just another, more polite, way to say that they aren’t real people, and they do not deserve this right.
We all know how well historically those poor souls who are deemed “not human” can be treated by society. Allowing the government to enact laws that restrict homosexuals from this most basic of human rites goes against everything that has built this great country.
I applaud the little old lesbian couple who were the first to step up to the San Francisco courthouse to be wed, the same way that I applaud the students who integrated the Little Rock Central High School some 47 years ago, the same way I applaud anyone who has the courage to be the one brave enough to do the right thing even when it is unpopular to the masses. Marriage is love.
Michael Lowe
Knoxville
Retail, Yes
With regard to the [Feb. 19] Insights column, downtown revitalization starts only with an audacious vision. Maybe you can’t convert ground floors to all retail now, but that has to be the message now, and for all time. No exceptions.
A ground floor office is equivalent to a hole which wrecks the street fabric and discourages streetlife (see the presentation on Design from the National Main Street Center, www.mainst.org, and Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities, Roberta Gratz’s Cities: Back from the Edge). It can be restored, but nobody ever said it would be easy. But to not even try dooms your efforts.
As to the point about the need for incentives to bring back retail downtown and Knoxville’s empty coffers, you’re absolutely right. How do you make this work? The primary reason for providing incentives to department stores particularly is that they spend millions and millions of dollars on advertising, and this drives people to not only shop their store but the adjacent stores and restaurants.
I used to be militantly against incentives (and I frequently think that they are misused), but this is a strong favoring argument. If Knoxville doesn’t have tax-increment financing laws in place, they should be considered. TIF allows monies generated by increased sales and/or property taxes from new developments to be used as subsidies/incentives.
As a university town, Knoxville has more advantages than most communities of equivalent size. The university is an engine that provides a great deal of stability and demand for residential, retail and entertainment. Even so, your city competes with every other community in your region, and to stand still is to fall behind.
One of the principals at ERA (the cited research company) was one of the first Main Street managers ever, in Columbus, Ind., when Main Street was in its pilot phase in 1977. There is a lot of experience there that shouldn’t be ignored.
Richard Layman
Urban revitalization consultant
Washington, D.C.
Conscious Objector
Three objections to Jack Neely’s excellent [Jan. 22] article on “God Bless the USA”.
First, I don’t think Jack should be so hard on poor Lee Greenwood. No-talent bums have to make a living too.
Second, Jack misses the point about the GIs. The point is pragmatic, not historical. What matters is not whether they gave us our rights, but why Republicans insist that the GIs gave us our rights. And the answer is to shut us up. When we object to a war, instead of defending that war, the warmongers can just say, “Well, you have no right to undermine those who gave you your rights.”
Finally, Jack shouldn’t propose God as the author of our rights, because that implies that God’s proprietor, Ivan Harmon [the Knox County Commissioner], can take away those rights.
Joe Finucane
Knoxville
Rail Riding Recalled
Jack Neely’s column on The Crescent brought back memories. When I first moved to Knoxville and Rockwood from New York City in 1968, I would travel back and forth on Southern’s The Pelican and The Birmingham Special.
When those trains were discontinued, I would entrain to Atlanta and catch The Crescent for New York, leaving Atlanta at 5 p.m. and arriving at Pennsylvania Station at 9 a.m. Meals were splendid, and I had a bedroom or stateroom. Sometimes I would awaken at 5 a.m. outside of Baltimore as the train would travel 80 to 100 miles an hour, unofficially, to make up time, and it would toss me out of bed with its rocking.
Later, in the train’s final year, when I was calling on University of Alabama because of construction in Tuscaloosa, I knew one early afternoon that the Crescent was due to pass; I went to a nearby viaduct and watched it go by. People nearly thought I was a little daft to spend time to watch an old fashioned train in the present age of air travel, but I was thrilled to reminisce about that fine way to travel.
Frank Edward Bourne
Knoxville
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