Contributor: Josh Hall
Unless you have actively avoided MMA news for the past week, you are well aware of the PR nightmare unleashed by Josh Thomson through social media. Between his Twitter and Facebook pages he voiced his opinions on gay marriage, and in the process angered quite a few people. Thomson made some comparisons for the sake of argument that crossed the line between debating a point and being offensive.
It started out with a question comparing gay marriage to polygamy. This isn’t that bad, but he really should have stopped there. He followed it up with this gem that started the fire:
“My next question is, should siblings be allowed to marry siblings? My point is, where do you draw the line? I personally don’t care who you marry but I also am smart enough to know that it opens a gateway to men/women trying to marry young kids, siblings marrying each other and people having multiple husbands an wives. You have to think all of these things are okay otherwise you’re stopping them from being happy as well which is hypocrisy. Equality doesn’t stop with gay marriage, it just starts with it.”
Uh oh.
“Blacks an whites getting married is nothing like this. So you’re okay with R. Kelly trying To marry little girls? People trying to marry their brother or sister? Animals, etc…? Those people want the same exact thing, to be happy. Are you gonna tell them no?”
Thomson did an impressive job of equating every deviant behavior he could think of with homosexuality here. It is impressively wrong from a logical standpoint, but that isn’t the issue I want to address. That has been discussed ad-nauseum, and there is no point in beating the proverbial dead horse here. I’m not writing this to yell at Josh Thomson, but instead to shed some light specifically on one of his comparisons: equating gay marriage with marrying children.
Before I get into that though, I need to give a little bit of context. Aside from my writing here, I have spent the last 15 months working on a book in an attempt begin combatting the terrifying number of children molested in the United States. The best studies on the topic estimate there are roughly 39 million adult survivors of molestation in this country. It is a plague that has destroyed far too many lives.
Mr. Thomson, I don’t know you. You could be a good guy that used hyperbole in a terrible fashion, made an offensive statement you didn’t intent in that way, or you could have meant for your statements to be completely hateful and offensive. I am going to assume it is not the latter, because if so there isn’t much of a point to writing this.
If you sincerely believe that marriage between an adult and a child is the same thing as the marriage of a homosexual couple, then you are neglecting one major factor. That would be consent. No child can consent to marriage whatsoever or to any kind of sexual relations with an adult. A consensual relationship is never going to be the same as one in which one of the parties is incapable of doing so. Another critical difference is that there are plenty of happy homosexual couples, while kids that are forced into sex with adults are scarred for life. You asked if adults should be able to marry kids if that is what makes them happy. The answer is unequivocally no, but the reason doesn’t apply to gay marriage at all. No one has the right to impose misery on someone else for the sake of their own personal happiness. Not in a civilized society, at least.
The other side of this coin is if you don’t actually believe that gay marriage is the same thing as adult/child marriage, but used that as a tactic in an attempt to strengthen your argument. People are much less likely to voice support for gay marriage if it will get them lumped in with sympathizers of child molesters. Hearing things like your comparison can have a seriously detrimental effect on molestation victims though. It doesn’t take a lot to send some victims of sexual abuse into an emotional downward spiral. Hearing the crime committed against them being equated with the union of a happy couple is something that just shouldn’t happen.
I have had more instances than I care to recall in which people have broken down in tears at the mere mention of the subject matter of my book because of the demons awakened within. I have heard horror stories from victims that I will never be able to forget no matter how long I live. Girls raped at the age of 5. Boys molested by family members. Threats made on the lives of children to shut them up. All of this and more is exactly what you are equating to a happy couple. Josh, please reconsider before making this sort of a comparison in the future. Don’t use the suffering of millions as a means to an end to get people on your side of the argument. They deserve more respect than that, and I really believe you are a better guy than that. From on Josh to another, do the right thing and put this sort of talk to rest. Thank you.
Writer’s note: If anyone that read this is interested in trying to help in the efforts to cut down on the number of kids molested in the US, email me or contact me on Twitter. It’s not finished yet, but I am working on an actual solution to cut down on the problem. I would be happy to give more details to anyone who is interested in learning more or helping out.
-Josh can be reached at [email protected] or @jhall282.
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