Fisking the Village Idiot. Again - Katherine Kersten: dishonst, hateful AND stupid

Kersten wrote another of her opinion rants in the STrib on June 3, 2012.  The resident village idiot at the STrib demonstrates consistently all of the fallacies of reason inherent in argumentation that is dependent for persuasion on poor emotions, not rationality or factual information.
Katherine Kersten, in her opening salvo of insanity and conservative illogic writes:

"I'd guess, for example , that 95 percent of Minnesotans would oppose redefining our marriage laws to include temporary marriages, where the partners' marriage certificate includes an end date; marriages of three or more people (say, two lesbians rearing their child with a gay male sperm donor), or marriages between siblings in a nonsexual relationship."

No one is proposing any of the above, nor do the above resemble heterosexual marriage that we have now in anything like the ways that same sex marriage have a strong similarity. Same sex committed couples are more like heterosexual couples, and therefore deserving of the same rights and treatment than ANY of the examples cited above. It is for reasons of fairness and recognition of the objective reality of same sex couples that there is a steadily increasing support for legalizing it. This is another apples to asphalt comparison, not apples to apples, or even apples to oranges.
So Ms. Kersten is once again trying her tactic of comparing dissimilar things as if they were similar.
Presumably this woman is sufficiently educated to understand that is not proper logic or reasoning, and improper conflation. Which means that Ms. Kersten is apparently either grossly dishonest, or she has begun to decline into senility where she no longer is able to reason objectively - and fairly. Wait -- has she EVER reasoned fairly? Maybe this is the flawed way in which Kersten has always failed to reason.
But IF at some future date we have consensus for what is properly described as term marriage, as an alternative to our modern divorce system, (which is why it has been proposed as a solution, not marriage equality), we DO have, as a nation, the right to do that if we have a consensus to do so.
Do we have that consensus now? No. But it is true that we have a very messy divorce system, where a high percentage of heterosexual marriage ends in divorce. From the site divorcerate.org:

The divorce rate in America for first marriage, vs second or third marriage50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri. According to enrichment journal on the divorce rate in America:
The divorce rate in America for first marriage is 41%
The divorce rate in America for second marriage is 60%
The divorce rate in America for third marriage is 73%

This would indicate that at best we have a badly flawed pattern, a failed pattern, of serial heterosexual monogamy. We don't 'do' monogamy, we give lip service to monogamy; to assert that even 41% of Americans actually engage in heterosexual monogamy, you would have to demonstrate that the 41% that remained married was also faithful. That is not the case, some of those who do remain married have been unfaithful, therefore not strictly heterosexually monogamous. From truthaboutdeception.com:

It is estimated that roughly 30 to 60% of all married individuals (in the United States) will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriage (see, Buss and Shackelford for review of this research). And these numbers are probably on the conservative side, when you consider that close to half of all marriages end in divorce (people are more likely to stray as relationships fall apart; also see, who is likely to cheat).

Ms. Kersten then goes on to debunk the rightwing's own faulty argument that same-sex marriage will harm existing or future heterosexual marriage - which clearly it won't.  Same sex marriage will neither help nor harm other marriages.  The point at issue, as Ms. Kersten so determinedly misstates it, is that NOT ALLOWING SAME SEX MARRIAGE HARMS THOSE WHO ARE IN SAME SEX RELATIONSHIPS AND THEIR CHILDREN.  It isn't always about those in traditional marriage, but about those who are not.

"Yet how would  such marriages hurt anyone else's marriage? If the individuals in question love and care for each other, isn't that all marriage is about? Doesn't love make a family? Don't people bound by affection deserve the benefits of marriage -- and suffer stigma if these are withheld? If you disagree, aren't you discriminating against others' "fundamental right" to marry as they wish?

People who have a stable and committed loving relationship, including raising children, (either their birth children or adopted children), people who in every way except traditional sexual orientation, are participating in a relationship that  IS a marriage should be able to marry. It walks, swims quacks like a duck -- lays eggs, and raise their young like ducks (there are same sex duck couples that raise offspring) THEN IT SHOULD BE CALLED A DUCK.
Marriage relationships are recognized legally in society because it has traditionally been a means of transferring property, it was a contractual relationship about treaty alliances.
That is no longer the basis for our system of marriage, hasn't been for a long time.  We need to look at our family traditions honestly and with an understanding of the reality and complexity of how that tradition evolved, not the stupid, blind way the Ms. Kersten treats it as an absolute. It is a bad ploy to try to posit something that is invalid as a legitimate argument, but she makes that false assertion the keystone of her position.
But more than that, Ms. Kerstenlevirate marriage where a married man has to marry and impregnate his deceased brother's wife.  And it allows for concubinage, and sex slaves, including describing the sale of one's daughter as a sex slave. That is not monogamy. 

We have accepted the form of monogamous marriage that was customary in Europe at the time of our founding fathers. I think it is likely we will continue that pattern, but it is not the only pattern, it is not necessarily the only successful pattern for that matter.
Then the clown dunce of the STrib goes on to make her most egregiously false arguments of all, when she writes:

"... marriage has a unique public purpose , which distinguishes it from all other human relationships, no matter how valuable they may be to the people involved.
Marriage has always and everywhere been a male/female institution because it is rooted in biology and human ecology. Across the globe and through the millennia, its public purpose has been the same: To connect men with their children and the mother who bore them, so that every child has a loving, committed mother and father.

Apparently Ms. Kersten is once again out of touch with objective reality and basic facts. This is NOT the reason currently that people marry, and it has never been the basis for one man one woman marriage in history. This grossly misrepresents the history and traditions, and most of all the legality, of the custom of marriage.

Increasingly, people having children in the United States -- per the New York Times are NOT doing so within marriage. In other words, raising a family IS NOT THE REASON PEOPLE MARRY. The majority of births, 2/3 of all births, are to women under the age of 30; within the prime child bearing years; of those majority of births, 50% are NOT within marriages.

For Women Under 30 , Most Births Occur Outside Marriage

It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage. Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

We don't require people to procreate as the basis of marriage; you can marry without planning to have children, you can marry if you decide to adopt children instead of having biological children, and increasingly, people are parenting blended families that include other people's children.  You can marry if you are past the child bearing age.  To assert that this is the PRIMARY reason people marry, or the fundamental basis people marry is false. 
People marry to formalize publicly and legally their paired bond.
Ms. Kersten then goes on to promote some additional fallacies:

Though the best environment  for raising children is a married mother and father, the power and inconstancy of human sexual attractions make this hard to achieve. Marriage brings social norms and pressures to bear to create a socially supported framework to ensure stable unions -- thereby forming the next generation and promoting the common good.

Ms. Kersten is correct that children in two parent households tend, on average, to do better than single-parent children (father or mother). From the same New York Times article, which reflects accurately the data consistently found elsewhere, accurately summarizing the data:

The shift  is affecting children’s lives. Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems. 

But what is NOT true, emphatically, is that those two parents have to be a man and a woman.  Same sex couples parent every bit as well as heterosexual couples.  There is no superiority in one male one female parenting.  There is nothing whatsoever inherent in gender or sexual orientation that makes anyone a better parent, or any relationship better for parenting.  That is precisely why same-sex couples, including those where the same sex couples are parents SHOULD be allowed to marry.  Not doing so penalizes them, and disadvantages their children.
For example, from Stanford University : Children raised by gay couples show good progress through school: 

By mining data  from the 2000 Census, sociologist Michael Rosenfeld figured out the rates at which kids raised by gay and straight couples repeated a grade during elementary or middle school. He found that children of same-sex parents have essentially the same educational achievement as their peers growing up in heterosexual households.

That is what using an objective measure of success or failure looks like, instead of 'because we wanna believe it, that's why' thinking. Stanford's research isn't the only study which supports that two same-sex parents are every bit as good at parenting as one man/one woman marriage partners. More than 80 other studies show the same thing. As reported in Discovery News: Does a Parent's Gender Impact a Child's Success?

Although two parents are often more effective than one, the parents' genders make little difference in terms of the child's development.

Children usually benefit from having two parents instead of one.

The gender of each parent, however, does not have a significant impact on a child's success.
This finding strikes at the heart of one of the major arguments of gay marriage and adoption opponents.

In a finding that confronts deeply rooted beliefs about parenting, a new study concludes that parents' genders have little impact on children -- suggesting that same-sex couples are as effective at raising children as heterosexual couples.

On average, children succeed most when raised by two parents rather than one. The parents' genders, however, make little difference in terms of a child's development, according to a landmark study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

The analysis of 81 parenting studies by sociologists Judith Stacey of New York University and Tim Biblarz of the University of Southern California challenges the widely held notion that children need both a mother and a father in their household in order to thrive.

"What we're saying is there is no best (household) structure," said Stacey, a professor of social and cultural analysis at NYU. "There are better parenting practices, and certainly better relationships and worse relationships, but they don't come in one particular structure."

Many of the studies that highlight gender-specific parenting skills, such as a father's masculine interactions with sons and a mother's nurturing care, only compared heterosexual married couples with divorced or single-parent families. Lesbian- and gay-parented households as well as single adoptive parents were usually left out.

By not controlling for the number of parents, sexual identity, marital status and biogenetic relationship to the children, the research often failed to isolate the real impact of gender on effective parenting, according to Biblarz and Stacey's study.

Recent research on lesbian-parented households seems to support the study's gender-neutral thesis. Overall, studies indicate that children raised with lesbian co-parents do just as well as children raised by heterosexual married couples. The children of lesbian co-parents may even have fewer behavioral problems and higher self-esteem.

In addition, single-mother households correlate to lower child delinquency rates, greater parental control and higher educational performance than single-father families.
Now I for one would be the last person to suggest that based on these studies, no single-father families should be allowed, following the kinds of prejudice evidenced by Ms. Kersten, who insists all families must be one man and one woman.  Families are individuals, not statistics.  But the statistics, contrary to the fabrication and just plain stupidity and bigotry promoted by Ms. Kersten, indicate why her arguments are wrong, and same-sex marriage is not only in the interests of the individuals who want to get married, but in the interests of our society.