Jenny’s Pennies

(I promise, the headline will make sense if you read on!)
Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet publishes a tired old same-sex-marriage-will-destroy-society tirade in their debate section today. It’s written by Anders Svensson, who says he’s a lawyer and law teacher at Stockholm University. I pity his students (and hope they take him on tomorrow):

Imagine a country were the legislators re-interpret human rights according to a value-neutral ideology, where dissidents are violated and where media censors unfit opinions. The military dictatorship of Burma or North Korea? No, it’s the country of Sweden.

Dear Anders Svensson: If you write a long opinions piece about a contentious issue and then get it published in a really large newspaper, where debate ensues and people are allowed to have different opinions and counterarguments are raised and you get support from some and critique from some, and all this happens without the police knocking on your door or you losing your job or getting imprisoned or tortured or threatened - that’s usually a sign that you’re not living in a military dictatorship.

His main argument against same sex marriage is not “won’t somebody please think of the children!” or “horses and box turtles and forty wives oh my!” but this:

It is not hard to see how a gender neutral marriage law would be yet another weapon of censorship against traditional values.

Oh really? What would be censored? How would this censoring work? Would legions of newlywed same sex couples invade newsrooms, lecture halls and kitchen tables everywhere to make sure everyone follows the “homosexual agenda”? Svensson, of course, doesn’t tell. But he sure is censored and oppressed, the poor little sod, sitting there at Stockholm University and getting his writing published in a large private newspaper. Yes, you can really feel the Swedish military dictatorship at work here.

But if the GLBT folks are so powerful that they can impose a brutal military regime à la North Korea on us unsuspecting Swedish citizens (they’ve done a great job of masquerading it as a pretty decent democracy, I can tell you), you would wonder why they haven’t managed to get that gender neutral marriage law passed in the parliament yet. Maybe they forgot to squeeze it in between brunch and facials.

A good society must rest on stable ground of values which are reflected in legislation. What does this ground of values look like? Well, it can’t lack values. In Sweden, we have abolished this ground of values and are traveling down a road of lack of norms. How can the legislature accept this?

If people aren’t allowed to think and speak freely, a democratically stable ground of values are missing. We don’t need any more laws which despite good intentions create a fearful society where conversations die out. I want to warn the Swedish parliament of taking further steps down this road of silence and censorship. The parliament should say no thanks to this sophisticated form of euthanasia for marriage.

As often with these kinds of articles, there’s no substance. No explanations, no examples, no logical arguments, not any arguments at all about why a “good society” can’t coexist with same sex marriage, why same sex marriage hinders people from thinking and speaking freely, which values will be destroyed and how and why conversations will be silenced. No explanation on how man-woman marriages will be “euthanized” if man-man or woman-woman marriages are allowed. No line of reasoning to follow. Just fluff and a lot of words.

Also, note this lovely allegory, used to rail against anti-discrimination laws and policies. As a metaphor for gay people, he uses a weed.

A dandelion isn’t discriminated against because it can’t call itself a tulip.

So, uppity gay-dandelion-weeds should be satisfied with the civil unions they have today (which people like Anders Svensson raised all kind of hell against when they were introduced in the 90s because they would destroy society, but which they now present as a great “separate but equal”-solution) and not destroy the lovely garden of heterosexual tulip-marriages. Dandelions can also silence conversations and turn countries into North Korea. Or something.

Tor of Antigayretorik takes on the train-wreck article here, tireless and to the point as always.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Freedom of speech, GLBT/Queer, Relationships, Stupidity, Sweden, Swedish politics, What did you just say?!?!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.