The current government shutdown has provided a glimpse into why leftists are so impermeable to facts.  One leftist reporter attempted to rebut the Republican assertion that Democrats wish to provide taxpayer-funded health care benefits to illegal aliens.  The reporter (propagandist) said the law already prohibits that.  And indeed it does, but wait — that is a law that the Democrats are demanding to be repealed in order to open the government.  The repeal would return us to the policy of requiring Americans to pay for illegal aliens’ medical expenses.  The reporter kind of, sort of forgot to mention that.

Those of us who have striven to reason with leftists — including with beloved friends and relatives — are well aware of the fact that once a person has become persuaded that men can be women, it is almost pointless to argue.  Frequently, leftists cannot hear what you are saying, because they are busy talking over you.  At one point I said in frustration, “You are brainwashed.”  “No, I’m not.”  “How would you know if you were brainwashed?”  “Because you are the one who was brainwashed, not me.”

Fortunately, I had been immunized against rhetorical frustration by debating online with flat-earthers.  They are something to behold.  No matter what you say or ask, they have a response.  If you have not had the experience, I recommend it, because they provide a clinic in how skillfully someone can make a seemingly strong case for something that you know is not true.

Similarly, the LGBALPHABET proponents have mastered the art of tossing out rhetorical devices that will leave an unprepared opponent stuttering for the response that you know is there but not top of mind.  One of the questions is, “How does my decision to marry my gay lover harm you?”  It’s a simple question, but it is a misdirection.  It causes me no direct, traceable harm, but there is an indirect harm to society that I can explain if you will sit still long enough to hear it out.  Bring a lunch.

The Atlantic is a rare example of a prominent leftist magazine that had the honesty to admit that it had been very wrong about a very important matter — voluntary single motherhood — although after many years, a lot of damage had been done. 

What The Atlantic said in its cover article in April 1993 was this:

The social-science evidence is in: though it may benefit the adults involved, the dissolution of intact two-parent families is harmful to large numbers of children. Moreover, the author argues, family diversity in the form of increasing numbers of single-parent and stepparent families does not strengthen the social fabric but, rather, dramatically weakens and undermines society.

That was a stunning admission, but it came after years of cheerleading to advocate single (unmarried) motherhood.  Unfortunately, there has been no government policy to recognize and remedy the problem.  Instead, we have policies that exacerbate it.

Why did it take so many years to admit the obvious?  It was because the lack of scientific evidence that (as it had been claimed) children in households without a father suffer no harm from it was filled in with an ideology of permissiveness.  Six thousand years of societies based on the family as the basis of civilization meant nothing, because nobody would sit still long enough to think all the way through the matter.  Because, after all, there are exceptions.  Because, after all, not all fatherless children suffer; not all of them turn to crime or welfare.  Because one misdirection after another can win out over common sense.

So it is with same-sex so-called marriage.  It does harm me, because it undermines recognition of the most basic sociological fact in human biology: Men are made for women; women are made for men.  Yet the gay rights advocates deny this, or claim that it is irrelevant.

When society decides that it matters not which sex your spouse is, then it undervalues the role of sex.  It inevitably slides into the destructive practices of transgenderism, pedophilia, and other confusions about who we are and why we have rules.

As I said, bring lunch.

Image: Chris Dodds via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.