A recent segment on Fox News between host Laura Ingraham and Dr. Keith Ablow was so full of red herrings and comedy it’s hard to begin with what was the most ridiculous.
First, Ablow, who has alleged that Pres. Barack Obama is obsessed with gun control because he was abandoned as a child, makes the standard history-denying argument that government should butt out of marriage and leave it to the church.
Which completely disregards the fact (ah, those slippery things) that the church did not even recognize marriage until the 12th century and didn’t get around to making it a sacrament until 1563 at the Council of Trent. Before then, the church viewed marriage as strictly secular because the reasons for marriage were, well, secular, since the marriage bond dealt mainly with landholders securing their property (which, by the way, included the wives) against those staking a claim. Or, because the marriage was beneficial to the economic health of both families. Nobody really cared if the poor people got “married.” They didn’t have any land or other property to secure.
One new twist, and the most comical to me, was Ingraham bemoaning the plight of those who are single with children:
“If you’re single you get nothing today, you get no benefits. If you’re single with kids you’re at the low end of the totem pole,” Ingraham said.
Which, of course, begs the question that if you’re so concerned about single people with children, why are “pro-family” legislators so intent on cutting or eliminating every single government benefit single parents may get? Note to Ingraham: If you want single people with kids to move up the totem pole, support more government programs that help them advance. Otherwise, stop inserting non-sequiturs into the debate.
Ah, but the best comedic note of this whole interview is Ablow’s final assertion that, of course, if we allow two men or two women to marry each other, it’s just a ride down the slippery slope to polygamy and “five men and a woman” marriages.
Which, really, should be good news to family values champions like thrice-married Newt Gingrich and the thrice-married author of the Defense of Marriage Act Bob Barr. If we add polygamy back to the marriage game, at least they’d never have to commit the sin of divorce.
