In a column of 05 June in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Roger Guffey, a math teacher at Lafayette High School, did a masterful job of pointing to the fact that children who come from homes lacking a father have, and present to the schools and the public, serious problems. Predictably for a math teacher, he cited a plethora of statistics to back up his claim, although he mentioned that while he had never had a student from a “same-sex home environment,” he could attest to the “results of hundreds of dysfunctional heterosexual families, particularly those households without a father present.”
The point of the column seemed to be that the time has come for same-sex marriages to become legal, presumably so that there would be a father in the home. Guffey has astutely and with great accuracy pointed out for years the catastrophe of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, but his reasoning in this instance is weird. A same-sex home would have either two fathers or two mothers but not just one of either, by definition. Indeed, homosexual couples can’t have children in the first place, so the whole premise is moot, and in Kentucky such “marriages” are prohibited constitutionally anyway.
Guffey took the usual tack that the problem exists because of religious reasons and furnishes the usual harangue concerning the “self-righteous religious zealot.” The Bible does condemn homosexual behavior – and thus homosexual “marriages” – but the actual problem is marked by both biological and legal ramifications, the latter derived from the former. The state Constitution recognizes this purely tangible aspect, without any reference to religion. Government does not look to religion or religious documents in the making of laws.
People who can’t (homosexuals) or won’t (heterosexual shack-ups) enter into a legal and binding commitment that absolutely protects, though not perfectly, the welfare of children should not be allowed any of the advantages – legal or otherwise – of those who are willing to make that commitment, accepting its constraints and costs. The fact that many marriages fail does not make them inferior to perverse couplings, especially since the marriage/divorce laws are designed to create the best result for the children.
In trying to make his “religion” point, Guffey mentioned that the “sin of Sodom” also included arrogance, gluttony, indifference, and failure to care for the poor, but those are things condemned by all civilized people, whether religious or not, and certainly in no way excuse the unconscionable behavior associated with homosexuality. It just happens to be the fifth sin worthy of condemnation, as in the case of the other four.
Seventy and thirty percent of births, respectively, among blacks and whites are illegitimate and form the main cause of fatherless homes, not the absence of same-sex marriages. Guffey didn’t mention this but he would have been well advised to do so in order to actually get at the root of the problem of fatherless homes…and be fair. Until both black and white men bring themselves to function responsibly, and until all women do the same, the problem will only intensify, notwithstanding all the glorification of actually impossible same-sex marriages.
Guffey probably is a fine math teacher, but the school system is ill-served when this kind of stuff is spread throughout the community in general, but in the schools, especially. Teachers have the right to their opinions and certainly have the right to express them, but parents have a right to expect that teachers not push their ideas in classes, especially when what they propose is clearly unconstitutional. Since the paper remarked Guffey’s position, the article does impinge, at least indirectly, upon Lafayette and pushes that which clearly is both illegal and unnatural.
Guffey wrote that he is “tired of this same-sex marriage debate obscuring real problems facing families today.” So are we all, so why bring it up again, especially since there’s absolutely no connection between same-sex marriage and fatherless homes?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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