Jason

“The traditional fixed-rate 30-year mortgages, which were once a majority of all mortgages, were no longer a majority during the housing boom, as ARMs and other “creative” ways of financing the purchase of a home grew rapidly to cope with soaring housing prices. Such innovative mortgages quickly went from being rare to becoming common, especially in places with very high housing costs.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Housing Boom and Bust: Revised Edition

“The problem was revealed most clearly by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in the recent Goodridge case, the case in which the Court in effect overturned the traditional laws of marriage and installed same-sex marriage. Quite central to the argument of the majority of four judges in that case was the insistence that procreation is not a requirement of marriage, and that the laws on marriage “do not privilege procreative heterosexual intercourse between married people above every other form of adult intimacy.” But the Court opened itself here to more than it realized, for by the same reasoning one may say that marriage should be open to uncles and nieces, father and daughters, who happen to be sterile and intimate. Or to the man willing to have a vasectomy in order to marry his mother? And yet, more than that: if people of the same sex may marry, why would the arrangement not be open to a father and son? We have seen cases of incest, as bizarre as they may seem, just as we’ve seen things as odd as the fellow in Maine who sought a license to marry his dog, or the fellow in Denver a few years ago who sought to marry his horse. The impulse is there, and once again it matters not at all in principle that these are rare cases. Until recently it has been rare to see people of the same sex wishing to marry. The fact that there may only be a handful of cases does not relieve us of the need to explain the grounds of principle on which we would deny these claims of marriage—once we move out of that framework of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“Stephen Macedo has accused the traditional view and its defenders of precisely this “double standard.” He asks: “What is the point of sex in an infertile marriage? Not procreation: the partners (let us assume) know that they are infertile. If they have sex, it is for pleasure and to express their love, or friendship, or some other good. It will be for precisely the same reason that committed, loving gay couples have sex.” 47 People today who are inclined to a liberal view of sexual morality tend to find this sort of criticism impressive, and more than a few conservatives seem to find themselves stumped by it. Once the core of the traditional view is brought into focus, however, it is clear that the criticism straightforwardly fails because it presupposes as true precisely what the traditional view denies, namely, that the value (and, thus, the point) of sex in marriage can only be instrumental. It is a central tenet of the traditional view that the value (and justifying point) of sex is the good of marriage itself, consummated and actualized in and by sexual acts that unite spouses as one flesh and, thus, interpersonally.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“The dualistic presuppositions of the revisionist position are fully on display in the frequent references by Macedo and others to sexual organs as “equipment.” 60 Neither sperm nor eggs, neither penises nor vaginas, are properly discussed in ethical discourse in such terms. Nor are reproductive and other bodily organs “used” by persons considered as somehow standing over and apart from these and other aspects of their personal reality. In fact, where a person treats his body as mere equipment, a mere means to extrinsic ends, the existential sundering of the bodily and conscious dimensions of the self that he effects by his choices and actions brings with it a certain self-alienation, a damaging of the good of personal self-integration.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals