The popularity of homosexuality, lesbianism, gay marriage, etc all through the world has become hot topics for international debates and discussions for many years. There are several ways to treat such a serious subject as gay marriage and many often, flowing in the stream of the common notion about gay marriage, several facts are distorted and comprehended with a prejudiced viewpoint. Such biased outlook and treatment of hot topics like gay marriage will only function to misdirect the facts behind the matter. Thus, there have been several articles and publications on gay marriage which used as tools to misguide the readers. One of the best illustrative examples of biased articles on gay marriage is the online article “Why Gay Marriage Will Hurt America” by Bryan Malley the editor of the Minnesota Christian Chronicle. The article in length deals with the issue of how gay marriage can be a destructive force in modern American society.
The article which seemingly addresses the central idea of how children are affected by the practice of gay marriage, however, fails utterly to concentrate on the main issue and significantly moves toward creating and spreading false ideas concerning gay marriage. The article opens with the statement “When the institutions of marriage and family are tinkered with, children are ultimately the losers,” but interestingly never more focuses on this central issue through the article. (Malley). Instead, the article goes on to disseminate false notions which demonstrate the biased attitude of people toward gay marriage. The most significant element of such a biased attempt is that the secondary materials for the source are used most intelligently to suit the purpose of the author. In this analysis of the source, we come to identify how biased renderings such as the article, can misguide the concept of the readers.
One most essential aspect of the bias created through the article is that everything in the article is directed towards the purpose of the author, which is apparently to convince the readers of the bad effects of gay marriage. This advocated goal of the article is not assisted by a positive way of creating the effect, but a negative attempt by which the author manipulates facts, figures, and observations to suit his purpose. This is felt mainly because any objective reader will significantly question the justification the author renders as the causes of divorces, separated families, and lack of interest in marriage.
For example, the article accuses gay marriage of separated families, offering ‘evidences’ (?) regarding “how gay marriage (and government-sanctioned gay partnerships) erodes families and hurts children” in Europe and what an objective reader fails to understand is how the following estimates can prove the role of gay marriage in resulting separated families. “Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Between 1990 and 2000, Norway’s out-of-wedlock birthrate rose from 39 to 50 percent, while Sweden’s rose from 47 to 55 percent.” (Malley). It is because of the biased approach of the author that these figures seem to prove gay marriage as causing family stability. We are familiar with greater aspects of modern family life such as money, material culture, the emerging social concepts, alcoholism, and other personal and social reasons which result in family separation and divorces. Thus, the article proves itself to be a biased attempt to misguide readers regarding the concept of gay marriage.
There are several similar examples of this attempt all through the article. When the author of the article makes baseless statements such as “Welfare systems, which punish married couples by reducing government subsidies, have played a role in this trend,” or tries (in vain) to prove “that the push for recognition of homosexual “domestic partners” has also discouraged marriage for heterosexuals,” what he conveys to the objective analysts of the issue of gay marriage is that the article is an obvious example to prove the bias in approaching the topic of gay marriage. (Malley). Similarly, the author also attempts to confuse the readers by suggesting that gay marriage will increase the divorce rate “in America, which already leads the world in divorce rates.” (Malley).
Again, the author’s biased approach manipulates data that “currently in America 26.7 percent of children born to white mothers and 68.8 percent of children born to black mothers are out-of-wedlock, and more than 43 percent of all children born in America will live in a single-parent home sometime in their childhood.” (Malley). Any objective observer wonders the significance and validity of these figures about gay marriage and one is aware of the fact that when the reasons for divorce are listed, gay marriage (if at all it finds a place in the list) is placed at the bottom position. However, disregarding this fact, the article goes on to spread bias notions of gay marriage. It is not an isolated case of biased attempts to misguide the common readers about the concept of gay marriage. However, this is an obvious example of how bias in articles can affect the objective readers’ perception of hot topics such as gay marriage.
Works Cited
Malley, Bryan. Why Gay Marriage Will Hurt America. New Man. 2004. Web.