I was driving through Hartford CT today when I saw this poster board painted with rainbow lettering waving in the air. It read How could loving, committed, same-sex marriages possibly bother you?
The person brandishing the sign was yelling at the other folk across the street protesting the Massachusetts ruling that allowed gay marriages.
My simplistic question to those opposed: What do you care what I do with my own person? Are these people somehow judgeable by you?
Homosexual people should be able to do whatever they please with one another, they are just as human as the fundies who oppose them so much…It really irks me when people standing behind a religion think themselves able to judge another human being, in the name of God no less.
First off let me say that I’m NOT opposed to them, but I do understand one or two of the ‘reasons’ why people might be.
I’ve heard it pronounced from the pulpit that allowing a general climate of immorality in the land would cause God to turn his back on the nation or some other sort of nasty thing; now this might seem a laughable proposition (and I’m certainly not going to defend it), but it is somewhat based on Biblical precedent and the main point is that a number of people sincerely believe it, so from their own POV, they do have what they believe to be a genuine, not entirely selfish reason to be bothered.
But Mangetout, the fact is that their religious beliefs have no business dictating public policy. This is a secular nation. There is separation of church and state. If they don’t want to be caught in what they believe is going to be a nationwide apocalypse, they’re free to move to one of those European countries that have a state church.
I’m not saying “love it or leave it”. I’m saying “understand how a secular nation does things and then decide whether or not to leave it…but don’t try to diminish my rights to make yourself look better to your god.”
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This is a secular nation. There is separation of church and state.quote]They really don’t want it to be that way and they perceive the move in that direction as disastrous.
Trouble is, they don’t see it as trying to diminish your rights, but trying to save you from some terrible danger that you yourself are unable to perceive. Again, I’m not trying to defend the view, just to explain that these arguments don’t prevail against someone who thinks they know better.
I’m an unmarried straight guy, so I don’t personally have a dog in this race.
I feel opposition to gay marriage is one of the most mean spirited and cruel forms of discrimination I’ve seen in my life, for the reasons implied in the OP’s question. In what way is a threat to ANYONE?!
And the argument about it being a threat to “traditional” marriage so far has only made me laugh. Last I heard, the hetero divorce rate was pretty high. People want to strengthen hetero marriage? Fine. Start with the divorce rate and its causes, but leave gays out of it.
Actually I can think of one “threat” gay marriage poses: Suppose it does become legal, and the rate of divorce among gay couples turns lower than for hetero couples over time? Perhaps the protestors are simply afraid of being made to look silly…
The unfortunate answer is that some people do not wish to be good and loving and accepting for it’s own sake.
They are simply not naturally, good, loving and accepting people.
What they have is a set of rules that were set down by fallible humans to help other fallible humans become good, loving, and accepting.
These people follow the rules, but miss the essential nut of what it is supposed to mean to be a good Christian.
For them the rules are a surrogate for the thing itself.
For others the rules are a framework within which they can be evil without guilt.
Some do this consciously, some do not.
Some are simply misguided.
These rules are like the rules of grammar, once you have mastered them, once you truly understand them, than you have become greater than they are and they no longer are absolutes.
These people have never reached the point in their own goodness when they see that the rules of their faith are a guide to a thing, not the thing itself.
I’ve recently reread the Bible, and you know what? Like many guidebooks, some of the data is dated or flat out wrong. All in all, it’s a pretty decent guide.
I don’t make a judgment for or against homosexual relationships, nor would I ever say that it would be wrong for you to love someone or be committed to them. But it isn’t just fundies who bristle at the notion that your committed relationship be called a marriage or call each other husband and wife.
My question is that if a civil union is given a comparable legal recognition as a marriage and you refer to your partners as significant other, would you have a problem with that?
so why does a loving same-sex domestic partnership bother gays?
Why should marriage be an issue to them?
Marriage is by definition not available to a same-sex couple regardless of what a court decides.
I could claim the right to call myself a fish, I could probably win that right. But I still would not fit the definition.
In 10,000 years of human history, marriage has been defined as a union between a man and a woman. I see no need to change that nor do I see a need to validate the gay lifestyle by pretending it is normal.
You know what? We don’t care if you validate our lifestyle or not. We don’t care if you go through your entire life refusing to call our marriages marriages. We don’t care if you spend the rest of your life trying to isolate yourself from gay people.
What we care about is the attempts on the part of people like you to keep us from receiving equal opportunity and treatment under the law. At this point, I really don’t care if what we’re given is called “marriage” by the state, as long as it’s completely equal in all parts to the legal entity known as marriage, including portability. And after we get that, we’ll go ahead and call it marriage and you folks who’d rather we didn’t even exist can go ahead and call it Shirley, for all I care. All I ask is that you GET OUT OF THE WAY!
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but on what grounds do you object somebody calling themselves a fish if they want to be a fish?
More importantly, it is only recently that certain beneficial entitlements have been formally granted to married couples in terms of legal benefits, spousal incurance, tax benefits, rights of inheritance, etc.
If we accept for the purposes of debate that being gay is not “normal” how does this justify excluding gay people from these entitlements?
We are not required to be normal to have rights, are we?
If we are going to take away rights for not being “normal,” than I think that I have bigger problems than most gay people.
10% of people may be gay. That’s how it’s not normal. Only about 10% of Americans are black so being black isn’t normal either. Maybe we shouldn’t let black people get married.
Actually, let me rephrase that, mmmkay? Because it doesn’t quite convey the level of anger and determination that I feel when people like you start giving these bullshit arguments against gay marriage, and I know this isn’t the Pit, which is the only reason I’m not insulting your ancestry, offspring and animal companions.
All I DEMAND is that you GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!
Yes I would. People are all up in arms about “changing the definition” of marriage, when the truth is that we’ve changed it a couple hundred times already. The definition we have today in the United States is neither the historical state of marriage or the state of marriage throughout the world, even discounting those nations which accept gay marriage.
If I love the man I’m seeing, if I wish to spend the rest of my life with him, it sounds like I’m committing myself to marriage with him. Plus, there are multiple religions and denominations that flat-out marry gay couples. Should I not be able to call myself a church-married homosexual? Should I not call my husband what he is? If it’s there to comfort me in bad times, love me in good, tend to my hurts as I tend to it’s… well it sure seems to walk, talk, and act like a hubby to this lil fag.
Quint Essence, I believe you’ve shown that (unlike some I disagree with here) in spite of evidence you will persist in your hateful ignorance, but I will try this one more time. Marriage as it exists today, between one man and one woman, has not even been the most predominant norm for 10,000 years (although that’s a nice pat number). Indeed, the complex structure we call modern marriage isn’t the same as it was 50 years ago. Monogamy as we know it today is actually historically quite rare to spot in Western society. During Graeco-Roman times it was quite common for men (but not women) to keep lovers of either gender without comment. During the Middle Ages, in nominally Christian countries, multiple rulers also did the same thing (dunno whether it was common for peasants). Further, take a glance into LDS/Utah/Deseret history for a fascinating example of polygamy. If you can change marriage, why the heck can’t I?
We let retarded people get married… even the ones who may or may not be competent to make their own calls, as far as judgment goes. They fought for that right in court.
Do we let crazy people get married? Schizophrenia is a chemical condition, and it’s chronic, but for some reason, we don’t nullify schizos’ rights.
My first thought is, “If the gays are going to pay taxes and suffer the same responsibilities and duties I do, let them have the same rights.”
But, then, apparently letting the fruity folks get married is some sort of a threat. Exactly how and why this process threatens me personally, no one has ever successfully explained to me – at least, not very coherently – but apparently, some people feel pretty strongly about it.
While I’m thinking about it, could someone HERE explain why gay marriage threatens me? I mean, does letting a couple of homos have a marriage certificate somehow devalue mine? What, is there a certain amount of marriage to go around, and if the lesbians start setting up joint checking accounts and thuslike, there won’t be enough for the new young hetero couples?
Someone explain this to me, please. Even if it’s bullshit, I sure would like some sort of coherent explanation…
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All I DEMAND is that you GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!
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Sorry. Won’t happen.
I have no problem with you getting equal marriage benefits that have been mentioned.
I do not discriminate against gays nor do I “hate” them. I simply disagree with the idea of homosexuality being someohow normal. It isn’t. It is an aberration from normal.
I do not fault anyone for being born (or learning depending on your viewpoint) to be gay. That is an unfortunate occurance that i sympathize with. It is not however “normal” nor will any legal redefinitions change that fact.
The word “marriage” is loaded with meaning for the religious and non-religious alike and the only reason for gays wanting to use the word for themselves is for that validation I spoke of. A civil union even with all the exact same benefits/legal issues, is seen as unacceptable to most gays according to all the polls and charts. Why is that? is it possibly because that validation is EXACTLY what the gay community is seeking?
You simply are looking to change the law to “normalize” homosexuality.
Won’t happen. And should’nt.
Deal with it. After all it is your “choice”.
Because we will have fabulous weddings/orgies with a scintillating theme and music to DIE for and make all the straight people realize what they’re missing. Then we’ll beat the remainder to death with Birkenstock sandals.
I’ve thought about this real hard. I’ve managed to come up with a argument against marriage that at least has its foundation in reason. I’ve never heard it from anybody against gay marriage, but I needed to think about it nonetheless before I could decide where I stood on the issue. I’ll leave the reason why this argument is ultimately wrong as an exercise in critical thinking.
While legalizing gay marriage seems valid on the surface it sets a precedent that must ultimately destroy the valid benefit of same sex marriage. There is no problem per se with allowing gay people to be married, but same sex marriage opens a loophole to non gays to take advantage of the entitlement of marriage regardless of their sexual preference. For example, two business partners, both male, may own a large business. If one should fall ill, both may divorce their wives and marry each other in contemplation of death in order to avoid estate taxes. The remaining partner may inherit the business under the unlimited spousal exemption thus avoiding all estate taxes.
Similarly, non gay men may marry simply to take advantage of the exemption and transfer wealth without tax ramifications. This same technique may be used to take advantage of other benefits of marriage normally not so easily transferred or shared.
Because of this loophole, it will no longer be possible to offer these benefits to those for whom they are rightfully intended, gay or not. This will necessitate a seperation of property between spouses, and force the federal governmet to no longer recognize domestic or family units in any regard. This of course will lead to the dissolution of the modern family.
The actual argument that I tend to hear from those against gay marriage when they try to be coherent goes something like this:
Too much permissiveness and no grounding in morals is a bad thing that hurts everybody so we’re drawing the line at gay marriage.
I tend to agree with the first part of this argument, but the second part doesn’t follow. It seems to me that if all this permissiveness and wild immorality is a bad thing, than the institution of marriage would give some rigor and discipline to all those crazy gay people (facetious) and help them settle down and be like the rest of us.
This doesn’t make sense. Even if we accept the fallacious proposition that homosexuality is some kind of curse or handicap depriving one of normallness, why would you want to rub it in.
I guy with no legs isn’t normal. Should he not have a wheelchair so that his life can be as normal as possible.
If you really do have nothing against gay people, shouldn’t you want them to be as “normal” as possible?
In response to your hypothetical argument against gay marriage, Scylla, I would respond that opposite-gender business partners (of which the numbers are increasing) can do the same thing with marriage laws at they stand now, so what do we do to fix that? Ban straight marriage? Strikes me as using a bazooka to kill a gnat.
Hahaha! That’s what you think! While you’re being dragged to Home Depot to buy a replacement for that leaky faucet, we’re enjoying our high-flying DINK gay lifestyle in Cancun after booking a lovely cruise on this gay-owned line I know, sipping margaritas under the sun while some poor schlob we hired is fixing the sink under the watchful eye of our poodle, Mitzy, and our lovely friend Steve who promised to look after the condo for the weekend.
