Does this cost me anything?
If not, why would I care what other people choose to do with their lives? Knock yourself out.
I do have one request, however, of the to-be-wed couples out there, and this goes for straight, gay, and all other varieties of couples out there (you’ll have to forgive me, I’m a bit out of touch with how many genders exist these days) - quit with the horn-honking motorcades - I mean, seriously - some people are trying to get some work done…
Well, let’s see…we’ll use a couple I’m acquainted with as an example: We have two gay males who wish to get married. They are both professionals, with good, solid incomes. They both enjoy doing home improvements as a hobby. They will not be having any children.
If the power that be see fit, they will be married. They will then purchase a large Victorian home in a nearby town. The home has seen better days, but many of their friends in the area have purchased similar homes and fixed them up beautifully. They do the same, and soon other friends follow suit.
So now we have a community that is primarily dual-income/childless families living in large, well-maintained homes in what was once a downtrodden area. Property values have gone up. No extra burden has been placed on the school system. Guess what, pragmatic neighboring homeowner – “Is this costing me anything?” is no longer the question. It’s “How much am I saving by the tax rate remaining so low?”
I am also a straight pragmatic atheist cynic. Or at least hope so. As such, my opinion does not differ.
The argument that I have heard, however, that gay marriage does actually harm others runs as follows:
Incomi-i-i-ng
I fully support the right of any two consenting, currently unmarried, adult humans to marry, but why would their decision to buy a home depend on being married?
I believe I read somewhere that the HIV rate in lesbian couples is the lowest, far below heterosexuals even. So if this pushed more women towards lesbianism, it would lower the HIV rate thereof in that group.
In the male group, practicing safe sex is as safe in homosexual relations as heterosexual ones. Monogomous relations are even better, and this will promote more monogomous homosexual relationships.
And finally, by your reasoning, we really should only be teaching abstinance-only sex education in schools. You can’t get HIV if you don’t have sex.
As such, we should discourage boys and girls from forming stable relationships, because the things that can go wrong with them might happen among youth.
See any flaws with this reasoning? I do. The same as in yours.
Me, too.
1. HIV is most often spread by gay people
Ummm, no, actually. Have you ever looked at the statistics?
2. Allowing gay people to marry advances the idea that homosexualism is OK
“Homosexualism” is OK.
3. As such, our youth are more likely to be willing to experiment with homosexuality
Oh, yeah, straight kids will see a gay couple and “catch the gay.” Just like all those gay kids became straight from seeing their parents.
4. Thereby, by allowing gays to marry, we are raising the level of risk for our young to catch HIV
See above. Take two aspirin. Call doctor in morning.
Let me just amend the subject line - it should have read: “straight pragmatic atheist rational cynic.”
SPARC just seems like a cool acronym.
Maybe to you, but I’d rather be a Straight Pragmatic Atheist Rational Cynical Youth… a SPARCY 
I’m 21… do I still get to be a youth?
Please do not skip past the intro.
The logic (or lack thereof) presented in my post was not mine. It is a summarization of the statements of others who are anti-gay marriage–and which I have argued against with much the same statements that have been prevented here.
Kindly proceed to continue bashing those ideas, but do not assign blame for them to me.
I really couldn’t say. In this example, these are acquaintences who made the decision that they would not buy a home until they were married (or until it became blindingly obvious that this would never be the case).
Apart from that, recognized marriage would be a large step towards making the entire situation more acceptable to the masses. More acceptable = more people would do it. It would make it the same as a hetrosexual couple – I don’t have hard numbers, but it would seem to me that most homeowners would be married coulples, not living together but unmarried. My wife and I rented for a few years, and then bought a place after we were married.
Damnit! That is really cool. And here I am being all Catholic. SPCRC just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Ah–well in that case, accept my apologies and repeat my answers to those yahoos you use those “arguments” within your hearing.
Well, among other reasons:
[ul]
[li]The spouses may be able to save up more money if they can file income taxes jointly.[/li][li]If one of the spouses can get the other covered by employer-offered health insurance, a lot of money can be saved instead of each spouse having to provide his/her own coverage.[/li][li]The laws of inheritance are more favourable to spouses than to cohabitants. Without such automatic protection, making a large investment (as in a house) is considerably riskier, if not prohibitive.[/li][/ul]
Fact is, there are numerous financial and legal benefits and options available to married couples. Without them, large purchases may be difficult if not impossible.
And being a SPARC myself, I find the arguments against gay marriage to be uniformly unconvincing.
Eve and Wolfstu I’m not disagreeing with your debunking analysis as such, but you are being much more specific than you need to be.
Quite simply the formula is:
Activity X increases the incidence of disease. Therefore, we should not allow activity X.
Start taking that formula and applying it to life and you’d never leave your house.
The problem I have with arguing this point is that it seems to always come down to religion. There just aren’t any good non-religious reasons to oppose gay marriage (that I have seen). So now you are no longer arguing for gay marriage, you are arguing against everything they hold sacred, and that makes it damn hard to convince anyone.
Note, I realize there are some religions that do not have this prohibition, and even some people who subscribe to the religions that do hold it who are not themselves anit-gay marriage, but most major religions in the US are anti-gay marriage.
My stance is as follows: Let them marry, but keep the tax breaks for men-woman unions. This doesn’t violate the equality of the issue, as the requirements for the justification of the tax break have not been met by man-man couples.
As far as I know, that’s the way we handle it around here.
What justifications are you talking about?
Right—like anyone on the Straight Dope ever leaves their house!
If you subscribed to that other silly word for atheist, would that make you a Bright SPARC?