Soooo…the fostering and easing of your avoidance of even mediocre parenting is preferable to an entire class of people being treated like actual first-class citizens?
Part of being a parent is teaching your child how the world works! Sheltering them from everything that you don’t feel comfortable explaining to them just so you don’t have to go through the discomfort is bad parenting, really. What happens when they go off to college and meet actual gay people? gasp! How about this for easy? “John and Steven love each other, just like Mommy and Daddy do. Some men love women, and some men love men. Some women love men, and some women love women. And some people can love either one.”
Wow…a complete and appropriate explanation for everyone from a toddler to a pre-teen, and not one mention or explicit description of homosexual sex. Imagine that!
I seriously don’t understand where people get that from. Half the time when an opponent of ssm explains their position it’s the “How do I explain that to my kid?” thing. How do you explain why Mommy and Daddy married to your kid? How do you explain why Uncle Tim and Aunt Marsha are getting married on Saturday? Why does only same-sex marriage somehow have to involve detailed diagrams of what Uncle Todd and Uncle Stephen are going to be doing on the wedding night?
My little sect should have the right to decide who gets married within my little sect. The difference is you want the government to oversee all decisions in private matters, and I do not. I consider marriage a private matter, which I would prefer had no legal recognition at all.
So, that whole part where I said your beliefs should have no legal bearing on the legal consequences of your actions was . . . to hard to understand? Fraud is not a private matter, and is a reasonable matter for the state to consider.
There are a lot horrible things a child has to put in perspective. There’s going to be a lot of disturbing things in your children’s school textbooks. There’s a lot of disturbing things in Bible. Same sex partnership’s not disturbing or horrible. It’s life; and it’s not going to die. What’s disturbing is when a kid grows up knowing they’re homosexual… but were shielded from it.
And seriously, Perciful.
Is it ok to tell your kids about multiple partner sex!? I mean…
It just doesn’t make sense. I hope you realise that, and that’s why your second post’s the way it sounds. I invite you to agree… and if you don’t, I hope for any potential kid or grandchild of yours, you do change your mind.
I argued AGAINST gay marriage when I was in high school. We had to pick a topic we could go either way with, (no pun intended), and a flip of a coin made me argue against it. At that time it didn’t mean as much to me as it does now. We were graded on our debating skills and not the debate. I won by a vote, but I then knew both sides of the argument, (this was 10 years ago). And I had the harder task debating against it than my opponent.
I wasn’t so sure where I stood when I picked the topic. After it was clear. It’s all about denial. People are afraid homosexuals will be on every street corner, holding hands or kissing – and though fewer and fewer people are arguing about homosexually being “a choice” – Seeing it would have to mean believing it. It doesn’t scare their kid as much as it scares them. Sex alone scares people I think, (I know I’m squeamish about it). Some people seem to think homosexuality exists, but they just don’t want them, or their lifestyle, to considered normal. But it’s all around you… probably even in you church. To be treated as if you aren’t ‘normal’ hurts. We all know that to some extent.
As a single guy, I wonder why the government has anything to do with our sex or love life. But no person with should be denied the opportunity to get married. It’s simply discrimination.
If I’m interpreting what you’re saying correctly, your position is something like “marriage is a religious recognition of a choice two people make, and should have no legal status whatsoever, and the government shouldn’t force a church to marry two dudes if it doesn’t want to”. Is that more or less correct?
If so, then it seems like if a church DOES want to marry two dudes (and many churches do), you support that. More importantly, though, your position, while interesting in the abstract, is certainly not one with any chance of being adopted in the US in our lifetimes. So, given that, what do you think about gay marriage as the issue practically exists in the US today?
My children are adults. I’m looking ahead at the future parents and grandchildren.
With tv being so sexual oriented the kids already know about sex at a young age. Sex education at school starts early and how to have safe sex. Our local schools give out free condoms.
As you are all saying, It’s no big deal and same sex marriages will be perfectly normal events in everyones families. Let freedom ring!
It is 2010 and about time we rethink the definition of marriage. We wouldn’t want to leave anyone out of the fun of marriage, divorce and child raising.
Considering that serial killers can get married, yes. Are you saying that being gay is worse than being a serial killer?
Nonsense. There have been polygamous marriages, even marriages between humans and animals.
But it IS broken. It isn’t giving same sex couples what they want. And, it is unfair. AND, the institution has been drastically changed, again and again and again. It is not the unchanging monolith you are trying to pretend it is.
Oh? Seems to me like polygamy is documented at a wide range of times and places throughout history and planetwide. Or, hey, let’s take probably the first great work of Western Civilization, The Iliad. What exactly is Achilles grieving about?
:et me note that that definition was written into law during the lifetimes of the older Dopers. And that the whole idea that the State licenses marriage is just over 100 years old – I celebrated the 102nd anniversary of my grandparents’ wedding as the last New York couple legally married without a license last New Years Eve, and posted bbout it.
Then look at the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Its first sentence is not “All straight persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Ted Bundy was able to get married and father a child in prison. Should a convicted gay person have fewer rights than BUndy?
It wasn’t too long ago everyone had an “arranged” marriage. Image if the people that changed that were told “It’s always been like that. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Since I am not gay, nor do I intend to get married, I have no valid concern on the subject.
My position is that the government has no legitimate interest in forcing any sect to perform, or not perform any religious rite whatsoever.
I think every person who feels that their church, or their private group is being discriminated against, or forced to act by a government should sue that government. Over and over, at every level, over every single identifiable case. And every individual who feels that they are being required to act according to my little sect by a government, or corporation should also sue, in every case, at every level. I think that any corporation that you feel is violating your rights should be boycotted, by you, and every person who you think will support you.
Sorry to jump in this deep into the thread with a question / hijack but I didn’t want to start my own thread to ask.
In my opinion, the only VALID objection I’ve heard to legal same-sex marriage is that it would force churches belonging to religions that oppose SSM to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. This seems to me to be a complete fantasy scenario but I have heard people mention it. Can anyone comment on the reality of this idea?
And fyi, even if it were true, meaning I think it is a valid objection, I still think the damage caused would be outweighed by the damage prevented by legalizing SSM.
No one forces Catholic churches to recognize marriages between previously divorced individuals, do they? I assume marriage licenses are a civil matter that you just happen, in some but not all cases, to be able to conveniently get at the same place you can perform or not perform whatever religious ceremonies you like. Same-sex marriage needn’t change that.
Sorry, Perciful, but this remark about the textbooks is completely incoherent. The “Sally, Dick and Jane” books were about three child siblings, not about marital partners.
I can’t figure out what point you thought you were making about adding an imaginary “Bob” to the cast list, or why you believe that a story about three siblings would somehow become more “PC” if it included a fourth.
Sure. I’ve been to same sex weddings and I have friends who have same sex marriages in their families. It really is no big deal.
I have no idea why you think this would be effective as sarcasm. The whole point of equal marriage rights is precisely this principle, in sober earnest. There is no good reason to leave gay people out of marriage and child raising, along with their accompanying downsides such as the risk of divorce.
Does not being a member of a subject group make all concerns one might have automatically invalid? As a bi person, who may well get married at some point, I certainly wouldn’t consider your non-gay non-marrying opinion to be invalid.
Indeed, they do not. You may be as legally divorced as you please, but if your previous marriage was considered valid by the Catholic Church, and you haven’t obtained an official nullification of marriage from the Catholic Church, then the Catholic Church does not consider you eligible for a sacramental Church marriage. The civil authority will let you legally remarry, but you ain’t getting no wedding Mass from the Catholics.
Similarly, the Church is under no obligation whatever to regard same-sex couples as eligible for sacramental Church marriage just because they have a civil marriage license.
And that goes for all denominations: the religious organization gets to decide what it considers a valid marriage and who is eligible to be married under its rules. The government neither has nor will have nor should have any authority to change the religion’s rules.
What some religious organizations are really worried about, IMO, is that the civil recognition of same-sex marriage will contribute to cultural pressures on them to change their own rules about marriage or else to lose congregants to more tolerant groups.
