# Explain to me why marriage is OK for murders and child molesters but not for gay people **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 27, 2011, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931 "2011-04-27T19:09:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/41 "2011-04-28T00:54:10Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > This is like asking why Jews can’t join the NSDAP. > No matter how you look on it, marriage is intrinsically a religious practice. Sorry, the government is involved, so this is not true. If a church doesn’t want to host a ceremony for homosexuals, fine, I could care less. The abrahamic religion shouldn’t dictate policy for US citizens. Red Lobster isn’t illegal and nor should homosexual marriage be illegal. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/42 "2011-04-28T01:00:41Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > He also hates people who work on Saturday… Perhaps no marriages should be held on that day? If they are, they are invalidated? > > My question for religious people is why is it that Christianity gets to decide the qualifications for marriage for everyone? > > It’s not like there’s only ‘christian marriage’ in this country. Ok if you don’t like to “play by the rules”. There is something called civil union, as far as I understand it is has the same legal status as a marriage. problem solved. But if you chose to marry in a christian church then you have to play along with their rules. sounds fair to me ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/43 "2011-04-28T01:01:09Z")
The OP presents a false equivalence. Marriage has nothing to do with criminal activity, so criminal activity doesn’t impact upon it. Marriage on the other hand, has traditionally been a socio-religious ceremony intended to merge a man and a woman into a cohesive relationship, primarily with the idea in mind of providing future parental support and guidance for children. Thus provisions have not traditionally been made for same sex relationships, and some people, holding to that tradition, maintain the belief expressed in the OP where marriage is “not for gay people”. Or, to put it more simply, the issue of crime vs. homosexuality when it comes to marriage is apples and oranges. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/44 "2011-04-28T01:02:40Z")
\*\*Explain to me why marriage is OK for murders and child molesters but not for gay people \*\* Because murderers and child molesters deserve it. Also, nothing has stopped gay people from getting married. You just can’t legally marry someone of the same sex. And for anybody that worries about the sanctity of marriage, take a look at all the married people you know, and Brittany Spears, and Charlie Sheen, and the list could go on a long way. Where is the sanctity? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/45 "2011-04-28T01:03:06Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > This is like asking why Jews can’t join the NSDAP. > No matter how you look on it, marriage is intrinsically a religious practice. No it’s not. It’s intrinsically a social institution. In communities with highly religious insititutions, marriage tends to be religious; in highly secular communities, it tends not to be. True, human history is overwhelmingly religious, but that correlation is still there. (FTR, I think the confusion about whether marriage is originally religious is because in most civilizations religion and government have been intimately intertwined). My wife and I were married in an almost completely secular ceremony (my father-in-law read a lovely and not particularly religious passage from Ecclesiastes), and our marriage is among the most important things in our lives. It didn’t need the state, and it didn’t need God, to make it important. It needed our friends and our family. It needed the people we love. I’m on the record as saying I prefer no governmental marriage. But if I believed for a second that this would deny meaningful marriage to atheists gay or straight I’d back off of that belief. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/46 "2011-04-28T01:10:17Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > Ok if you don’t like to “play by the rules”. There is something called civil union, as far as I understand it is has the same legal status as a marriage. Except that it doesn’t have anything close to the same legal status, which is the point of it; it’s a ghetto. It’s just a modern version of segregation, an attempt to write bigotry into law. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/47 "2011-04-28T01:12:08Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > \*\*And for anybody that worries about the sanctity of marriage, take a look at all the married people you know, and Brittany Spears, and Charlie Sheen, and the list could go on a long way. Where is the sanctity? I didn’t say it always worked; I merely said that was its purpose. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/48 "2011-04-28T01:13:02Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > Ok if you don’t like to “play by the rules”. There is something called civil union, as far as I understand it is has the same legal status as a marriage. > > problem solved. But if you chose to marry in a christian church then you have to play along with their rules. sounds fair to me Separate but equal? I don’t think so. Also, and I could be wrong, but I thought that civil unions were also in dispute. I see no reason to care if homosexuals get married. Their marriages will not effect mine and they are consenting adults. As to getting married in a christian church - the christian church can be bigoted for all I care. They could say that they will not marry two people of different races. I don’t care what a church does, I care what the government does/allows. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/49 "2011-04-28T01:15:14Z")
Also, wasn’t marriage traditionally about ownership rights? As in, the man has paid for his wife with a dowry. We shouldn’t covet our neighbor’s house, pets, wife, and other property… ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/50 "2011-04-28T01:44:50Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > Ok if you don’t like to “play by the rules”. There is something called civil union, as far as I understand it is has the same legal status as a marriage. Your understanding is incorrect. In no state in the country are civil unions completely equal to marriage. Many states have explicitly banned civil unions - Texas is one, I believe Florida is another. On a federal level, there is no recognition of civil unions, so none of the federal rights and priviledges that attach to marriage apply to civil unions. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/51 "2011-04-28T02:21:07Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I didn’t say it always worked; I merely said that was its purpose. Yes, well, my purpose in burrying Euro bills in my planters is to make them grow into money trees, but it doesn’t always work either. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/52 "2011-04-28T02:29:28Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > … if you chose to marry in a christian church then you have to play along with their rules. … And those Christian churches that don’t have a problem with it? Is the state going to enforce a Christian orthodoxy? CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/53 "2011-04-28T02:49:50Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > And those Christian churches that don’t have a problem with it? I guess they don’t count. It’s apparently OK to write religion into law, as long as it’s right wing religion. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_In_Black)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/54 "2011-04-28T04:09:52Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Except the reason pedophiles can’t marry children is because children are by definition not consenting adults. Same sex people can’t marry because? Because most states do not allow it yet. I assume you must know this. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/55 "2011-04-28T13:06:29Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > Also, wasn’t marriage traditionally about ownership rights? As in, the man has paid for his wife with a dowry. We shouldn’t covet our neighbor’s house, pets, wife, and other property… Not that I’m aware of. I know that in ancient Rome in pagan times a man had total power over his wife (and children) up to and including the power to kill her, so it might reasonably be said that the wife was the husband’s property. After Christianity became the dominant religion that power was abolished and women’s rights were established for the first time. If you have evidence that the law treated women as “property” more recently, I’d like to see it. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/56 "2011-04-28T13:21:03Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > Also, wasn’t marriage traditionally about ownership rights? As in, the man has paid for his wife with a dowry. We shouldn’t covet our neighbor’s house, pets, wife, and other property… I think you mean [bride price](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_price). [Dowry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry)is something else. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/57 "2011-04-28T13:52:03Z")
Canada’s had gay marriage for over six years now. Are Americans a bunch of _chickens?_ bwock-bwock-bwock! ---
**Author:** ![Marquez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@Marquez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marquez)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/58 "2011-04-28T14:06:00Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > There are those who say that the feelings of a few thousand gay people are worth having millions of children grow up in poverty. For others of us, not so much. Yeah all you find in trailer parks and ghettos are gay couples wanting to adopt. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/59 "2011-04-28T14:35:28Z")
> [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](#): > > Because most states do not allow it yet. I assume you must know this. :rolleyes: You know what I mean, considering that it’s the entire point of this thread. What justification do they have besides bigotry? None. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931/60 "2011-04-28T16:25:04Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > What part of getting married by Elvis to a drunk hooker in Vegas is religious ? Jesus, what part of that _isn’t_ religious? 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-why-marriage-is-ok-for-murders-and-child-molesters-but-not-for-gay-people/579931.md?page=4)