And I just as firmly believe that your religious beliefs shouldn’t be imposed on anyone else. Does anyone have an issue with gay marriage that’s not based on religion? I honestly haven’t heard one yet, and I’d be interested in knowing what that position would be.
How about being against government recognition of gay marriages as a subset of being against government recognition of any marriage? Despite what I might wish, the government has entangled itself in marriages, and so I object to it officially redefining what marriage is. If it would remove itself from giving any official definition to marriage, the whole problem (on all sides) would be solved. If two homosexuals wished to form a union and call it a marriage, good for them; the government wouldn’t be giving its sanction to it. If a man and a woman wished to marry, they could do so under whatever definition of marriage they want, and the government would have nothing to say about it, nor any power to change it.
I can understand being opposed to legalization of gay marriage because you’re opposed to legalization of marriage at all, but I can not support the idea of legislated discrimination in the meantime. Given that the government has no religious say, either the government should allow people to marry regardless of gender, or the government should say nothing at all to it. If the government doesn’t have the power to legislate your religion, then there’s no reason that the government saying “yes, gay people can be married in the eyes of the state” should mean that your individual church or whatever has to perform the ceremony.
I’m not sure I’m speaking my point very clearly.
Spare me your sanctimonious shit. You’ve shown yourself time and time again to be bigoted trash and you want some sort of pass because you touched a gay person? Fuck you!
I am not “unhappy.” I am “pissed off.” I am pissed off that I’ve been on these boards four years and the same fucking shit arguments are still playing out on this issue. I’m pissed off that for thousands of years people like you have taken a message of love and twisted it into an excuse to write your bigotry into the laws. I’m pissed off that multiple child-rapist serial killers on Death Row have the constitutionally-protected right to marry and I don’t. And I’m pissed off that jesus-freak bigot trash like you dare to have the audacity to try to reduce my anger to “unhappiness” to help you feel better about your vile bigotry.
See Loving v Virginia. See Zablocki v Redhail. See Turner v Schafley. The Supreme Court has said time and again that marriage is a fundamental right. There are rational reasons for preventing sibling and polygamous marriages. There are no rational reasons for denying same-sex marriage.
Otto - Nice rant. Summed things up nicely.
If anyone is interested in a formal approach to the non-religious reasons to oppose gay marriage, please see this three-page thread in Great Debates.
So far, the good guys are winning, and the religious zealots are whining that you can’t have morality without religion, so the discussion is meaningless. Quite amusing.
Whoa!! Much hostility is being shown here…it’s a simple concept, folks. Everyone has the right to love someone, and have that love be recognized in the same fashion, whatever their choice of mate - same sex or opposite sex. I challenge any poster to give me one good reason why that shouldn’t be the case.
I happen to be for gay marriage, but the lack of respect from somg pro gay marriage people here toward their opponents really pisses me off. Just because they happen to not want people of the same sex to marry each other doesn’t make them bigots. It doesn’t even make them prejudiced against gay people. Of course, there are prejudiced people who oppose gay marriage, but that’s not all of them.
I’m not saying anything about the intentions of the OP, but it seems some people like to use threads like this as an opportunity to snipe. Ask a question directed to your opposition, and when they reveal themselves to answer you attack them.
Looking back, this thread’s not as bad as some of the others I’ve seen. Maybe this post is just a release of a lot of built up frustration.
Observation: It seems that homosexuals want gay marriage for the same reason that other people oppose it, which is that they value some aspect of it.
In anticipation to the “fuck you” posts that will be directed at me: If you disagree so strongly with what I say, I’m open to discussion. There is no need for name-calling.
So, how can you believe that a whole category of people aren’t worthy of the same rights in society as you are, and not be prejudiced?
No, it was accomplished because blacks were eventually able to shift the opinions of a large enough segment of society into supporting full integration, and because proponents of integration won legislative and judicial victories to make it happen. It was the right thing to do, but that isn’t why it happened.
If gay people get equal rights in this country, that’s why it will happen. Not because it’s right to give gay people equal rights, although it is, but because the proponents of equal rights will have succeeded in convincing enough people, and passing enough legislation, and convincing enough courts to make it happen.
I’m sorry, but this position just seems like nothing but a cop-out to me. It’s like saying “no, no, I’m not against gay marriage, I’m against all government regulated marriage. See? I’m not trying to take away anyone’s rights! I’m a good guy!”
It seems like a cop-out because we’ve pretty much established that government regulated marriages aren’t going to be done away with. That’s just not going to happen. It’d be nice, and this would no longer be an issue, but it’s not going to happen. Not in the near future anyway. You think all the religious nuts are up in arms now…
So it’s now pretty much a matter of you supporting gay couple’s ability to have rights associated with marriage or you don’t. If you don’t, why not?
Because marriage has “always” been defined as between a man and a woman? Please refer to the comments about interracial marriages. Because the bible says so? Not getting into the whole issue of what the hell relgion is doing in government to begin with, call it something else then, if it hurts your delicate senses so damn much. And if that is the reason, and you’d be perfectly content with gay marriage being called civil unions, then you’re doing nothing but arguing semantics, which is just lame.
I think the real question here is, who is gay marriage hurting? What do you stand to gain from denying someone the same rights you have?
It sure as hell does so. Except in the case of those folks who are opposed to government recognition of any marriage. But if you (generic “you”) believe that gay people should not have the same rights as straight people, you certainly are prejudiced.
I have been with my partner for 16 years, and we have always very openly lived as a Gay couple… All of our friends (both straight and gay) have always seen and accepted us as a couple. We’ve done all the legal things - registered as domestic partners, given each other Power of Attorney, etc, but marriage is totally different…
When we got married in Canada a few weeks ago, the reaction from everyone we know in both Canada and the U.S. has been amazing… These people always knew us as a couple, and yet getting married seems to have put our relationship on a completely new higher level in their eyes… The love and support has been overwhelming…
In my mind, there is no longer any comparison between a civil union and a marriage…
As far as whether people have actually met Gay people… I teach at a school in California… I am the only openly Gay teacher on a staff of about 150… Time and time again, I have had students, staff and parents come up and say that I am the first Gay person they have ever met… although there are others on staff who are not open… And I really don’t think I’m the first Gay person they’ve met…
The battle for Gay rights and Gay marriage is not going to happen overnight… And as frustrating as it can be dealing with the people who don’t understand, or won’t understand… Almost all the kids I deal with on a day to day basis are much more tolerant than their parents and grandparents… They just can’t understand why my marriage is any different from their parents’ marriages…
I really think being out and just being myself can change the world… (Although court challenges won’t hurt, that’s for sure…) 
Survivor
Survivor - congratulations, that is a wonderful story.
It is very hard to describe what I mean in the OP, without sounding like I’m stereotyping all gay guys. There are some who “pass for straight”. But generally when I am chatting with a gay guy - it is so obvious that their attraction instincts are not like that of a straight man. This difference is so market, so distinct, that IMO this validates their orientation. I
t makes it as real and as strong and as relevant and as important as any attraction I might feel for men, or straight men might feel for women, etc.
And because of this, I cannot see why gay people should not be able to get the full coupleship status - religious, legal, social - that straight people can get. Sure: the one thing that gay couples definitely can’t do is have children together (where they are both biological parents). But if having children is the only distinction, that to my mind means that infertile couples, or couples that don’t want to have kids, shouldn’t be allowed to have full marriages.
Which of course is fucking stupid and offensive. And to my mind - hugging a gay guy, but saying he shouldn’t be able to get married, is like hugging a disabled person, but saying they shouldn’t be allowed to hold a normal job.
Really? What about saying this:
Can you seriously say that and expect anyone to believe you?
Sorry, Talon, whether you understand it or not, you are expressing bigoted views here.
How does this work, exactly? How can you deny someone a basic right and expect them not to be pissed off? Gay people (and gay rights defenders) aren’t some kind of homogenous hivemind which speaks as one, y’know. Sometimes, we get pissed off, because we’re human too, and no one likes to be constantly dismissed as unworthy of a basic human right. That hurts. It really fucking hurts. It hurts me, and I’m not even interested in marrying another woman. I can’t imagine how much it must hurt the couple in San Francisco who had been together for 50 some years. And you expect people not to get upset? You expect them to sit there and remain the voice of calm reason while bigots constantly spout their hateful rhetoric? They’re not really prejudiced, they just don’t want gays to get married! After all, tradition says so! (it also says that women are weak, stupid, and the downfall of man but we’re more enlightened now) And Jesus says so! (but we’ll ignore everything else in Leviticus because it would be inconvenient) And the Constitution says so! (but it’s okay to change the Constitution as long as we’re giving rights to women and black people).
It amazes me that anyone can sit there from their safe, comfortable little position, and talk about how those excitable gay people get so upset about their basic rights being denied them! They gasp name call! The horror! Jeez, someone might get their feelings hurt. Because God forbid someone let off a little steam at the ugliness they’re confronted with every god damn day of their lives. But no, if a gay man or woman or hell, even a straight person who happens to believe that everyone deserves the same basic rights, happens to say something even slightly unkind than we have to whip out that tired old bullshit about how inappropriate and self-defeating it is to defend yourself. On a message board, for Christ’s sake. That’s one of the more appropriate places to let off your vitriol. But no–the hivemind must maintain a demeanor of perfect friendliness at all times. Are we supposed to say “thank you” and smile as we’re spit upon, too?
PS: NOTE TO BIGOTS: I’m not actually gay, so please don’t feel the need to add a few more bits of kindling to your burning hatred of gays on my account.
I don’t understand this at all. Hundreds of years? Marriage has only been defined as between “one man and one woman” in a small number of societies for a very small amount of time, really. And anyways, why does it matter what might have been? You might as well argue that we can’t let women vote, because if we’d been letting women vote from the begin, who knows what privileges voters might have had? If we’d been allowing black people to actually be free from the beginning, who knows what kind of rights we might have now? Who the fuck cares?, I think, is the important question here. I think it’s more important that we’ve finally figured out that its not okay to take away rights from people just because they’re female, or black, or homosexual. Some of us have, anyway.
Well said, Tanaqui
Lets hope gay marriages will be normal soon, in the rest of the civilized world.
Not true. There is no long tradition of disallowing inter-race marriages in Western societies. The antimescegination laws were an unusual stiution in a few localities (sates). Marriage has always meant a relationship between people of opposite sex (not always just 2 people, but definitely people of the opposite sex) for the entire history of Western civilization. There isn’t even evidence that the modern sociological concept of race existed in the pre-modern world (that is, before the enlightenment).
I never said “more desirable”. I said “different”. Our society has decided (with hundreds of years of precident) to give some preferential legal status to the union of a man and a woman, clearly with the idea that the family is the locus of child rearing and propogation of the human species. Had we decided, in the past, to formalize “any pairing that people might want to make”, then it’s unclear that that formalization would have included the various “privileges and responisibilities” that we bestow on married couples today.
Note that there is nothing about the race of the partners that is inherent in the perferential legal status according to married couples, but there is certainly an assumption that the couple would be of two different genders.
That is not to say that marriage requires procreation in order to be recognized legally. But that we, as a society, have decided it is benficial to the society when procreation takes place within a family unit, and that we will proactively encourage that type of union.
And why should that opinon have any weight? Seriously. Just because you think something is good, does not make it so. Besides, there are plenty of ways for a gay couple to be recogized as a couple without having a special special legal status. That recognition can be within a church which recognizes gay unions, or within the definition of legal civil unions that are specifically designed to recognize couples (or multple parings?) that do not consist of oppsoite sex pairings.
And when the Supreme Court ruled on this right, they were ruling on the term “marriage” being between one man and one woman. Do you think otherwise?
What are the rational reasons for preventing sibling and polygamous marriages? Some states disallow cousins from marrying as well as siblings. If the dangers of inbreeding are the “rational reasons” for disallowing sibling marriages, why is not illegal for an adult man to have sex with his adult sister (or his adult cousin in those states where they can’t marry)?