# Gay marriage - non-religious objections? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 13, 2004, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098 "2004-02-13T20:47:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Joe\_Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Joe\_Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Random)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2004, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/41 "2004-02-14T17:15:35Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > But, when there are nations like India, where Marriages are pre-arranged when you are 13, how can you actually justify that love is a good reason to allow Gay Marriages? So, because India has some arranged marriages, love is not a good reason for _anybody_? > [@](#): > > America doesn’t have to be “different” (or in this case similar, since it seems to be a fad in Europe to get this thing legalized). So America doesn’t have to be different, and America doesn’t have to be similar? And why, exactly, do _you_ get to pick the countries that we don’t have to be different from or similar to? Can’t you easily reword your above statement to say “America doesn’t have to be “different” (or in this case similar, since it seems to be a fad in India to not get this thing legalized).” In other words, your above argument (if it can be called such) is completely arbitrary. Gay marriage should be argued on its own merits, not on what other countries are (not) doing. > [@](#): > > If America chooses, or in my opinion, the states so choose to illegalize it, so be it. And if they choose to legalize it, so be that. Just accept what the majority in your state wants on this issue. So if the majority of some Southern state had wanted to continue the practice of slavery, would your accept that, too? At what point does something become wrong even if the majority wants it? > [@](#): > > After all, it’s not an inalienable right. If it was popular consent to ban all marriages hetero or homo, then let the State do that…lol. You’re missing the point, which is that allowing people with one sexual preference to marry the person they wish to marry, while denying people of another sexual preference that privilege, is discrimination based on sexual orientation. > [@](#): > > Most of the world doesn’t recognize Love. The idea as the West knows it is completely foriegn to people such as Indians or many African tribes//nations So? America isn’t India or Africa. Why should the state of marriage in some other country matter in the least? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2004, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/42 "2004-02-14T17:33:04Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > How about rather than simply claiming that my arguments based on past civilizations (Rome never recognized marriage between the same sex), are unfounded, you present your “facts” that Homosexual Marriage is infact a good thing to allow. > Just give a good reason to allow homosexual marriages. We’ll work on that. Meanwhile, why don’t you give us a good reason to allow heterosexual marriages? Heck, give us a good reason to allow people to have kids. After all, if the parents divorce, the kid will be screwed up, because you said everyone who grows up with a single parent is somehow screwed up. We have to ban all pregnancies to protect the children, right? ---
**Author:** ![MrVisible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MrVisible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrVisible)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2004, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/43 "2004-02-14T17:41:30Z")
Seeing as **TBR** has fogged things up considerably around here, I’d like to pose a few questions for (him? her?). 1. All children don’t have a mother and a father. In fact, throughout history, children have been raised by single parents, or in orphanages, or in a whole vast variety of configurations. There are thousands of kids right now being raised by gay parents. Why do these children deserve less in the way of legal protections than the kids raised in nuclear families? 2. [33% of adoptions](http://statistics.adoption.com/single_adoptive_parents.php) from foster care are by single parents. I presume you admit that having one parent is better than being in the foster home system, despite the fact that there aren’t both sexes of parent. Why, then, is having two parents of the same sex, who can both provide for a child financially and emotionally, worse than having a single parent? 3. There are consistently more than [120,000 children](http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/dis/afcars/publications/afcars.htm') waiting to be adopted each year in the US. There are less than 90,000 adoptions completed each year. Tens of thousands of children are stuck in the system, waiting for parents. What good does it do society to eliminate a massive pool of potential adoptive parents? 4. You bring up the idea that gay marriage will be detrimental to society. Please specify how. As in, detail for us the exact effect that you think the legalization of gay marriage will have on an enormous, centuries-old democratic republic that will cause it to cease to exist. Bring facts. ---
**Author:** ![Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weird_AL_Einstein)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/44 "2004-02-15T15:40:46Z")
> [@Faldage](#): > > Can anyone offer a cogent non-religious objection to same-sex marriages? I am responding directly to the OP here, not to anything that came after it. What I post here is nothing I haven’t said already, in this very forum more than once. In fact I can cut and paste it directly from my save files. The OP must have missed it. I post with a certain forlorn hope…people here seem to relish taking on the kind of “arguments” put forth by **The\_Broken\_Column** , but when they come up against an _actual_ “cogent non-religious objection to same-sex marriages” I get a sense they’d rather just avert their eyes… Anyway…here we go again: Words are _labels_ that we put on things, on phenomena that actually exist in the real world. To have clear communication, different things need different labels. Now, if you accept as an axiom that men and women are different in fundamental ways, then an inescapable corallary is that a relationship between two men is fundamentally _different_ from a relationship between a man and a woman is fundamentally _different_ from a relationship between two women. Please note, “different” does not mean “better” or “worse”. Just _different_. And if two phenomena in the real world are different, then I consider it a good policy to have two different words to describe them. And to address the idea that not calling it marriage is “discriminatory”: If we are to say that “seperate but equal” is an unnacceptable form of discrimination when it comes to gender, even if the discrimination consists of no more than the application of seperate labels…which would be the case if the state were to create a category of civil union with all of the same rights as marriage…wouldn’t it then be equally unnacceptable for the state to even so much as use the words “man” or “woman”, or any derivatives like “mother” and “father”, in any of it’s laws or statutes? Think about it. If it is acceptable for a man to be referred to with the label “man”, and for a woman to be referred to with the label “woman”, as long as they are treated equally under the law, then why is it unnacceptable for a union between a man and a woman to be referred to with one label, and a union between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, to be referred to with another, as long as they are also treated equally under the law? ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/45 "2004-02-15T16:13:44Z")
I’m just amazed that The\_Broken\_Column has been so easily allowed to shift the burden in this discussion; when people called him or her out on supporting his/her assertions with facts, the response was to forget all about those unsupported claims and instead provide evidence that gay marriage was a good thing! That little primer about debate structure…I mean, geez, people, when he/she supplied the unsupported arguments, he/she pretty much said, “prove me wrong” and of course that is not where the burden of proof should lie…so instead he/she simply says, “OK, let’s forget about my claims (so it won’t be necessary to provide cites or examples, presumably) and in the meantime, _here, let me make a claim **for you** for you to defend._” I’m just flabbergasted that no one has said, “Hold on a here, a second, the challenge in the OP is not to prove that gay marriages are good- they could be neutral in many respects, for example- but to provide non-religious arguments against gay marriage.” Sorry, The\_Broken\_Record, but I’m still going to hold you accountable for your claims. You’ve got all of recorded human history to draw from, so let’s have your evidence, not just conjecture and assumption and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![MrVisible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MrVisible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrVisible)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/46 "2004-02-15T16:36:00Z")
> [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](#): > > To have clear communication, different things need different labels. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, most of this debate is caused by the simple fact that marriage in this culture refers to two separate and distinct things; the secular contract that legally binds two people together in the eyes of the state, and the religious ceremony that binds two people together in the eyes of God. So, in one regard, your argument is pretty silly; yes, it’d be nice to have different labels for every variation on every person, place and thing in the world, but in reality, different things are often referred to by the same word. Right is not only a direction, but a legal entitlement, correct, and a political inclination. If I really believed that civil unions would be indistinguishable from marriages in the legal sense, I would be completely happy entering into one. However, all of the civil unions proposed to date have significant differences. The most common one is that, while a state may recognize a civil union, they have no standing under federal law. Seeing as there are [1049 federal benefits, rights, and privileges](http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/og97016.pdf) which are contingent on marital status, that’s a really big deal. Even if the current proposed civil unions were totally equal in all regards to marriage, I’d be wary. Once you’ve established a separate category for one type of person, there’s the possibility that in the future, some legislature or other would start passing laws that applied to civil unions and not to marriage, or vice versa. So, in other words, if civil unions were completely equal to marriage in all regards, and if there was a way to guarantee that in the future that equality would be maintained in perpetuity, I’d be completely in favor of civil unions, and this argument would be about semantics and nothing else. However, that’s not the case. If you’re interested in a very thorough discussion of this aspect of the matter, I’d suggest reading [the Massachusetts Supreme Court Judges’ Opinion](http://www.glad.org/marriage/SJC_Advisory_Opinion_020404.shtml) given to the state senate about this very issue. One of my favorite parts: > [@](#): > > For no rational reason the marriage laws of the Commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain. The bill would have the effect of maintaining and fostering a stigma of exclusion that the Constitution prohibits. It would deny to same-sex “spouses” only a status that is specially recognized in society and has significant social and other advantages. The Massachusetts Constitution, as was explained in the Goodridge opinion, does not permit such invidious discrimination, no matter how well intentioned. I love that. Invidious discrimination. I’ve known it all my life, of course, but it’s amazing to see it condemned by the courts. > [@](#): > > …but when they come up against an actual “cogent non-religious objection to same-sex marriages” I get a sense they’d rather just avert their eyes… No eye-averting here. But then again, there’s also no “cogent non-religious objection to same-sex marriages” either. There’s simply an objection to the fact that gay people won’t be satisfied with a separate and unequal status under the law. Would it have been acceptable to you if the marriage of an interracial couple wasn’t allowed to be called marriage, but was called something else instead? If the union of a black woman and a white man had most, but not all of the rights assigned to the marriage of a white couple? People of different races are, after all, referred to as such by the law, and some laws apply to them differently. Why extend the benefits of marriage to them, in that case? You don’t deny people rights because of semantics. ---
**Author:** ![spectrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spectrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spectrum)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/47 "2004-02-15T20:43:00Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > Family. I’m gay, and I’m just as much a member of a family as any hetero. The notion of the nuclear family is less than 80 years old, and hardly an ideal. > [@](#): > > Humanity has never existed as other species, which communally raise children. Nonsense. To one degree or another, we are all influenced and raised by our communities. Children in their formative years spend far more time out in the community, being “raised,” for lack of a better word, by teachers and school peers, than they do at home. > [@](#): > > Mothers and Fathers raise children differently, without both, you have an imbalanced child. Sixty years of increasing single parenthood has disabused the rest of society of this notion. Time to catch up. ---
**Author:** ![spectrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spectrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spectrum)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/48 "2004-02-15T20:44:47Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > How about you just prove I’m wrong…my “facts” are the way it’s worked in every major civilzation in the past 5,000 years. Gay “marriages” were common in pre-modern Europe, and there were even Church rites for such ceremonies. > [@](#): > > If you allow Gays to marry, why not allow some dude to marry a dog? What’s the difference? Well, most obviously, a dog is not a human who can consent. Nor is a dog sentient. But thanks for calling me a sub-human animal just because I’m gay. ---
**Author:** ![spectrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spectrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spectrum)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/49 "2004-02-15T20:49:48Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > Civilizations don’t take well to a collapse of morality on all levels. What is immoral about my love? What makes yours so much better? If anyone could love a “person” like you, that is. > [@](#): > > And the arguement that Animals can’t consent is stupid. A Dog is not going to divorce his/her wife/husband if they get married…what more consent do you need? This is the stupidest thing anyone has ever written on the Internet, ever. You should be ashamed for your continued comparison of human being to unintelligent, non-sentient animals. Do you even know what the legal concept of “consent” is? ---
**Author:** ![spectrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spectrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spectrum)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/50 "2004-02-15T20:52:40Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > How about rather than simply claiming that my arguments based on past civilizations (Rome never recognized marriage between the same sex), are unfounded, you present your “facts” that Homosexual Marriage is infact a good thing to allow. > > Not refutes of whatever I’ve claimed, erase those, clean slate. > > Just give a good reason to allow homosexual marriages. Because equality is an inherent good. Love is an inherent good. And no two consenting, loving adults should be treated differently by the law than another pair of consenting, loving adults just because of their gender. ---
**Author:** ![Alien2022](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e19adc/32.png) [@Alien2022](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien2022)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/51 "2004-02-15T20:54:10Z")
Hello The\_Broken\_Column, or should I say FreeMason. 😉 Whether it should or should not be legalized is going to become irrelevent here quickly. Either it will, or it will not because of the threshold the gay community is reaching. A 1960’s Civil Rights Movement is approaching, very quickly. ---
**Author:** ![spectrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spectrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spectrum)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/52 "2004-02-15T20:55:13Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > 1. Who should legalize Gay Marriage? I’m for State’s making their own legislation on this, not the Nat’l Government. It is not gays who are seeking to make this a national issue, but the people like you, who hate and despise us. > [@](#): > > 1. It was Rousseau who argued that Society itself was inequal in nature, so why should we bother to try and be “equal” in every thing? Rousseau said a lot, and much of it was wrong. He was also a philosopher of the French Revolution, which was a separate movement from American Democracy. I fail to see why his thoughts apply. > [@](#): > > But a gay man has in this society equal opportunities everywhere, even to marry women and thus get the benefits they so desire. Yippee, I get to marry a woman I’ll never be in love with and whom I will never be attracted to. Thank you for condemning me to a life of Hell. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/53 "2004-02-15T21:10:29Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > Civilization is based on one principle alone. > > Family. You’re exaggeratting. Even you don’t believe that this is the ONLY principle needed for a working civilization. > [@](#): > > Without family there is no civilization. Well, duh, its an important basic component. Someone has to raise the children, and people like to form families. But in case you missed it, gay people like and already have families too. You even acknowledge this later on. So, yet again, this is either irrelevant or hyperbole, depending on how you mean it. > [@](#): > > Gay Marriages, will destroy the family structure that OUR Civilization is based upon. Yet to be seen. Yet to see a good argument as to how. In fact, the reality is that there are ALREADY gay families raising kids. Gay marriage wouldn’t create them, because they already exist no matter what. Gay marriage would help those families be more functional in the legal and civil and economic arena. Unless you advocate breaking up those families outright, why would you want them to be LESS functional rather than MORE functional? For your point of view, gay marriage seems at least like the lesser of two evils. > [@](#): > > Humanity has never existed as other species, which communally raise children. Actually, not true, depending on what you mean. Many native socieites existed this way in a wide variation of child-raising set-ups. Even across societies today, there is a wide variation of how families and extended familes work. > [@](#): > > And certainly has never existed where the concept of a mother or father does not exist. Again, true, but irrelevant. Of course such concepts exist in all societies, if only for genetic reasons alone. So what? What does the existence of concepts have to do with anything. Gay marriage won’t erase _concepts_. Further, you’re again glossing over the realities that while these very general concepts exist, ACTUAL mother and father roles are so vastly diverse across not only cultures but just different people that it makes almost no sense to pretend that they are any one similar “influence” in a child’s life. > [@](#): > > It’s not the same to adopt a child to a family of two unmarried guys, because the child will still relate to his/her mother. > > But to adopt to two gay guys, how will the child relate to the mother then? And where will the motherly influence be? I’m confused: why is there a mother in the first scenario, and if there is, why can’t it be in the picture in the second scenario as well? > [@](#): > > Mothers and Fathers raise children differently, without both, you have an imbalanced child. See above. There just isn’t enough consistency here at all to make such statements. The way my mother raised me was so radically different from the way my friend’s mother raised him that it makes no sense to claim that there was any distinct influence that could be called the “mother” influence. Our “normal” family experiences were far more different from each other than they would have been if my dad happened to be a woman. So how can both his and my families be lumped under “normal” when a gay family would be closer to my own experience than to his? > [@](#): > > There’s no point in refuting my facts…because they are all that. So you say. On this board, nobody gets to declare that something is a “fact” and expect others to simply accept it. Anyone can claim that their opinion about something is a fact, but in the telling of the fact smuggle in faulty reasoning or irrelevant connections. > [@](#): > > If it worked, then we’d all have just mothers, or just fathers. But it doesn’t work, humans need both a mother and a father. Again: why? Can you prove that it doesn’t work? Can you explain any substantive REASON why it wouldn’t work other than this very vague “mother/father influence” you claim is essential? > [@](#): > > I can’t wait until some child grows up, and sues his gay parents, or the government for allowing his gay parents to adopt him, on the pretense that they denied him the right to grow up in a normal family. But kids have grown up with gay parents, and they seem to come out just fine (in fact, in adopted non-genetically related kids, they are no more likely to be gay themselves). The only special problem they face are, well, having to deal with people like you. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/54 "2004-02-15T21:20:20Z")
> [@The\_Broken\_Column](#): > > Civilizations at their peak (with the ONLY exception of Greek civilization which was never a cohesive society to begin with), were moral societies. Er, what? Ancient Greece was too a cohesive society. Athens was the first proto-democracy for goodness sakes, and the Greeks launched Western philosophy and learning. The fact that they got overrun in wars doesn’t say anything about their success in child rearing. And regardless, how was Greece not a moral society compared to other major civilizations? They had mother/father based families. > [@](#): > > If you can somehow magically explain, why Gay Marriages will not do to our civilizations today, what rampant do whatever you want society did to Rome, and all the other above nations, then by all means explain. Rome fell because of the squabbling of its rulers and their petty schemes in carving up their empires, not because of any change in family structure or public morals. The Empire stretched itself too thin. But you might as well claim that Christianity destroyed the Romans, because it was doing fine up until it became the official religion. Makes about as much sense (i.e. little) > [@](#): > > Civilizations don’t take well to a collapse of morality on all levels. YOU are the one calling gay marriage a collapse of morals. I see it as extending a moral institution to a group that has been denied it: moral progress. You might disagree, but let’s see you back it up with real arguments. > [@](#): > > Morals are lines drawn by choice, you want to move the line down court a little bit, to us who don’t want to move it at all, we see it for what it really is. But I see your views as immoral. Why are you correct and I wrong? Not all changes are slips to immorality: some are progress to greater morality, as the civil rights movements were. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/55 "2004-02-15T21:26:00Z")
> [@](#): > > 1. All children don’t have a mother and a father. In fact, throughout history, children have been raised by single parents, or in orphanages, or in a whole vast variety of configurations. And in fact, things are BETTER today in this regard: children are more likely to have at least two parents while growing up. This is largely because of advances in medical care, but the outcome is the same: in pre-revolutionary Puritan America, an idealized time, a HUGE chunks of kids had lost one or both parents. It was very common to be raised by a more distant family member, and even to go through several different primary caretakers as illness cut people down willy-nilly in a way we can barely even imagine today. ---
**Author:** ![spectrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spectrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spectrum)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2004, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/56 "2004-02-15T21:54:00Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > Rome fell because of the squabbling of its rulers and their petty schemes in carving up their empires, not because of any change in family structure or public morals. The Empire stretched itself too thin. But you might as well claim that Christianity destroyed the Romans, because it was doing fine up until it became the official religion. Makes about as much sense (i.e. little) Yes, but then she’d have to argue against St. Augustine. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2004, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/57 "2004-02-16T07:51:42Z")
> [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](#): > > Now, if you accept as an axiom that men and women are different in fundamental ways, then an inescapable corallary is that a relationship between two men is fundamentally _different_ from a relationship between a man and a woman is fundamentally _different_ from a relationship between two women. > > (…) > > Think about it. If it is acceptable for a man to be referred to with the label “man”, and for a woman to be referred to with the label “woman”, as long as they are treated equally under the law, then why is it unnacceptable for a union between a man and a woman to be referred to with one label, and a union between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, to be referred to with another, as long as they are also treated equally under the law? Because homosexual relations have been seen as inferior for much of humanity’s history, and reinforcing the notion that they’re different is therefore a Bad Thing. “Marriage” is the societal standard, and what gays really want with the gay marriage movement is to be allowed into the societal standard. ---
**Author:** ![Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weird_AL_Einstein)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2004, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/58 "2004-02-16T08:49:57Z")
Well…two people replied to me. I guess that’s better than nothing, but it seems that people would much rather get down with **The\_Broken\_Column** … > [@MrVisible](#): > > I couldn’t agree more. In fact, most of this debate is caused by the simple fact that marriage in this culture refers to two separate and distinct things; the secular contract that legally binds two people together in the eyes of the state, and the religious ceremony that binds two people together in the eyes of God. Civil and relious marriage are seperate and distinct, but not completely so. A religious marriage consists of a set of vows made publicly by a man and a woman to each other, enforcable by God in theory, by social pressure form the religious community in practice. A civil marriage consists of essentially the same set of vows, but is enforceable under the law, by the law enforcement authority of the state…a type of contract, in other words. > [@MrVisible](#): > > So, in one regard, your argument is pretty silly; yes, it’d be nice to have different labels for every variation on every person, place and thing in the world, but in reality, different things are often referred to by the same word. Right is not only a direction, but a legal entitlement, correct, and a political inclination. This is true so far as it goes, but doesn’t prove anything here one way or another. At one extreme we could be like the Eskimos who purportedly have 33 different words for different kinds of snow. I don’t think we need that myself, but at the other extreme there are the Marklars from South Park, who somehow are able to make themselves understood even though every third word out of their mouths is “marklar”. I don’t want that either. The question is, given this particular label, “marriage”, that already exists to describe a committed relationship between a man and a woman, should it’s definition be expanded to include similar kinds of relationships between people of the same sex? I personally don’t see how this is fundamentally any more desirable than expanding the definition of the word “man” to include women, or vice versa. > [@MrVisible](#): > > If I really believed that civil unions would be indistinguishable from marriages in the legal sense, I would be completely happy entering into one. However, Never mind the “however”, _if_ the two contracts were treated equally under the law, on what basis would you object to the differentiation in labelling? > [@MrVisible](#): > > Even if the current proposed civil unions were totally equal in all regards to marriage, I’d be wary. Once you’ve established a separate category for one type of person, there’s the possibility that in the future, some legislature or other would start passing laws that applied to civil unions and not to marriage, or vice versa. Well hell, the possibility of lawmakers making mischief of one kind or another will always exist, no matter what. In spite of the existence of diffferent labels for men and women, women did achieve equal rights. The possibility exists, though, that legislatures might pass laws treating them unequally. Do we have to abandon those labels as well, and take to calling everyone a “person”? > [@MrVisible](#): > > So, in other words, if civil unions were completely equal to marriage in all regards, and if there was a way to guarantee that in the future that equality would be maintained in perpetuity, I’d be completely in favor of civil unions, and this argument would be about semantics and nothing else. However, that’s not the case. There is no way to guarantee _anything_ in perpetuity, no matter what laws you make, or what labels you change. > [@MrVisible](#): > > Would it have been acceptable to you if the marriage of an interracial couple wasn’t allowed to be called marriage, but was called something else instead? No, but not _because_ the two relationships were treated unequally under the law, if in fact they _were_ treated equally under the law. > [@MrVisible](#): > > If the union of a black woman and a white man had most, but not all of the rights assigned to the marriage of a white couple? No, but now you are confusing the issue by assuming they _wouldn’t_ be equal under the law. > [@MrVisible](#): > > People of different races are, after all, referred to as such by the law, and some laws apply to them differently. Why extend the benefits of marriage to them, in that case? I don’t think race and gender are at all analogous when it comes to intimate relationships. Would you like me to explain why? > [@MrVisible](#): > > You don’t deny people rights because of semantics. I agree with that statement completely, though not in the sense that I assume you meant it. > [@Priceguy](#): > > Because homosexual relations have been seen as inferior for much of humanity’s history, and reinforcing the notion that they’re different is therefore a Bad Thing. “Marriage” is the societal standard, and what gays really want with the gay marriage movement is to be allowed into the societal standard. _Women_ have been “seen as inferior for much of humanity’s history”. We’ve gotten over that, mostly, in western society at least, and we did it without expanding the definition of the word “man” to include women. And what do you mean exactly by “societal standard”? Couldn’t I just as easily say that the “societal standard” is that marriage is between a man and a woman? ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2004, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/59 "2004-02-16T09:25:13Z")
> [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](#): > > _Women_ have been “seen as inferior for much of humanity’s history”. We’ve gotten over that, mostly, in western society at least, and we did it without expanding the definition of the word “man” to include women. Yes. That doesn’t mean that it was automatically the correct or easiest way to go. Also, there is a point in maintaining the distinction between man and woman. If nothing else, doctors need to know it. Men don’t get cancer of the ovaries and women don’t get cancer of the testicles. I see no such point in maintaining the distinction between straight marriages and gay marriages. > [@](#): > > And what do you mean exactly by “societal standard”? Couldn’t I just as easily say that the “societal standard” is that marriage is between a man and a woman? Oh yes. That’s what we want to change. ---
**Author:** ![mrsam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5ac83/32.png) [@mrsam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrsam)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2004, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098/60 "2004-02-16T11:16:27Z")
I cited these ages ago but this one seems to come up periodically. Flaks, Ficher, Masterpasqua, Joseph **Lesbians Choosing Motherhood: A Comparative Study of Lesbian and Heterosexual Parents and Their Children.** _Developmental Psychology. 31(1):105-114, January 1995._ > [@](#): > > Notwithstanding this study’s specific features, its results are entirely consistent with prior research on planned lesbian-mother families (McCandlish, 1987; Patterson, 1994; Steckel, 1985, 1987). Like earlier research, results of this study are consistent with the conclusion that the children of lesbian and heterosexual parents are remarkably similar, specifically in the areas of intellectual functioning and behavioral adjustment. In each of these areas, no gender differences were found; scores for both boys and girls in the lesbian- and heterosexual-parent groups were extremely similar, and each group compared favorably with the standardization samples for the instruments used. Furthermore, of the 24 comparisons made between the children in the two groups, 17 actually favored the children of lesbian parents, a fact that diminishes the likelihood that differences were not found because of problems associated with small sample size. Rather, given the direction and magnitude of these results, it is more probable that the two groups of children and parents were comparable in the areas assessed. Here’s a more recent one: Golombok, Perry, Burston, Murray, Mooney-Somers, Stevens, Golding, **Children With Lesbian Parents: A Community Study. Developmental Psychology.** \* 39(1):20-33, January 2003.\* > [@](#): > > The findings of the present investigation are largely in line with those of earlier studies of lesbian-mother families that pointed to positive mother-child relationships and well-adjusted children. No significant differences were identified between lesbian mothers and heterosexual mothers for most of the parenting variables, although lesbian mothers reported smacking their children less and engaged more frequently in imaginative and domestic play with their children than did heterosexual mothers. Regarding the children, no significant differences in psychiatric disorder were identified by a child psychologist who was unaware of family type or by mothers or teachers using the SDQ. Although there was a nonsignificant trend toward greater peer problems among children in lesbian-mother families as rated by mothers on the SDQ, the children themselves did not report greater problems with peers. With respect to gender development, there were no differences in gender-typed behavior between the children of lesbian parents and the children of heterosexual parents for either boys or girls. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-non-religious-objections/229098.md?page=4)