I saw an article where a “scientist” said that homosexuality was dangerous because homosexual sex was better than heterosexual sex, and this lure will turn more and more people gay until we as a species completely fail to reproduce.
There is only one response to a claim like that:
what
Cute. But no. Not yet, at least. Cite me scientific evidence that children raised by gay couples are at least as good off, in general, as children raised by straight couples, and you may have an argument. But granting custody of children to gay couples ‘just to be fair’ is more than a bit silly.
Should we have asked interracial couples to furnish proof of their child-rearing abilities before their marriages were legalised?
Brutus,
It’s not just child rearing. It’s rights of survivorship, the ability to make family decisions when one partner is incapacitated and reaping the same financial benefits. I am a man who has been married to a woman for close to eleven years. We have no children by choice. You apparently don’t think that my wife and I should have the same rights as a hetero married couple with kids. In your mind our marriage is in the same company of the recent gay marriages. Well that’s mighty fine company indeed. I am proud to be there.
Haj
Brutus: *1) Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. As a society, we give that institution special privileges so that they may better raise children. […]
Wrong. The institution of marriage in the majority of human civilizations throughout history (including those in most of the millennia in the history of what is now known as “the Western world”) has been between one man and one or more women. In other words, polygamy is at least as old as marriage, and throughout most of human history has been as popular and accepted as monogamy, if not more so. If modern marriage can be redefined to exclude the ancient and traditional custom of polygamy, I don’t see why it can’t be redefined to include same-sex couples.
Nothing else. We don’t give them benefits so that they can better show their undying love for one and other, we want to give that ‘family unit’ a bit of a break, to better raise the next generation of to-be married men and women. […] In the interests of fairness, I wouldn’t be opposed to taking away the ‘benefits’ of legal marriage to couples, to be reinstated upon the birth of children.
In the interests of true fairness, you would have to be actively advocating for that policy. Otherwise you are being hypocritical in declaring that heterosexual marriage benefits are solely meant for the advantage of the couple’s children—but that it’s okay to give the same benefits to heterosexual childless couples, which is exactly what our current marriage laws do.
By the way, even if marriage benefits were confined only to couples raising children, why shouldn’t such benefits be extended to homosexual couples? Plenty of gay couples are raising children, you know.
2) Judicial activism sucks. […] Trying to sneak it in through judicial fiat just pisses off those sitting on the fence, and will more than likely hurt your cause in the longterm.
Pal, the judges are there partly in order to determine whether laws are constitutional. What you are saying is basically that judges should not do their job; instead, you want the legislatures to have sole control over what the laws are, without any oversight from the judicial branch. But the reason we have the three different branches of government is precisely so that they can oversee one another.
What that means is that from time to time, judges are gonna overturn laws that they consider to be in violation of constitutional principles. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. Whining about it and calling it “judicial activism” and “judicial fiat” whenever you happen to disagree with the judge’s decision is not going to change that.
The very crux of ‘conservatism’: Don’t change without a damned good reason to do so.
Liberty and justice for all, including equal rights for homosexuals, counts as a “damned good reason” for change in my book. I would be very disappointed if it turned out that most conservatives didn’t agree with that. However, they were wrong about civil rights for blacks too, and they eventually came around; so maybe there’s still hope.
Funny how inconspicuous anything to do with raising children is from what it takes to be married, then, eh?
The MA decision isn’t activist. If the people of Massachusetts wanted discrimination, they shouldn’t have passed the equal rights amendment the court cited in its decision.
Equal rights didn’t sneak through the judiciary, it was an amendment passed by the lawmakers on two consecutive congresses and then passed by the majority of citizens.
We’ve been hunter gatherers far longer than anything else. Is farming destroying your way of life?
Like equality before the law?
You are supporting active discrimination against a class of people because of your prejudices. That is bigotry. Someone so concerned with the definition of marriage should realize this.
There are other ways of accomplish the granting of certain other legal abilities. Being against gay marriage should not imply that I am unaware that some laws and procedures may need some updating. Hospital visitation procedures, to name one. But changing marriage to accomplish that is a cumbersome and devisive way of doing so.
No offence, but if you are not going to have children, why should the state grant you the privileges intended to help raise children?
Surely if you’re denying someone the opportunity to adopt, it ought to be incumbent upon you to prove they are unfit. “Because they’re gay, duh,” doesn’t really cut it…
I don’t know what this sentence is supposed to mean, but I know what it was supposed to say, which is funny how conspicuously absent etc.
But gay people don’t have to be “granted” custody of their own children. So you’re saying you’d support full marriage rights to same-sex couples if one of the partners had custody of his or her own natural or legally adopted child, correct? I’m glad to see you’re starting to come around on this.
Do you believe infertile people should be denied the right to marry?
What privileges are those? I don’t get the tax credit, in fact I get screwed by the “marriage penelty.”
How does getting to keep all of the assets when I die and getting to make medical decisions for me when I am incapacitated have anything to do with children?
Haj
No. They can adopt. If a sufficient body of evidence is presented showing that gay couples are, on the average, as good at parenting as are straight couples, then the argument becomes moot.
Marriage, as ‘granted’ by the state, should be for the express purpose of helping people raise children. Like I said, I can see the need to change some laws to allow for people to have certain legal abilities to act on behalf of their ‘mates’. But until children enter into the equation, I see no reason that tax benefits and whatnot should be present.
So can Rosie O’Donnell. So has Rosie O’Donnell. What’s more, I understand she has taken a wife in San Francisco quite recently. I’ll try to find out where they’re registered if you’re interested.
Again, why should the burden of proof be on gay adopters? You are trying to oppose gay marriage without saying explicitly that you dislike gay people, but the presumption that they will not be as good parents contains this very opinion.
What it comes to is this: If you oppose the equal access to societies secular institutions to specific groups of people (and the rights, protections and responsibilities that go with that access), you are a bigot. Like it or not, although there are obvious religious aspects to marriage, it is a secular institution. I say this because, after all, it is the State that issues marriage licenses and the state that enforces the protection that marriage affords.
In the end, the above quoted argument will not stand and I utterly reject it as a tenable term for debate. If you want to go down that road, why stop there. Obviously, children of wealthier parents can, on average, be expected to do better in life then the kids of poor folks. Why not have an income requirement for procreation or adoption? Perhaps we could go even further and target folks with specific disabilities, or even myopia. Bring on eugenics, baby!
You’re shifting the burden of proof. Why assume gay couples are bad parents?
Isn’t it funny how child-rearing is only trotted out as why society values marriage only when homosexuals try to marry?
But here are some studies on the differences, or lack thereof, between children of gay parents and children of heterosexual parents. http://www.apa.org/pi/l&gbib.html
Yeah, you can hear the mental cogs ticking, trying to find the one key issue (however irrelevant) that can distinguish hetero and gay marriages, then hanging an entire argument on it. Shame that any thought of love and companionship gets lost along the way - no, these days marriage is apparently solely about getting taxpayer money for pumping out sprogs. How very romantic. If this is the fabric of society, it’s sackcloth.
Hardly, and your constant characterization of your opposition as ‘bigots’ just adds to determination. You are going to sit there and fling names at me? Well, fuck you then. If I am a ‘bigot’ in your eyes, I may as well just act like one. :rolleyes:
The state denies equal access to secular institutions all the time. I cannot get the benefits that a small-business does, because I do not have a small business, one of the preconditions. Sure, I could start one just to get the benefits, but then again, a gay person could just marry a woman, no? I similarly cannot get a the various benefits that American Indians get, simply because I wasn’t born an American Indian! The unfairness of it! Et cetera. (Examples only. I do not think that I do or should qualify for either set of benefits.)
The state has every right and obligation to not change its institutions until it is shown that the change will, on the average, be for the better.