Bullshit. You can love and accompany whoever the hell you please without the state getting involved.
What about inheritance, spousal decision power and all the other things that straight people take for granted? I’m not expecting you to give a good answer. I know you don’t have one.
We’re calling you a bigot for a reason, Brutus. You are one. It’s just that simple. You choose to discriminate a group of citizens for no sensible reason. You pretend to have a sensible reason and for all I know you may even believe that you do, but you just don’t. It comes down to this: why differentiate between gays and straights in this manner? What’s the point? There is none. You choose to do so anyway.
Bullshit back (isn’t this fun?). The state, as you will surely agree, is already involved in marriage. The standard wedding vow is:
This mentions both love and companionship, but not children. You are clearly talking about some other type of marriage, therefore. Would you care to tell us which?
Actually, here’s a more common one:
Again, I’m seeing love and companionship but no promise to have ones loins bear fruit.
Brutus: No offence, but if you are not going to have children, why should the state grant you the privileges intended to help raise children?
Again, it sounds as though the real point of your argument is not against gay marriage but against childless marriage. That, at least, is a logically consistent position, so why spoil it with illogical arguments that childless gay couples ought to be denied the same rights that childless straight couples get? They just make you look like, yes, a bigot who’s clutching at the “childlessness” factor for the purpose of resisting gay marriage per se.
Go convince the state to fix its unfair policy of granting child-raising marriage privileges to any childless couples, and then you’ll have a logical leg to stand on when you argue that childless gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
If I am a ‘bigot’ in your eyes, I may as well just act like one.
You’re doing a pretty good job of that already, I’m afraid. Face it, Brutus, when you make illogical arguments in support of a policy that is largely supported by bigots, it is hard for others to understand what motivation you can possibly have except bigotry.
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.
Well, by your own admission, you think it’s unfair that the state grants marriage benefits to childless heterosexual couples, right? And removing that unfairness would be a change for the better, right? So you support changing the state’s institution of marriage to deny it to childless heterosexual couples, right?
In exactly the same way, gay-rights advocates are complaining about another form of unfairness in the marriage laws as currently defined, and arguing that removing that unfairness would be a change for the better.
You can love and accompany whoever the hell you please without the state getting involved.
But the fact remains that heterosexual couples, childless or otherwise, are allowed to involve the state in it if they want to, whereas homosexual couples, childless or otherwise, are not.
See, we are complaining about unfairness in the institution of marriage as it actually exists today. You are replying with the objection that it isn’t actually so unfair in the context of what you think the definition of marriage ought to be. That’s not a logical response.
So if we take for granted the unproved assertion that the purpose of marriage benefits is to make childrearing easier…
…and if we take for granted the unproved assertion that two parents of the same gender can’t raise children as two parents of the opposite gender…
(…and if we don’t ask “Well, why don’t we help gay couples raise children better by giving them those benefits of marriage, then?”…)
…and if we completely ignore the other legal incidents of marriage that have nothing to do with childrearing, like the ability to refuse to testify against your spouse in court…
…then that still doesn’t demonstrate how the hell gay marriage is “a threat to the fabric of society” on a par with international terrorism!
Brutus isn’t just trying to shift the burden of proof. He’s throwing proof out the window entirely by focusing on things irrelevant to the issue at hand in this thread. Some people ask how the hell gay marriage is at all equivalent to international terrorism, and in response Brutus has dragged us into hypothetical la-la land.
I was getting all angry at your homophobic and bigoted view of the matter, but then I read the quote above, and now I get it! You’re just a raging lunatic! That makes it a lot easier to ignore you.
I meant “can’t raise children as well as two parents of the opposite gender”, of course.
And friend Brutus, a voice in the crowd, cries out!
“Won’t somebody please think of the children!”
Some more references, studies of gay parents have been going on for more than 20 years, and there’s no evidence that the kids turn out poorly.
And a counterpoint, which makes the argument that because gays have a higher suicide rate than the national average, they’d make unstable parents.
Ahem. Such brilliant reasoning will be right up Brutus’ alley.
Brutus, if a same sex couple had custody of a child, would you support them getting married, and partaking of the child rearing benefits?
Just for argument purposes, assume the other parent died, or is otherwise unfit for parenting, and the living parent wanted to remarry but with a person of the same sex.
I think that “scientist” was Edie Massey in Female Trouble: “Queers are just better. I’d be so proud if you was a fag, and had a nice beautician boyfriend. I’d never have to worry. I’m worried that you’ll work in an office, get married, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life.”
It may well be that homo sex is better than het sex. Don’t know, not likely to find out, since the idea of kissing another guy creeps me out. But if thats a problem, its my problem, not thier problem. Long as they don’t scare the horses, none of my beeswax.
Why would anyone want the dull ordinary life of the married, office-slogging het? I’ve no idea. But if they do, why shouldn’t they have it?
And as well as the children, think about the parents. People used to torment themselves needlessly when thier children turned out to be slightly bent. Where did they go wrong, how did they fail? Why shouldn’t they have the comfort of nagging thier son-in-law and spoiling thier grandchildren in vengeance?
So, I take it you feel my parents’ marriage ought to be legally annulled? They’re certainly not raising any children: I’m 41, and my younger brother is 39. We may be their biological offspring, but by no means are we kids. By your logic, my parents’ marriage should have ended 20 years or more ago, and their legal status for the past 2 decades should simply have been that of “shacking up”.
Boy, THAT’S one legal change that’s going to go over well with the public!
Face it, Brutus: marriage isn’t solely (or even primarily) about raising children. Othewise the elderly, the infertile, and those who deliberately choose to remain childless would not be permitted to benefit from the institution - and they are.
To be honest, I could give a sweet shit if the opposition’s becomes more determined. We have tried asking, we have tried reasoning so fuck it, time to take what we want. Assuming that you are one of those folks that wish to deny people the protection of marriage based on orientation, and in reading you’re your posts I have no reason to think differently, well fuck you to. Enjoy being left behind in the 19th century. The rest of the world will get along quite well without you and your ilk standing in the way.
As to your foolish argument, I know that this is a hot button issue but do try to think. Talk to me when the president is proposing a constitutional amendment to prevent a specific sub-group of society from obtaining a small business license and then you might have something.
I’ve tried both. It is. Much better, in fact.
I still want to know how legalizing gay marriage would “fundamentally change the fabric of our society, and not for the better.”
Well, you see, the fabric of society is kind of like the fabric of the space-time continuum. If there’s a rip in the fabric, you could end up buggering your grandfather.
Damn. And me without my deflector dish.
Would that be a paradox or a pair of dicks?