I can remember when women who liked sex were called nymphomaniacs. Even by some in the nedical community. Not prostitutes, or “easy” women, but women who had affairs, or who wanted more (sex) than their husbands could or would give them. “Normal” women, it seems, wanted closeness and snuggles more than actual screwing. :dubious:
Anyway, I mention this because I suspect there may be parallels.
You’re talking about divorce, not marriage. While one requires the other to have occurred first, they are not the same thing. My wife and I are childless, and likely to stay that way. Our relationship is not called a civil union by the government. We check the exact same box that says “Married” as the couple down the street with little rugrats running around. If you asked people that know both couples, they would likely be unanimous in stating that they consider us to be more “married” than the couple with kids. There is no law anywhere that I am familiar with that requires either children, or the anticipation of children, in order to be married.
Divorce between a childless same sex couple is identical to a divorce between a childless hetero couple. Likewise, a divorce between a same sex couple with children is identical to a hetero couple with children. There are indeed differences between those with and without children, namely that one has children, and the other doesn’t. Neither of those states have any bearing on whether I am married or not.
Regarding the taxes, there are things in place that affect married couples differently than singles, but the tax breaks for children apply to married couples and single parents, and therefore has no bearing on whether someone is married or not.
Well, nobody needs to explain what it’s like not to act on the love they feel for someone of the same sex, I’m afraid. I’m all over that. I’ll just say from personal experience that it definitely does not lead to a “cure.”
No, a closet bigot would never have bothered to write in this thread at all. Or would’ve just said “I’m against it and I don’t care to debate it but here’s what I think anyway and I’m not going to pay attention to what you say in response, because I’ve made up my mind.”
Nope, it’s still just a stereotype. A stereotype with some basis in truth, of course, but still just a stereotype. You’ve got to remember that just because some characteristic applies to some members of a certain group, it doesn’t apply to all of them.
Yeah, there are a lot of gay men who don’t want to get married, who aren’t particularly into families or even into long-term relationships. In fact, the majority of the gay men I’ve met are turned off by the idea of marriage. But then, how many single heterosexual guys do you know who get really excited at the idea of long-term commitment? Whether they’re gay or straight, men are still men.
And remember that this spring in San Francisco, over 3000 couples jumped through hoops and over legal hurdles in order to get married. They weren’t all women. Are all of those people supposed to go without, just because there are a lot of people who share 1 trait in common with them (being homosexual), and they don’t have the same goals or values?
I do see the distinction between gay marriage and a childless hetero marriage. One is illegal, the other isn’t. Taxes, divorce proceedings, custody – all these are details. The basic right to marry isn’t denied to hetero couples that choose to remain childless.
It took me a few years to come to terms with it, too, and I had a personal interest at stake. But time is running out. There are an awful lot of men and women who have been together and in love for years or decades, and they deserve for our society to show respect to that level of commitment.
From everything you’ve said, you seem view the ability to repoduce as the only fundamental difference between a homosexual and heterosexual relationship.
In that case, heterosexual marriages where one partner is sterile are on exactly equal footing as homosexual marriages. If homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry because they can’t have children together, then sterile heterosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry, either. Either they should both be allowable, or both not allowable.
In all fairness, Dun King, I gotta say; I’m really impressed with you. You’ve been very open to our arguments. It can’t be easy, questioning something you’ve always taken as (no pun intended) gospel.
I’m not comparing this with the civil rights movement. This is the civil rights movement. You know, that’s exactly why the “race card” gets played so much. Because people recognize that it’s ludicrous to discriminate based on something as arbitrary as skin color, but they still fail to see how it’s ludicrous to discriminate based on gender.
There is only one thing in there that a homosexual couple can’t do that a heterosexual couple can: create a child that is the combination of both of their DNA. Everything else is open to same-sex couples. And heterosexual couples who choose to adopt. Or use a surrogate mother.
If it does always come back to the biology of conception for you, then that’s fine. You just have to ask yourself if that’s enough grounds to deny marriage to the thousands of same-sex couples who want it and have proven they deserve it.
Hmmm, I dunno, man. I remain unconvinced.
See, I don’t have anything against you personally, but I just don’t know if I can recognize this “marriage” of yours as valid. I just don’t know if straight men and women are cut out for marriage. By far, the majority of straight guys I’ve met will wince and get nervous at the prospect of a long-term commitment. And in all my years, and in spite of the hundreds of women I’ve met, I’ve never once had that feeling of love and attraction towards a woman.
I mean, I know how it is for me. How I met a guy who “clicked” with me within 10 minutes after talking to him. How we talked for hours that night and I felt I’d finally found someone who really connected with me. And for the next week afterwards, when we couldn’t talk because I was out of town, I spent every waking moment (and many of the sleeping ones) thinking about him. And I realized that I was going to have to finally come out of the closet so I could tell my friends about him. And how when we met in person I felt more comfortable and more right than I ever have with anyone else. And how we could talk for hours and I wouldn’t notice the time passing. How I would say something and he could finish my sentences. How every moment we spent apart, I would think about him. How I would go to bed every night thinking of what our lives together would be like. And how I would spend all day at work thinking about him, and everything I saw, everything I experienced, I wanted to tell him about, and I wanted to know what he was doing as well. And how I’d wonder what our family would be like, how we’d raise our kid, would we have more than one, wouldn’t it be great to show him or her what the world is like? And how for the first time in my life, everything made sense, and I saw that it was actually going to be possible for me to have the life that I’d always imagined for myself.
Maybe that kind of thing is possible for a man and a woman; I can’t say.
As an offhand question, are you familiar with homosexuality in the animal kingdom? Given the quantity of species that exhibit homosexual behaviour, including individuals who will remain with same-sex partners even when opposite-sex partners are available to them, it stretches my suspension of disbelief that the specific species of which I am a member would somehow be exempt.
Responding to several posts in this one…
See, I don’t think there’s any excuse for that kind of behavior. The people who do that clearly have more issues than just not coping with gay family.
I actually had this discussion with a gay dorm buddy a long while ago. I said, “no, I’ve always pretty much felt like I’m a straight guy, no chance of changing, etc.” He immediately became hostile, saying I’m in denial, called me a repressed homosexual, homophobe, etc. This is after a couple of months of me rejecting his drunken advances. It kinda scarred me. Every time someone asks me that, it makes me cringe. :mad:
Thank you for not taking that approach.
But, yeah, I choose to be straight. I’d choose that way again. All this I have in my marriage, I want. I want my wife, I want to have children, I want to provide for them materially, emotionally, spiritually. Definitely, I’d choose straight again.
I can see that a gay person will have wants of a different and possibly opposite nature, but with the same kind of intensity. I have no problem with that.
But I never said I was against a legal framework for gay marriage, either. If anything, I’m for one, just for the sake of simplicity and consistency. Legally, such a marriage would likely be similar to mine.
What I am against is the notion that the kind of marriage I have is, I dunno, spiritually similar to a gay marriage. No that’s not the right word. I wish I could just figure out how to say it.
I’m just glad to see that I’m not the only person person posting in this thread with a logically ambiguous statement. Not that I’m using this as a defense. The irony just made me laugh out loud, and I had to share.
No, of course not. But I can’t help but feel that a good portion of that was socio-political grandstanding. How can we safely consider the legitimate couples, and discount those who were there mostly for the civil disobedience? The whole thing is a mess, personally I think the mayor of San Francisco overstepped his bounds, I think the Superior Court got a little power-happy in how they annulled the marriages. Enough with the election-year tub-thumping already.
Er, right. Yes, I do feel that if this weren’t an election year, if we didn’t have certain politicians who routinely speak in macros simpler than my own, if there were actualy some form of, I don’t know, actual dialogue amongst the big movers and shakers, it wouldn’t be this big of an issue. That’s a road I really don’t want to go down tonight.
You’re putting a lot of absolute statements into my mouth. And I’m not so sure it’s as black-and-white as you say.
I’ve already said that it always comes back to the kids, for me, but there’s also something telling me there’s more to it than that. And I never said that homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
But I can’t help but feel that biology is a big part of this. Or at the very least, bringing up kids. That’s, like, the be-all end-all of existence, is to be a parent, to raise kids who aren’t mean and who eat their veggies.
IMHO.
The Dun King
Whowhatzitnow? What vast quantity of species in the animal kingdom regularly exercise monogamic homosexual behavior? We’re not counting worker bees, are we?
The Dun King
Hey, that’s cool, man.
And this, this was poetic. Thank you. I wish I could write like that.
The Dun King
I gather you missed the story about the gay penguin couple who were so desperate to adopt that they were incubating rocks, then . . . 
The book I know on the subject is called Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (the link is an Amazon.com one); I believe I got the title because it was recommended here on the SDMB. I haven’t bought it yet – if you could see my to-get booklist, y’know how it goes – but the summary does indicate that it discusses some two hundred species at least in passing.
Yeah, that really sucks. I don’t think there’s any real defense or excuse for that, so I won’t try. But I can kind of sort of see where that comes from – it’s really, really tough having to accept that you’re “different,” because people automatically assume that “different” is the same as “wrong.” So instead of assuming, “I’m this way, and he’s that way,” your “buddy” assumed that everybody must be like him on some level. You want to take comfort in the idea that everybody goes through the same process that you’re going through.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that no one is truly 100% homosexual or 100% heterosexual. I just don’t buy it, mostly because I just can’t relate. Even when I was at my most convinced that I could turn myself straight, I still knew that I’m gay, and I’ve kind of always known on some level.
You choose those things from your life, but you don’t choose to be straight. Just above, you said that you’ve “always known” that you’re a straight guy. It’s the same with gay people. I always wanted to have all the things that you mention, and I used to believe that the only way I could get that was to be straight. But I can’t be straight, and I’ve tried. It just doesn’t work. And the cool thing is, I can still have all those things – or at least, I can if people don’t get in my way and try to deny me from having them. And you know, I’d choose to be gay again, too. Hopefully next time, I figure it out earlier and stop wasting so many years trying to fight it.
I wish that too. Because I honestly don’t see how they’re necessarily different, and would like someone to explain it to me. I still consider myself a Christian, and my faith and spirituality are still very important to me, and I don’t consider that to be mutually exclusive with my sexual orientation. In fact, a big part of the reason I came out was so I could finally have a full, complete, monogamous, spiritual relationship with another person, instead of having to keep it secret or be in denial at how “serious” it could ever get.
Heh, that’s awesome. I didn’t even notice I said that. Okay, let me put it this way: all gay men aren’t the same. But hetero men and homos have a lot more in common than you’d probably think.
You discount them just by saying that there was probably a good many people there who were only there to make a political statement, and recognize that not all of them could possibly have gone through all that hassle just in order to make some empty gesture in the name of the gay rights movement.
Does the fact that Britney Spears was married for less than a day, invalidate all heterosexual marriages? Does the story of Anne Heche mean that no lesbians are capable of genuine long-term relationships? Does the fact that a few of the couples in San Francisco were probably grand-standing mean that no same-sex couples want a “real” marriage?
That’s cool. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think about having a son (okay, I admit I’m biased. But a daughter would be cool too) and explaining to him how things work, taking him to Disneyland, teaching him the stuff my parents taught me, listening to him describe the world as he sees it, and being proud at all the stuff he’s able to accomplish.
But I couldn’t possibly do all that alone, and I would never do that without a stable family to which I’d add a child. And to be honest, I just wouldn’t feel right doing that unless I were married to my partner.
It just occurred to me: the only thing a gay couple can’t do that a straight couple can is have a child by accident.
Must’ve been because all the… NO! I WON’T SAY IT! I’ll spare everyone the obvious pun.
That’s some interesting stuff. I work at a used book store; I’ll definitely be able to snag this one if/when it comes across the counter.
But this relates strongly to a point I raised earlier. Now that this guy has done the research and published his findings (and even wrote a book!) we really need a disinterested third party to follow up. I don’t know if it’s happened yet, or if it even will, like the reviews say, this is a topic many biologists are nervous about…
Ya know, there’s a movie script in there somewhere…
The Dun King
Um, it sounds remarkably like you’re saying that not only is my marriage spiritually lesser than yours, but my existence meaningless. Is that what you’re trying to say, or do you need to clarify some more?
As for your argument that childless hetero marriages are legally different from those with children, that is incorrect. Having children causes differences in how taxes get done and divorce proceedings play out, but those are not differences in the marriage itself. Tax deductions for children apply to anyone who has a kid, married or not. Divorce proceedings are just ways to divide up assets and responsibilities accrued during the marriage. If you buy property together instead of renting, your proceedings are going to be more complicated, but that doesn’t make the marriages of home-owners legally different from the marriages of renters.
First, let me explain that my font really squeezes letters together, and second, my eyesight ain’t what it used to be.
I was reading your post, above, when I read this;
I was half amused, half confused as I read the rest of your post. What I thought I’d read just didn’t fit in with your eloquent description of love, so I went back and re-read the sentence. This time I leaned a little closer and put on my readers. Aha! :o
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just mentally combime the “c” and the “l” of "clicked.
I hope I don’t offend, but thanks for the chuckle.
Dun King, I reread this thread this morning. If I read you right, what it seems you are trying to convey is that you feel that there is nothing beyond the physical in a homosexual relationship. Is that correct? Well, maybe friendship, but not the bond you believe exists between a man and woman. Is that what you’re trying to say?
Yeah, I’ve had a gay man hit on me before, though I think it was more because I was a 17-year-old virgin and unsure of myself and he thought it was fun to watch me squirm. (He was the costumer for a show I was in at the time.) I would have a much, much better response now that I know who I am.
Still, it’s an axiom of mine that we judge others based on the way we know ourselves to be. It’s easy to see our own behavior as it is reflected in the mirror of our friends.
Your friend had seen his own behavior in you and, for his own reasons, mistakenly attributed it to the same motivation. You yourself are very likely doing this as you observe same-sex couples, because you admit that you have trouble understanding the depth of the need for commitment with someone of your own sex. Take yourself out of yourself and look at it with someone else’s eyes. (It isn’t easy. Practice!) Imagine yourself in a world where everything you wanted with your wife (love, sex, home life, children, closeness, lifelong bond) was something you were forbidden from having because a book from the Olden Days said No.
I’m not gay or religious, so perhaps this qualifies me as a disinterested third party. (In some circles, at least.) As a purely practical matter, if raising children is the desired outcome of a marriage, a child raised by same-sex parents cannot in my view be worse off than a child who grows up poor and parentless in an orphanage and abandoned on the street at 15. And it’s not as if there isn’t Child Protective Services around to help children of hetero couples who get abandoned in carseats or left in their own feces or beaten and broken and sodomized by whole, married, working hetero parents. How can being raised by same-sex parents be worse than the worst of the existing abuses?
And yes, I’ve known gay men with the wild and flamboyant one-night-stand lifestyle. Truth be told, I’ve known more straight men with this tendency than gays. By volume, I mean; the percentages wouldn’t easily compare. Straight men flaunt this lifestyle. Our society reveres it in many ways. We have an image that a man who fucks and fights too much is powerful and vigorous. We forgive the television evangelist who tearfully admits he was unfaithful to his wife because he could not resist the temptation of a woman. A gay man who likes to fuck is somehow an embarassment and shameful? I don’t get it.
I say let 'em get married. Call it the same as a regular marriage. They couldn’t screw it up worse than we already have. If (between you and your God) you decide that their marriage isn’t as sacred as yours, so be it. I don’t doubt that there are similar turned-up noses about Ben and J-Lo, or Bruce and Demi, or whatever used-to-be-hot marriage in the news. Gay or straight, we all like to gossip and click our tongues and say “my relationship would never do that.”
I really enjoy this discussion with you, as you seem to be very open to hearing that which gives other people their understanding of the issues.
I’ve only got two words to say to that: “I WISH.”
See, no, not exactly. Certainly stronger than mere friendship. But I think the second part is right, I think I feel that there is a bond between a man and a woman that can be stronger than the strongest bond between a man and a man.
But that’s not quite right either. In any relationship there exist many bonds. Like there are many meanings for “love.” Is it that I feel there are more bonds, or that the bonds are stronger? That’s a good question. I haven’t really ever tackled it from that direction before.
I need to think on that.
The Dun King