In broad strokes, I see marriage as the societal recognition of the natural union of a man and a woman. The union that brought us all here. Faith is a man-made construct that is predated by such unions.
Please see my post immediately preceding this one.
This sounds a little like the tired old ‘marriage is for procreation’ argument. Or is it just the initial act of intercourse by our earliest ancestors?
If you believe, as you say:
then isn’t their attraction also “natural”?
I don’t know what you are referring to here.
I cannot speak for the LDS. My guess is that they would have supported some legal maneuver, as your side is now doing. As they have every right to.
No. I don’t. The rights argument to me is reasonable. Fighting with a position that gives gays equal rights and ALL the benefits afforded others save marriage is, IMO, very unreasonable. You’re demanding that all of society change to fit your philosophical worldview. Sorry. Have you ever heard of the word “compromise”?
Marriage IS important as a concept. It is important because a represents an institution that has been beneficial to society for hundreds if not thousands of years. It reflects the monogamous nature of man. That institution, called marriage, was a societal recognition of the natural union of a man and woman that is at the very foundation of each of us.
Your first sentence begs the question. You’re assuming this is a right they should have. If you insist on starting there you’re guaranteed to view any dissenters as hateful or bigoted. But that doesn’t make them so. Many of us disagree with your premise.
But here’s where your logic fails. I do support gay rights. You may not want to accept that, but I do. And I don’t think badly of gay people in the least. They’re simply attracted to the same sex. I think they’re stuck with that every bit as much as I’m stuck with being attracted only to females. I wish them love and happiness. At the same time, we all share a society. To demand that society change and take one of its fundamental institutions and redefone it based on your whim is ridiculous. And then when they do you claim that the only reason they could do so is because of hate or ignorance or bigotry turns you into an asshole. Sorry. But that’s just how it is.
So because my views don’t fit with yours I’m stupid. Not only that, I’m lying, and not actually expressing my views. And you have the balls to call anyone else stupid? Amazing. You may want to stick with bigotry, at least that nonsense isn’t easily disproved with an IQ test.
I feel that the inability on your part to comprehend and/or entertain my reasons is a failing on your side, not mine. So, I guess that settles that.:rolleyes:
I think that is wrong. I think that gay couples should have ALL the legal benefits as straight couples. If that were on the ballot, I would vote for it.
So you support gay marriage.
Or is it just the word that you’re hung up about?
Not quite. I thought after five pages of everyone repeating that exact same sentiments that you’d welcome an opinion from the other side. A look into the mind of “your enemy”, so to speak.
But I’ll tell you what: open another thread entitled “Poor us Prop 8 victims. Come in for a group hug, free whine.”, and I will stay out of it.
I have been reading your posts in this thread, and not responding so far because I don’t really feel it is my place to jump into this particular swimming pool. (For a variety of reasons)
But I am missing something.
If you are not opposed to giving same sex couples everything BUT the name marriage…why are you opposed to giving them the name?
This is the bit that I haven’t been able to understand. I am sure you are trying to articulate it in other of your posts (such as the one immediately before the one I quoted) but I am not following.
You have my full permission to treat me like a youg and slightly stupid child.
Why are you in favor of the rights but not the name?
What would legitimizing gay marriages do to damage “regular” marriage, magellan?
Faith most certainly predates marriages as any sort of societal recognition of a natural union or a governmental institution. After all this entire debate is about keeping domestic partnerships and marriages legally distinct – not socially, not physically, not religiously.
The relationship is not one of cause and effect, but one of association. And most of society would agree that the more closely linked the two, the better. To see what can happen when that link is broken, look at the plight of kids living in the inner cities.
That’s helpful. Thanks. You made it easy to ignore the rest of what you wrote.
Unfortunately, the rest of your post contradicts the negation you claim here.
BTW, marriage, to the law, has nothing whatsoever to do with procreation.
Der Trihs,
Sigh.
You know, the SSM issue is one that can enflame passions, making people say things that are just bat shit insane. But since you are already bat shit insane (not to mention one of the most hate-filled people on these boards), the boost you get from the added passion sends you off the charts and makes dialogue impossible.
But, keep frothing, by all means.
In that it is innate, yes. But not everything that is natural is something we single out as deserving of special status. People are born as albinos, yet we don’t mandate that national parks be domed. Yeah, bad analogy. As far as sexual preference, evidently there are people that are born hardwired to be attracted to 13-year-old girls. Just because that is “natural” doesn’t mean society should reconform itself for them, does it?
I support the ability to two gay people to live as a couple just the way married couples do, with ALL the legal benefits. I feel strongly that it should not be called marriage.
Ah, I knew we’d get to the root of the matter. You don’t care about gay marriage. Gays are sick.
You know, if you truly didn’t think gays were sick, the better analogy would be left-handedness. Ban them from marriage too?
But, you’ve outed yourself, and your true feelings.
Yes, but compromise with bigotry is wrong. And no one but a fool thinks there’s any chance of separate but equal AGAIN being separate but unequal. That is the whole, the only point of trying to shove them off into second class ghetto-marriages.
Oh, please. The majority of cultures have practiced polygamy; and those that are officially monogamous like ours are primarily on so in word, not deed. And historically, marriage has been a number of things, many of them not admirable at all; like being an assertion of ownership of a woman by the biggest killer in the tribe, or the transfer of a piece of female property from one man to another. It has most certainly not been some sort of noble force for good with a history of millennia.
Don’t be silly. Some people want to get married; some don’t. Some people define themselves by their relationships; some don’t. Some people are gay, some straight.
And homosexuals being attracted to each other is just as natural as a man and a woman doing so; homosexuals aren’t built in a factory somewhere.
And I also assume that black people or Jews or left handed people have the right to marry. And anyone who disagrees IS a bigot.
I think you are lying. This isn’t Great Debates, where I have to pretend to believe you as you spout that sort of obvious lie. You don’t support them, and you wish humiliation, suffering and second class ( at best ) status among them. You want to deny them something that’s allowed to serial killers.
If you oppose same sex marriage, then you are bigoted scum. No better than a KKK member. Period.
Your ignorance is not my fault. I’ve been following the Prop 8 campaign here in California for the last three months.
But that’s not the issue.
You said that we should accept the LDS’s hand of friendship. But that hand of friendship was completely absent during the campaign, and is only being extended now that they’ve managed to shit all over anyone who cares about the rights of same-sex couples.
Sorry, but if you walk up to a person on the street, knock him over, take his money and spend it, you don’t then get to extend your hand and ask him to let bygones be bygones. Same principle applies here.
You don’t seem to get that fact that giving gays equal rights and denying them marriage are mutually exclusive. If gays can’t marry in the ame way that straight people can, then they do not have the same rights, by definition.
Would you support, then, making marital infidelity illegal? What about divorce?
I mean, if marriage is a symbol that “reflects the monogamous nature of man” and “the natural union of a man and woman that is at the very foundation of each of us,” and if this is the specific reason that you want to deny gays the right to marry, then why not also prohibit specific actions that drive straight at the heart of the marital institution?
After all, infidelity is an intentional repudiation not only of the martial vow, but of the idea of the “monogamous nature of man.” And divorce is an intentional, and often intentionally hostile, rejection of the martial bond.
If the prevalence of infidelity and divorce in our society pose no threat to marriage as symbol, then why should the wedding of two guys, or two women, pose any such threat?
I do make that assumption.
And i make it because i believe that consenting adults should be allowed to do things that do not impinge on the rights and freedoms of other people. If the simple fact of allowing gays to marry reduced the freedoms or the rights of heterosexual married couples in any way, or in any way reduced the legitimacy of their own marriages, i might be willing to entertain arguments against gay marriage, but it doesn’t, so i don’t.
The very fact that you describe this as a whim says about all we need to know about you. Surely the thought and the effort that gay people have put into gaining this right makes very clear that it’s far from a whim.
Also, remember that it was the proponents, not the opponents of Prop 8 who want to “redefine” marriage. There is no definition of marriage related to the sex of the couple in Cali9fornia constitution. Such a definition will only appear now, as a result of Prop 8.
Whatever else you believe, remember that the people who called for a dramatic shift here, the ones who were so incensed by this that they wanted to change the founding document of the state, were the proponents of Prop 8.
Leaving aside your one-dimensional argument about the alleged cause of inner-city problems, i ask again whether you think divorce and infidelity should be illegal. Because, to the extent that children—any children, whether from the inner city or not—are in a state of plight in America, it’s not the result of gay marriage.
So your rationale really IS little different from religious fundamentalism. At least, it’s based in thew same level of reason and logic. It’s good to know, because at least it alerts people that you are not interested in rationality when this issue is being discussed.