The Lamest Argument Against Gay Marriage

[Gorsnak]

I came in here planning on making the point that Bryan Ekers made, but I was wrong. This argument is indeed lamer than all the other lame “arguments” made against SSM. It’s the kind of lame that makes the polio-ridden cripple on a streetcorner in Calcutta look like an Olympic athlete.

That said, it’s only slightly lamer than Stephen Harper’s recent assertion that this is just the first step of the Liberals’ agenda to legalize polygamy. Makes me want to move to Calgary Southwest just so that I can vote against him.

[Polycarp]

@Miller

Thanks for the explanation. In that light, allow me to amend my earlier statement to, “Arguments against SSM are teh suXXors.”

I trust no one will object to that.

Duly noted. The Archivist will list this as Argument #1337.

[rjung]

@Rebekkah

She started off by saying the in early Nazi Germany, in the 30’s, Hitler gave equal rights to the “gays” (he did?!?), and used that as way to round them up and eliminate them come the Holocaust. She then compared the Liberal government to early stage facists and said that if we allow gays to marry, the liberals will use this as a way to track them down and persecute them at a later date.

Huh?

“We’re restricting your rights to protect you, you ungrateful homos!”

@Rebekkah

People are fucking nuts.

The scary fact is that their vote has as much weight as yours.

[SPOOFE]

All I know is that my ears just switch off whenever I hear someone compare Current Issue/Group X to something the Nazis did. Did you know that liberals breathe oxygen? JUST LIKE THE NAZIS?!?!? Run for the hills!!!

[aurelian]

Originally posted by SPOOFE:
All I know is that my ears just switch off whenever I hear someone compare Current Issue/Group X to something the Nazis did. Did you know that liberals breathe oxygen? JUST LIKE THE NAZIS?!?!? Run for the hills!!!

Or when Current Issue/ Group X is compared to a simliar group that helped precipitate the fall of the Roman empire (which was caused, btw, by of a lack of fundamentalist-Christian morals).

[Miller]

@rjung

The scary fact is that their vote has as much weight as yours.

Well, with these people, at least there’s always the chance that when they go to vote, they’ll wander into a phone booth instead and spend election day trying to find their candidate’s name in the phone book.

[Queen_Tonya]

Whew, how fortunate the gays are to have the neocons looking out for them!

I overheard a similarly confuzzling rationale for opposing gay marriage on what I presume was some wacky AM station. The jist was that if we legalize gay marriage in X state is 16 and the gays are allowed to marry, why that means some hypothetical ol’ gay man could marry an innocent boy merely 16!!
I kept waiting for them to extrapolate how this would be somehow worse than a hypothetical ol’ straight guy marrying an innocent 16 year old girl but of course that never happened.
The entire argument was ‘if gays are allowed to marry, age of consent laws won’t change but gay children marrying is hellaciously worse than straight kids.’

I had to repeat “I’m sure the next caller brought it up” to myself nearly fifty times before I could sleep that night.

[Queen_Tonya]

Umm throw in “age of consent” where I neglected to. :smack:

[Cat_Whisperer]

Was that Dave Rutherford and his bunch on QR77, Rebekkah? Or Ragin’ Rutherford, as I like to call him?

What amazes me about the SSM onfrikkin’going debates is that every time they start talking about it, the first thing people talk about is how it’s going to lead to polygamy, and the second thing it will lead to is bestiality. Good grief, people. You need to put down your Alberta Report magazine and get out once in awhile.

(Gorsnak, if you do move to Calgary, you’ll find lots of fellow Saskatchewanites, I assure you. )

[Gorsnak]

@featherlou

(Gorsnak, if you do move to Calgary, you’ll find lots of fellow Saskatchewanites, I assure you. )

Oh, there are lots of idiots closer by to vote against; I don’t think I have to move to the Kingdom of Ralph. I could, for example, move to the north end of town and vote against Maurice Vellacott, who’s been making some rather inane comments on the subject of late. Or I could just stay put and vote against Yellich again, though I haven’t heard her say anything. I don’t expect I’ll be able to top Mom and Dad, though, since they got to vote against Jim Pankiw twice. I can only aspire to such heights.

[matt_mcl]

“My home town of Hartford, Connecticut, just passed domestic partnerships. You go downtown and you give them your name and address and they write it down. You don’t get anything; they just get your name and address. And I’m thinking, ‘That’s great; when they come to kill all the queers, they’ll just go to my house first!’” - Maggie Cassella

[Ranchoth]

Say, what does this theory say about those courthouses putting up the ten commandments, and putting the “warning stickers” on science textbooks, and whatnot?

Maybe the Republicans are secretly adding lion cages to the nation’s sports stadiums, or something? :eek:

Just goes to show…human looniness knows no bounds. It is the great gift and the great curse of our species.

[wolf_meister]

Musicat raised a good argument concerning other things that aren’t in the Bible.
How about mentioning things that are in the Bible? Cain slaying Abel, God creating floods to wipe out 99.9999999% of the human race, God blowing up cities, etc. Yes, there’s a nice source for moral direction. ARRRRGGGGHHHHH !!!

I live in Boston, Massachusetts - yep, the state where same-sex marriage has been legal for about six months. The state has not gone to Hell in a handbasket nor has it fallen off the face of the Earth. However, January, 2005 was the worst winter month in terms of snowfall. This obviously is a punishment from God due to the fact we have same-sex marriages in this state. :rolleyes:

[CanvasShoes]

@tdn

Ah. I did not know this. Learn something new yada yada.

Still, the caller would then have us believe that we need to ban SSM because we need to protect those poor, defenseless gays. I ain’t buying it.

NOTE, I do NOT agree with the caller, however I can see where they may have come up with that statement.

First off, it is a stupid statement on the caller’s part. But I don’t blame her/him for having thought it, however misguided. After all, there have been several similar statements made on this very board and IRL. That is, that there are those that have said that the fact that it’s (gay marriage) been disallowed yet again, IS the next step in the rounding up of gays by pitchfork and torches by nightfall. It’s entirely possible that the caller assimilated that mentality from his/her gay friends and/or acquaintances, but didn’t understand its intent.

A lot of those posts and IRL statements were made shortly after bush was elected and in fact they made claim to the “fact” that now that bush was in office, that making gay marriage illegal was the first step toward making homosexuality illegal, and other stuff like that.

I don’t know where he/she came up with the gay rights in Germany thing though.

[Liberal]

@Dead Badger

Assuming Lib is using the terms in their stricter logical senses, as is his wont, it is the difference between an argument which is internally contradictory, and one which is not, but is based on false premises. E.g.:

“If all dogs are cats, then Boris my dog is a cat” is valid but not sound, since not all dogs are cats.
“If all dogs are cats, then Boris my dog is not a cat” is neither valid nor sound.

The Wikipedia entry is quite helpful on this one.

Also, all circular arguments are valid. And in general, any argument is valid so long as all its inferences are drawn according to the rules of logic. But to be sound, an argument must meet two criteria: (1) it must be valid and not circular, and (2) all its premises must be true.

Your Wikipedia example is okay for illustrating the rule, but naturally it is seldom that easy to declare an argument unsound. Two people might view the same argument differently, one as sound and the other as unsound if, for example, one of the premises is that it is possible that God exists. The person who agrees with that premise will find the Modal Ontological Proof to be sound, whereas the person who does not will find it to be valid but not sound.

[bienville]

@Miller

Well, with these people, at least there’s always the chance that when they go to vote, they’ll wander into a phone booth instead and spend election day trying to find their candidate’s name in the phone book.

They manage to get to the polls much more dilligently than those with the opposing viewpoint.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

[F.U.Shakespeare]

Has anyone noted that he OP quotes the arguer are saying that “the liberals” will be the persecutors?

Makes perfect sense to me: the minute the liberals get into power, they will undergo a 180-degree shift. (Picture the evil-laugh speech given by Sideshow Bob right after he was elected Mayor). All the pro-gay rights rhetoric of the last fifteen years (which cost them all those elections) will be replaced by their true goal: to “persecute” homosexuals.

Wake up people!

[Grey]

The Liberal party is the current government of Canada.

[CanvasShoes]

Look folks. There’s an old saying, which applies VERY well in this situation.

Know thine enemy.

How many people voted against gay marriage in those states this last election? Couple hundred million? So, they are all either stupid evil mouthbreathing troglodytes, or normal people with a differing viewpoint on this subject. (with the provision that OF COURSE each group has its stupid evil mouthbreathing trogs).

If they are stupid evil mouthbreathing troglodytes (SEMTs), then who cares what they think?

The trouble is, that whether they are SEMTs, or just normal people with a different viewpoint on the issue of homosexuality, they DO currently stand between gay couples and legal couplehood.

So, now what do you do? Keep on bringing up examples like this silly person? Or understand the reasoning behind it (know thine enemy) and use that to your advantage?

I don’t personally understand any other reasoning behind it other than the religious one. After all, in my humble opinion, I’ll ikely never get lucky enough to find the man of my dreams, so why SHOULDN’T people that have found " the one" at least get some happiness?

However, until those “in the fight” start to understand the reasoning behind it, and start working WITH that, rather than simply dismissing it as stupid evil mouthbreathing troglodytism then the fight is going to continue to be a losing one.

It will eventually happen, but it COULD happen a lot sooner if people would understand the motives of those against gay marriage (NOTE!! “Understand” does NOT = agree with). I think this is may be what another poster might have been getting at with his “valid” argument statement?

Choosing the cause of gay marriage as a way of shove it down their throats “we’ll show ‘THEM’ gays are SO normal people” type thing is, as has been proven over the ages by normal human nature, is NOT going to work. People will always fight something forced upon them.

There are those, particularly in the religious side, that will never agree. This doesn’t mean that they’re right. But fighting to force them TO agree will only delay the right to marry, as was shown in the recent election.

Understand their objections, work with them and around them, then the change will occur at a much quicker rate.

[Polycarp]

I’m not going to quote Canvas Shoes’ magnum opus in full, but she’s got a really good point.

There are a lot of people out there who don’t realize they know gay (closeted) people and whose opinions of gay people are formed from idiotic, homophobic, or comedy-level misrepresentations. And who cannot wrap their mind around the idea that two people of the same sex can love each other in the same way as they love their spouse, fiancé(e), or SO.

Add in the “'tain’t right” fulminations of most religious groups, toned down from Swaggert-style denunciation to “While we affirm the right of homosexually oriented people to be sinners in need of Christ’s salvation the same as the rest of us, Scripture teaches us that homosexual practice is indeed a sin…” or similar mealy-mouthed fence-straddling. Then throw in the “ick factor.”

Net result: Nobody among them sees it as a question of civil rights, but as a debate about whether a legal status ought to be extended to people whom they “know” don’t look at it in the same way as they do.

That’s where education, in the sense of making the injustice clear, becomes important.