What does “solidify the opinion” mean, in this context? Heterosexuals will stop marrying/having children?
Incidentally, I’ll just repeat something I asked earlier, in case you missed it:
As for your claims that you’d drop your opposition [to same-sex marriage] if:
[ul][li]High morals could be maintained, and/or[*]Homosexuality could be shown to be instinctive[/ul][/li]
Well, I can’t really argue for the first without a good working definition of “high morals” (please offer one), but I’m sure I can find any number of cites from reputable psychiatric journals that show homosexuality as a purely natural inclination felt by some random segment of the population. If I do so, will you stand by your word and drop all opposition?
Well, humans are not a separate and isolated life form on earth. Our cues for procreation have evolved a system, as all life does, to do just that. When someone presents a precedent anywhere in the natural world that shows “ANY” survival advantage in the pairing ( mating ) of like sexes, I will concede that there is no ligitimate arguement against it.
Our culture is very reluctant to accept social change from tradition in many aspects. Conservatives often feel that the “Camel” of immorality and indecency, has it’s ugly head too far under the “tent” already. Like it or not, it is a moral issue.
I am not for a constitutional amendment. You cannot legislate morality, whatever your version of it is.
But this isn’t a solution, it’s simply denial of reality. Homosexuals aren’t going to go back into the closet. It’s a done deal. They exist, they are going to have to function in society. And they are going to have partnerships and those partnerships are going to need to function like marriages. They are going to need to take care of each other, have the ability to raise kids properly, and be treated as joint entities by law. The only thing that does this is marriage.
And the other thing you are in denial about is the future of marriage. We don’t have the choice of returning to the pre-50s days of marriage as an institution. That’s not on the table. What IS on the table is the fact that if homosexuals aren’t allowed to marry, then society will have to invent (and already is!) a whole bunch of “marriage-lites” to accomodate gays: basically marriages will all the benefits but none of the responsibilities. And in addition to these sudden inventions being being vastly inferior to marriage in terms of social stability, they will primarily have an effect not from homosexuals (who are a minority), but heterosexuals who choose them over marriage. They will compete with marriage, and they will suck the life out of it. Marriage will become just one option on a wide range of options from cohabitation to civil unions to domestic partnership and so on, all with ambiguous purposes legal statuses and so on.
Letting gays marry, on the other hand, restores marriage as THE universal, THE norm. That’s where it does the most good, has the social power it needs.
To think of God is to think of compassion for other human beings: anything less is empty contemplation of an abstract concept, sometihng I can’t imagine would give a God much joy. I find it tragic that for so many Christianity has become a way to avoid compassion through a dogmatic application of interpreted texts rather than to accept that Jesus-like compassion requires challenging what’s easy and conventional, challenging what our comfortable gut often tells us, instead doing the often very hard work of focusing on the actual human beings at stake.
Gay people need marriage. It would be good for them. And it would be good for the institution of marriage. In fact, it is THE place to make a stand FOR marriage: to say that yes, marriage is about being able to marry somebody that you can love, no matter who you are, to form a life bond that is about mutual responsibility through all the hardest parts of life. And it is important. So important that denying to this or that group is a shame, a serious missed opportunity for something positive for our society and the individuals seeking to marry. To live a life without marriage: without the prospect of marrying someone that you can love (and gay people are gay precisely because they cannot love, in the marry sort of love, anyone but same sex people, just the way I can’t love a man in the way that makes any sense for marriage). The sort of love needed for marriage is not necessarily a sexual love, not necessarily a passionate or romantic love, though that is part of it. It is a marriage kind of love, and that’s the only way to describe it. And that sort of love, not just lust, that marrying sort of love, is what many gay people feel for their partners. To deny them marriage is cruel. It bespeaks a lack of imagination, a lack of willingness to understand what a life without the prospect of marriage, without the prospect of a socially recognized and aided commitment, must be like, and how difficult it must be.
A lack of gay marriage means a lack of the ability to create family, at least not in the full sense. Families exist not simply because of penis and vaginas: they exist because society RECOGNIZES you as a family when you marry: and that recognition imposes the power of expectation and responsbility upon partners to care for each other.
What defines a marriage/family? Really? Even if you cheat on your wife, you are still married, still joined as family. Even without kids, you are still family. What is the thing that would really make a marriage meaningless?
It is this: if I stoped caring for my wife, stopped paying any attention to her life and she to mine. If I abandoned her. That is when people would no longer call it a marriage, and no longer really see us as a family, see me as truly failing to do what society expects a marriage to be all about. That is the power that gay couples need access to. The power to create family, to create bonds that everyone in a community will help enforce and police. To deny that to gay couples, who cannot do or be anything other than be gay, is cruel.
I don’t call people homophobes for opposing gay marriage. I do think it almost always boils down a refusal to take seriously the fact that homosexuals exist, but it is not necessarily bigoted or hateful. But it is cruel, and there is no way around that. It is saying “sorry gays, but you must pay the price: no marriage for you: no prospect of marriage for you. You are to be shut out. You can never go there.”
Apos, I read more and more of the Sol/prisoner exchanges with greater and greater irritation, because more and more I was getting included in the mix – as Sol pressed home his points and prisoner kept trying to redefine “family” to what he considers suitable as “family.” suddenly it was no longer “standing by them” – my family, those who mean all the world to me, was suddenly on the outside along with the gay couples and their children looking in at prisoner’s dream family, who alone are entitled to the blessings of society. And I finished the thread ready to jump in with both feet.
Then I read your post. And you calmly but emphatically and definitively set forth the problem, the meaning of “family,” and why including gay couples in that is a good idea socially, as well as being morally right.
And now, all I need to do here is say, “thank you.”
Nope, sorry – your options are 1)echo every condemnation allegedly handed down by God with equal vehemence and frequency, or 2)stop hiding behind scripture and admit that you are speaking for yourself, not God.
Since I reject the communist notion that the money belongs to the government, which out of its grace allows the taxpayer to keep some of it, I find this argument to be invalid on its face.
In order to impose your agenda at the point of a gun (we’re all grownups here; let’s be honest about the nature of government), you need a stronger case than mere personal belief.
In the long Pit thread that culminated with my agreeing I had been wrong on the merits, I expressed views against the recognition of same-sex marriage that did not come down to personal or religious reasons.
My arguments may have been “irrational,” in the sense that I ultimately was convinced they were flawed… but that’s a weird twisting of the word “irrational.” Certainly I was persuaded that my position was incorrect, but my arguments did not arise from being uncomfortable with or repulsed by homosexuality itself.
“Male black swans court and form stable pairs. With two males, they are able to defend huge territories from other swan couples, which sounds like a double-income-no-kids situation except that they often manage to wangle some eggs from somewhere – all right, they steal them – and become model parents, twice as successful as straight parents.”
Cite from this review of Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity.
I’ve seen figures that claim that male swan pairs have an 80% survival rate on the eggs they acquire, compared to a 30% survival rate on the eggs raised by mixed-sex swan couples. Those may be from the book, but as I haven’t managed to put my hands on a copy yet, I don’t know for certain.
I don’t support gay marriages. I don’t believe it’s right and is not acceptable. It is an abomination and should not be practiced. If you’re gay, so what, but don’t tell people they are wrong if they don’t support gay marriage. Don’t even think about telling me I’m wrong in what I don’t believe is right. It’s my opinion and every one is entitled to their own.
Abyss:It is an abomination and should not be practiced. If you’re gay, so what […] Don’t even think about telling me I’m wrong in what I don’t believe is right.
Make up your mind. Is being gay an “abomination”, or is it just a “so what”?
If it’s okay for you to tell someone else it’s an “abomination”, why isn’t it okay for someone else to tell you that you’re wrong to think so?
Like this: You’re wrong. Your opinion is misguided and ill-informed.
Well, you’re right. I’m not speaking for God. I didn’t say I was. These are my opinions. But they do have some correlation with scripture. But you’re missing the point. Everything we are arguing about is about my opinion. The op asked why some people are against gay marriage. I answered about why I am opposed to it. I’m not condemning anyone. I’m just illustrating my personal opinion. Now you guys continue to lambast me with questions and when I answer them you accuse me of verbally assaulting you. I’m not in the slightest. Your life is your own. But it does affect the world around you.
And I’d like to point out that I’m neither far right nor far left. This discussion is extreme because I’m having to come up with extreme examples to satisfy you folks. In fact, I’m a bit of a hybrid. I am pro-life anti-abortion and am working on being more christian and christ-like, yet I am pro-environment. I realize that the 50s era is long gone, (and good riddance) but we can still maintain some moral decency, right? That’s what I’m saying. The world is changing to a selfish, money driven world instead of a world intent on raising physically and emotionally healthy children. The removal of family from the definition of marriage is part of the problem. And since most people think homosexuals have no interest in raising a family, they believe that SSM is about personal love, not raising a family. Now all of a sudden a lot more people (I’m not talking about gays) think marriage is ONLY about love. THey are beginning to think children are a byproduct of that love, rather than the goal. We are still far from there. Ask young unmarried childless women if they want children. I’m sure the majority do. But times are changing. The percentage of women wanting to focus on their own personal careers is growing. It won’t be long before the majority of women want a career instead of kids. So, the world will then cater more to career minded women, rather than children. Gay marriage only strengthens the belief that marriage is only about love because it gives people an example of a couple that is happily married without children.
So to sum up. My problem isn’t with the moral indecency I feel goes with homosexuality, and it doesn’t have anything to do with that “immorality” affecting the world. Your homosexuality really doesn’t affect me. The problem I have is that family is being weeded out marriage. I have said this time and again. I don’t know how you can’t understand this. I don’t understand why you can’t see that this argument is all about personal opinion. I’m not condemning anyone. You asked freaking questions. And I answered. Arguing about it is pointless. You can’t convince me, and I’m not trying to convince you not to be gay. I know that it’s pointless for me to say that I feel that gay unions are wrong, but I’m not going to lie about it just to please you people. You asked. I answered.
Well, the fifties weren’t exactly “Super Swell Family Days”, either. This idea that we’re somehow more “immoral” than we were before is a crock. But that’s another debate in and of itself.
I’d like to point out that the same arguments you use about homosexuals were used about desegregation back in your precious '50s, prisoner6655321. It was WRONG then, and it’s WRONG now.
Saying marriage is all about children isn’t just spacious-it’s an insult to people who want children and cannot have them. How the HELL do you think that makes them feel, to be told they aren’t a “true” family?
Not very Christian attitude, from where I’m sitting.
Family isn’t about a husband, a wife, and 2.5 kids. It’s about a support system of people who love and protect you. People who are there for you, who back you up, and provide friendship, compassion and understanding.
What about nuns or priests living in monasteries? I’m sure they consider their fellow sisters or brothers to be family.
Well, after more than an hour looking for a specific post in the morass of gay rights-related threads, I’ve turned up nothing, so I’ll retract that statement.
The phrase “personal and religious reasons” had stuck in my head because I remembered (possibly mis-remembered, judging by my lack of search results) some poster as saying that in the middle of a thread in which he’d been discussing it in semantic terms and saying that all marriage should be taken out of the state’s hands. To suddenly say “I have my own objections for personal and religious reasons, but that’s irrelevant,” was a red flag – there’s something else going on that would cause such an insistence that it was wrong despite all arguments to the contrary. But like I said, I can’t find any such post, so I retract the statement.
I said something similar in a different thread, but I’ll repeat some of it here: when I use the word “homophobe,” I’m actually trying to be charitable. I feel like I can understand homophobia, I can relate to it. I know how to beat it. But I really don’t understand how someone can believe that homosexuality and same sex marriage should be shunned, or wiped out, or “cured,” or outlawed, or even thought of as so fundamentally different that it requires its own term, unless it’s based on some unspoken prejudice or invalid assumption.
And it’s ironic (this isn’t directed at you at all, Bricker; it’s just a general observation) that people will insist that they’re fine with equal rights, but that homosexual marriage is so fundamentally different from heterosexual that it requires its own term, and ask supporters of SSM why they’re so insistent on the word “marriage,” because it’s only a word. And then, they’ll react vehemently whenever they’re called “homophobic.”
Well, the trick in my case was a very well-reasoned argument that did not insist that the word was the same – I had been stalwart in saying “marriage” MEANT “between a man and a woman.” It was Daniel, I think, that very cogently pointed out that it was the MODEL of a male-female marriage that was being now applied to the new legal state of a same-sex pairing, and what better word existed to apply to that model than an existing word which encapsulated each and every element of the pairing?
I think there’s a respectable argument that “marriage” ought to be reserved to the church, and any administrative arrangements the government finds necessary ought to be handled separately, and given a different name (if only to minimize confusion). Obviously, this is equally true of straight or gay couples.
But marriage wasn’t invented by any particular religion, has never been solely practiced by religious people, isn’t even universally considered a religious ritual to start out with, and has never been the sole property of any particular religion.
That’s entirely true, but if a significant number of the people who are against same sex marriage really are against it because of their religious beliefs about marriage (and I don’t know if that’s true) , it might be easier to get the meaning by giving up the word. As I see it, the important issues regarding same sex marriage are that it have the same rights and responsibilties as opposite sex marriages and that both types be called by the same name. It doesn’t matter to me if the government calls the relationship between me and my husband a “marriage”, a “civil union” , or a “widget”. I just don’t understand people who think the name itself is important on either side- not the ones who think that SSM will somehow affect their own marriage, and not the ones who have a problem with giving separate names to the religious and civil institutions.
