You say people are born evil.? What kind of god would make them evil then punish them. That is disgusting.
Who is they? I’ve never heard this before. Is there a non-Phelps like site/cite that talks about this?
But they presumably chose not to be gay sometime in their childhood, like God intended, and gays supposedly chose to be gay, no doubt to slap God in the face. Yesterday the California Supreme Court ruled that religious belief did not entitle doctors to discriminate against gay patients. Clearly some doctors think that enabling a lesbian getting pregnant is against the will of their god.
I doubt the premise of the OP, since the desire to marry directly contradicts lack of love and desire for promiscuity. I think a lot of the problem is education in bigotry from parents and church, and not knowing that the nice guy down the hall is gay. I suspect the turning of the tide comes from people coming and and blowing away stereotypes. When those who fear gays see this they redouble their efforts, just like in the south as it became clear Jim Crow was dying. At least in this case no fire hoses or dogs are involved.
I don’t know that “they don’t love each other like we do” is necessarily the root cause of opposition to gay marriage, but doesn’t it sort of sum up bigotry of all stripes? Isn’t “*they * don’t feel as deeply/don’t think as competently/are lacking our nobility/aren’t quite as *human * as **we ** are” exactly how people have demonized the Other for all of history?
Because it’s kind of true.
Wait, wait, hear me out.
Homosexual attitudes toward sex and sexual behavior is inherently and fundamentally different than “traditional” straight views - I think we really need to just put that on the table right now and acknowledge it as the elephant in the room before we even deal with the bigotry and attitudes. We’re dealing with two truly different sexual cultures, one of which happens to be the dominant one.
I’m not gay, but I have several friends that are homosexuals in long-term ( at least 10+ years, and 25+ for one couple) relationships, as well as a few single gay friends. They all have different mentalities toward sexual behavior than traditional straight couples do. Even the couple that’s been together for 25+ years, and who have one of the strongest and most committed relationships I’ve ever seen, thinks nothing of bringing other people into the bedroom and does so at least several times a year. This is to say nothing of the outright promiscuity practiced by my single gay friends.
It’s just there, and it’s true: sexual behavior is a different thing for homosexuals, even the closest analogues to “old married couples,” and it’s significantly more casual than it is for straight couples. This will always be true, and it’ll always be the thing that strikes traditional straights as gay relationships being “not the same,” as exclusivity is considered to be one of the defining aspects of marriage (just ask anyone in an open marriage about the attitudes they encounter from other marrieds).
A lot of gay males have that view of sex, but don’t see it as having anything to do with love. I love my partner more than anyone or anything I can imagine, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility of having sex with someone else. The love we have for each other is both related to and separate from the sex.
My opinion is that this is not a ‘gay’ attitude but a male one. You just don’t see it as prominantly in straight couples because there is only one male in the equation.
I don’t see a lot of swinging among my lesbian friends.
Exactly. I have that exact attitude, and I’m a traditional straight male. I could be married and have an affair a day and it would mean nothing to me and would be as unrelated to my marriage to me as golfing or going out for beers. I think most men, deep down, actually feel that way.
But the fact that we’re partnered with women keeps us from behaving that way. 
Put two men together, and it’s simply a different sexual equation - not just in attitude, but then in practice. And this will always be threatening, weird, slightly icky, and “other” to heterosexuals.
Poor straight boys. 
(though it does handily explain all the married men that troll for sex on the gay sections of craigslist and the like)
Amen, brother!–and I get as much guff from the religious as my gay cousin does. “You shouldn’t be married, you’re sleeping around and that’s not what marriage means.”
The bolded statement effectively sums up what I think the real issue is deep down–there’s a “typical” definition of marriage that’s much more complex and prescribed than “two people in love” or even “two hetero opposite-gendered people in love” and it’s that edifice that they’re trying to protect from expansion for fear, I dunno, that too many options and suddenly it’s not a beautiful ivory tower, it’s just another building.
I don’t buy your argument, because the issue is marriage and marriage strongly implies a committed, monogamous relationship, whereas the alternative implies more casual sexual behavior in perpetuity.
It’s just that they don’t want to condone gay sexual behavior at all, no matter how monogamous. If they don’t have the power to wipe it out, they at least want to keep it at the margins of society, under a cloud of condemnation.
Marriage implies God’s blessing of the sexual behavior in question. For the government to recognize gay marriages would be to officially declare that God blesses homosexuality, and therefore officially declare that Christian beliefs are wrong.
Right, so we now come full circle and realize the reason why people who feel that gay sex is a perversion do not want the “marriage” label attached to it.
You are envisioning a gay couple in a committed monogamous relationship. Others are envisioning men in assless chaps hitting each other with bullwhips and luring 14 year old boys in their lair.
The cultural differences on this issue are astonishing and I think that this issue, like the abortion one, is so emotional because the two sides are miles apart in their basic perception of the facts…
Yeah, lesbians often get lost in this equation (especially when homophobes go on and on about the dangers of ‘gay sex’ and AIDS as God’s punishment). I also like to see homophobes’ heads explode when informed that it’s not so rare for some gay males to never have anal sex.
I think anti-gay marriage (and homophobic) sentiments stem both from the fear of losing a popular point of argument – all gay people are sluts with no family values – and, well, a smidgen of jealousy. A bit like slut bashing. ‘Why should they get to have NSA attached sex when it’s so difficult for me?’
But that doesn’t make any sense. They’re certainly not going to put away the assless chaps if they don’t get married.
I’m not envisioning a gay couple in a committed monogamous relationship, it’s directly implied by the word marriage. GMOs* don’t want them to be committed and monogamous–and to be in love–because that would imply legitimacy. They want them to whip each other and pour excrement over each other because that’s something that can be condemned, and so wrong is still wrong.
*Gay Marriage Opponents
No, a religious ceremony implies God (or Goddess or gods) blessing. The civil side of a marriage implies the goverment’s acceptance of a cluster of legal and monetary contracts.
Exactly. From a civil perspective, marriage may *imply * a monogamous (which is different from committed, incidentally) relationship, but that’s not what it means. It *means * that you are now each other’s next of kin, with all the legal ramifications of such.
But the GMOs don’t care about that distinction–it’s holy matrimony, Batman!
Similarly, the RR persistently blurs the distinction between government agencies and “public life” when they complain about the removal of religious displays. The religious side and the government side are both part of the culture and mutually reinforcing (when convenient; they don’t look at helping the poor that way).
I’m sure a lot of GMOs don’t even realize that a lot of gay have gotten married in commitment ceremonies–even religious ones–but if you point to them, they’ll point to the lack of government recognition as proof that they’re not “really” marriage.
But what it’s really all about is the fairy tale, the love affair, and the blessing (and wasn’t there a big city mayor that got in trouble for illegally “solemnizing” marriages?). Marriage is a public acknowledgment that the couple is joined in the eyes of God. I’m sure they say that even atheist marriages have God’s blessing whether they admit it or not.
People, as James Baldwin puts it, do not believe there can be tears between men; they think we are only playing at a game and we do it to shock them.
How many times have I faced the idea that aspects of my love life that are precisely analogous to aspects of heterosexual love lives that are considered innocent and sweet are seen as sordid or at the very least in poor taste?
It needn’t even be considered “sinful,” as such – how often have we heard “I have no problem with what you do, but I don’t want to hear about your sex lives,” as if knowing that two opposite-gender people were married didn’t imply something about their sex lives?
It’s even in our own heads a lot of the time, and I really have to insist against myself, even, to talk about things that straight people feel perfectly at ease talking about.
So to that extent, the OP is on the money as far as it goes.
i jus think it comes down to people being taught set definitions of right and wrong and that you should stop other ppl from doing wrong. its difficult to unlern those teachings.
overall i feel sorry for the gay couples who want to commit to each other and have that commitment accepted and cant. but i look at it as being similar to ethnic and womens rights in that in a few generations from now it’ll probably just be the fanatics who have a problem with it.
i even think opposers like the catholic church will come around eventually for a few reasons:
- they claim its in the bible. but they used to claim that the bible said the sun went round the earth and the world was flat.
- when the church finally gives the ok, they should have no problem finding an obscure reference saying gays are ok. with a million contradictions and hundreds of different translations, the bible is handy like that.
3)isnt catholic doctrin that everybody is a sinner by default? if so whats the difference between gay sinners and strait sinners?
oh an as for the ppl saying that AIDS is god punishing gays. it would be interesting to see how they account for bi-sexuals and gay-curious and “drunk-gay”.
also how does the logic work on this?
if being gay is genetic/biological (my belief) then god created them that way so what are they being punished for?
and if being gay is a choice then what happens if they choose to be strait again? does the desease magically disappear or what?