I talked about demographic decline and a decline in the valuation of marriage. You ignored that. Like I said above it’s not that there aren’t reasons, it’s that the reasons are things you don’t value. But instead of just accepting that the reasons are things yuo don’t value you feel the need to say they aren’t even reasons. That’s bad faith interlocution, that’s all it is.
Well for you I would say it probably happened some many months maybe years ago that you did this.
I have offered many things that you do not value. Arguing with you is like arguing with a teenager.
Why shouldn’t siblings be able to marry? If one or the other is sterile would that make an exception to the right of siblings to marry? Why do you discriminate based on familial proximity if breeding is not a relevant function of marriage?
Demonstrating harm is a good criteria in my view as well. That’s not an irrational position.
When I say irrational I am not using it perjoratively. I am saying both sides are based off of validating an emotional response.
Given the length of the thread and the number of contributors, could you summarize the gists of these things into tidy paragraphs and make note of the post number for easy future reference? I have to admit, I’ve seen no major breakthrough moment that made me pause and consider that banning gay marriage might prove necessary, but possibly I simply missed it.
Put simply, what do you consider the single best (or best two, or best three) arguments against gay marriage? So far I’ve seen, in very rough terms:
[ul][li]Gay marriages don’t produce children[/li][li]Gay marriages will devalue straight marriages[/li][li]Gay marriage will undermine Christianity and society in general[/ul][/li]
…and possibly a few others. None of the above strike me as convincing, though. In fact, some of the arguments I’ve seen advanced are just plain false.
If there’s a good reason (or two, or three) to ban gay marriage, I don’t see why it need be a complicated one. The state can exercise eminent domain because public infrastructure benefits society. The state can ban drugs because drugs harm individuals. Whether one agrees with these or not, there is physical evidence demonstrated in a busy road used by people getting to and from work (where before there was some farmland), and a wasted junkie dying in an alley (where before was a young person with a promising future).
For gay marriage what is the “before” and what is the “after”?
I’m just waiting around for someone to demonstrate the harm caused by gay marriage.
Then at least acknowledge there are degrees of irrationality. I would hope that “all citizens deserve equal treatment under the law” is not viewed as the irrationality equivalent of “kill all fags.” Where on the spectrum of irrationality does “ban gay marriage” sit? Closer to the former or the latter?
That’s because the countries that have legalized SSM are mature, industrialized and have undergone the demographic transition. The mature, industrialized countries that have NOT legalized SSM also have below-replacement birthrates. The fall in birthrate has several causes, but the most salient seem to be the cost (in money and energy) of raising children, which leads some people to have fewer children and some people to have no children, and the desire for smaller families among those that do choose to have children so that parents can focus more on each child.
There has been quite a lot of research on this (admittedly most aimed at “how can we get the transition to happen faster in developing countries?”). Hedonistic orgies and rampant homosexual affairs have never been suggested as a contributor by any study I have yet seen.
Anyone who believes that civilization is contingent on not letting two people of the same sex mary gets a free “bigoted idiot” T-Shirt from me.
No, I dismissed them as being euphemisms for fear and hate, being utterly inconsistent with the world of fact or even with the “moral code and tradition” from which you allege them to arise.
You can either answer the question or let it be concluded that you cannot. I’ll ask again: When can the rest of us conclude that there is nothing substantial in the pro-homophobia position you so stoutly defend?
Like one who’s being incessantly told “Because I said so, that’s why?”
Yes, it’s true - I do not value hatred, or fear, or wrapping those things in religious cloaks and demanding that they therefore be accepted. Guess I’m just funny that way.
I asserted nothing about loss of religious values-- except that such loss was not caused by the existance of homosexuality. If you asert that homosexuality (or any manifestation of it, like SSM) will accelerate historical loss of religious values, it is your burden to make some offer of evidence. As I’ve asked before.
You have no idea what I may or may not value. And I have offered no arguments. I asked for evidence, which continues to be absent.
Anybody who “got it” want to help an old fool out here? Apparently my Altzheimer’s is showing.
I’ll go back to watching that dog and his tail, while I wait.
Generally the liberal social engineering you describe is taken as a wholistic system and viewed as pernicious as a whole. One place I agree is that the demographic transition is terrible thing. The idea that breeding below replacement rate is somehow a good thing is a vile idea. So not only is this generation of old people running up the debt per capita, they are also producing fewer people who will be saddled with that debt. Smaller families is a matter of replacement rate, going below replacement rate is imbalanced and has dangerous consequences. We will see what that’s like when the Boomers get to be hospice age and they break the socialized medicine systems they worked so hard to put together.
SSM isn’t even the core of this issue, it’s just one particular battleground. It’s seen as a bad omen because the social engineering has taken us so far that it even redefines marriage.
Now that “liberal social engineering” has been thrown into the ring, can I ask who’s in charge of it and what you think their goals are? After all, the word “engineering” implies a directed thought process, not a natural evolutionary process.
I mean, if “both sides are irrational” invokes images of arguing for creationism, “liberal social engineering” sure reminds me of various conspiracy theories I’ve heard.
Of course how gay marriage affects the birth rate is unclear. Heck, I’m sure there are some lesbian couples out there who would gladly have kids if they had the stability offered by a legal marriage - i.e. the pregnant spouse can be covered by the working spouse’s health insurance and the nonpregnant spouse can be assured of parental rights. The mechanism by which one of the spouses gets pregnant can be the well-established process of artificial insemination or she could just (ick!) have sex with a man.
A friend of mine has a lesbian sister. She and her long time partner were talking to him about having kids and thought they might ask him to donate to a selected sperm bank since genetically he was close to his sister and her partner would be having the baby. His question was “Haven’t you heard of direct deposit?”
Hold up, now. I posted a link to a study just two pages ago that has some pretty good evidence. Read my post here. (I should note that this post was in conversation with magellan01, who never returned to comment on it).
Here’s the money quote: “15 years after Denmark had granted same-sex couples the rights of marriage, rates of heterosexual marriage in those countries had gone up, and rates of heterosexual divorce had gone down.”
15 years is a decent timeline. Yes, it would be better if it were longer - all the more reason to get SSM legal ASAP so the new studies can begin.
Huh. First time I posted about this study in response to magellan01, he disappeared from the thread. Then I posted about it again to mswas, and he disappeared. Must be some kind of magic bullet or something…
