If you’re going to drag pseudoscience like “intelligent design” into this discussion, you are really not going to persuade anyone on this board. 
Beyond that, your argument still fails. Homosexuals employ various body parts containing erogenous nerves to gain sexual satisfaction, just as heterosexuals do. They simply have more effective methods of birth contriol.
So do people who choose the company of animals. That argument does not negate the normal behavior of a heterosexual species.
How do you determine what parts of the body were “designed” for, exactly? I know you well enough to know that you’re not talking about God as the designer, so I’m guessing you mean “designed by nature?” Well, let’s talk about that for a little bit. Let’s take the dick for an example.
The dick serves several clear purposes. The elimination of waste is one. Sex is another*. But, unlike many other animal species, humans aren’t “designed” to use sex solely as a means of reproduction. If we were, sex probably wouldn’t feel as good, and women would show clear external signs of ovulation, so we’d know when we were supposed to fuck. Instead, for humans, sex is primarily a socialization tool. (I say “primarily” because the vast majority of sex, even absent contraception, does not result in pregnancy.) For whatever reason, the human species evolved so that a certain portion of it is interested in sexual pair-bonding with the same gender. Now, I know that you feel that this particular kind of pair bonding is, for whatever reason, “less special” than opposite sex pair bonding, but to say that gays are using their bodies for something they “weren’t designed for” is clearly incorrect, unless you’re arguing from a purely theological standpoint.
[sub]*Also, I use mine to crack walnuts. But I may be unusual in that regard.[/sub]
We are not a heterosexual species. We are a species that displays a range of sexual behaviors, among which heterosexuality is simply the most common.
Now that this thread has turned tons of people against each other, lets dump some Kerosene on this fire.
I’ve heard that if you take a gay person and shake him upside down, a thick black liquid comes out of the top of his head. And I’ve heard christians need to eat this liquid to live.
Discuss.
Joining thread late; my apologies, somewhat halfhearted I guess, for returning to the general case now that you all are knee-deep in specifics and hypotheticals.
But.
I’ve read somewhere (I wish I could remember where; the blogosphere is full of this stuff) that the petit bourgeois middle class, and the white workingclass who aspire to be part of it, live in much greater fear of perceived threats to their way of life - very generally defined - than realistic or incipient threats to their civil liberties or constitutional freedoms.
To a large degree, goes the thesis, what threatens their way of life is simply a certain degree of difference. The idea that people somehow unlike them might be entitled to the way of life - or the freedoms and liberties - they enjoy is threatening in itself.
To fiscally-responsible lower-middle-class folk, it really does come down to numbers, money, and sweat. Life itself is a zero-sum game: anything given to Others must be taken away from Real Americans. What makes you freer makes me less free; what opens doors for you closes them for me.
The argument about “voting others’ rights away” doesn’t get far with this kind of thinking: the idea that these people ever even deserved these rights is, to them, misguided humanist twaddle. When people are a threat, they must be contained.
No no, that’s how you tell when we’re ripe.
Are there really that many fundamentalist young-Earth Christians?
The idea that some perceived, possibly, somewhere down the road things might be bad, BS is a valid reason to deny citizens equal rights in the here and now is utter nonsense and a shining example of the irrational and unfounded fears that make up the entirety of arguments opposing SSM.
There’s no escaping the obvious fact that this is the same kind of BS argument that stalled other equal rights movements.
Is this a joke? Let me rephrase, This is a joke! I’ve only had hetero relationships including marriage and I often used body parts, hers and mine, for things they weren’t designed for. {or were they?} If you need a cite I think I still have some pictures around here somewhere.
So we’re back to the “gay sex is ooky and I don’t want to sanction ooky things” argument. Which is problematic because, if you get down to brass tacks:
[ul]
[li]Sex acts engaged in by same-sex couples are practiced by hetero couples all the time, the only difference is genital symmetry. But anal sex is anal sex, whether the penetrated partner has a penis or a vagina.(Or whether the penetrating partner has a penis or a vagina, for that matter.)[/li][li]More importantly, existing marriage laws do not focus on the nature of sex that will or will not be had by the couple. A quadriplegic on a ventilator who is paralyzed from the shoulders down and cannot perform sexually in any fashion may still marry legally. Someone imprisoned on a life sentence in a state with no provision for conjugal visits may still marry legally. Someone lacking in genitalia (or functioning genitalia) entirely may still marry. There is no presumption under law that a couple who marries will engage in procreative penis-in-vagina intercourse in the midst of the marriage, and unlike days of yore, while lack of sexual consummation can still be used as a basis for legal dissolution of a marriage, a marriage is still fully legitimate so long as both parties agree that it is even if sex never occurs.[/li][/ul]
Simply put, the “gay sex is unnatural” argument dog don’t hunt. No matter what you think about what us freaky unnatural queers do in bed, that has nothing to do with the legal right to marry for heteros, so it cannot be applied to those seeking to marry someone of the same sex without creating an unacceptable double standard.
I don’t know if it’s ever been quantified, but it’s definitely seemed to be true, especially in this debate. Remember the “there’s a storm gathering” commercial by the “National Organization for Marriage (Inequality)” folks? The black clouds rolling in over the heads of frightened looking middle class people just like you and me (or just like you and I want to be)? The ominous music, the fearmongering?
The exploitation of the fear of loss is the anti-equality “activists” stock in trade. “Your marriage will be cheapened” and “marriage will be diluted” are the tip of that iceberg.
Exactly, and if there is no real threat, gin one up. “Our kids will be taught… facts! OH NO!”
I need to see if any polling has ever been done on how many people voted on Prop 8 or Maine 1 because of the worry about that hoary lie about what kids would be taught in school.
Oh, and I note for the record that Yorick73 and his ilk have refused to answer my question, so I’ll restate it. When I am free to be legally joined to the partner of my choice without regard to my race, my religion, my economic status, my incarceration status, my criminal history, my employment, my immigration or citizenship status or any other basis other than my sex, how is that anything but an act of gender discrimination antithetical to the freedoms guaranteed me by the constitution as well as the spirit of liberty upon which this nation is meant to be predicated?
Absolutely…as long as you refrain from calling me a racist homophobic bigot.
- Yes for the most part. My argument is that you cannot change one half of the definition of marriage without, at least, a push to change the other half.
- I don’t think poly/incestuous marriage would be horrible. In my opinion they are identical to SSM in that it is a fundamental change in how we as a society define marriage. I also believe, as I stated earlier, that altering the definition in such a way will lead to marriage being defined out of existence. Others have pointed out that this has not happened in countries that allow SSM but I don’t claim this will happen quickly. These things take time…maybe generations.
Well, you are wrong. Both because SSM isn’t changing the definition, and because we most certainly can choose to leave everything else alone.
How many generations? Polygamy being allowed was the norm for most of human history, and marriage has yet to vanish.
And again; SSM in no way changes the definition of marriage; nor does polygamy. Otherwise, phrases like “his third wife” and “Bob and Dave got married” would be unintelligible. Changing what is allowed isn’t the same as changing the definition.
The government has a compelling interest in prohibiting incestuous or polyamorous marriages. The government has no such interest in prohibiting homosexual marriages.
There are. In this 2007 poll, 39% of Americans said is it “definitely true” that God created humans within the last 10k years, and 26% said that was “probably true.”
Uh huh. And once more, this vague irrational fear of something maybe some day down the road possibly, I’m not sure but it might, lead to something bad is an incredibly piss poor reason to justify denying people equal rights.
We *might *suffer some harm somewhere down the road, so it’s best that you continue to suffer now just in case. Is that about it?
We don’t have countries that have had legal SSM for generations but we do have a history of the struggle for equal rights for other minorities and similar arguments about how changing the status quo may lead to bad things down the road. What does history tell you about those vague irrational fears?
They all turned out to be nonsesne didn’t they?
Yorick thinks that if he ignores this point it will go away. Much as he thinks that people calling him on his BS are just being mean.
OK, I am officially scared.
Marriage is not a right. And, even if it was there would still be no denial of equal rights.
Yes, and we can choose to tinker more with the definition whenever we want. We can do whatever we want, right? The people have spoken clearly on this issue and they “choose” to leave the definition alone.
Of course it changes the definition. Saying someone is married to their job is easily understandable yet everyone knows this is not literally possible. Just like when we here “Bob and Dave got married” we know they are not really married but are in a committed relationship.