Marriage Debate

Hardenbergh said:
Some of those people you value also value traditions.
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People who value tradition are those with no sense of self and who must resort to external means to define themselves.

Frankly I do not consider them to be the same species as myself, a being who is completely self-defined.

People who oppose gay marriage oppose it for one reason -- they fear the loss of a part of themselves should it be legalized -- and that is just pathetic.
 
Marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Nothing is being taken away from same-sex couples. It is not and has never been their right to marry. It wasn't even thought of until fairly recently.
 
Hardenbergh said:
Who said anything about trying to protect gays from the problems of marriage? The point was that gay couples want the same benefits of heterosexual married couples and this article points out some of the things that might not necessarily be beneficial and examples are noted.
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Poor people are allowed the same marriage rights as rich people, in spite of the evidence that socio-economic status is strongly correlated with academic achievement, and the socio-economic status of the child when they grow up. Would you advocate allowing only rich people to have children?

Also, child rearing is only tagentially related to gay marraige. Stick to the subject.
 
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Hardenbergh said:
Marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Nothing is being taken away from same-sex couples. It is not and has never been their right to marry. It wasn't even thought of until fairly recently.
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Untrue. There were "brotherhood" marraige ceremonies in ancient Rome. Also, looking right there in the Bible, we find that polygamy used to be accepted by the very people objecting to marraige "being changed". Y'all have already changed it once.
 
Hardenbergh said:
Who said anything about trying to protect gays from the problems of marriage? The point was that gay couples want the same benefits of heterosexual married couples and this article points out some of the things that might not necessarily be beneficial and examples are noted.
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Sorry, I should have put “protect” in quotes. It’s the unspoken assumption of this section of the paper that gays are incapable of recognizing that marriage comes with responsibilities attached. Why else get into all this stuff? It sounds incredibly patronizing considering the conclusions he’s trying to reach and the fact that gays will be reading it. “Marriage is really, really bad for you, so it’s in your best interests to make sure gay marriage stays illegal”.

It’s still not any sort of argument against gay marriage. A gay couple might not benefit from marriage, therefore it should illegal for any gay couple to get married? Those same downsides apply to heterosexual couples, but somehow I doubt that this guy is going to be speaking against “traditional” marriage anytime soon.
 
Hardenbergh said:
Marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Nothing is being taken away from same-sex couples. It is not and has never been their right to marry. It wasn't even thought of until fairly recently.
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It’s also only fairly recently that homosexuality was not a crime with punishments ranging from fines all the way up to death. I’m fairly certain that there were homosexual couples in the past who wanted to get married but could not make the case for their rights for fear of being executed.
 
Hardenbergh said:
Marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Nothing is being taken away from same-sex couples. It is not and has never been their right to marry. It wasn't even thought of until fairly recently.
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Marriage isn't a "right" either, it is a social privelege (sp?). And my point is that the only reason one would oppose gay marriage is because one is afraid that allowing it would somehow lessen or dilute the meaning of heterosexual marriage.

This might be true if marriage was always held to some objective standard, but it isn't. ANY claim that the meaning of marriage would be lessened by allowing same sex marriages can easily be shot down by simply finding counter-examples in the heterosexual couples that already exist.

Wouldn't be good to raise kids? -- guess what, tons of heterosexual parents are abusive bastards anyway.

Wouldn't allow for "true love"? -- guess what, tons of heterosexual couples don't love each other anyway.

etc, etc, etc...

In a nutshell, any claim that same sex marriage would hurt society at all is BS because society is already a veritable sh--hole.

In the end, it boils down to a simple reason (this is incidentally the reason for most of the crap that goes on in the world, so pay attention) -- people oppose gay marriage because it is just one more tiny thing they can use to make themselves appear better than their neighbor. I can get married because I am not gay, he can't, so I am better.
 
Random said:
Sorry, I should have put “protect” in quotes. It’s the unspoken assumption of this section of the paper that gays are incapable of recognizing that marriage comes with responsibilities attached. Why else get into all this stuff? It sounds incredibly patronizing considering the conclusions he’s trying to reach and the fact that gays will be reading it. “Marriage is really, really bad for you, so it’s in your best interests to make sure gay marriage stays illegal”.

It’s still not any sort of argument against gay marriage. A gay couple might not benefit from marriage, therefore it should illegal for any gay couple to get married? Those same downsides apply to heterosexual couples, but somehow I doubt that this guy is going to be speaking against “traditional” marriage anytime soon.
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The article (How) Will Gay Marriage Weaken Marriage as a Social Institution: A Reply to Andrew Koppelaman by Maggie Gallagher is in response to Andrew Koppelman's article, The Decline and Fall of the Case Against Same-Sex Marriage (a gay marriage advocate). The link to his article is below:

http://www.stthomas.edu/law/student.../The decline and fall of the case against.pdf
 
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All I can say is, if fags are ever allowed to get married, Mrs. BPSCG and I are gonna have to get divorced, 'cuz fags getting married is a threat to the institution of marriage. Or something. :boggled:
 
rocketdodger said:
In the end, it boils down to a simple reason (this is incidentally the reason for most of the crap that goes on in the world, so pay attention) -- people oppose gay marriage because it is just one more tiny thing they can use to make themselves appear better than their neighbor. I can get married because I am not gay, he can't, so I am better.
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That's a pretty strong statement. Since you obviously don't oppose gay marriage you don't know this first hand. How have you aquired this knowledge of motivation? I'm highly skeptical of it really. I'm not sure what the common motivations are, to be honest, but I'd need some serious evidense to convince me of your assertion.

Aaron

P.S. For the record, as I've stated in other threads, I don't believe the government should recognize ANY marriages. Let the ceremonies be handled by other institutions and legal rights of inharitence, etc. be handled via contract law. Marriage predates the state anyway.
 
BPSCG said:
All I can say is, if fags are ever allowed to get married, Mrs. BPSCG and I are gonna have to get divorced, 'cuz fags getting married is a threat to the institution of marriage. Or something. :boggled:
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I find terms like "fags", "queers", "dykes" very offensive. In fact, it makes me cringe.
 
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HeavyAaron said:
That's a pretty strong statement. Since you obviously don't oppose gay marriage you don't know this first hand. How have you aquired this knowledge of motivation? I'm highly skeptical of it really. I'm not sure what the common motivations are, to be honest, but I'd need some serious evidense to convince me of your assertion.

Aaron
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This is the motivation behind all homophobia. It is a rather complex subject and I am writing a book on it (not just applied to homophobia, though).

You will arrive at the same conclusion if you think about the issue long enough. The evidence is quite simple:

1) Gay marriage would not in any way affect traditional marriage except in the way people view the institution of marriage.
2) Such an effect would logically either be positive or negative.
3) If the effect was to be positive, nobody would oppose it.
4) Therefore the effect is presumed to be negative by opponents of gay marriage.
5) All but one function of traditional marriage that could possibly be undermined by gay marriage can already be undermined by traditional marriage (such as couples professing how much they love each other, raising children, etc). In other words, gay marriage could NOT logically harm these functions of traditional marriage.
6) The remaining function of traditional marriage is to separate those that are married from those that are not -- giving benefits to those that are married. This fact is indisputable.
7) This last function CAN be harmed by allowing gay marriage, because it lets more people ("fags" and "homos" and "dykes", to boot!) into the elite group of "married couples."
8) Therefore, anyone opposing gay marriage must be opposing it for the reason I put forth. Or at least, anyone who isn't a moron and opposes it, because only morons would argue that the functions in point 5) actually would be undermined by gay marriage.
 
Tricky said:
The first one argues that if gay marriage is legal, churches may decide to stop helping people adopt for fear they may be forced to help gay people too. That really is a good reason... for getting rid of hateful churches.
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Or finding a better balance between anti-discrimination laws and religious freedoms, including the freedom to believe that homosexuality is sinful. I can see why faithbased adoption agencies object to being forced to treat homosexual couples the same as heterosexual ones, and I think they should have the freedom to set their own criteria for what they consider good parents. But the issue is a seperate one from same sex civil marriage.

In the Netherlands we have civil marriage regardless of sex or gender, but we also have legal protections for religious people who object to same sex marriage. Fiathbased adoption agencies are under no obligation to give children to parents who are not good parents according to the agency's own criteria. Since people don't have a right to a child, adoption agencies almost always have a religious or ideological basis, and judging whether people will be good parents is a value judgement that can't be made on objective criteria, I think this is how it should be.

There is also no obligation for churches to carry out same sex marriages (it has never been possible to obtain a civil marriage through a church ceramony. Church marriage and civil marriage have always been strictly seperated) and there is also no obligation for civil servants to carry out same sex civil marriages if they morally object to such marriage (in that case city hall must appoint a different civil servant to do the job).
 
Can people who undergo sex changes get married? If a man surgically becomes a woman, can he then marry a man?

What about the intersexed? You know: those born with X, XXX, XXY and XYY chromosome combinations. Seems to me we'd have to have a very firm and restrictive definition of "man" and "woman" before we could even consider which of them should be allowed to get married.

I'm in favor of gay marriage. I figure they can't hurt the "institution" any more than heteros have, and they're certainly not going to hurt me in any way.
 
Tricky said:
I was smoking a pack of fags when one of them set fire to my van dyke. That really queers the whole smoking experience for me.
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I got a friend works in a chocolate factory. They specialize in making a variety of chocolate that involves mixing the melted stuff with tons of sugar, then pouring it out onto a granite slab and folding it over and over until it cools and hardens. They then cut it up into little cubes, and my bud's job is to put the cubes into little boxes and seal them for sale.

He's a fudge packer.
 
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