Marriage Debate

RandFan said:
Yep, that's what happened to me on this forum. I argued and argued and argued until I realized that none of my arguments held water.
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I had a similar experience, but now my problem is that I think a lot of folks throw the baby out with the bath. No pun intended, I still think that the reason for marriage to exist is first and foremost to provide a stable system for raising of children. Scot, Rob Lister, and others convinced me that, whatever misgivings I have about it, gay people are raising children and therefore they need the protection afforded by marriage as well.

What I have a problem with is that so many arguments for marriage are cast as individual liberty arguments, and the logical conclusion of those arguments is that people can choose whom to marry, when to marry, and when to get divorced, all based on their desires, regardless of societal concerns, or those of their partners or children.

I have one other problem as well. It seems to me that the ability to create new life is something rather significant, and provides some significance to having sex that is beyond having fun. I have occaisionally asked a question, to which the repsonse is inevitably, "Who cares? This is about equal rights!" I'll ask it again.


How do we,as a society, acknowledge the ability to create life, and the role that sex plays in that process? Marriage was once the way we did that, but if marriage isn't about procreation, what is? In my opinion, it's worth having something.
 
How do we,as a society, acknowledge the ability to create life, and the role that sex plays in that process?
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Why should we care all that much? It seems that the human species does well without it.

Marriage was once the way we did that, but if marriage isn't about procreation, what is?
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That seems to be your claim, but there hasn't been any evidence brought about that marriage is/was about procreation. It's not in marriage vows (for the vast majority of people)at all, for some reason.

I don't think we need to "acknowledge" the ability to create life, it will happen regardless, just like we don't need to acknowledge the ability to breath.
 
Meadmaker said:
I had a similar experience, but now my problem is that I think a lot of folks throw the baby out with the bath. No pun intended, I still think that the reason for marriage to exist is first and foremost to provide a stable system for raising of children. Scot, Rob Lister, and others convinced me that, whatever misgivings I have about it, gay people are raising children and therefore they need the protection afforded by marriage as well.
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While there is a lot of overlap in the areas of marriage and child rearing, they are separate issues. Married couples are quite free to choose not to have children, and you do not need to be married to be a parent, you just need “a few body parts and a brain the size of a garbanzo bean”.

Married couples do tend to have children, and there are social pressures for parents to be married, but they are really two separate issues that are just sort of lumped together because of the large amount of people who are both married and parents.
 
Meadmaker said:
How do we,as a society, acknowledge the ability to create life, and the role that sex plays in that process? Marriage was once the way we did that, but if marriage isn't about procreation, what is? In my opinion, it's worth having something.
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I'm not certain why this is important, but assuming that it is, what does gay marriage have to do with your point?
 
Meadmaker said:
Zig,
You see why it's hopeless? (Now the real question is why this topic sucks me in. Only a shrink could answer that one.)
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There's a reason I haven't been posting. I think this thread is essentially finished, though it may take a few more pages before it drops off the front page of the politics forum.
 
Yes, this thread has proven that the anti-SSM position has nothing to do with marriage. It has to do with bigotry and intolerance against homosexuals.

I say this because the anti-SSM club has come up with NO reasonable argument against SSM. So far, they've only managed to invoke gods and talk about children.
 
thaiboxerken said:
I say this because the anti-SSM club has come up with NO reasonable argument against SSM. So far, they've only managed to invoke gods and talk about children.
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Marriage is to having children what being able to ride a bicycle is to having a paper route.
 
Snide said:
Sometimes even detrimental (as a paper boy, I delivered Sunay papers with a bike exactly once...red wagons worked better).
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Our paper middle-aged-woman uses a car. She drives by and tosses them out the window.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Yes, this thread has proven that the anti-SSM position has nothing to do with marriage....
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Still haven't figured out the differences between evidence, proof, opinion, and reality, I see.

(See sig lines below..........)

It has to do with bigotry and intolerance against homosexuals.
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(BTW, that was an opinion, and it doesn't "have the authority of reality".......)
 
It doesn't suprise me that the anti-SSM folks failed to see your point, Upchurch.
 
Meadmaker said:
And legalized gay marriage is... what? The Americans With Disabilites Act?:duck:
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I'll connect the dots for you. Marriage is not required to have and raise children. Neither is having children required in a marriage. Much like bicycles are not merely for delivering papers, and paper delivery persons need not use bicycles.
 
Well, once again, we've heard what marriage isn't. It isn't about children. So what is it? Apparently, it allows you to buy beach houses together, and if you bury a body under the porch of the beach house, you don't have to worry about the co-owner of the beach house testifying against you.
 
A legal commitment to stick with my wife and son. (Yeah, the son's in there, even if the law doesn't spell it out.)
 
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