Dramanoids Deployed for Maryland’s Gay Marriage Campaign
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Edward Albee’s tale of marital non-bliss (credit: Internet Movie Data Base)
It is often said that marriage must be made available to homosexuals since homosexuality is an inherent biological trait. Well-meaning straight people – or, “the 97 percent,” in current parlance — are suckers for this approach but it is less than sound. Truly, the “gay gene” people on the left, as well as those on the right who look to deficient parenting and/or recruitment to explain same-sex attraction, are guilty of breathtaking overconfidence. What imponderable combination of nature, environment, and choice makes me or anyone else homosexual is something that at this point only God knows.
Equating homosexuality with race and ethnicity is dubious, too. Not permitting marriage between blacks and whites is unlike not permitting same-sex marriage. The miscegenation laws pulled apart generative pairs. Those laws stood in nature’s way, whereas same-sex marriage — especially, but not only, if children are involved — is a work-around to evade nature’s iron realities. So there is a right to interracial marriage but not to matrimony between two individuals who are “not even potentially partners in reproduction,” in the words of Susan M. Shell.
The Boston College political theorist wrote an article called “The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage.” That was in 2004 – a startling reminder that there was a liberal case against gay marriage not too long ago. It almost sounds strange in today’s political environment. Professor Shell based her position on eternal verities and the secular underpinnings of the American constitutional experiment, which is why I see merit in that position regardless of the political environment.
What is sought by gay rights activists often boils down to financial benefits, inheritance rights, and other such family matters. It behooves them to acknowledge how successful they have been in gaining accommodation on many of these issues. Employers across the United States are starting to extend benefits to same-sex couples — it happened for me and my partner recently, even though the institution that extended the benefits is Catholic-run.
The liberal stance laid out by Shell embraced civil unions for same-sex couples that would enable them to adopt children and receive a partner’s health and other benefits. It had the contours, to my eye, of the sort of “sweet spot” that legislatures seek when drafting a bill that politically clashing members can approve despite their differences. Because it looks like a natural harbor for a plurality of Americans, Shellian liberalism ought to be where we are headed as a country.
If, however, same-sex marriage wins in Maryland as many expect, I will be living in a place where what I am designating the National Liberal Position is condemned as right-wing extremism by the moral authoritarians of the left. The Baltimore Sun’s Susan Reimer is a good example. Reimer had real trouble restraining herself in her weekly column, warning those who disfavor same-sex marriage: Think of the judgment of future generations and try not to give your children “reason to be ashamed of your bigotry.”
The live-and-let-live social space created by the liberal polity is a great cultural and moral accomplishment. Those who call themselves liberal today show very little of the care needed to guard and preserve this accomplishment.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle on gay marriage:
Sorry, but I cannot support homosexual marriage. I will support it after one of two things happens:
1) Jesus (or suitable supreme being) comes to Earth and announces that God created man and woman uniquely different only to have children, that love and sex and other stuff can be between man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, man/woman and child, man/man/woman/woman/transexual, etc., or
2) I die and find myself spiritually standing before God and being judged. If God or Saint Peter says that I would be going to Heaven but because I didn’t support “gay” marriage I’ll instead be going to hell. Then I’ll ask for forgiveness.
Other than the above I can’t support it.
Amen, Brother!
+1.
I love my gay brothers and sisters and I want them to be as free as I am, but they should not have marriage. And if it takes an Amendment to the US Constitution, then so be it. Let me know when I get to vote on that.
Well said. Nothing new under the sun, if I may quote. For homosexuals, God is the big problem and no matter how glib, clever or earnest they are in their arguments for homosexuality, there is always God in the way. I feel sorry for homosexuals. Apparently most are simply born that way and must contend with that condition as best they can. But claiming that God is not telling the truth won’t work.
what happened to the golden rule?
There’s an off-broadway hit play celebrating Harry Hay? Are you kidding me?
I discovered a few years ago that there was a new movement to glamorize Harry Hay, to retroactively make him into the MLK of the gay rights movement. Since I already knew from research (and hearing personal anecdotes from people) long ago that Harry Hay was an infamous pedophile, and that this fact was well-known in the gay community, I decided to quash the movement to anoint him as some kind of hero — I made a few posts on zomblog about Harry Hay’s relationship with NAMBLA:
Harry Hay’s connection with NAMBLA: the evidence
Memo to Media Matters: Kevin Jennings knew of Harry Hay’s NAMBLA connections
Harry Hay’s blurb for the NAMBLA book A Witchhunt Foiled
Absolutely crushing. I thought those posts had pretty much put an end to the whole “Harry Hay is a hero of the downtrodden” movement. Guess I was naive in the extreme. When the decision is made to crown someone a hero, all negative inconvenient facts are swept aside. (Other examples: Gandhi often savagely beat his wife; MLK plagiarized most of his work in college including his master’s thesis — and he also had nightly sex with teen groupies; Harvey Milk almost never had sex with adults — he preferred young boys; etc. etc.).
Look for pedophile Harry Hay to soon appear in children’s textbooks as a civil rights hero.
As for gay marriage — non-issue of the century so far. I personally voted No on 8 (i.e. I voted in favor of gay marriage in CA), but after seeing the violent antics of the No on 8 crowd after it passed (i.e. trying to ruin the lives of anyone who could be identified as an 8 supporter), I regretted my vote. I did not want to be associated with mob rule. But in the bigger picture, it is nothing but a trivial distraction from the real issues facing society.
The object is to make Hay shine while he makes the sons.
Are you saying schools are now being named after a pedophile (Harvey Milk)?
Can you show us verification of Harvey Milk’s conviction for pedophilia or proof that he was a pedophile? tick. tock.
Milk’s biography reportedly describes his preferences, and it’s not a controversial subject. Nobody said anything about a conviction.
Then there was Milk’s deep involvement with Jim Jones. This is important politically because it was predicated on common ground the two found in using claims of discrimination to deflect criticism of their corrupt political behavior.
Harry Hay was one of NAMBLA’s fiercest and most enthusiastic advocates, a position that appalled many (apparently not enough) in the gay community. It is simple to find specific references to his defense of that pro-child molestation lobby group. If you cannot, you can e-mail me for a citation or two.
It is disturbing that a play is made in Hay’s honor. Why didn’t the author here mention Hay’s real record?
It’s Just a Harry Hay Ride
—apologies to Dietz and Schwartz and “Louisiana Hayride”
Git goin’, it’s just a Harry Hay ride
Git goin’, we’re lubricated
Git goin’, it’s just a Harry Hay ride
No use to guard your holes
The age of consent, wishin’ it away
Gettin’ it repealed, ooh ooh
Don’t let underage kids
Give you any lip
Don’t care what you rip, oh no!
Start somethin’, ’cause it’s a Harry Hay ride
Kevin Jennings found his teachings heady
Git goin’, ’cause it’s a Harry Hay ride
No use to guard your holes!
– Harvey was the Founding Father.
Shakespeare often focused on troubled marriages or disturbed marriages.
The tragedy of Othello is the most obvious case, and Titus Andronicus features a depraved adulterous wife.
Mistaken jealousy infects marriages in The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Henry VI part 2 touches on the odd relationship between Henry and Queen Margaret (infatuated with the Duke of Suffolk).
I could care less one way or the other on this. I won’t vote for it as long as official gay political groups are Democrats first and Gay Rights Activists second. We still have the situation where every Gay Democrat who gains notoriety is regaled as a hero, while Gay Republicans get reviled in the press and the Democrats gleefully pile on with nary a word of objection from the professional Gay Rights organizations. Don’t attack my allies and then expect support on your pet issue.
I have to say to Conservatives; Gay marriage is not the cause for the failure of straight marriage as an institution in the West. That award goes to Feminism’s successful demonization of marriage and men, converting divorce law into a wealth transfer system from men to women, and mysandric legislation like the VAWA. In this civil rights atrocity, both parties are complicit.
And while we are on the topic. If Gay marriage is going to be normalized, what about polygamy? Once we get past the idea that the majority can decide what is and isn’t a legal family configuration, why not anything goes? Polygamy is not abnormal, it has been practiced since forever and is still common in some parts of the world. If we have equal rights and protection under the law, why should Gays get their marriages legalized while Polygamists remain outlaws?
The decline of straight marriage is caused by the skyrocketing divorce rate. And that, in turn, was caused by another liberal idea: No-fault divorce.
Time was when if a spouse wanted to get divorce, he had to prove his spouse was at fault for something: Cheating; spousal abuse; criminal record; drug or alcohol abuse; etc.
With the passage of no-fault divorce in the 1960s, divorce became more of a choice: If you just didn’t much care for staying married, you got divorced, simple as that.
That changed the entire nature of marriage. Marriage used to be considered a lifetime contract. You entered into it after careful consideration and only after you were sure, because getting out of it was hard. Today, it’s more like a service contract with an easy escape clause: So why not get married even if you’re not sure? You can always get divorced easily later.
All these social conservatives who keep attacking same-sex marriage have it all wrong. They need to advocate making divorce harder to get. But I’ll bet that many of THEM wouldn’t like that in their own lives.
You are correct about divorce and conservatives should make it clear that they are just as appalled at pre-marital sex and adaultry as they are at same-sex marriage and homosexuality as a whole.
but they’re not as appalled. otherwise they would DO something about those issues rather than just fight the gays.
What would you have us do? Every time we try to get our children taught about things like, oh, abstinence (which is about not engaging in premarital sex among other things), we’re mocked and called unrealistic luddites. We do however try.
I am also appalled at no-fault divorce. It eroded the idea that marriage was a contract entered into by two individuals for the sake of creating a stable, permanent relationship and foundation for the creation of a family for the begetting of a rearing of children. Marriage is not primarily about two individuals simply satisfying their undying love (which, btw, simply dies and then they divorce and move onto the next great “undying” love).
Unfortunately, conservatives lost the battle over divorce, and it has now become so much the norm that it is a lost cause. Easy divorce certainly did more damage to marriage than same-sex marriage could ever do. But having lost one battle does not mean that we have to surrender the next.
@Clayton – No! We lost a battle, not the war. We can take back what they stole regarding divorce, permiscuity and adultery through our children.
It was liberals who brainwashed children into accepting this as normal in the first place. All you have to do is look around at the carnage it caused. Point it out to kids now. To really nail the point home, get some old class books/tv shows to show them what “normal” life in American looked like just 50 years ago. To today’s kids it would probably look like a wonderland.
“And while we are on the topic. If Gay marriage is going to be normalized, what about polygamy? Once we get past the idea that the majority can decide what is and isn’t a legal family configuration, why not anything goes?”
Indeed. And while we’re at it, why not normalize pedophilia and bestiality?
I’m being serious here. If we are to take the position that anything that anyone wants to do is okay and that society has no business legislating who we can be married to (or have sex with), then what is the problem with polygamy/polyandry, group marriages, pedophilia, or bestiality?
Yes, I’m a believer in the slippery slope, at least with regards to marriage. The only legal objection I can think of with respect to sex and pedophilia is the idea that children are not old enough to give informed consent about who they will have sex with. But lowering the age of consent is far from out of the question. In my lifetime, the more-or-less worldwide age of maturity – the age at which you could vote – went from 21 to 18. I just read the other day that one of the South American countries has just lowered its voting age to 16. It seems entirely possible to me that activists could agitate to lower the age for sexual consent to 16, then 14, then 12 and maybe even lower in coming years since people seem to be maturing sexually at earlier and earlier ages. (I’ve heard of cases of girls beginning puberty at 9.) After that, the only protection for children would be the potential that the child’s family might wreak a fatal revenge on the child molestor, despite the risk that they in turn would go to jail for protecting their children.
“Indeed. And while we’re at it, why not normalize pedophilia and bestiality?”
Because polygamy is still a marriage contract between consenting parties, while pedophilia is an adult sexually exploiting a child, and bestiality, like pedophilia is the behavior of a person who has serious mental problems. It more a slander than an argument to conflate the two.
Right now we have the situation where the government dictates a one size fits all marriage contract. Why is that? If Conservatives want to get government out of people’s lives, how about getting government out of marriage? That is the most important part of most people’s lives. Can anyone say that the past century of progressive government intervention into family affairs has improved things?
If marriage is a contract, people should be able to write their own, and the only role of the government should be the courts settling contractual disputes. There should be standards that require the contract to address rights and responsibilities, inheritance, what constitutes breach of the contract and thereby dissolves it, and division of assets, and custody and support of any children in the event that the contract is dissolved.
If your church wants lifetime marriage between a male and female and either no divorce or only allowing divorce under limited conditions; let the church lawyers write a model contract and refuse to marry any who are not a M/F pair or do not agree to sign the standard church marriage contract.
If a same sex couple wants to get married, I am sure that a suitable contract can be written.
Want to get married with the woman having the option of leaving at her whim and getting half the family’s assets, lifetime support, and the kids? Have a lawyer write it up and get some guy to sign it, if you can.
Want a polygamous marriage, write a contract and get everyone to sign.
Get pregnant without a contract that includes child support? You have a serious problem. Sounds cruel, but that notion did much to reduce unmarried motherhood in the past. Take away the safety net and people get more cautious.
You said, “… and bestiality, like pedophilia is the behavior of a person who has serious mental problems. It more a slander than an argument to conflate the two.”
And so homosexuality was considered a mental disorder until fairly recently. Why do you get to say what’s a mental disorder and what isn’t? If they can re-define homosexuality from being a mental disorder, why not bestiality also? Why is it that you get to decide that one sexual abnormality is OK, but another is a “serious mental problem”? If we take the lid off of what’s normal and what isn’t, what makes you think that you get to put the lid back on where you want it?
“If we take the lid off of what’s normal and what isn’t, what makes you think that you get to put the lid back on where you want it?”
What you appear to be saying is, unless we accept the Christian definition of marriage we cannot rationally limit any behavior. In other words, unless you get to determine what is right and wrong, no one can.
I am saying marriage is a civil contract that should be outside government regulation other than to settle disputes in the courts. If you want a Christian marriage, I am sure church lawyers can create a model contract for the parties to sign and then the church can bless the marriage.
@Old Guy – “What you appear to be saying is, unless we accept the Christian definition of marriage we cannot rationally limit any behavior.”
Yes – because marriage is ours. It’s our sacrament. Get your own.
As far as telling us that children are not old enough to consent – you must have missed the democrat memo where they wish to de-criminalize and de-stygmatize pedophilia. This will be in addition to lowering the age of consent.
Seriously, I thought the libs would go for polygamy first because of all the muslims. But, nope! They went straight to legalizing child-rape. Bravo, buddy!
Old Guy, perhaps you are unaware that there are already progressives arguing that animals are in fact capable of consent.
And as for the objection that children are harmed in pedophilia, what about the growing body of scientific evidence proving that fathers and mothers are hardly interchangeable, but parent differently? We are told that the well-being of the children is irrelevant: the well-being of gays is a civil rights issue, and that means the burden of proof is changed: it’s on you to prove that what gays are doing to the children is harmful (and if you even try, that itself is proof you are a bigot, and therefore should not be listened to). So one assumes that the same people who are comfortable with undermining parental consent laws – even to the point of forcing children to walk to the nearest abortion clinic, to make sure they all know how to get there – won’t have a serious problem with pedophilia, once the groundwork is laid. In the immortal words of Whoopi, there’s rape and then there’s rape-rape, and what Roman Polanski did is not rape-rape.
But even if we allow that pedophilia is different, it still remains the case that those who practice incest, bestiality, necrophilia, and other forms of deviance can certainly argue that the principle of equality under the law ought to apply to them. If the right to have one’s sexual desires publicly affirmed and legitimized is a basic civil right, it applies to all of us.
Biblically, marriage is not a contract. It is a covenant.
JFTR: I am neither Gay or a pedophile, nor an advocate for either, or a Progressive for that matter. I am a Libertarian.
I think it is wrong to use the powers of government to limit marriage to those models that are acceptable to Christians. Just as I think it is wrong for the government to force religious organizations to do things that are against their faith. Forcing Catholic institutions to provide birth control and abortion via health insurance for employees and forcing their adoption agencies to serve Gay couples are examples of government intrusion I find abhorrent. Religions should be left to do what they will with exceptions for obvious stuff like human sacrifice.
Marriage does not belong to Christians. They did not invent it nor are they the only religion that has them. Joseph and Mary were married when Jesus was born, which should be all the proof you need that marriage predates Christianity.
The fact that goofy Progressives who support bestiality and pederasty also support Gay marriage has no bearing on the justness of denying Gay people the right to marriage. That is guilt by association, and should be repulsive to freedom loving Americans.
Neither Gay marriage or polygamy would have any affect on your ability to have a straight marriage. What is more, the arguments presented here seem more founded hate than reason.
If you want to save straight marriage, I suggest you work on reforming marriage, divorce, and custody law and the “Family” Court system.
Actually, marriage does belong to us. God Created when He gave Adam his wife, Eve. Also, Joseph and Mary were already married when God Created Life (Jesus) within Mary. The Jewish custom of the day had a very long waiting period between the vows and the actually consumation of the marriage. That’s why when it was found that Mary was pregnant it was up to Joseph, her husband, whether she was to be stoned to death for harlotry and not her parents.
If gays would make up their own form of social structure, that’s fine. As long as we all recognize that it is a different form, and for different purposes.
What I object to is that they want to appropriate the form we Christians made, then pervert it.
They want to argue both that marriage is not procreative in nature – it’s not about starting a family, it’s about recognizing the needs, feelings, emotions, etc. of the adults. That’s fine, but that’s not what traditional marriage has ever been, and if we change the definition of marriage to that, then we lose any justification for the benefits of marriage, the social and legal and economic norms, all of the things that make marriage what it is – all of that has always been oriented around family-making, and provides support for it.
So it isn’t just that they want to “share” in an institution. If they wanted to “share” in it, then they would be honest and admit that SOME marriages ARE procreative, that this is in fact an important aspect of marriage for most people, and that THEIR union is barren.
And, being barren, their “rights” extend only to the same rights granted other barren couplings: the ability to adopt IF they can prove they meet all the needs of the child (which they can’t; the argument in favor of gay adoption is that gay rights is more important than the child’s best interest – because nobody can honestly argue that, all other things being equal, a home with two mothers is as good as a home with a mother and a father. All you can argue is that it’s “bigoted” to prioritize the well-being of the child over the well-being of the gay couple – an argument that assumes adoptable children should be grateful to have a home, period.)
Now, if gays were willing to accept that their union is NOT the same as hetero marriage – specifically, that it shares the emotional and social but not the family-making aspects – there would be no conflict. They’d accept that they have the emotional and social rights, but not the family-making rights. But they’re not willing to accept that. Their goal is not to share in the institution, but to redefine it. Having established that procreative couples are not to be counted as stakeholders in this institution – that legally they are to have no rights, no needs, no expectations, nothing at all – gay couples then turn around and argue that, now that we’ve established that it’s bigoted to view procreative couples as different from gay couples, it is therefore also bigoted to deny gay couples anything that procreative couples have. Ergo, gay couples have a RIGHT to procreative benefits, and they have a RIGHT to have access to children since they can’t manufacture their own.
The logic is twisted. The result is destructive. It is not justified by logic, certainly not justified by fairness, and there’s no reason why it should be viewed as a “civil right” because there is no “right” to marriage that includes the “right” to cherry-pick the parts that you like while rejecting the obligations that rightfully accompany those benefits. If “you” (meaning the gay person, not necessarily YOU) aren’t going to marry the child’s mother, then you don’t have the right to just use that mother and then transfer what is rightfully hers to your gay partner, because the two of you aren’t the only stakeholders here: the whole family is affected, the taxpayers who are subsidizing and underwriting the benefits are affected, the community whose structure is being tampered with is affected – and of course the child and the discarded mother are being ripped off: for every “family” made by one gay man “sharing” his child with his lover, you have at least two people whose rights are being trampled – the woman who has the right to be free from exploitation (a more basic human right than any make-believe “right” to sexual expression), and the child who not only has the right to be free from exploitation, but also has a legally recognized right to a relationship with both his biological parents – a right that is supposed to only be sundered when two conditions are present: (a) a judge rules that (b) it is in the child’s best interest…which is, by the way, why non-gay stepparents have to go through legally having a judge declare their stepchild’s relationship with the absent biological parent severed before they are allowed to even petition for adoption. This is what the non-biological gay “parent” really is: a stepparent – and outside of victimhood identity politics, there’s no reason in the universe why being gay should make a stepparent be entitled to different treatment than any other stepparent.
The basic problem is that gays are trying to overcome the problem of not being like heteros through lies and fraud: they are trying to have it both ways. They are trying to claim that marriage isn’t procreative, while at the same time demanding the right to be treated as procreative couplings when they in fact are not. Their relationship is different in kind. Real civil rights never involves forcing people to lie – in fact, exactly the opposite: real civil rights has historically involved forcing people to STOP lying. (It is for this reason I suggest that the real civil rights battle in this case involves the kids, the children who are being used by gays in ways that are neither healthy nor fair.)
I agree with the people that take a ‘meh’ stance on this issue…….
The churches and the general society has failed in their defense of marriage in that they allowed it to become a contract of convenience for the mutual gain of either party and a club for an aggrieved party to use on the other one when it ends. The habits and tendencies of young heterosexual persons show they have no regard for purpose or identity higher than themselves and for that reason, they don’t tend to marry and many don’t bother to have children. That some people take an initiative to observe the institution of matrimony seriously on their own individual initiative is no reason to let organised religion and mainstream culture off the hook. They have FAILED and deserve to have their noses broke on this issue…….
So, those of us who do take our social obligations and marriages seriously and view them sacredly deserve to have our religious convictions ground into the dirt and be compelled to view unions that we do not view as valid as blessed unions just because you think our society and faith organizations have failed? Gee, thanks for taking my conscience into regard.
Why should gay people have to their lives in such a way as to protect YOUR religious comfort level? If you want to believe that marriage was divinely created for one man and one woman, nobody is stopping you. Believe whatever you want. But, don’t tell me that I have to believe your religion, your scriptures, your preachers, and your politicians, or that I have to abide by your sectarian rules. The United States isn’t a theocracy. Try reading Thomas Paine, our foremost Founding Father, for his views on religiously-based public laws.
Two consenting gay adults who choose to marry are not victims, nor by marrying are they victimizing anyone else (embarrassing them doesn’t count). It’s really nobody else’s business. It shouldn’t be a political issue. It is NOT morally equivalent to abortion or infanticide. It isn’t even interesting.
There are plenty of religions that don’t condemn homosexuality; there are even many Christian denominations that don’t condemn homosexuality. Practice your faith as you see fit, but please respect my right to practice mine. Thanks.
Because the right to religious freedom is in the Constitution.
Yes, it is. I am not a Christian. I have a different religion. I have a right to follow MY religion, even if your religion doesn’t like it. I have no obligation to conform to your religion, or your sexual beliefs and superstitions. If you think your anti-gay marriage opinions should shape my life, you’re sadly mistaken.
Be careful about forcing your religion on others; the day may come, when others start forcing theirs on you.
Nobody is depriving you of your right to follow YOUR religion.
The question is whether you have the right to force ME to accept YOUR beliefs – specifically, your belief that marriage “isn’t procreative” – except when you want it to be, at which point I am suddenly obliged to believe that a child “can have two mommies” – all of which is a fancy way of forcing me to accept that parasitism is as legitimate a means of family-making as what heteros do.
It isn’t. The ways in which gays reproduce are NOT as good. They are NOT equal. I don’t care if you share my beliefs or not; the argument is not what I am trying to force you to do or not do, but rather whether you have the right to force me to give up my beliefs in favor of yours.
Mine are grounded in reality. Yours are not.
I’m not forcing you to give up your beliefs. You can believe anything you like. But your definition of “marriage” is YOURS. Deal with it, and let other deal with their own definitions of marriage. If you want to live in a theocracy, move to Iran.
You are telling gay people they can’t get married because it offends your religious sensibilities. Get real. There are ten thousand Christian denominations because everything offends somebody. So which denomination is going to get to make the rules? Yours? Of course. But, what happens when you change denominations?
Florida, I’ll accept that gays have the right to marry, as soon as they make up their mind about procreation.
It’s the having it both ways I object to. I’m not an anti-gay bigot, I’m an anti-liar, anti-fraud bigot: I am bigoted against people who use children to defraud both the children and the taxpayers.
Children are not transferable property. They are people, and they have rights of their own. So I won’t support your right to make marriage be whatever you want it to be until you make up your mind: is the gay couple non-procreative, and therefore content to live as a barren couple? Or is procreation important, in which case how do they plan on reconciling the reality that they cannot procreate, except parasitically – and that parasitic reproductive strategies are a violation of *other* peoples’ rights (namely, the child, the extended family, and quite probably the parent to be reduced to “Handmaid’s Tale”-type breeding stock)?
Children are the real civil rights issue here. They’re not here for you to use and abuse. Parents are supposed to take care of kids, not exploit them.
“But, don’t tell me that I have to believe your religion, your scriptures, your preachers, and your politicians, or that I have to abide by your sectarian rules.”
That’s fine. Just know that you may NOT use our term – marriage – for your deviant lifestyle. That one belongs to us. Deal?
It does not belong to you. It derives from Old French from 11th century Latin, in turn derived from ancient Latin. It wasn’t coined by the Church or the bible or Christians or Jews. It originally referred to a legal contract.
And who are you to describe someone else’s lifestyle as deviant? Did you create the world and the beings on it? How do you know what the Universe has in mind?
How about avoiding gay people and eschewing everything they’ve produced. Let’s see how long you can remain looking or sounding even barely civilized. You already sound like the Church Lady having a particularly nasty day.
Here in the United States, the majority does not call the shots. The Constitution does. At least four of its major creators would almost certainly reject your argument.
Yeah – it (marriage) DOES belong to us. Even in the old days of the sodomites, gay-marriage was banned.
Get your own term and back off. You can play house all you want but you will never EVER be normal. Get it?
I find it unfair that homosexual couples lack the inheritance rights, spousal-benefit rights, medical-consent rights, etc. that heterosexual couples take for granted. But the word marriage carries profound religious significance for many people, and homosexual marriage is anathema to many (not all) religions.
But if marriage is a religious matter, why is the state involved? I favor states adopting family codes providing for secular domestic partnerships for all couples, straight and gay. The rights associated with these partnerships would be identical to those now associated with marriage.
As for the label of marriage, if you can find a religious authority to bless your domestic partnership with a ceremony, then you would be entitled to refer to your partnership as a marriage. If not, then not.
This way, religions that disapprove of gay marriage may continue to abide by their principles. Religions that are fine with it will be the ones to which gays flock. Gay activists won’t like this, because we aren’t forcing people to marry them. Traditional activists won’t like it, because gays will always be able to find some religious authority to bless their partnership with the term marriage. But that will be a matter a religious difference and not a matter of secular law.
You are not getting this. This problem was solved close to 20 years ago with civil unions. Religious people were actually ok with this. It was fair. We may not agree with the homosexual lifestyle, but we’re not opposed to giving them full rights under secular law.
But, you see, that was just not good enough. Homosexuals are not satisfied with EQUAL rights. They want EXTRA rights. If you think about it they are constrained under marriage laws just like the rest of us. There are several laws regarding marriage that prevent unions. You can’t marry a close relative, age is a factor and you have to marry a person of the opposite sex. That makes them just as eligible as the rest of us.
But what they REALLY want (and they’ve already started to do this) is the ability to sue churches – to BANKRUPT churches – that refuse to “bless” their unions. And don’t even bother trying to tell me that they aren’t already engaged in this lawfare. Wedding planners, bakeries, photographers and even churches that rent out property they own for ceremonies have ALL been sued by people who could have just gone somewhere to have their needs met. But that wasn’t good enough…..
Unfortunately, mainline Protestant churches sought to accommodate themselves to changes in mainstream culture, which were largely driven by wealth, a revolt of the cultural elites (in Lasch’s terminology) and most important, technology.
Prior to antibiotics and the pill, sex was literally a life and death issue. You got VD, you lived unpleasantly and then you died. And less effective contraception meant you could end up with a baby. With antibiotics, the pill, and later, legal abortion-on-demand, at least until AIDS came along (and it was more restricted to the homosexual community than the press ever let on), sex wasn’t going to kill you and you could prevent life. Thus, sex was not so much a life or death issue.
This, unfortunately, required an adjustment in thinking — an adjustment that was not made in time to prevent possibly fatal damage to our culture. Many people thought, OK, sex is no longer life and death, let’s indulge. Many (and I include myself) didn’t realize that there were important benefits to marriage beyond just the physical results. We didn’t realize how premarital sex would effect later marriages, and didn’t recognize that the margin for error was extremely narrow. (It starts at the number two.) Removing the stigma of out of wedlock pregnancies, and marriage was unhinged from family life, too.
Add in legal changes, such as no-fault divorce, and the institution as written no longer made a lot of sense. Only cultural inertia keeps it alive.
Right now, marriage is an institution for an indeterminate period of time, that may or not include children, that doesn’t necessarily involve virginity or lifelong sexual exclusivity, and with adultery laws no longer enforced, doesn’t really involve lifelong sexual exclusivity within the terms of the marriage. It’s basically coupling with some social benefits.
So same sex marriage proponents abstract the concept of gender out of that mish-mash and now we’re left with exactly what? It’s two people who make a commitment to each other and society sanctions that relationship and grants certain benefits and some responsibilities, for social purposes that are not quite clear. How, after all this tumbling down the slippery slope, you’ll actually be able to limit the number to two, I don’t know.
It’s a silly discussion.
We know what marriage is, and we know that our current legal definitions aren’t it. Only the vestiges of the old marriage definition propel it forward, mostly in hope. It still works in some places, but in a lot of others it doesn’t.
Not good. It’s been a bad situation for 45 years, and it’s only getting worse.
You left out one other thing that changed marriage and sex: In-vitro fertilization (IVF).
That permanently cut the link between sex and procreation. Nowadays, a woman can get pregnant by IVF without ever having sex with a man. Lesbians are choosing to get pregnant that way and have children of their own. So the claim by social conservatives that marriage should be reserved to heterosexuals because only they can procreate is now falsified. Lesbians have been getting pregnant by IVF.
IVF has even made available some new arrangements: An infertile wife can hire a surrogate mother to be implanted with one of her fertilized eggs. The surrogate woman carries the fetus to term, gives birth to the baby and then hands it over to the wife. That makes the surrogate mother a “silent partner” in the marriage, an arrangement that has never existed before in all the time humanity has been on earth.
But artificial insemination, which does not require modern technology, can do the same.
Surrogates have never existed before in human history? That would be news to Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.
I will vote against homosexual marriage in Maryland. That is “Question 6″ on the ballot on Tuesday. Through five thousand years of the Christo-Judaic moral ethics, male-female has always been the definition of what a marriage is. This is NOT a civil rights issue. It’s a moral issue. If you choose an alternative lifestyle, that’s YOUR choice…but marriage won’t be a part of it.
When ever this has come up in a ballot initiative in the past, homosexual marriage has lost at about 70% of the vote against it. IF we as a nation are going to permit ONE type of “altnative” definition of marriage, then we must allow ALL forms of alternative marriages. That means line-marriages, plural marriages, polygamy, etc, MUST be legalized as well. You don’t get to pick and choose…it’s an either or issue…
Rich, I completely agree when you wrote: “If we as a nation are going to permit ONE type of “alternative” definition of marriage, then we must allow ALL forms of alternative marriages.
Let’s pretend your prediction comes true in 20 years. Enjoy!
Dateline: WashingtonPravda: November 6, 2032
“This year the Supreme court is being asked to repeal the conviction of US Resident X and his wives Y1, Y2, Y3, and Y4, who were found guilty in Michigan of polygamy. Furthermore, the court will rule whether Michigan unlawfully denied wives Y2, Y3, and Y4 and their fourteen children access to free food, Medicaid, college scholarships, tutoring, cell phones, plus their three “Section 8″ four-bedroom houses.
The court will also consider the claim by the husband and four wives for $20 million in damages for emotional damage caused by intolerant bigotry.
Chief Justice Satomayor, plus Justices Bloomberg, Soros, and the remainder of the progressive court, are believed to be nearing a majority ruling that Michigan and the other 49 states may not prohibit polygamy. The court is expected to declare polygamy is a basic civil and religious right. On the issue of state benefits, the justices are expected to assert that children born to low-income polygamists be fed, clothed, housed and educated by the taxpayers, plus attend American history classes which define voting as “revenge”.
The Satomayor court may also address impediments to the right to a polygamous family. Justice Soros himself declared previously that US residents who are unable to find multiple wives in North America ought to be provided up to four green card legal residency permits to import spouses. This would “level the playing field” for North American males who encounter resistance in the native female population. It is rumored the Satomayor court will extend this benefit to undocumented workers.
The Satomayor court, which believes world peace is served by forcing inclusive international family practices and customs onto the US public, is expected to be awarded a Nobel Peace prize. Experts predict smooth sailing for the prize, backed by the prestige of the 16-year UN veteran chief and proponent for wealth re-distribution by UN middlemen, who surprised the world when he himself married wife No. 2, but divorced her quickly when confronted by wife No. 1.”
“If we as a nation are going to permit ONE type of “alternative” definition of marriage, then we must allow ALL forms of alternative marriages.”
Absolutely false and illogical. If we legalize gay marriage, we legalize it because we decide it is not harmful to society as a whole. If we choose to keep polygamy, adult-child, or other marriages ILLEGAL, we do so because we judge them to be either inherently nonconsensual or else harmful or potentially harmful to the individuals involved or society at large. Everything needs to be looked at case-by-case. The problem anti-gay marriage advocates have is demonstrating that allowing it would cause damage to society at large that outweighs an individual’s freedom to enter into a consensual marriage. I’m all ears if you can give me some sort of reason besides slippery slope argument as to why gay marriage harms society as a whole.
Mark: it’s not at all false and illogical.
Perhaps you don’t understand what “equality under the law” means?
Look up the term “precedent”.
Pro-polygamy, pro-incest, and even pro-bestiality arguments have already begun.
NAMBLA…..
I don’t know what it is about buggering little boys that get’s democrats off but they’ve already set about decriminalizting pedophilia. They are also gungho about lowering the age of consent. In some states it’s 16 and they want it lowered to 6 or 9. I’ve heard some want no age of consent.
Tell me how that doesn’t harm society.
After a half century of life in these United States of America, I still do not understand why this is considered a political issue. This should be an issue kept in the privacy of ones home. All sex should be kept thus and not politicized. On the other hand, when my children ask me about my thoughts on homosexuality and marriage, as the morality for them has already been settled by constant school indoctination, I stay purely functional. I ask them what is the purpose of any species? That purpose, at its most basic level, is to reproduce itself. Thus, if the sexual activity of any of the members of that species does not result in at least a chance of reproduction, than that behavior is a biological dead-end. So, without any moralizing, hand-wringing or other theatrical atmospherics, such behavior is functionally incorrect unless the point is a species growth control measure, i.e., suicide. I personally could care less what people do IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN HOMES as long as it causes no harm, but in public, I don’t want to see promiscuous homosexual or heterosexual behavior. So please, just stop and let us as a people move on to something actually important.
S/F, Webfoot Warrior
OK, so why are the schools indocrinating children against their parents’ religion? And why are the rest of us subsidizing it?
Maine is poised to make the same fatal mistake that Maryland is making, except that it will be the first time that a citizen’s initiative will vote positively for gay “marriage”. We are about to make the choice of putting the “rights” of a sexual identity group over that of individual human liberty.
Homosexual marriage will become the law of the land, as people are pressured into viewing homosexuality as socially acceptable.
But then it will become problematic, on a trajectory similar to other Sexual Revolution “improvements” that turned out to be destructive. It will become clear that changing the definition of marriage involves issues other than merely that of whether one “hates” homosexuals or homosexuality.
Changing gay marriage inevitably requires changing the definition of what a marriage is (from a thing that is primarily about starting a family to a thing that is primarily about celebrating the emotional bond between two people).
Less noticed: it also requires changing the definition of what a family is (from a group of people bound via the bonds of kinship to a group of people bound via the bonds of government recognition).
People argue that adoption already changes the definition of family. An adopted bond is ‘just as good’ and so on. But it’s not ‘just as good’; adoption is legitimate because it’s the best possible outcome for children who for some reason need a family. All other things being equal, nobody would choose to be adopted. Adopted children have an issue they have to adjust to. It’s similar to an amputation – you amputate the child’s kinship and identity information so as to enable the child to grow within a new setting. Adoption is 100% about what is best for the child – that is the source of its legitimacy.
But gay marriage involves doing that amputation on children for reasons that are not in any way concerned with what is best for the children. It’s about reducing that amputation to a preference – a choice for parents’ convenience, and to heck with the kid. We will create a new class of human breeding stock – “gestational carriers” – so that the wealthy can exploit the poor in new ways.
Traditional marriage protects against this sort of threat. Its social, legal and economic norms protect children from being abandoned or sold, protects women from being exploited, and even protects men against certain forms of estrangement.
Yet we hardly talk about any of this. Gay marriage is always reduced to argumentum ad misericordium arguments about how miserable life is for the gay man or woman, and argumentum ad hominem arguments about the supposed motives of the person opposing gay marriage.
A fascinating false dichotomy, which attempts to suggest that traditional marriage must “prove itself” for there to be any argument against same-sex marriage. In truth, there is no argument for same-sex marriage.
The modern gay-rights movement was founded upon the objective of destroying marriage; the manifestoes of the post-Stonewall movement were clear on this point. The movement has decided that marriage is now a must-have, but the movement has never addressed, let alone forsworn, its founding anti-marital ideology. It seems that the movement wants “marriage” because it is looking for a batch of “gimmies”—gimme tax breaks, gimme “social validation,” gimme inheritance rights to estates and rent-controlled apartments (where they exist), gimme hospital visitation rights, etc.
Leaving aside the fundamental irony that a movement which has based itself on proclaiming its difference from the society at large is now demanding—demanding!—that the society it routinely vilifies extend it a massive concession recognizing its similarity, the gimmies which the movement is demanding can, and in most cases have, been granted by the passage of domestic-partnership laws. Indeed, California had already granted “marriage rights” under a sweeping domestic partnership law when the militant gay-rights movement demanded that it be granted the “right” to marry.
In support of this alleged “right,” the gay-rights militants usually cite to the anti-miscegenation laws swept away by the US Supreme Court in the mid-late Sixties. This, too, is a fraud: miscegenation laws invalidated otherwise-valid marriages on the extraneous basis of race; the same-sex marriage advocates seek the acceptance of a newly-invented form of marriage.
The gay-rights movement is, at bottom, a “human rights” movement; in this, it is antithetical to the entire Constitutional structure. “Human rights” are special privileges granted by the government to a favored constituency. The Constitution does not recognize such things; it regards people as having liberty, protected by civil rights held against the government. The Bill of Rights consists of a litany of ways in which the citizen can slap down a government which oversteps its power, as governments are prone to do; these are civil rights. The gay-rights movement is seeking “human rights”—special privileges—by demanding that the government give it something to which it is not entitled.
“At bottom”. Buzzsaw made a funny.
No poon intended…
Well, I always thought the Constitution acknowledged that our “rights” human and otherwise, came from God and therefore could not be touched by government – who has the power to take what it also gives. I might just be parsing words here, though.
However, you are correct in stating that the gay-lobby wants to destroy marriege. In European countries that have legalized gay-marriage the institution collapsed overnight. In some scandinavian countries there are even hetero couples who marry in secret and hide that fact. In these same countries, preachers are routinely arrested and jailed for reading from from the bible. Mosques’ are, of course, exempt.
But, what better way to destroy marriage than by getting it sanctioned by the government and then suing individual churches that refuse to perform the ceremonies out of existance? At least destroy then ones that still adhere to God’s Word, leaving only those that comply with the new order, bearing no resemblance to a church of God.
I’m thrilled that the democrats have chosen to focus so much energy on gay marriage. Why?
1. It fractures their special interest group base. Minority voters, particularly blacks, tend to be anti-gay. So giving the gays what they want will automatically turn off a certain percent of minority voters and their churches, who may just stay home. Remember how Prop 8 passed in California when nobody expected it to? That was because of the unprecedented black turnout for Obama. This time it’s reversed, baking gay marriage into the dem platform will decrease black turnout.
2. Every minute of time, every dollar, that liberal groups spend pushing gay marriage is a minute of their time and dollar of their money that they’re not using to make my life worse. If gay marriage fails or wins, it doesn’t impact me in the least. Compare that to other liberal platforms like government healthcare, raising taxes, affirmative action, handouts, carbon taxes, etc. Those things directly make my life more difficult. Let them spend their venom on gay marriage, it’s the least destructive outlet for it.
I disagree.
Gay marriage is necessary because gay couples are now raising children. And it’s better for the children if their parents are married, whether those parents are straight or gay.
In my state of MA, the courts ruled long ago that adoption agencies can’t discriminate against gay couples; gay couples have the right to adopt and raise orphan children.
And thanks to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) with anonymous sperm donors, lesbians are now getting pregnant and giving birth to children too.
Once children are involved, marriage is a good thing, regardless of the sexual orientation of the parents.
And nowadays, gay couples have children.
Right. So the solution is to ban homosexual adoption.
What is your answer to the Harvey Hay/Harvey Milk conundrum? They enjoyed sex with underage boys. Do you think they would be suitable parents to boys?
Another question: How are you going to prevent two defrocked priests from marrying, becoming foster parents for “boys only, please”? or adopting: “boys only please”.
Here’s another “elephant in the room” question?: WHAT IF there are tens of thousands of men in America who would be happy to marry another man to get sexual access to adopted or fostered little boys, one for each? Sexual practices with underage boys were common in the ancient world, with pages or young military servants providing sexual gratification for their masters day after day, year after year, until the master lost interest. Do you want this mess to begin again?
Were you wearing a bag over your head when you wrote that you see no problems ahead?
“They enjoyed sex with underage boys. Do you think they would be suitable parents to boys?”
Lots of people make unsuitable parents. State should not be in the business of determining who these people are. Lots of gays (particularly the one’s seeking gay marriage) are NOT interested in underage boys. The issues are separate. Gay marriage advocates today are not calling for lowering of age of consent.
Actually the state becomes the child’s guardian as soon as the children are no longer in the custody of their own real parents.
The state should not break up biological families unless abuse is present. But when a child is given up for adoption, the state gains a moral, ethical, and legal obligation to make ALL custody decisions based on what is best for the child.
Every time the state permits its representatives (including judges) to prioritize the interests of anyone else over the interests of the child, it is failing in its duty or worse.
Any person whose interests are represented by a guardian who is not actively representing those interests is a crime victim. Think about it: you wouldn’t want the state to assert the right to act on your behalf, then ignore your rights and give your interests away to someone else whose rights seem more compelling to that state’s representative, would you? That would be fraud, embezzlement, etc.
Like so many left wing policies, it only makes sense if you assume that children aren’t fully people (or “persons” as they like to say) until the child is old enough to become politically useful to the left.
Actually, they often are—just not at the same time. Or else they are pursuing the lower-age-of-consent agenda by demanding ever-younger and ever-more-graphic “inclusive sex education” (i.e., recruitment) in the public schools.
If your point had any validity that gay adoption demands the legalization of homosexual marriage “for the sake of the children”, it presents gay adoption for what it really is, a cynical ploy to use children as a means to advance the gay agenda. Where is your empirical evidence that a child is better off with two mommies than one? Just because the enlightened leftists in Massachusetts pushed gay adoption doesn’t mean it’s necessary to push the whole edifice of traditional marriage down with it,
…and Catholic adoption agencies no longer can function in MA because of being forced to accept gay adoption. The children lose again.
Why are you so willing to abandon children to a living hell? Why do you turn a blind eye to such atrocities as these:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/media_nervous_on_new_duke_u_ra.html
-atrocities that are routinely ignored by the mainstream press?
The same people who have given us the torture and murder of more than 50 million baby boys and girls now went access to vulnerable little ones to be used as their personal sex toys. When will this evil cease? Maranatha!
“want”
All children have the right to a relationship with their own real mother and father. Any child who cannot have both relationships has the right to have custody decisions made based on the child’s best interests.
The only way for gays to be “raising children together” is if the child’s best interest is made secondary to gay desires.
There are also gay couples who choose to enter into “coparenting” relationships. How come we don’t hear more about this? They voluntarily choose to raise their child in a permanent relationship with a member of the opposite sex, because they understand that, if gender were irrelevant, they wouldn’t be gay; it wouldn’t matter whether they marry a man or a woman “as long as s/he’s loving”. But it is a lie to pretend that gender is irrelevant. Gender is irrelevant, and children have both right and reason to value both mother and father.
It matters in a million ways what gender your parent is. Children are better off when they have one of each – a same-sex parent to model themselves on, and an opposite-sex parent for them to learn from. A man to throw them up in the air and a woman to gasp and panic when he does so (that’s one of many scientific studies showing the very real, biologically hardwired differences between men and women, not sexism on my part).
Men and women play different roles within the parental relationship, and children deserve one of each – their own, if possible. Loving parents should not deliberately make their child motherless or fatherless. Deliberately engineering a situation where a child is abandoned by mother or father should rightly be viewed as child abuse, not a “choice” for the parent to make – as if all “choices” were perfectly valid. And whether the gays adopted or “custom built” their motherless or fatherless child, forcing that child to pretend that being motherless or being fatherless does not involve loss is beyond unloving; it is cruel. It is vicious. It is dehumanizing.
Oops – meant “gender is relevant”, not “irrelevant”
“The Baltimore Sun’s Susan Reimer is a good example. Reimer had real trouble restraining herself in her weekly column, warning those who disfavor same-sex marriage: Think of the judgment of future generations and try not to give your children ‘reason to be ashamed of your bigotry.’” Susan Reimer is a fool; there won’t be “future generations” from gay marriage.
The birds on my balcony always mate male to female and raise young. There is no such thing as “gay marriage” among animals.
Well, animals dont tend to have straight marriages either. I am not sure what your point is, but you can find homosexual. Behavior in most species. Some even self reproduce, so i guess they marry themselves.
You can find homosexual behavior among the animals, and do you know what it’s almost always an expression of? Dominance and hierarchy. The dominant animal mounts the subdominant one. It’s not an expression of love, mating or tenderness for on individual to another. The closest I’ve seen to that is some mating cuckoo behavior expressed in some cichlid fish species where the subdominant males will express female coloration and invade the mating dance between the dominant male the actual female. He then scatters his sperm between the pair while using the female colors to confuse the issue. At least some of her eggs will be fertilized by him (still heterozexual mating).
Of course, the species you refer to are mono-gendered species. They all effectively clone themselves, but they need the stimulation of sexual activity to get the process going. They go through the motions.
And there was a study that found the incidence of homosexual behavior in male ibis increased with environmental exposure to toxins … so maybe some human homosexual behavior comes from evil enviro toxins? Too much birth control hormones floating around?
You are lying, of course. There are several species that mate for life and any “homosexual” behavior is pack animal behavior to show dominance over another member of the pack.
But – and this is the point, you see – WE are NOT animals no matter what leftists say. So quit judgeing us in the same manner you’d judge a weasle.
Homosexual organizations are/have been instrumental in attacking age of consent laws in the Uk and Canada. They are imposing speech codes on those who disagree with them….rather like the islamists. I have watched the movement over the course of my life. I used to be sympathetic but no more. Live your life but leave marriage and children alone.
Good posts, buzzsawmoney; you make some excellent points.
!
Homosexuals who want to get married aren’t bothering anyone and aren’t hurting the institution of marriage. Just what would the two members of a homosexual pairing be doing if gay marriage remains outlawed or even if sodomy becomes illegal again? Do people really think there will be less homosexuality? No, homosexuals will then return to doing the same things they have been doing for centuries: psychologically torturing themselves and others through attempted celibacy, lonely bachelorhood mixed with dangerous and fleeting sexual encounters, or dysfuntctional and unhappy marriages with members of opposite sex.
“gay marriage” is likely to lead to healthier lifestyles and greater happiness for those who want it. There is no chance it will lead to more homosexuality, as no one chooses to be gay. Just leave them alone. If you care about the institution of marriage, deal with the divorce rate and the out-of-wedlock childbirth rate, which have NOTHING to do with this issue.
Why do homosexuals define themselves by their sexual preferences?
because that’s is the only thing that sets them apart from other people: their sexual proclivities, and the traditional social/religious/moral opposition to those proclivities. They’re not preferences either, which implies choice — most gays would prefer to be straight.
Leave them alone and let them do their thing. Gay civil marriage does not threaten traditional marriage. No one who should be entering into a traditional marriage is going to choose gay marriage instead if it is legalized.
It’s a choice and several famous “gay” people have come out and said so. It’s also a choice in that you have a “choice” with who you sleep with. I also don’t see why gays should be given carte blanche to destroy something that has nothing to do with them. Marriage is ours – back off of it. We made laws to geive them civil equality and that wasn’t good enough. They just HAD to have marriage – which means they want the ability to sue churches that refuse to marry them. They want revenge on those that dared to call their lifestyle an abomination – even though those that said it were just repeating what GOD said regarding the matter.
It’s only a choice if you’re bisexual. That fact that you believe it’s a choice tells me that for YOU, it IS a choice, meaning that you are bisexual and have CHOSEN heterosexuality.
I’m gay, I didn’t choose it, and no power on Earth could make me sexually attracted to women. But, you think one can go either way, because YOU can. You’ve outed yourself. Good luck.
Sorry, not bi. Straight, but celebit. You see, I choose NOT to sleep with men before marriage. And I’m not planning on marrying anytime soon.
However, my former best friend admitted that he CHOSE to be gay because he enjoyed the hedonistic lifestyle. It cost him his life in 1989 when he died of aids. His plan had always been to marry and have children and be faithful to his wife. It didn’t work out that way for him.
But again, you may be “gay” but you CHOOSE who you sleep with. You’re not an animal. Quit acting like one.
I’m willing to leave them alone to let them do their thing.
I only get involved when “their thing” interferes with my ability to do my thing, and interferes with Catholics’ ability to do their thing.
You want to get married? Go get married.
What you really want is to force everyone to recognize your marriage as equal. But your marriage is not equal. It is not a “marriage”. It is a friendship.
Marriage is more than just “love”. Marriage is about starting a family. Gay couples cannot start families. They can only find or make families that are vulnerable and scavenge from those families to find the makings of what they “build their family” out of. It is a lie-family. It is a family that is only a family through make-believe.
Real families are genealogical, biological, kinship-based structures. The only exception I am willing to grant is for adoption, and that case is only because adoption is about solving a problem in the way that is best for the child. Gay marriage claims similarity to adoption, but turns it on its head: instead of being about what’s best for a child, instead the child’s interests are sacrificed to what is best for the gay couple.
Gays have a real problem, but that doesn’t give them the right to demand whatever they want. They can’t be a real family because they don’t have the right to demand that people lie for them. They are within their rights to demand that they not be discriminated against, but they are not within their rights to demand that we view “discrimination” in terms that are defined according to equality of outcome, because the only way to do that is to deny equality of outcome to others – specifically: to their children, and to everyone who is forced to accept two not-equal things as equal.
That is, you are welcome to believe that the differences between their union and a real marital union are irrelevant, but you are not welcome to demand that *I* believe those differences are irrelevant. And you can’t argue that the differences aren’t there, because the differences are demonstrable.
Ultimately that’s what the real problem comes down to: what you want is nothing less than the right to force people to accept your beliefs over their own beliefs. You don’t choose what it means to be gay, but you do choose what you want to believe about what it means and how you want to live. It’s the gay rights activist who is “shoving his beliefs on people” – because he wants his own moral beliefs, his own beliefs about marriage and sexuality and reproduction and life’s purpose and what it means to have a family to be universal beliefs. He wants his beliefs to be the majority view, and if they conflict with Christian beliefs (or any other religion – since even the Dalai Lama does not support the homosexual rights agenda) then all religious people must have their religious rights bounded such that people “have the right to believe whatever they want, until and unless their beliefs conflict with humanist universalism”.
“I only get involved when “their thing” interferes with my ability to do my thing, and interferes with Catholics’ ability to do their thing.”
I don’t know of anyone calling for Catholics to be forced to recognize gay marriages, and if they are, it is irrelevant. Churches are entirely protected by First Amendment. If Mormons refused to marry interracial couples, for instance, no one could ban them from doing so or take away their tax exempt status.
“Marriage is about starting a family.”
I await your explanation of why you are willing to make an exception for infertile and childless heterosexual couples who wish to marry, but not for homosexual couples.
“instead of being about what’s best for a child, instead the child’s interests are sacrificed to what is best for the gay couple.”
You are making an argument against gay adoption, not gay marriage.
Recognizing gay lovers as procreative is what you want.
It’s a lie.
You have no right to force anyone to lie.
Gay lovers are not equal to spouses, and the families they make (out of parts scavenged from real families) is not equal to a healthy family.
You have no right to force your beliefs on me, and you certainly have no right to teach your weird beliefs to my children in school.
Gays are equal to straights, but gay couples are not the same as straight couples.
Gays are as entitled to equality as every other citizen, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to make a family. The right way is to honor (not disappear) the man or woman you make a child with. Honor, support, protect, and cherish. You don’t have to love him or her. I don’t care if you sleep with him/her. But I do care if your child is allowed to have his relationship with him/her recognized, honored, and upheld.
Being gay doesn’t mean you are exempt from obligations – legal, ethical, or even just plain common decency. Women aren’t here for you to use as “gestational carriers”. Babies are not something you give as gifts. Deal with it, and stop coveting what ain’t yours.
And by the way, is marriage procreative or isn’t it?
If it is, then gays aren’t eligible for it.
But if it isn’t, then why are gays unwilling to make a baby with one person, while marrying another?
When you’re ready and able to answer that, we can talk about whether arguing against gay adoption is somehow different from arguing against gay marriage.
Because gays are the ones arguing that marriage is somehow separate from procreation. I think it’s pretty self-evident that a marriage license is a license to procreate (and be recognized and supported by the government in the act of doing so) – in the same way a hunting license is a license to hunt on government property and a driver’s license is a license to drive on city streets. That the marriage license is a license to make a family – not to love another person – is clearly obvious if one looks at the benefits marriage confers (benefits that make no sense if you’re talking about an institution that is only about fulfilling the emotional needs of individuals).
The sexual revolution is what gave us the idea that sex can be separate from procreation. But the sexual revolution has not worked out well. I see no reason why I should accept its flawed premises as self-evident. So, why don’t you explain why, if marriage is not procreative, you need to force us all to pretend that a child “can have two mommies”, when if marriage is “not procreative” why can’t gays just parent with the person they make a baby with?
Now wait a minute. Are churches entirely protected by the first amendment anymore? The healthcare contraception mandate would like to differ with your opinion on “entirely protected.” It is no stretch at all to think that a gay couple in a state recognizing any two adults as a valid marriage could sue a church that refuses to allow them use of their facilities for recognition of their union citing equal protection under the law. Then we have a constitutional crisis between the 1st and 14th amendments. We already have gay couples citing discrimination against private business owners who cite religious objections in denial of service and states attempting to pass hate speech ordinances that prevent churches from preaching against homosexuality as a sin despite the 1st amendment and Catholic Charities have had to stop offering adoption services in MA because they were forced to offer services to gay couples despite their religious objections. But hey, total protection under the 1st … Tell me that one again. It’s a good joke.
As to your other arguments, gays seem to want it both ways. Marriage is about two people who love each other whenever I hear about why they should marriage. Procreation and children very rarely come into it. In fact, “breeder” is a slur the gay community often levels at the heterosexual community the same way the “n” word used to be leveled at blacks. My experience seems to tell me they simply want to have their exclusive attachments to one another recognized more often than not and to co-opt the word society uses to force social acceptance.
Now, when we point out that marriage is in reality a relationship that is a social contract made for the formation of a family with the idea that it creates a stable and permanent, secure foundation for the rearing of children. Of course, you try to point to the childless marriage which are a minority as an excuse to justify gay unions and point to gay unions that want children which are also a minority (IME).
“Churches are entirely protected by First Amendment.”
You might want to explain that to the Catholic church who has been essentially driven out of Massachusetts over gay adoption. Or how about the POTUS and his little was on the 1st Amendment by demanding that the Catholic Church – as an employer – MUST provide abortion services and birth control to their employees?
specifically protects clergy from having to perform a marriage ceremony that is against their religious beliefs.
All the bible thumpers need to remember the golden rule . . . no religion should tell you that there is something wrong with 2 people who love one another to marry.
What you are saying is “the golden rule” is not, in fact, the Golden Rule.
And as for the meaningless “protections” of the proposed Maryland law, you need to read my comments at #24 below.
Not a single poster here who has been arguing in favor of same-sex marriage has offered one reason, excuse, or justification for inventing a new form of marriage.
inventing a new form of marriage? wtf? let me guess, you were against legalizing inter-racial marriage too?
Not a very clear thinker, are you, catherine? I dealt with that upthread: the attempt by the gay lobby to equate its invention of a new form of marriage with the abolition of miscegenation laws is totally false.
Anti-miscegenation laws voided otherwise-valid marriages on the basis of the extraneous detail of race. Same-sex “marriage” invents a new form of marriage which never existed before. No comparison.
It is not surprising to see this phony comparison brought up, however. The gay lobby has been striving for decades to try and invent itself as a “protected class,” and has attempted to creep, like a hermit crab, into the hollow shell of the defunct civil rights movement. But the gay lobby is not a civil rights movement; it is a “human-rights” movement, which means that it is merely seeking special privileges. “Human rights,” as I discuss in #11 above, are totally antithetical to the Constitution and civil rights.
“The gay-rights movement is seeking “human rights”—special privileges—by demanding that the government give it something to which it is not entitled”
My impression has always been that “marriage” as a concept and its “benefits”/”special privileges” were/are designed for the benefit and legal protection of “children.”
Frankly I am wholly unable to rationalize why I (U.S./Maryland citizens) should be called on to become aware of, applaud and/or give homosexual or other behaviors that depart substantially from the norms of our citizenry special privileges and rewards.
I voted against Maryland’s new law establishing homosexual marriage (and its award of the purported 20 plus legal benefits accorded “marital relationships”) in that I don’t see this “stipulated condition” as rising to accord of a “right” and our according the rewards of a “marriage” as a result.
why can’t a homosexual couple receive the benefits of marriage for their children?
Here is a free Movie 2016. http://vimeo.com/m/51569342
I will not vote for anyone who supports gay marriage and killing babies who are born alive during an abortion.
Obama is not only incompetitent, but evil.
Since it obvious the most basic reason our country failing is the destruction of a married husband and wife raising kids – the very foundation of our country without dispute for almost 400 years, our solution now is to deal with the problem by further making mockery of the definition of marriage, rendering the term meaningless.
Yeah, that will certainly help to solve what ails us. For as long as we last.
lolly said . . .
“Sorry, not bi. Straight, but celebit. You see, I choose NOT to sleep with men before marriage. And I’m not planning on marrying anytime soon.
“However, my former best friend admitted that he CHOSE to be gay because he enjoyed the hedonistic lifestyle. It cost him his life in 1989 when he died of aids. His plan had always been to marry and have children and be faithful to his wife. It didn’t work out that way for him.
“But again, you may be “gay” but you CHOOSE who you sleep with. You’re not an animal. Quit acting like one.”
————–
Your best friend lied to you. No straight guy is going to hop in bed with other guys because its fun. Men are notorious for deluding themselves on this issue. Many claim to be straight but just experimenting. Yea, right.
Also, why don’t you post a picture of yourself so we can see if you are choosing a life of purity, or saddled with one. I knew a woman who claimed she was saving herself for marriage; what a present that would have been. Arf, arf.
What makes you think I act like an animal? And how do animals act, anyhow? I’ve never known a promiscuous animal. What makes you think I have sex with anybody? Did I say I did?
Your letters on this site are continually sanctimonious. You come across as a self-righteous, holier-than-thou, religious prig, always pointing fingers at everyone else. I couldn’t care less if you do or don’t get married, and I couldn’t care less of some gay gouple does or doesn’t get married. Tens of millions of straight people behave every bit as badly as the gays you put down. Who do you think had fifty million abortions since Roe vs. Wade? Gay couples?
Here’s a novel idea: How about minding your own business and fixing your own life? And how about reading something other than the bible.
Changing to goal posts just like a good little commie. Your lifestyle is animalistic because you have implied that it is so. Also, my friend never lied to me. It is YOU who are lying to yourself. You rut like an animal like you have no say in the matter. DO excerize a little CONTROL in your life.
“Here’s a novel idea: How about minding your own business and fixing your own life?”
Good advice, if only sodomites would follow it.
Nobody cares what you do in your bedroom. When you bring it out in public, it becomes public business. The push by Sexual Deviants to get their deviant behaviour ‘normalised’ will produce a push back.
Nothing will change until “gays” accept that they are mentally ill and seek help, not more sexual opportunities. Why spend billions on finding a cure for AIDS when that same money spent on finding a cure for homosexuality will produce many positive results.
Better to shower at Penn State then vote Democratic.
You’re entitled to your beliefs, as well as the knowledge that they are destined for the dustbin of history. At least western history. You’ll probably be able to find lots of Muslims who agree with you a hundred years from now.
The fact is that normalizing homosexual behavior will not produce more homosexuals. On the contrary, it will probably produce fewer, as less and less people with homosexual orientations enter into traditional marriages, procreate and pass on their orientation genetically.
Actually, the school indoctrination HAS produced a lot more children who have at least experimented in the behavior – encouraged by the school. They then through a little party to celebrate the student’s self-awareness and the students basks in the attention. Then, when they decide they are actually straight they are told they are in denial and then the child feels trapped and kills themselves.
That is your liberal tax dollars at work. You must feel so proud!
Where and how and on what basis do you ascribe “fact” to the opinion you express here?
mostly the testimony of homosexuals indicating their aversion to sexual relations with the opposite gender. testimony of heterosexuals — such as myself — indictating their aversion to sexual relations with same gender. the character of the aversion which indicates it goes deeper than culture, that it is innate.
How far do you propose to take this absurd argument? Do you now propose to argue the “innateness” of the “aversion” held by someone who walks around wearing a “no fat chicks” T-shirt?
“the most basic reason our country failing is the destruction of a married husband and wife raising kids – the very foundation of our country without dispute for almost 400 years. our solution now is to deal with the problem by further making mockery of the definition of marriage…”
Separate issue. The question of equality does not “further” anything, but simply extends the right to participate in that “mockery” to citizens who do not currently have it, and who want it. What you consider mockery is the new cultural norm, and extending it to homosexuals will neither weaken nor strengthen that norm for the heterosexual majority.
Social conservatives are focusing on this issue because they don’t know what else to do. The scale of what would be necessary to reverse the tide — especially putting the birth control and pornography and no-fault divorce genies back in their bottles — is so ridiculously large that anyone who thinks we “have to do something” is left with only with the notion that picking on a small group of people with abnormal sex drives attempting to live some semblance of a normal straight life would actually acomplish something.
also, re: “special privileges and rewards” — can someone please explain what they are asking for that is “special”? They want the right to marry one other consenting unrelated adult of their choice. How is that right different than the rights heterosexuals have to marry one other consenting adult of their choice? If gays were asking for the right to be able to have polygamous marriages or to marry same gender siblings — since there was no chance of producing offspring — I agree that would be asking for special privileges. But they’re not.
” – can someone please explain what they are asking for that is “special”?
Don’t play the fool. It’s been explained to you several times. You are like a child that sticks your fingers in your ears screaming lalalalalal when you don’t hear what you want. Grow up!
I voted for Maryland’s proposed law because I think gay couples should be afforded all the protections of marriage, including for their children.
The Maryland proposed law specifically protects clergy from having to marry anyone against their religious beliefs, which is of course important as well.
If your religion condemns the love of one person for another, it’s time to find a new religion.
Talk to God about that view.
lolly,
god is good, god is love. please don’t personify god.
Utterly meaningless. If the law passes, within a year that “protection” provision will be attacked on federal “equal protection” grounds—and within five years the First DA/DT Justice, Elena Kagan, will write the Supreme Court decision that renders the First Amendment a dead letter, if we are so unfortunate as to give Barack Obama the chance to make any more Supreme Court appointments.
There have already been cases of Professionally Aggrieved Gays suing private businesses on “equal protection” grounds—flower arrangers, banquet halls, bed and breakfasts—which have politely declined to accept same-sex marriage business. Traditional religions, which are the gay lobby’s real target, are next.
bullcrap. . .
Apparently you have not been following the news for the last several years.
apparently, unlike you, I can hold 2 thoughts in my head at the same time.
to wit: I don’t think a private company should have to give services to any gay person if they don’t want to. I read about the florist who didn’t want to provide their services for a gay wedding, and were sued by the couple. I happen to think a private business should be able to decide whose business they want, and the gay couple should not win that suit. Doesn’t mean I agree with the florist’s perspective, I agree with their right to serve whom they wish.
However many thoughts you can hold in your head, or believe yourself capable of holding, you have a fine disregard for actual fact.
It is nice that you “believe that private businesses should have the right” to turn down whatever business they wish to turn down, but you are apparently unaware that under current civil rights law they are not permitted to do so—that members of professionally-aggrieved pressure groups such as the gay lobby have successfully sued businesses which have done exactly what you claim to advocate.
The gay lobby is the greatest foe of the First Amendment in the United States today. Both in its advocacy in favor of restricting free speech, which is all its “hate speech” prating amounts to, and in its pushing for the creation of same-sex marriage instead of being content with domestic-partnership protections, which is intended as an attack on religion, it is using useful idiots like yourself who fall for the “love” lingo to destroy one of the foundation blocks of American jurisprudence.
One should, perhaps, add that anytime someone tries to sugarcoat a basically-unpalatable law by saying, “oh, yes—I know you’re worried about that, but there’s an ironclad protection written into it, the only question is whether that person is lying or merely self-deluded—not whether the “ironclad protection” is a figleaf that will fall in short order.
what’s unpalatable about allowing 2 people who love one another to marry?
preach to the choir, it’s what your arguments are based upon.
What is unpalatable is granting a special privilege to a vocal pressure group, when that pressure group created itself around the objective of ending the very institution it is now demanding for itself, and is demanding, further, that the larger society pretend its relationships are “the same” when the pressure group has, from the beginning, maintained that its relationships are different.
The gay lobby wants to eat its erotic cake and have it, too.
Now you’re really making stuff up. The vocal pressure group, in this situation, is not asking for a special privilege. They are asking for the same privilege that you have Buzzsawmonkey. Said pressure group did not create itself in order to end marriage, they created pressure to obtain the right to enter into marriage. Are you following so far? Lastly, your comment that larger society is being asked to pretend its relationships are the same is nonsensical. Larger society is being asked to provide gay people the right to marry the person of their choice. That choice should be based on the relationship of those 2 people, not what Buzzsawmonkey thinks of that relationship. Just treat people the way you want to be treated, and it all gets so simple.
We all want to eat erotic cake and have it too. Isn’t that one of the great advantages of a marriage of 2 people?
It is you, catherine, who are making stuff up. You are ignoring, among other things, that same-sex relationships are not the same as opposite-sex relationships; that there is no historical precedent for same-sex marriage; that there is no compelling reason to legalize it except the “I wanna” of the gay lobby, which represents a tiny minority; that one of the gay lobby’s founding principles was the destruction of marriage; that there has been no public discussion of this founding principle of the gay lobby; that there is, indeed, no actual definition of what constitutes “being gay,” and that the lobby continually expands its definitions on the basis of swelling its political demographic.
“We should grant this because two people claim they love each other” is just as much an argument for the legalization of incestuous marriage as it is for same-sex marriage. Try making an argument based on substance, not politics; you can’t.