gay marriage

i'm with mdnky on this one. marraige is a generic term under the law as religion isn't supposed to influence it (althought it sneaks in there). that is really the only point that i've seen against it. the religions are still free to not recognize it. a law of this type doesnt affect them.

for some reason, everyone is in a tiff over the word. call it a civil union or whatever, but still 20 posts later, no one has made a compelling argument in my eyes why gays cant have said union
 
chemistry_geek said:
The second problem I have with gay marriage is what effects these "unions" or relationships can have on their heterosexual children, assuming one partner somehow had sex with the opposite sex and is responsible for bringing a life into the world. I'm not up on the current psychology research publications, but I'd like to know for sure how these experiences affect children. If there are no adverse affects (and I know there are - teasing by peers in schools, prejudices, etc...), then go for it, let it happen. But if there are adverse affects, then it should not be allowed, or allowed with restrictions against involving children.
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Oh please. Do you know how many kids out there are being teased in school, or being on the wrong end of predjudices? That really is a nonissue.

Aside form that, the possibility that a kid will be affected because he is being raised with 2 dads or 2 moms. That's assuming that parents are the only influences on a child's life. There are aunts, uncles, teachers, friends, peers, guidance counselors, etc.

This is all besides the point. A gay nonmarried couple can raise a child, and a married gay couple can easily not raise a child.
 
To add to that, a straight married couple can't always raise a kid either. There's more than enough proof of that in the world today.

There's been no compelling arguement made for a very simple reason...there is none.
 
I think we should keep the marriage issue and children issue separated. Gay couples want to marry for the same reasons hetero couples want to marry: love, romance, economics, rights. Denying them to do that is discrimination. Instead of issuing a new word, we should expand the classical concept of marriage to include the new phenomena. Remember the colonial period? Negroes (pardon the term) were not considered humans. We have now learned fortunately to accept all branches of humanity in our midst and have fortunately not invented another word to indicate them. Same with gay marriage. Marriage is union of two people: what does gender matter?

Regarding children, AFAIK the important thing is that there is a Father Figure and a Mother Figure: who exactly they are doesn't really matter. E.g the father figure can be you grandpa if your dad works abroad, but it also could be your bigger brother if your orphan, or your mother if she's alone, or your mothers partner, whatever their gender.

Unless your view is inherently religious, thinking that the only role of marriage is ("legal") procreation, I see no reason at all to forbid same-sex unions.
 
Cat said:
I think we should keep the marriage issue and children issue separated. Gay couples want to marry for the same reasons hetero couples want to marry: love, romance, economics, rights. Denying them to do that is discrimination...
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Now this annoys me intensely.

In the UK, you get tax breaks and lower vehicle insurance among other things _just_ because you're married.

So because two people -- whatever gender they might be -- have gone to the expense of getting married, they suddenly become more reliable, responsible or mature?

So by giving these rights _only_ to married couples, I'm denied. Aren't I being discriminated against?

I hate to drift into expletives to make a point [often a sign of weak argument .. not in this case], but that is a load of shit you can smell a mile off.

This isn't an attack leveled against you Cat, just the points you've raised and the way the system is tilted against the likes of me who will never marry.

Cat said:
Instead of issuing a new word, we should expand the classical concept of marriage to include the new phenomena...
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It's this expansion that is causing shockwaves in the various churches around the world.

It sounds easy, but how do you expand something within a religious context when in many cases, religious teachings are quite clear on the issue of homosexuality...
 
:mad:

For MANY reasons that I'm not going to post here because we will need LOTS of cyberspace, :mad: I'm against gay marriage... Religion one or not! :mad: This may sound whatever you may want it to sound BUT... :mad: I'M AGAINST IT :mad:

:mad:
 
i'm going to be a bit of a smart-alec now. please forgive. hulkaros, thats fine and dandy, but this isn't a poll. we want to know WHY!

It sounds easy, but how do you expand something within a religious context when in many cases, religious teachings are quite clear on the issue of homosexuality...
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thats cuz it is easy if you actually believe that separation of church & state stuff. the fact that in the eyes of the law there are NO religious attachments, should keep the state from forbidding such a thing on those grounds.

as far as the economic deal, i'm sure there are studies involved here as insurance allows for lower rates as well. last i checked insurance is based on a lot of statistics so, yeah, you probably do tend to "settle" down a bit when you get married.

thats really my only beef actually. if they called it something else, but got all the same rights, i'm cool with that, but that seems not to be an option based on what the media is reporting.
 
Octane: why don't you want to marry on principle? It's just a piece of paper, like any other contract. You exchange some rights with the other person, mutual assistance, pool resources, etc. This is economically also very convenient and from a tax perspective the government/insurance companies etc. give you a kind of group discount/lower risk price. Why gender would matter in this case is a mystery ...

From a religious point of view, I think there are two main problems: 1) many religions only consider marriage as a vow to bear and rise children 2) in most religions one gender dominates traditionally over the other. If religions want to survive, sooner or later they will have to accept changes. Female emancipation has made great progress in the last 100 - 150 years, I suspect the gay-rights movement will need something similar before becoming accepted. Remember I live in merry old Holland where we already have legal gay marriages, which are a complete non-issue now. Priests and Imams occasionally shout something unintelligible about homosexuals being animals or mentally ill, but these are silenced as discriminatory outbreaks and nobody really pays any serious heed to them anymore. By the way, Holland is also 40% officially atheist, and unofficially even more ...
 
Cat said:
Octane: why don't you want to marry on principle?..
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Because it is without value.

There are people who insist that you cannot possibly love another fully until you marry them.

This is not only tragic for it's blinkered short-sitedness, but it's typical of the perceptions of certain people as to how we should all live.

I am not atheist. I'm of the 'belief' that [to paraphrase the late Carl Sagan] we really don't know what we don't know.

Here's a little puzzle for you:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?..
 
I think at the very least, gay people should be allowed Civil Unions with all the same perks as a regular heterosexual marriage. Maybe expanding "marriage" to include gays is just a bit much for this country, but in general, I'm all for equal rights.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
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This does not make God malevolent. You cannot know good without knowing evil. If we were all deliriously happy all the time, we wouldn't know it, because we got so used to it. To know good, you have to compare it against something: bad. It's that whole yin-yang thing. It's getting the complete experience.

The argument is flawed in that it assumes because one lets bad stuff happen, you are being mean. When really, you are just offering the other end of the spectrum for a full life experience.

But, that's an aside from the gay marriage thing.
 
The "why does God let bad things happen to good people?" argument is REALLY old. Read the Bible or at the very least some half arsed theology. It all boils down to God giving humanity free will. Gay marriage? I would have to say that on balance I'm against it, purely because I would see it as a stepping stone to allowing gay couples to adopt. I would have to draw the line at that point in my own head. There is something profoundly sad about a couple(heterosexual) that cannot conceive. How could you give a child to a(loving) gay couple ahead of a(loving) heterosexual couple? A gay couple, loving and committed as it may be, cannot conceive a child without outside influence, I just find it hard to swallow the idea that gay couples are entitled to children and marriage would be a stepping stone to this.
 
lilbandit said:
The "why does God let bad things happen to good people?" argument is REALLY old. Read the Bible or at the very least some half arsed theology.
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It might be an old argument, but it's a fundamentally simple one to which some of the best theologians can only shrug their shoulders to.

Oh I can assure you I have much more than an half-arsed theory.

lilbandit said:
... A gay couple, loving and committed as it may be, cannot conceive a child without outside influence, I just find it hard to swallow the idea that gay couples are entitled to children and marriage would be a stepping stone to this.
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And I totally agree.

But this side-issue owes nothing to common-sense or right & wrong, it's governed by political correct diktat.

And this is why in some cases gay couples have been pushed to the front of queue; to satiate the desire of being seen to be all-welcoming, all-loving and mono-cultural and all of the other tiresome, rainbow-colored things people scream and shout about these days...
 
Until marriage -- heterosexual or not -- is perceived as more than a slip of paper in this society, it's pointless.

Just my two cents.
 
donkey said:
i'm going to be a bit of a smart-alec now. please forgive. hulkaros, thats fine and dandy, but this isn't a poll. we want to know WHY!
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Ok, I will try to settle this in a Spartan way :rolleyes:
Being a gay, either via becoming later on in your life, or by simply born one, it is not a normal thing! :mad: It is something that simply is not the rule but the exception of the rule... The rule of life that is! :mad:
 
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