Ninerfan1 Wrote:For me the issue comes down to a couple of simple questions. "What is marriage?" and "What is marriage for?"

What is marriage? Is it just a contract between two people on which nothing really important rides on? It seems to me that those for gay marriage see marriage as merely an individual expressive conduct. That marriage's only purpose is the expression of love, be it gay or non-gay, and to have that love reconized by society as a whole. A mere contract, a vessel with no particular content, one of a menu of sexual lifestyles, of no fundamental importance to anyone outside a given relationship.

Good points, and I only right now have time to respond to this portion.

I don't see this as entirely looking for mainstream validation of a loving relationship. Much of it comes down to legal rights afforded (or not, in this case) to a spouse. That said, I have no problem with churches denying to sanction or perform marriage ceremonies, but I believe that gays should be afforded similar legal rights.

Also, the "sanctity of marriage" argument would always be easier for a cynic like me to accept if it were harder to actually get married. Driving a car is much easier to do than make a marriage work, and there's a test to pass in order to drive a car. Why not to get married? :D

HuskieDan Wrote:

The Knight Time Wrote:I wouldn't even necessarily care about gay marriage, if I could get a guarentee that adoption of kids wouldn't be the next "crusade", but it will be.

A child growing up in a gay marriage household would simply be totally unfair to the child and put him or her in a terrible spot.  There is no way I would ever support that, and I know that's the next step the gay community will take if they do somehow get marriage passed.

I'm curious - wouldn't a seemingly stable 2 person relationship be better for a child than a single parent relationship? IMO, I'd rather see a kid grow up in a loving family than a broken family.


Potential strawman alert - a very good friend of mine was brought up by a pair of lesbians. They're wonderful people, and he is a good person, a special ed school teacher with a 1 year old child, a wife and a newly built home near a State Park.

Now, I'm sure there are people that could come out of such a relationship in a different state, just as I'm sure not all mother/father families produce perfectly-adjusted children. But I have a hard time placing a blanket statement on the ability of a group of somewhat like-minded individuals to raise a child. Just IMO.

Here we go again.

Everytime I bring this up I get the EXACT same responses. They generalize heterosexual marriages as broken, and every gay marriage as "just a loving experience".

Am I to believe that every gay couple will be the perfect little parents?

Marriage in America needs a boot in the @$$ to the dignified institution it once was. It needs to be fixed, and creating gay marraiges is NOT the way to do that.

The Knight Time Wrote:

HuskieDan Wrote:

The Knight Time Wrote:I wouldn't even necessarily care about gay marriage, if I could get a guarentee that adoption of kids wouldn't be the next "crusade", but it will be.

A child growing up in a gay marriage household would simply be totally unfair to the child and put him or her in a terrible spot.  There is no way I would ever support that, and I know that's the next step the gay community will take if they do somehow get marriage passed.

I'm curious - wouldn't a seemingly stable 2 person relationship be better for a child than a single parent relationship? IMO, I'd rather see a kid grow up in a loving family than a broken family.


Potential strawman alert - a very good friend of mine was brought up by a pair of lesbians. They're wonderful people, and he is a good person, a special ed school teacher with a 1 year old child, a wife and a newly built home near a State Park.

Now, I'm sure there are people that could come out of such a relationship in a different state, just as I'm sure not all mother/father families produce perfectly-adjusted children. But I have a hard time placing a blanket statement on the ability of a group of somewhat like-minded individuals to raise a child. Just IMO.

Here we go again.

Everytime I bring this up I get the EXACT same responses. They generalize heterosexual marriages as broken, and every gay marriage as "just a loving experience".

Am I to believe that every gay couple will be the perfect little parents?

Marriage in America needs a boot in the @$$ to the dignified institution it once was. It needs to be fixed, and creating gay marraiges is NOT the way to do that.

No, I didn't say that.

What I basically said was that you're generalizing a homosexual marriage as one that a child couldn't possibly survive as a reasonably well-adjusted individual. My point is that I don't believe it comes down to whether the individual is brought up by homosexual or heterosexual parents, as long as the marriage is a healthy one and the parents are caring, loving parents.

Now, there is certainly a bit of vagueness to that description, but what I was asking of you was, would you rather a kid grow up with a married man and woman that is not a healthy relationship and they're lousy parents, or with a pair of gays that are loving and attentive to their child? I'm not generalizing, I'm asking if you are. It seems you are, and I'm curious.

FWIW - I see absolutely no reason to believe that a similar percentage of gay marriages wouldn't be just as screwed up as traditional marriages.

Ninerfan1 Wrote:

HuskieDan Wrote:I would honestly like to know what is so "heinous" about two gay individuals marrying one another.

For me the issue comes down to a couple of simple questions. "What is marriage?" and "What is marriage for?"

What is marriage? Is it just a contract between two people on which nothing really important rides on? It seems to me that those for gay marriage see marriage as merely an individual expressive conduct. That marriage's only purpose is the expression of love, be it gay or non-gay, and to have that love reconized by society as a whole. A mere contract, a vessel with no particular content, one of a menu of sexual lifestyles, of no fundamental importance to anyone outside a given relationship.

I see it much differently. Marriage, throughout history, in virtually every culture on earth, has always been the union between men and women. Its purpose is to provide a norm in my opinion. An ideal. It is about holding out a certain kind of relationship as a social ideal, especially when there are children involved. The marriage idea is that children need mothers and fathers, that societies need babies, and that adults have an obligation to shape their sexual behavior so as to give their children stable families in which to grow up.

Many here will disagree with me, but this is what I believe the intent of marriage has always been. If it doesn't have a purpose beyond the two people involved, why have it at all?

I have a serious problem with seeking to change the meaning of an institution for a tiny minority of individuals in this country. I heard a great analogy about this. The government does not create private property. But to make a market system a reality requires the assistance of law as well as culture. People have to be raised to respect the property of others, and to value the traits of entrepreneurship, and to be law-abiding generally. The law cannot allow individuals to define for themselves what private property (or law-abiding conduct) means. The boundaries of certain institutions (such as the corporation) also need to be defined legally, and the definitions become socially shared knowledge. We need a shared system of meaning, publicly enforced, if market-based economies are to do their magic and individuals are to maximize their opportunities.

There are social norms of behavior that have existed in this country since it's enception, and in humanity as a whole for centuries. There are social ideals and definitions that are universally reconized. Once you open the pandora's box of allowing an extremely small minority of people to dictate individually a new meaning for them, you challenge any type of social order or norm that exists today.

Basically, two people of the same sex being together is NOT marriage. In the same way that me and my brother calling ourselves a corporation doesn't make us one. There are defining characteristics of marriage, and the most basic is that it is between a man and woman for the purpose of providing a positive structure for raising children. Yes I know that not all couples have children and I know that not all marriages last. But the idea of marriage is an ideal in my opinion. And simply because people fall short of meeting it doesn't mean we therefore change it.

Just my opinion, without flame.






:D

Some excellent points, Niner.

I would suggest, however, that your use of private property in comparison to law in our society at its heart suggests a necessary flexibility in said law based on the will of the people. Now, we do know that people seem to be easily swayed when in a furor of something, so it shouldn't be something that should just be able to be turned on and off like a light switch - it's why a constitutional amendment is so difficult to pass. But if the circumstances change, and opinions become prevalent that a change in policy is a good thing, it does appear to still be there. It's extremely debatable whether that prevalence exists now, I understand that.

Marriage may have been "intended" to further procreation and sustination of a species. It may be more of convenience - I believe humans to be one of the few species to actually subscribe to the idea of sole mates (pun intended) - I'm no anthropologist or other -ologist or -ientist, so I can't swear to that. But marriage really appears to me to have born out of the human need for convenience. In many societies at varying times in history marriages have been arranged contracts that consolidate wealth and holdings.

As for changing marriage to include a tiny minority, I look at it a different way. I see a group of people who may be excellent couples. If a woman can be a CEO while her husband is a stay-at-home Dad, why can't a gay couple have legal rights as partners and raise a child? Each seem to be contrary to the more traditional family views, and yes, intentions.

HuskieDan Wrote:As for changing marriage to include a tiny minority, I look at it a different way. I see a group of people who may be excellent couples. If a woman can be a CEO while her husband is a stay-at-home Dad, why can't a gay couple have legal rights as partners and raise a child? Each seem to be contrary to the more traditional family views, and yes, intentions.

It's easy to speculate on that, and you can even find the anecdotal case to support it, but laws shouldn't change to accommodate 1 in 1000 or so. Particularly when the 999 are worse off.

Now this is hard to evaluate, and subject to much controversy, but there are legitimate data that suggest that the "loving" couple theory doesn't hold. That a father and mother, performing the traditional roles, works best. Not always perfect, but in general better.

In fact, recent work shows frustrated wives who have more of the role you describe, and despite their "feminist enlightenment" they find themselves not respecting and even disliking their husbands.

It would seem that the traditional roles were not completely out of conevenience, but rather humans are wired that way.

BTW, the lesbian couple that you mentioned has a decent chance of sticking together. Homosexual men OTOH, are far more likely to break up, creating even more instability in homes. Once again changing laws to accommodate this small minority (and have you ever wondered why the myth of 10% is pushed so hard?) leads to far more negative consequences than it solves.

Trooper Wrote:

The Knight Time Wrote:

Trooper Wrote:

The Knight Time Wrote:Do you think the founders would approve of abortion?

The "founders" pretty well laid out what the role of the government is in The Constitution.

I don't think you'll find abortion mentioned in there.

They do make it clear that the government does not have the right to meddle in the personal affairs of it's citizens.

Check out the U.S. Constitution, I'm sure you'll find it enlightening, that is if you can find a copy that someone hasn't wiped their feet on lately.

Meddling in personal affairs and legalizing genocide are 2 totally different things.

Freedom of speech is a constitutional right.

Killing 13 million babies a YEAR should NOT be.

The federal government has no business making any legislation for or against abortion.

Agreed. At the very worst, it should be a states' issue. If the people of a state want to ban abortion, so be it. However, the fed has no business in the matter.

Same with gay rights, as far as I'm concerned.

Let the states decide.