Explain this "no gay marriage" thing to me again please

Explain this "no gay marriage" thing to me again please

I guess I don't get the rights' argument against gay marriage.

It doesn't affect me directly, personally (I'm straight, and married). But how is it a threat to either me, or the institution of marriage?

Supposedly it will "undermine marriage" and "destroy families". How?? Do they think that straight guys, given a chance, will throw away a chance at marriage to a women in favor of marriage to a man? Or do they think that gay guys (or gals) will marry and procreate and make gay offspring, ultimately crowding out hetero families? If so, they need to go back and crack open their biology books.

Perhaps they think lesbians, upon learning that gay marriage is banned by the Constitution, will then opt to "do the right thing" and marry a man and thus be available to perpetuate the human race?

If they haven't noticed, for a long time now, people of mixed genders have been having children without benefit of marriage - marriage is not a requirement to having a family.

And if they also haven't noticed, people of the same gender have been living together for time immemorial.

And if they really haven't noticed, you can't put two guys together, or two girls together, and come up with a child. So how it is a threat to "families", I don't know, unless they mean by being foster parents or adopting. And in that department, I note that gay couples already can foster or adopt without "benefit of marriage". Certainly being adopted or fostered into a gay home is a bit against the norm, but I would argue it beats out living in an abusive home, which is where they'd be if no one (gay OR straight) stepped up to the plate to take them in.

The two women who live in the house next to mine are gay. We don't know them that well yet, but I'm pretty sure they aren't legally married, although they are in a committed relationship. Is it any different than when my girlfriend and I were living together for a year before we were married? I don't see how. The only difference is that ultimately my girlfriend and I got married, while our neighbors aren't allowed to. But if they got married tomorrow, I don't see how that threatens my life. I'll still expect them to keep their lawn mowed, like they do now.

I know the right's not known for always making reasoned arguments, but I'm having a hard time conjuring up any sort of reasonable argument against this.

Thoughts, anyone?

- t

It's one of their last "safe" hatreds, and they need people to feel superior to. therefore they invent tall tales about how their own marriages will lose some mystical property, or how kids will magically turn gay.

What they fear is gays without shame.

with their same sex partner right in front of you. Then you'll have a hankering for it, get divorced, find a gay lover, traumatize your kids (they'll turn gay, too) and then try to convert everyone else.

It's the destruction of society, for cripes sake!

:sarcasm:

Lewis Black got this all figured out some time ago. He was on HBO the other night. Love that guy. :rofl:

self-loathing? I'm with you, I don't get it.

Except maybe in the way that honoring the rights of others seem like a demand to some people.

Good thing we both "turned" gay last week. Wouldn't want to be the last to be undermined. :)

No wonder my marriage is failing! It's all your fault!

Actually, according to an old neighbor of mine, the failure is because we allowed our daughter to "turn" into a lesbian. Damn-it, I knew I should have bought her Barbie Dolls, painted her bedroom pink, and forced her to watch the 700 club instead of South of Nowhere!

over. :)

1) That societies that permitted gay marriage in the past have all gone downhill quickly due to the decadence of allowing gay marriage(they cite the Roman Empire on that one)

2) If we allow gay marriage now, pretty soon, we'll be allowing man-on-dog sex and people will be marrying box turtles or people like Rick Santorum.... The old "slippery slope" argument.

You assume that there is a logical basis for the bigotry. :hi:

Seriously, I have been asking these same questions for more than 10 years now, and I have only heard three arguments made:

A) It is against the Bible
B) I am a fascist bigot who believes that everyone should do as I say
C) Ick! Ick! Ick!

but logic is my trade. I'm wondering how the right can justify it. As usual, I don't think they can't, except this claim is so over the top (requiring a Constitutional amendment) that I'd like to think they had some justification for it beyond just being "a threat". And if they do, I'm wondering what that justification is.

Then again, they probably don't, which is why so many people are calling them on it.

That is according to the bible.
How come there is no constitutional amendment on the table right now banning most sports on Sundays because of this. We all know football has damaged more heterosexual marriages than homosexuality ever could.

My marriage would be much better off if there was some slavery....

but then when I think about it...this is my second marriage. OMG! If that got put in the constitution I'd be stoned to death! Oh, wait...a preacher on TV said we can ignore that part in the bible. Whew! I feel so much better.

:sarcasm:

:rofl:

It's kind of like what they do with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights!

It is

A) handling the skin of a pig, which is an "abomination" (in Hebrew, T'V, the exact same word used to condemn "a man who lies with a man")

B) working on the Sabbath, in direct violation of one of the first of the Ten Commandments.

of change, nothing is as secure as it used to be in life and they need something to blame it on, the whole fundie thing is like that. They think if they're really, really good maybe daddy will love them and everything will be OK (abused child analogy)

if we find a donor/surrogate - but adoption is great too. Everyone who can should have at least one of each. :P

No the real issue is control of reproduction. In a society that cherishes individual freedoms the one freedom that conservatives believe "goes too far" is the freedom to do as you wish with your own reproductive organs and life.

It's hypocrisy, dishonesty and lord/serf thinking. All your gonads are belong to me.

And by golly they hate having reality rubbed in their face - us queer folk have been around forever, gonna be around forever. We have families and are going to make families forever, and there is NOTHING anyone can do except inconvenience us. How petty is that?

You are right - the more intelligence-challenged among them really believe that the urge to procreate is SO strong that all us authoritarian homos are going to just run off and gots to have me some cootch now that we can't marry the person we love.

And the single biggest chunk of hypocrisy: If these assholes were told they couldn't marry the person they love by some other busybody because they part their hair on the left instead of on the right - they would go into a positive froth of santorum, and yet when they're doing it they claim to be righteous.

Ha.

good post by the way - thanks

... actually believe (without connecting the dots) that allowing gays to marry makes for more gays. I seriously think there's a contingent out there that think that if gays can marry that they can magically reproduce.

Reproduction (by cloning or same-egg fertilization) does not require marriage, and certainly marrying someone (as opposed to living with them) won't get you any closer to having children than if you didn't marry, but I really get the impression that many people, who haven't applied a whole lot of thought, think that marriage=more gays. wtf? Are people that dumb? And my answer is: yes.

We look at gays as culturally gay too - but in a permissive society, is Anne Heche gay, ex gay, bisexual, or heterosexual at the moment?

It's a polar, temporal, subjective observation. If you messed around at band camp with a dude and his flute does that make you gay or even bi? I doubt it. But if we're more permissive on the whole then we end up taking away these polar labels that also indicate superiority/inferiority or normality/abnormality to our hindbrains.

Anyone of either sex who has ever given him or herself a handjob could as easily give and take that pleasure from someone else of the same sex. It's not a big leap to go from being comfortable enough with your own body to not be freaked out by that to more complex forms of sexual pleasure. Does that make someone gay? I still doubt it, but it does muddy things up.

So if we build these totemic ideas that you are "BORN" gay or that there is a gene or set of juvenile circumstances that "MAKES" you gay then we can neatly cordon off those ideas in our own heads. That is the real reason it's so important to externalize our discomfort with the obvious to a class of people who self-identify as gay.

As a "gay" guy I would likely say both my partner and I are much closer to the middle of the continuum than the far end. My first relationship was a multiple mix and at the end of the day we're all human and we all have the capacity, if not the actual desire, to play both or either side of the continuum.

I think that at the end of the day, at least for the past 25,000 years or so of known history, it would appear that "straight" parents are the ones that have been having all the gay babies! :rofl:

The religious right (and other bigoted assholes) are using the term "marriage" as their talking point. They claim all these "travesties" will happen if they allow gay "marriage" and they mainly tie it in with their religious beliefs. Although I can't give a full history of the origin of the term "marriage" I think it has been too widely accepted as the term to use when a man and a woman become partners for life legally and a lot of time religiously.

The track record for "traditional" marriage has been shit. The divorce rate among traditional marriages is over 50% and I can bet the adultery rate is well over that.

I think that we should start using a different term instead. "Legal union" seems to be more of what marriage has become anyway, and that is what I think it needs to be called. I know some might look at this as bowing to the anti-love people, but I think that calling it what it is and changing societies thought process can be a positive thing. I am also not saying that it takes away from the spiritual side of a relationship, I think that is between two people and whatever spiritual belief they hold.

I hope this isn't stepping on anyone's feet. I am single and straight and have never been married. That would make me one of the least qualified for a position on this issue, but I really think that the religious right has shoved the term "marriage" down everybody's throat making it only a religion thing and not what it really is in today's society.

it's these freaks attempting to force the rest of us to agree with what their idea of marriage is.

Hubby and I have been married for 18 years. We have a marriage. We love each other and are equal in every way. We put our marriage first...ahead of our kids and god (we're not much in the way of religious people so god's down the list)

The religious nutjobs are under the delusion that EVERYONE should put their idea of gawd first...ahead of everything else. They want to define it in that way plus the whole 'man and woman' argument.

My beef with this is not only that it's discrimanatory, but also it's none of their damn business on how hubby and I handle our marriage.

There is the legal definition of marriage, but when it comes down to it, what a marriage means comes down to the people who are married to each other. It's rarely the same from one couple to another. It's a private matter and the govt. should stay out.

All I am saying is that there are a lot of people who don't think beyond what they are told to think. The common thought on the term "marriage" is one man one woman. It isn't even about the gay marriage issue in a lot of cases. People have been conditioned to think along those terms.

My opinion is that we need to approach the issue from a different direction.

Take my mother for example. She is an old time Catholic and is a very good woman. She believes in what she was raised on and doesn't really question things like Adam and Eve and things like that. She is also a pretty liberal woman in the sense that she thinks everyone should be equal. But when the marriage issue was raised here in Ohio for the elections, she said something to me like, "I don't understand why they won't let gay people be legally together." She is just programed to think of the word "marriage" as a religious thing between a man and a woman.

I don't fault her on her thinking because she really is a good woman, but it shows me where people's heads are at. She has no problem with anyone who loves anyone no matter who they are. I think many people would open their minds more if the issue was opened up into something they could look at with a different approach.

I mean, you can beat the religious right over the head forever and they aren't going to one day magically change their mind. But there are actually a lot of good people in this world and I think sometimes they just need to be educated a bit.

Fascists MUST have an Enemy to demonize. If they don't, then people look at their bullshit to closely.

Substitute Jew/Black/Hispanic/Martian for Gay and it's the same old bullshit. Fascists are Fascists are Fascists, and there won't be any peace on earth 'til EVERY Nazi dies.

... So they exploit any opening available to hurt or limit them.

I fail to see what's complicated about it.


EDIT: Ah - now it occurs to me - what makes it appear complicated to a certain segement of the population is that a certain segment of the population is almost completely unwilling to acknowledge the existence of bigotry. In that case, this gay marriage to-do would appear very mystifying indeed.

Because the fundie creed is homophobic, legitimizing gay relationships is an attack on their religion. The fundie hierarchy is God, Man (husband), Woman (wife), Children. Gay marriage is an attack on that hierarchy.

There are no rational arguements against same-sex marriage, only irrational ones, i.e. religion.