Should homosexuals have the right to marry?

[Lerica (Ancient)]

The argument is definition of terms it seems like.

Marriage, in original definition, was between a male and female.

Well, isn't that a bit narrow? Originally it appears that marriage could be between a man and any number of women he could afford to buy. Out of 1,231 societies examined worldwide, only 186 were strictly monogamous. 1,045 societies allowed polygamy.

What's your opinion on polygamy?

[The Alma Mater]

Marriage, in original definition, was between a male and female.

Except it wasn't. As far as we know (since marriage quite possibly predates writing) it was between a man and as many girls he could support.
Note the differences. Not female, but girl. Not singular, but plural.

[Quattrablegia]

"How does my getting married to a dude affect you in any way, shape, or form, other than you don't like it?"

This isn't the sticking-point question you would think it would be. The trouble is that there are a good many Christians who believe that they are to be "salt and light" in the world--preserving what is considered to be good and exposing/destroying what is considered to be evil. They believe that they are God's spokespeople, God's representatives, to Earth, and it is up to them to command what they believe God commands. Everyone else's business *is* their business, because everyone's business is God's business. Remember too that these Christians view the universe, not as a democracy, but as an absolute monarchy.

I can speak to this because I used to be "one of them" until I came out.

[Galloism]

The argument is definition of terms it seems like.

Marriage, in original definition, was between a male and female.

Well, isn't that a bit narrow? Originally it appears that marriage could be between a man and any number of women he could afford to buy. Out of 1,231 societies examined worldwide, only 186 were strictly monogamous. 1,045 societies allowed polygamy.

What's your opinion on polygamy?

Support.

[The Alma Mater]

This isn't the sticking-point question you would think it would be. The trouble is that there are a good many Christians who believe that they are to be "salt and light" in the world--preserving what is considered to be good and exposing/destroying what is considered to be evil. They believe that they are God's spokespeople, God's representatives, to Earth, and it is up to them to command what they believe God commands. Everyone else's business *is* their business, because everyone's business is God's business. Remember too that these Christians view the universe, not as a democracy, but as an absolute monarchy.

And others, like me, point out that a father who thinks he has the right to murder his children if they disobey him probably is not worth listening to

[Dempublicents1]

Marriage, in original definition, was between a male and female. That wasn't made explicit because the majority of human beings just follow the path of least resistance/complexity and love someone who offsets them physically.

Was it? When was the original definition created? Are you sure it wasn't one man and multiple women?

Thus, the definition can be changed at will, but marriage between gays won't be the same as between straights.

Other than the genitalia of the people involved, what inherent difference is there?

Whether you widen the term to include both, make two separate terms, or make a wider term and two narrower terms, it's all the same. Straight people just would like to keep the term marriage as their own narrower term because it applies to them. Why is that bad?

Because, just like separate schools for black people, it isn't equal.

[Herolandia]

"How does my getting married to a dude affect you in any way, shape, or form, other than you don't like it?"

This isn't the sticking-point question you would think it would be. The trouble is that there are a good many Christians who believe that they are to be "salt and light" in the world--preserving what is considered to be good and exposing/destroying what is considered to be evil. They believe that they are God's spokespeople, God's representatives, to Earth, and it is up to them to command what they believe God commands. Everyone else's business *is* their business, because everyone's business is God's business. Remember too that these Christians view the universe, not as a democracy, but as an absolute monarchy.

I can speak to this because I used to be "one of them" until I came out.

And an amazing job you did

[The Candy Lane]

same sex marriage should not be allowed. nuts and bolts my friends, nuts and bolts.

[Galloism]

same sex marriage should not be allowed. nuts and bolts my friends, nuts and bolts.

Where do the nails fit in?

Won't anyone think of the nails?

[Quattrablegia]

Forget the government's ability to establish marriages/ grant marriage liscences at all. Leave "marriage" to the Church.


A friend of mine had an idea that he called Cooperative Living Contracts.

The CLC could be between any 2,3, or 4 people, regardless of sex.

They'd get all the benefits of being married, and could even still have rings.
Anyone involved in a CLC would have to live with the people they're contracted to, so it's not like you could just sign up and then do your own thing. The relationships wouldn't have to be romantic, though.

That way, everyone can still have the benefits of a marriage without a fight between the Uber-Christians and the...well, everyone who supports gay rights. (I'm Christian myself, but...in no way a "Bible Banger.")
If a same-sex couple does want to get MARRIED married? Well, it'd just have to be left at the discretion of the church. Right?

I don't really remember all the details of the CLC, but I know it was more thorough when my friend conceived it. (It's totally not my idea; I just really liked it.)

Never understood this point. We already have "two" marriages anyway, they just happen to act similar to a single because we allow religious ministers to bring the culmination of licensure into effect (that is, states issue the marrial licensure, and religious representatives may preside over the ceremony which makes it legally official). So effectively we already have this similitude, we simply have segments of the population using political force to en-graph their view of religious discipline into the civil law on the issue. Religious institutions can already refuse to marry individual based upon their own private beliefs (happens all the times, prior-divorcees, inter-racial marriages, etc); allowing SSM does nothing to the civil legal concerns involving the practice of their religion.

Exactly. All marriages in the US are "civil unions" already. You don't need anyone to pronounce you anything. I imagine the rules vary by state, but as long as you get the license, have it witnessed competently, and register it at the appropriate state office, you're married. Osmstan's proposal actually stands the current system on its head.

But, again, the trouble is that the word "marriage" is specifically codified into hundreds upon hundreds of federal laws, and the only way that "civil union" can be on the same footing as "marriage" is to have every one of those several hundred laws rewritten to include civil unions.

It must also be noted that there have been instances where a religious community has said, "Have all the rights you want, just call it a civil union and not a marriage," and as soon as civil unions are declared to be equal to marriage except in name, they reverse stances and go into a frenzy that these "civil unionists" are trying to usurp the sanctioned place of marriage.

[The Alma Mater]

same sex marriage should not be allowed. nuts and bolts my friends, nuts and bolts.

Are you suggesting that marriage is all about screwing ?

[Galloism]

same sex marriage should not be allowed. nuts and bolts my friends, nuts and bolts.

Are you suggesting that marriage is all about screwing ?

18 nails to build a crib, but only one screw to fill it.

Or something.

[The Tofu Islands]

Are you suggesting that marriage is all about screwing ?

I was just about to make a pun along those lines.

Damn you.

[Farnhamia]

Forget the government's ability to establish marriages/ grant marriage liscences at all. Leave "marriage" to the Church.


A friend of mine had an idea that he called Cooperative Living Contracts.

The CLC could be between any 2,3, or 4 people, regardless of sex.

They'd get all the benefits of being married, and could even still have rings.
Anyone involved in a CLC would have to live with the people they're contracted to, so it's not like you could just sign up and then do your own thing. The relationships wouldn't have to be romantic, though.

That way, everyone can still have the benefits of a marriage without a fight between the Uber-Christians and the...well, everyone who supports gay rights. (I'm Christian myself, but...in no way a "Bible Banger.")
If a same-sex couple does want to get MARRIED married? Well, it'd just have to be left at the discretion of the church. Right?

I don't really remember all the details of the CLC, but I know it was more thorough when my friend conceived it. (It's totally not my idea; I just really liked it.)

Never understood this point. We already have "two" marriages anyway, they just happen to act similar to a single because we allow religious ministers to bring the culmination of licensure into effect (that is, states issue the marrial licensure, and religious representatives may preside over the ceremony which makes it legally official). So effectively we already have this similitude, we simply have segments of the population using political force to en-graph their view of religious discipline into the civil law on the issue. Religious institutions can already refuse to marry individual based upon their own private beliefs (happens all the times, prior-divorcees, inter-racial marriages, etc); allowing SSM does nothing to the civil legal concerns involving the practice of their religion.

Exactly. All marriages in the US are "civil unions" already. You don't need anyone to pronounce you anything. I imagine the rules vary by state, but as long as you get the license, have it witnessed competently, and register it at the appropriate state office, you're married. Osmstan's proposal actually stands the current system on its head.

But, again, the trouble is that the word "marriage" is specifically codified into hundreds upon hundreds of federal laws, and the only way that "civil union" can be on the same footing as "marriage" is to have every one of those several hundred laws rewritten to include civil unions.

It must also be noted that there have been instances where a religious community has said, "Have all the rights you want, just call it a civil union and not a marriage," and as soon as civil unions are declared to be equal to marriage except in name, they reverse stances and go into a frenzy that these "civil unionists" are trying to usurp the sanctioned place of marriage.

I wasn't advocating creating a separate thing called "civil union" to stand beside marriage in the law. Same-sex couples should simply have the right to be married, in all the legal sense of the word, full stop.

[The Candy Lane]

i found an interesting article by a liberal about gay marriage. he isnt against gays getting together in civil unions or watever, but believes marriage should be kept between a man and a woman. kind interesting.
I didnt actually read the whole thing, to bloody long lol

whole article is here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_156/ai_n6143562/pg_2/?tag=content;col1

Families are not infinitely malleable, as even champions of diversity must concede. This does not simply owe to considerations of size: A government that distributed children randomly, for example, could not be other than tyrannical. Even if it had the best interests of society in mind--say, the principle of equal opportunity, radically understood--a government that paid no regard to the claims of biological parenthood would be unacceptable to all but the most fanatical of egalitarian or communitarian zealots. Beyond its other functions--limiting female fertility, transmitting property, or providing companionship, for example--marriage is a way of honoring this central fact, which limits one's ability to regard practices of marriage as either wholly dependent on belief in a particular divine revelation or as wholly "socially constructed."

But marriage is not merely a matter of biology. That children can be "illegitimate" suggests that the biological facts of parenthood are not enough for social purposes. Disputes over fatherhood, for example, or variations in parental attachment to their children, make it reasonable for societies to supplement and sometimes override the natural bonds established by and through the processes of human generation. Marriage is, before all else, the practice by which human societies mark, modify, and occasionally mask these bonds. Like death, and the funereal rites that universally accompany it in one form or another, human generation has a significance that is more than arbitrary, if less than obvious. Marriage is the primary way societies interpret that significance, and it is doubtful whether any other custom could substitute for it adequately.

Whatever else it may accomplish, marriage acknowledges and secures the relation between a child and a particular set of parents. Whether monogamous or polygamous, permanent or temporary, marriage never fails to address this relation--at least potentially. It establishes a legal or quasi-legal relation of parenthood that draws on, even as it enhances and modifies, the primary human experience of generation and the claims and responsibilities to which it naturally gives rise. A husband is, until otherwise proven, the acknowledged father of his wife's off-spring, with recognized rights and duties that may vary from society to society but always exist in some form. And a wife is a woman who can expect a certain specified sort of help from her husband in the raising of her off-spring. All other functions of marriage borrow from or build upon this one. Even marriage among those past child-rearing age or otherwise infertile draws on notions of partnership and mutual aid that have their primary roots in the experience of shared biological parenthood...

Is the desired union between homosexuals more like a marriage between infertile heterosexuals, unions that draw ultimate psychological and moral sustenance (at least symbolically) from the experience of human generation; or is it more like insistence on attending one's own funeral--a funeral, one might say, existing in name only [see pg 4 TCL]? This question is not easily answered. Progress can be made, however, by attending to the stated goals of most gay marriage advocates....

Keeping the goals that advocates emphasize in mind, one can reach a principled and liberal public policy toward gay marriage. Most, if not all, of the goals of the gay marriage movement could be satisfied in the absence of gay marriage. Many sorts of individuals, and not just gay couples, might be allowed to form "civil partnerships" dedicated to securing mutual support and other social advantages. If two unmarried, elderly sisters wished to form such a partnership, or two or more friends (regardless of sexual intimacy) wanted to provide mutually for one another "in sickness and in health," society might furnish them a variety of ways of doing so--from enhanced civil contracts to expanded "defined benefit" insurance plans, to new ways of dealing with inheritance. (Though tempting, this is not the place to tackle the issue of polygamy--except to say that this practice might well be disallowed on policy and even more basic constitutional grounds without prejudice to other forms of civil union.) In short, gay couples and those who are not sexually intimate should be permitted to take legally supported vows of mutual loyalty and support. Such partnerships would differ from marriage in that only marriage automatically entails joint parental responsibility for any children generated by the woman, until and unless the paternity of another man is positively established....

...That liberal sword cuts both ways, however: American citizens should not have the sectarian beliefs of gay-marriage advocates imposed on them unwillingly. If proponents of gay marriage seek certain privileges of marriage, such as legal support for mutual aid and childbearing, there may well be no liberal reason to deny it to them. But if they also seek positive public celebration of homosexuality as such, then that desire must be disappointed. The requirement that homosexual attachments be publicly recognized as no different from, and equally necessary to society as, heterosexual attachments is a fundamentally illiberal demand. Gays cannot be guaranteed all of the experiences open to heterosexuals any more than tall people can be guaranteed all of the experiences open to short people. Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares. To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it....

A liberal resolution to the issue of gay marriage, one that transcends sectarian advocacy with an eye to the broader public interest, would encompass at least four primary elements. First, a legally expanded definition of civil union (or partnership for mutual support and aid) should be advanced that includes, but is not limited to, gay couples. Such unions might provide some of the benefits now afforded married couples while withholding others. Second, gay individuals and couples should be allowed to adopt children without prejudice and with primary regard, as is generally the case, for the interests of the child. Third, marriage as such should be limited to heterosexual couples, given that a central role of marriage lies in the public recognition of certain responsibilities and claims arising from human generation. Finally, marriage is to be defined in terms of mutual parental responsibilities and claims that civil union does not similarly take for granted....

On the other hand, many who support gay marriage will deplore any solution they believe discriminates between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Such intransigence is neither politically reasonable nor just. Some who endorse gay marriage, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, equate its prohibition with earlier strictures against interracial marriage. This analogy is entirely unfounded. Antimiscegenation laws acted in the face of, and against the facts of, human generation and the bonds they establish; laws instituting gay marriage seek to defy them.....

anyway before you yell at me i didnt right the article.
personally i think marriage should be a solely religious institution and civil unions (re-defined) secular.

[Treznor]

i found an interesting article by a liberal about gay marriage. he isnt against gays getting together in civil unions or watever, but believes marriage should be kept between a man and a woman. kind interesting.
I didnt actually read the whole thing, to bloody long lol

[/snip]

personally i think marriage should be a solely religious institution and civil unions (re-defined) secular.

Yeah, I'm just gonna say that I think he a bigoted piece of shit. As for marriage being a strictly religious institution, no. It was secular before it was religious, and it should return to the secular world.

Nobody is saying churches will not have a choice in who they perform marriage ceremonies for. We're just saying that marriage can't be restricted only to heterosexuals.

[Mirkana]

In every state that has allowed gay marriage, when a vote was taken the gay marriage was abolished. How about that for rights?

Washington State held a referendum to allow domestic partnerships all the rights of marriage. That referendum passed, and I am proud to say I voted for it.

[Lerica (Ancient)]

I didnt actually read the whole thing, to bloody long lol

Your knowledge and interest in this subject astounds me.

[Farnhamia]

i found an interesting article by a liberal about gay marriage. he isnt against gays getting together in civil unions or watever, but believes marriage should be kept between a man and a woman. kind interesting.
I didnt actually read the whole thing, to bloody long lol

whole article is here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_156/ai_n6143562/pg_2/?tag=content;col1

Families are not infinitely malleable, as even champions of diversity must concede. This does not simply owe to considerations of size: A government that distributed children randomly, for example, could not be other than tyrannical. Even if it had the best interests of society in mind--say, the principle of equal opportunity, radically understood--a government that paid no regard to the claims of biological parenthood would be unacceptable to all but the most fanatical of egalitarian or communitarian zealots. Beyond its other functions--limiting female fertility, transmitting property, or providing companionship, for example--marriage is a way of honoring this central fact, which limits one's ability to regard practices of marriage as either wholly dependent on belief in a particular divine revelation or as wholly "socially constructed."

But marriage is not merely a matter of biology. That children can be "illegitimate" suggests that the biological facts of parenthood are not enough for social purposes. Disputes over fatherhood, for example, or variations in parental attachment to their children, make it reasonable for societies to supplement and sometimes override the natural bonds established by and through the processes of human generation. Marriage is, before all else, the practice by which human societies mark, modify, and occasionally mask these bonds. Like death, and the funereal rites that universally accompany it in one form or another, human generation has a significance that is more than arbitrary, if less than obvious. Marriage is the primary way societies interpret that significance, and it is doubtful whether any other custom could substitute for it adequately.

Whatever else it may accomplish, marriage acknowledges and secures the relation between a child and a particular set of parents. Whether monogamous or polygamous, permanent or temporary, marriage never fails to address this relation--at least potentially. It establishes a legal or quasi-legal relation of parenthood that draws on, even as it enhances and modifies, the primary human experience of generation and the claims and responsibilities to which it naturally gives rise. A husband is, until otherwise proven, the acknowledged father of his wife's off-spring, with recognized rights and duties that may vary from society to society but always exist in some form. And a wife is a woman who can expect a certain specified sort of help from her husband in the raising of her off-spring. All other functions of marriage borrow from or build upon this one. Even marriage among those past child-rearing age or otherwise infertile draws on notions of partnership and mutual aid that have their primary roots in the experience of shared biological parenthood...

Is the desired union between homosexuals more like a marriage between infertile heterosexuals, unions that draw ultimate psychological and moral sustenance (at least symbolically) from the experience of human generation; or is it more like insistence on attending one's own funeral--a funeral, one might say, existing in name only [see pg 4 TCL]? This question is not easily answered. Progress can be made, however, by attending to the stated goals of most gay marriage advocates....

Keeping the goals that advocates emphasize in mind, one can reach a principled and liberal public policy toward gay marriage. Most, if not all, of the goals of the gay marriage movement could be satisfied in the absence of gay marriage. Many sorts of individuals, and not just gay couples, might be allowed to form "civil partnerships" dedicated to securing mutual support and other social advantages. If two unmarried, elderly sisters wished to form such a partnership, or two or more friends (regardless of sexual intimacy) wanted to provide mutually for one another "in sickness and in health," society might furnish them a variety of ways of doing so--from enhanced civil contracts to expanded "defined benefit" insurance plans, to new ways of dealing with inheritance. (Though tempting, this is not the place to tackle the issue of polygamy--except to say that this practice might well be disallowed on policy and even more basic constitutional grounds without prejudice to other forms of civil union.) In short, gay couples and those who are not sexually intimate should be permitted to take legally supported vows of mutual loyalty and support. Such partnerships would differ from marriage in that only marriage automatically entails joint parental responsibility for any children generated by the woman, until and unless the paternity of another man is positively established....

...That liberal sword cuts both ways, however: American citizens should not have the sectarian beliefs of gay-marriage advocates imposed on them unwillingly. If proponents of gay marriage seek certain privileges of marriage, such as legal support for mutual aid and childbearing, there may well be no liberal reason to deny it to them. But if they also seek positive public celebration of homosexuality as such, then that desire must be disappointed. The requirement that homosexual attachments be publicly recognized as no different from, and equally necessary to society as, heterosexual attachments is a fundamentally illiberal demand. Gays cannot be guaranteed all of the experiences open to heterosexuals any more than tall people can be guaranteed all of the experiences open to short people. Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares. To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it....

A liberal resolution to the issue of gay marriage, one that transcends sectarian advocacy with an eye to the broader public interest, would encompass at least four primary elements. First, a legally expanded definition of civil union (or partnership for mutual support and aid) should be advanced that includes, but is not limited to, gay couples. Such unions might provide some of the benefits now afforded married couples while withholding others. Second, gay individuals and couples should be allowed to adopt children without prejudice and with primary regard, as is generally the case, for the interests of the child. Third, marriage as such should be limited to heterosexual couples, given that a central role of marriage lies in the public recognition of certain responsibilities and claims arising from human generation. Finally, marriage is to be defined in terms of mutual parental responsibilities and claims that civil union does not similarly take for granted....

On the other hand, many who support gay marriage will deplore any solution they believe discriminates between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Such intransigence is neither politically reasonable nor just. Some who endorse gay marriage, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, equate its prohibition with earlier strictures against interracial marriage. This analogy is entirely unfounded. Antimiscegenation laws acted in the face of, and against the facts of, human generation and the bonds they establish; laws instituting gay marriage seek to defy them.....

anyway before you yell at me i didnt right the article.
personally i think marriage should be a solely religious institution and civil unions (re-defined) secular.

I can agree with some of the ideas here but not all of them and the overall position of being against simply allowing gays full marriage rights I cannot agree with. Human existence and human relationships are not all about biology and children. Ms. Shell admits this and then proceeds to make a case for creating a "separate but equal" institution based exactly on that (her references to "human generation"). This is just the argument that gays can't reproduce so they aren't entitled to marriage. Nor has Ms. Shell shown how allowing gays to be married as if they were merely citizens and not "homosexual citizens" does any harm to the state. I believe Brother Occam's shaving implement applies here: the author has proposed a needlessly complex solution where a simple one is available.

[Muravyets]

same sex marriage should not be allowed. nuts and bolts my friends, nuts and bolts.

Are you suggesting that marriage is all about screwing ?

Is he further suggesting that nobody screws unless they are married?

[Farnhamia]

same sex marriage should not be allowed. nuts and bolts my friends, nuts and bolts.

Are you suggesting that marriage is all about screwing ?

Is he further suggesting that nobody screws unless they are married?

May I offer the obligatory jest about being screwed because you're married? Just to get it out of the way?

[Dyakovo]

No.

Wow! That is so utterly convincing it has instantly swayed me...

[Farnhamia]

No.

Wow! That is so utterly convincing it has instantly swayed me...

Me, too. In fact, I ... I don't think I'm gay anymore, either!

[Muravyets]

same sex marriage should not be allowed. nuts and bolts my friends, nuts and bolts.

Are you suggesting that marriage is all about screwing ?

Is he further suggesting that nobody screws unless they are married?

May I offer the obligatory jest about being screwed because you're married? Just to get it out of the way?

By all means, do.

[Dyakovo]

Marriage, in original definition, was between a male and female.

Really? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see in the oldest known rules of marriage anything about it having to be 1 man and 1 woman... Care to tell me what number it is?