Okay, let’s do it. Clear the table, I’m gonna give you a topic. Gay marriage. Discuss.
The arguments against it:
- It’s unnatural and could lead to other unnatural partnerships; as Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum put it while arguing for the constitutionality of an anti-sodomy law, “If the Supreme Court says that you have a right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
- The children of gay marriages could be at risk; as hulk theorizes, due to the lack of role models of BOTH genders. Or due to the fact that homosexuality is actually harmful to children, for those who believe that.
- Marriage is between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation and continuing the human race. Gay people cannot procreate without help, therefore, marriage makes no sense.
- Marriage is sacred amd homosexuality is wrong.
The arguments for it:
- Sexual and marital activity between of-age and consenting adults should not be legislated by the government. The United States was founded on principles of self-determination and self-governance, which should extend to one’s private life. There is no evidence that gay sex will naturally progress to incest or bestiality. Most incest, incidentally, is father-daughter and heterosexual.
- Regarding children: obviously gay couples cannot procreate by themselves. However, not all heterosexual marriages end up producing children, and these marriages are still legal. Furthermore, if more couples want to adopt unwanted children, and if these couples pledge to raise these children in a loving home, why stand in their way? Studies (there have been several) show that while children from gay couples take more than their fair share of teasing at school, they tend to be well-adjusted AND only slightly more likely to be homosexual than the average child raised in a heterosexual household.
- While marriage is a legal contract, it also provides benefits and protections; among them, tax breaks under the current administration, hospital visitation rights, custody rights, inheritance rights, insurance rights, and so on. Adults who love one another and desire to spend their lives together, regardless of their gender, deserve these rights and protections.
- If marriage is sacred, (again paraphrasing hulk), then how come Britney Spears can have an 18-hour marriage in Vegas and J.Lo can get married four times in six years? In the interests of keeping marriage as the sacred once-in-a-lifetime entity that it’s supposed to be, why not extend it to couples who love one another and want to stay together, regardless of their genders?
This is just scratching the surface, but that’s my take on some of the arguments I’ve been hearing. I’m biased, of course. Who wants to weigh in?
I just want to address a couple points here:
How would homosexual marriage lead to further unnatural partnerships any moreso than heterosexual marriages would? This wasn’t talking about the fact that homosexual activities are unnatural to start with, it was implying that something further is caused like (as was later mentioned) beastiality or incest. It just boggles my mind that anyone could think that.
How does consensual sex necessarily lead to polygamy, incest, or anything else? That’s like saying that owning pets leads to beastiality. What the hell? (Or, of course, that owning a gun leads to violence.)
She can’t and she can’t, respectively. Those were not marriages. Anyone who would allow those people to get married has no idea what marriage is, and is just doing it for the marriage fee. You should not be allowed to be married in such conditions, nor should anyone else be forced to respect such crap. Marriage has lost some of its meaning because of precisely cases like this. If we treated it like we should, the divorce rate would be far lower.
On a somewhat related note, getting a driver’s license is far too easy, for the same reason. Being able to drive isn’t respected as much as it should be – it has the same potential effects in an irresponsible person’s hands as a gun. The driving age needs to be raised to at least 18, and the testing process needs to be much more strict. And people need to be retested at regular intervals. It’s ridiculous who’s allowed to get married and drive these days.
November 11th, 2004, at 10:16 am #Two thoughts right off the bat. First, I still say gay couples should be held to a higher standard when it comes to adoption. Again, excluding abuse cases where heterosexual parents end up hurting the adopted kids, I’d like to know what these studies looked at.
As far as marriage being sacred, I think the issue has been forced. Do we need a complete redefinition of marriage in our society? Should marriage be even allowed for all HETEROSEXUAL couples? Has marriage become just a glorified form of dating? I think it has. What I’ve heard is that lesbians are usually committed while gay men are just as bad as regular men in being cheating bastards, which I think fits. Men were wired to hump everything that walks. You can see this in the animal kingdom. So here’s the question: Could we allow only committed couples, gay or straight, to marry?
This is one of my concerns. The first is that heterosexual couples have turned marriage into a joke of a committment what with divorce attorneys and they way treat marriage and their kids. It’s a whole separate issue, but there are too many parents acting like carefree children these days who feel they shouldn’t have to be bothered with making the sacrifices necessary to raise their kids properly. The second concern is that there are gay couples who are seeking to be married not out of a deep sense of committment to their partner, but out of a petulant desire to backlash against those who have ostracized them. Notice I said “there are”, not all or most or many.
But still, I reinforce the point that referring to everyone who has problems with gay marriage as a retard isn’t a good way to get your point across, nor is it correct.
November 11th, 2004, at 4:59 pm #