The gay marriage issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...
Okay, time for me to apologize. I went back and read your original statement and see that you were saying it was good news that only 53% voted in favor of Maine Prop 1. I thought you had said that it was good news that it had been voted down, which following your first somewhat ambiguous statement, suggested that you were all in favor of majority rule crushing minority rights. I should have taken the time to read more carefully. Sorry!

Apology happily accepted and I'll give you one also. I was probably trying to be too cute about a sensitive subject, and was not sure how to get out of it without getting obnoxious or pedantic.

13:37 -- yes, that makes sense! I still should have read more closely though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:this is the PP. someone told me shorthand "homos" for homosexuals was offensive. Didnt mean it that way - meant it just as an abbreviation. i.e., heterosexuals = heteros. Going forward I'll use a different term.

are the hard-core conservatives also against some form of civil union? i'm ok with that, just leave marriage alone.

No offense, but if someone had to tell you that, you are beyond clueless. Yeesh.

[Anonymous]

why is that offensive?

[Anonymous]

The question stands on civil unions vs. marriage? Straight, married, athiest here, and I support a homosexual couple having the same tax, hospital visitation, social security, Medicare, etc, benefits as a married man and woman. But you can accomplish the same thing through civil unions, or even just plain contract law, without redefining what marriage is. Whether you are born straight or gay does not matter in my mind. Its an evolutionary dead end, so should not be allowed to be codified in the same institution of marriage. "Work arounds" to the evolutionary issue not withstanding (adoption, donor sperm/egg, etc), it is not natural, and it is not a 'normal' occurance, so it shouldn't be treated as such. Accomodations can be made, much like they are made for individuals with disabilities, and that 'accomodation' is a civil union.

I'm sure i'll be flamed for these opinions, but I am curious to hear from others on this question of contracts vs civil unions vs. marriage.

[Anonymous]

and there are certainly those out there that say there is only one "normal" skin color too. Time will play this out. Maybe one day we'll have a gay president with a spouse in the white house.

[Anonymous]

Equating skin color and homosexuality is apples and oranges. Skin color variations serve/d evolutionary purposes for the advancement of humans. I may be wrong, but I don't think there has been an evolutionary purpose described for homosexuality?

[Anonymous]

PP, I'd love to know what purposes skin color served in the evolutionary process except in modern times to allow for discrimination against people of color. Please, tell me more.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Equating skin color and homosexuality is apples and oranges. Skin color variations serve/d evolutionary purposes for the advancement of humans. I may be wrong, but I don't think there has been an evolutionary purpose described for homosexuality?

If evolutionary capability is a requirement for marriage, what should we do in the case of infertile hetero couples or post-menopausal women who have finally found their mate? Then again, overpopulation is a serious problem in many parts of the world. Maybe same-sex couples are nature's way of telling us there are two damn many of us? The connection of rising education and socio-economic factors to lower birthrates is well-documented. Perhaps the acceptance of childless couples (or children conceived by "alternative" means) is similarly connected?

[Anonymous]

Darker skin tones (african) evolved with more melanin to protect them from harsher sun. Lighter skin tones evolved so that they could get more vitamin D from the sun to be able to absorb the calcium in their diets since they relied more heavily on dairy. This is also why you tend to see lactose intolerance in individuals with darker skin tones -- evolutionarily they didn't have a lot of dairy in their diets so they didn't develop the need to have to metabolize large quantities of milk.

I learned these things in college through my evolutionary biology class. It was a fascinating course.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050602012109.htm

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090109-why-white-people.html

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't be surprised if there turned out to be an evolutionary reason for homosexuality.

[Anonymous]

There are arguments out there:

http://allpsych.com/journal/homosexuality.html

[Anonymous]

I can see why it could be an evolutionary adaptation for a minority of the population. The dominant strategy for raising human offspring is one of heavy parental investment.

Instead of having tens or hundreds, or thousands of offspring, we concentrate our resources on fewer children, which allows us to have offspring who are so helpless for so many years, but who are dominant in adulthood vs. others species.

This strategy is the primary reason why human monogamy is an adaptive (ie smart) strategy for males and females alike.

I can see why in times of great scarcity, a minority of families may survive due to an excess number of children who do not bear offspring. In other words, gay children provide resources to their nieces and nephews, ensuring the parents' genes (and theirs, to a large degree) pass into the future, whereas less well-supported babies die out.

[Anonymous]

Gays should be allowed to marry (using the term marriage, not civil unions) because marriage is a civil institution. Christian Churches (at least) did not perform marriage ceremonies till the 12th or 13th century. If the religious right want's to create their own term for marriage, fine by me. The term marriage denotes a social, not religious, institution.