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Those opposed to "gay marriage" will you explain your position to me?
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Anonymous
| Being gay isn't a sin. Sodomy is the sin. Both heterosexuals and homosexuals engage in sodomy. Everybody is a sinner . Active homosexuals exclusively engage in sodomy while some active heterosexuals never do. As a Christian I stand against the promotion of and glorification of sodomy just as I would the religious celebration of greed or adultery. |
Anonymous
Do you ever mix fabrics? Because that's a sin too or do you just pick the sins you you want to support oppress people you don't like? |
Anonymous
Oh, you're very ignorant. Not all male couples engage in anal sex, and of course plenty of straight couples do. As long as they don't, is gay marriage cool with you? How about if they sign something promising to engage solely in mutual masturbation? Then would you feel okay about their having their families protected by federal law? As I thought, this thread is showing that people who are against gay marriage are mostly against it because they want a theocracy where their religion is privileged above all others. Or they're the poster affectionately known as "pantysniffer" who just loves to talk about sodomy. |
Anonymous
| How is expression of opinion here "oppressive"? -NP |
Anonymous
Full disclosure: I am a gay marriage supporter, and voted for it in Maryland. So I am not exactly the person you are talking to. Further, I suspect that many of the supposed opponents of gay marriage on this thread are actually supporters trying to make opponents look terrible. But that's just a guess. On the internet no one knows you are a dog. The secular argument against gay marriage is not nearly so complicated as people make it seem. It goes as follows. Marriage is a social institution that has evolved over time to manage the brute biological fact that men and women have sex that produces children. Obviously, the specific forms vary to some extent from culture to culture, and people are not strictly monogamous, polygamy used to be a prevalent historically, etc. etc. But one-man, one-woman marriage is both obviously grounded in biology and surprisingly robust across the world and is thus clearly adaptive in many ways, not all of which are clearly understood, social behavior being as complex as it is. The outcome of changes to such institutions cannot be predicted in advance, so we ought not to tinker with them without a good reason. Essentially, the argument is Chesterton's fence. Given that background assumption---which seems debatable but rational to me, contra the rhetoric of gay marriage supporters---the question then becomes is there a good reason to change how this institution has historically functioned. (Again, as I said above, I believe that it should for reasons that fall outside this topic, which is asking for an explanation regarding where the other side is coming from.) Opponents of gay marriage would say no---the institution grows out of and is justified by the biological reality of procreation, and there is no reason for same-sex couples to be included in it. Further, at the population level, gays are a rather small population, so why change an important social institution to accommodate whatever small fraction of that population is actually interested in marriage. I note that one of the disconnects here is that gay marriage supporters frame the issue in ways that assume the conclusion. Your own post, OP, speaks in terms of "two consenting adults" and *assumes* that the appropriate definition of marriage is something done between two people, rather than between a man and a woman. I mean, sure, once you assume the problem away, it looks like an easy one. But those assumptions are not neutral and inherently true -- they are in fact exactly what is contested. "Two consenting adults" is the rhetoric of gay rights generally, although it has been fabulously successful and is now an assumption of many. But really it's not: no one actually think that "anything" two consenting adults do is ok, so we are back the inherent line-drawing problem that we always have. All too often, this argument boils down to an unresolvable one about the definition of marriage. So then down the rabbit hole you go. Gay marriage supporters will say that is an argument for banning marriage between infertile couples, elderly couples, etc. These points are unpersuasive to me in the abstract, because that is not an argument for gay marriage, it is an argument against law as a concept, since no legal rule can be drafted to avoid conceptual difficulties around the edges. Gay marriage opponents will say, under your argument, what is the case for banning incestuous marriages, or polygamous ones? I think we have all seen these arguments before, and they are persuasive or not according to taste. Of course, the arguments against gay marriage have flaws of their own and I find them ultimately unpersuasive. My own view is that technological and social changes have thrown a lot of things into flux, and who knows how it will shake out before all is said and done. My personal view is that gays are, in fact, similarly situated to straights on the merits of this issue and should be included in marriage as a result, but I recognize that as a legitimately contested question, largely because the strong forms of the argument for gay marriage prove too much and require unprincipled stopping points as a result. Really, what is the argument against polygamy in a gay marriage world? Assuming marriage is only two people is exactly the same, conceptually, as assuming it is a man and a woman. Gay marriage advocates simply like one and not the other; in this regard they are similar to gay marriage opponents with the line drawn in a different place. |
Anonymous
Everyone mixes fabrics, even you no doubt. |
Anonymous
NP. The only wrong sex is nonconsensual. Anything mutually enjoyable and agreed to cannot be wrong because it is, or should be, an individual decision, and the only thing I think could be objectively wrong is something that harms another person or violates their rights. Just because one person doesn't enjoy a specific kind of sex, that doesn't make it wrong for others to engage in it. Everyone has the right to not engage in any activity they don't like/find uncomfortable/consider to violate their faith or morals, but why would someone assume that another person has agreed to the same standards? |
Anonymous
NP. I'm not subject to the rules of a group I haven't consented to join. The same could be said of the holy book of any faith, and I doubt you would want to be told you're subject to someone else's religious text for a faith other than yours. I'm not a Christian, and I have no obligation to live my life by your Bible. I also have no right to ask you to take an action that would violate its rules, since you do believe it and have chosen to live by it, but part of freedom of religion in the US is that you don't have the right to force your religion and its rules onto others. |
Anonymous
I noticed that very few of the anti- posters were able to discuss this outside of religion. Maybe none. |
Anonymous
We already have your situation. What you call civil unions are civil marriages, authorized by the government to convey the rights and privileges that have been granted over time to those who are religiously married and have been granted rights by the government, such as hospital visitation rights, legal custody of children, the right to transport legal dependants across state lines, etc. There are thousands of laws that are crafted around the concept of the civil marriage. Maryland has over 400 laws conveying rights and privileges to individuals in marriages. The federal government conveys over 1000 rights and privileges to individuals by way of marriages. Local counties and towns have laws written granting privileges to marriages. Trying to amend the legal documents of all of the various jurisdictions in the US to change "marriage" to "civil union" would be a crippling financial burden to the system, so we have adapted the term marriage in law, by the government to be a civil union authorized by the government. Nothing about the laws makes a marriage a religious one, it never could. But when you look at laws, "marriage" will mean a civil marriage because the state can only authorize a civil marriage, not a religious one. Only the church can authorize or "bless" a religious marriage. But church canon does not and should not have any effect on modern American laws. Words adapt over time. You can't change that. "Gay" at once only meant happy or lighthearted. Now it means homosexual. You can insist that it only means the former, but you'll find that many people will misunderstand what you're trying to say. It's unfortunate that the laws originally chose to convey rights to marriages rather than civil unions, but trying to change the laws to grant all rights and privileges at this time is completely impractical. |
Anonymous
| I believe with all my heart that people who oppose gay marriage or gay anything are struggling with their own homosexual issues. I don't get it otherwise. Before you make any assumptions about this poster, I'm hetero male. |
Anonymous
Yes and it is a no no in the bible. Why aren't you up in arms about that. I was educated by nuns (almost exclusively) for 13 if you want to argue the bible with me bring it on. Or wait....you won't because I'm a pagan idol worshiper right? |
Anonymous
I agree or they are faltering in their marriage or Faith. Or they are miserable so they want others to be. |
Anonymous
|
That should say 13 years.
Oh parochial school, the memories. |
Anonymous
I'm gay and I hate it when people say this. People who hate {minority group} aren't necessarily struggling with their own desire for {minority group}. Some people are just assholes. |