Amid news that gay marriage law is leading to the shutdown of church adoption services, a new gay sex curriculum in elementary schools, and same sex marriages in a few states, it’s time to bring back our exciting Marriage Debate.
We’ve all heard the question, “How does letting gays marry threaten heterosexuals?” The idea behind the question is that same-sex marriage has no real negative consequences. So, let’s put the matter up to debate:
Q. How Exactly Does Gay Marriage Law Hurt Heterosexuals and Their Families?
Before weighing in with your comments, consider our suggestions below and then have at it. To ensure your comments are posted, keep it clean and focused on the arguments pro or con. (There may be a brief delay while comments are being reviewed and approved.)
MarriageNewsNow! Top Ten Ways Gay Marriage Law Hurts Heterosexuals and their Families
- Same-sex marriage law would not stipulate (or even insinuate) that adult partners are agreeing to raise children together; therefore, the all-inclusive same-sex marriage contract leaves heterosexual women and children without essential legal and economic protection against penalty-free spousal abandonment.
- Same-sex marriage law would not stipulate that adult partners must stay together for any duration of time; therefore, the all-inclusive same-sex marriage contract places heterosexual spouses and children at grave risk of economic destitution through penalty-free spousal abandonment.
- Same-sex marriage law would not severely penalize a spouse who exits the contract; therefore, the all-inclusive same-sex marriage contract offers no legal recourse for the faithful spouse or the children now struggling to survive without the committed help of the departing spouse.
- Same sex marriage law would create injustice in adoption services, for gay-couple adoptions institutionalize gender discrimination against one sex and deprive children of the normative right to both a mother and a father as provided in nature.
- Same sex marriage law would legally and logically open the door to polygamy, polyamory, polyandry, or to any group of cohabiting individuals that requests “marriage” status and benefits.
- Same sex marriage law would be fundamentally unequal, unfair, and unjust, for homosexuals would receive from the state equal benefits as heterosexuals without providing to the state an equal number of new citizens and related caregiving services.
- Same sex marriage law leads to gay sex indoctrination of young children in taxpayer funded public schools.
- Same sex marriage law marginalizes and stigmatizes religious groups, and removes the right of religious charities to deliver the services required by their faith communities.
- Same sex marriage law would permit self-interested spouses to quit the contract for any reason, potentially causing grave economic harm to responsible faithful spouses.
- Same sex marriage law would redefine gay cohabitation as “marriage,” thus destroying the child-oriented, family distinction and culture of marriage which takes great effort to maintain.
4.) Couples are required to produce X amount of offspring or they don’t qualify for marriage rights? What? I’ve known many heterosexual couples who don’t have children, and there are perks for being married and perks for having children. Being married doesn’t get you the perks for having children unless you, y’know, have children.
6.) There’s a difference between gay indoctrination and teaching children to accept people regardless of orientation. Besides, wouldn’t that just counterbalance all the heterosexual indoctrination we who are homosexual have to deal with growing up now?
The point that is not being raised is that for homosexuality to be granted any special-interest consideration is unconstitutional… They demand to be recognized for having engaged in a free-will sexual preference… To grant homosexuals the “right” to marry, is no different than allowing misantrophic anthropomorphic bestial marriage… Homosexuality is a paraphilia…. It is not normal…
Actually homosexuality is listed as an orientation, not a paraphilia. Paraphilias include pedofilia and extreme fetishes. Meanwhile there are 4 types of orientation, bisexuality, heterosexuality, honosexuality, and asexuality. Get your facts right.
Secondly homosexuality has been observed among animals, there are in fact several famous gay penguin couples at different zoos, one or two are more successful at raising chicks than heterosexual couples. Again, do your reserach and stop twisting science to support ideas based on religion.
I cannot believe you are comparing homosexual penguins at a zoo to human beings. Keep your animal kingdom out of it. How pathetic is your argument..
Mia, how pathetic is your argument? Would you mind explaining what kingdom humans are in if we should keep the animal kingdom out of it? I think the point was that as far as we know, animals carry out things like sexual behavior instinctively? AKA they don’t have a Bible telling them what is or is not moral? Am I wrong?
For you naturalists, remember that Natural Selection is all about what’s best for reproducing. Ergo, Natural Selection eliminates homosexuality. Period. End game. Check mate.
As far as homosexual behavior observed in animals, there is evidence mounting (no pun intended) that (in Rams for example), it is about showing male dominance – as they vie to be the one to mate with the females. Thus, it is not about a sexual desire for the same sex at all. But the homosexual camp is seeing what they want to see as they try to get homosexuality normalized in the mind of the population. They are probably getting away with gross manipulation of data at this point in time, but database aside – the chief fallacy in all these claims is the assumption that animal behavior is a guide to human behavior.
Consider female spiders that eat the males. Following this logic, sexual cannibalism is ok for humans.
Male stallions treat the females terribly so again, per this logic, male chauvinism is right for humans.
The stallions can even kill their male opponents, etc. The list goes on and on, but I’m sure you have the point.
Man is not related to animals so it doesn’t matter a fig what your dog thinks is normal – it only matters what the Creator says is right for man who is made in the image of God and will be held accountable by Him.
And let’s not forget, we humans are aware that the homosexuality is an anatomical absurdity.
@ David Hardy
Homosexuality is not a paraphilia.
Here’s the definition of Paraphilia out of the American Heritage Dictionary: “Any of a group of psychosexual disorders characterized by sexual fantasies, feelings, or activities involving a nonhuman object, a nonconsenting partner such as a child, or pain or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner.”
Homosexuals are human and homosexual sex =/= rape. There is no legitimate documentation to show homosexual activity to be a source of humiliation or pain.
Here ya go Princess
“There are some basic ethical problems with this kind of therapy that need to be discussed. The first problem is the use of the psychiatrist to enforce social conformity. LoPiccolo does not mention homosexuality in his article in spite of the fact that homosexual acts are illegal in the state where LoPiccolo lives and that sodomy no doubt is the most common of all sexual crimes in the USA. There is no theoretical reason for not including homosexuality among the paraphilias; there is only the pragmatic reason that the gay organizations are politically strong. The very fact that LoPiccolo recommends the treatment of transvestites and fetishists but not homosexuals indicates that the normality criterion he enforces is indeed arbitrary. ”
http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/98-053r_fog_eng.htm
In which case, it is still inaccurate to use the term “paraphilia” to describe Homosexuality. Also, all anti-“sodomy” laws (which included anal sex among heterosexuals as well as oral sex among gay men and heterosexuals, but excluded all lesbian acts) were repealed by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
There is also no connection between any of the things listed as paraphilia and homosexuality. As I said, homosexual sex does not equate to rape, and there is no legitimate documentation to show homosexual activity to be a source of humiliation or pain.
Citing “sodomy” as “the most common of all sexual crimes in the USA” is no different than if one randomly decided to make it illegal to have heterosexual sex (and there actually is a state in which it is illegal to have even heterosexual sex with a virgin, period).
There just is no justifiable reason to make either activity illegal, as the Supreme Court has recognized.
Wow, I’m guessing that this is another conservative Christian web site as the questions are all the same idea, slippery slope questions given when there is no reason that SSM should be denied.
Question 1. Same-sex marriage law doesn’t stipulate that adult partners are agreeing to raise children together, and thus it denies the family reality of heterosexual spouses and children and robs them of crucial economic protections against spousal abandonment.
Answer: there is nothing in law that stipulates that hetro partners are going to agree to stay together to raise children either. The whole concept of spousal abandonment is in error. There’s nothing that guarantees a hetero couple these things either. Nothing changes.
Question 2. Same-sex marriage law doesn’t stipulate that adult partners must stay together for any duration of time and therefore places spouses and children at grave economic risk of destitution should one partner grow bored and exit the agreement.
Answer: And this is different on how hetero couples act now? How is SSM going to change any of this? Marriage is assumed to “death do us part” for religious assumptions but in reality, most of the time, it isn’t. Nothing changes.
Question 3. Same-sex marriage law doesn’t severely penalize a spouse who tries to exit the contract and thus offers no dependable legal recourse or protections for the spouse and children now struggling to survive without the committed help of the departing spouse.
Answer: unless you’re speaking about some southern states who are trying to the best of their ability to make divorce extremely difficult. As it is today, there is no guarantee that the spouse or children will have any recourse or protection. It’s unfortunate but true.
Again, no changes.
Question 4. Same sex marriage law is fundamentally unequal, unfair, and unjust, for homosexuals receive equal perks from the state though they do not produce an equal number of new citizens and the related 24-7 childcare involved in raising babies.
Answer: If SSM is allowed, they should have the exact same perks. Besides, you error in the fact that not all hetero couples can or choose to have children. So with your premise, why should hetero couples that choose to not have children be allowed the same perks? If a couple has children, they should receive those perks intended to assist families who have a child or children, be they hetero or gay. Again, no change.
Question 5. Same sex marriage law creates injustice in adoption services, for it institutionalizes gender discrimination and deprives children of their natural expected right have both a mother and a father.
Answer: No it doesn’t. As it stands, states and organizations have created trumped up ideas as to why gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt. Studies have shown that children growing up in a family where there is a gay couple is no different than a family with a man and woman. Also, nowhere in laws is there any hint or suggestion that children should have the right to a mother and father. This is a trumped up excuse that conservative Christians use to justify their beliefs, however, there is no factual evidence to this claim. Its sole purpose is to create fear and create further prejudice.
Question 6. Same sex marriage law leads to gay sex indoctrination of young children in taxpayer funded public schools.
Answer: What is taught in the public school system is tolerance of all people be they gay or whatever. It is conservative Christians who object to the idea of tolerance as they are of the opinion that they should be able to determine, for everyone, what is acceptable and what is not based solely on their religious beliefs.
Question 7. Same sex marriage law marginalizes and stigmatizes religious groups and removes the right of religious charities to deliver the services required by their faith communities.
Answer: Conservative Christians will still have the same right to hate whom they choose based on their religious beliefs. Your question 7 is ambiguous as to what deliver the services required is. You might what to clarify this position but then again, you may not want to as your intentions will become very clear and you won’t be able to hide behind religious rhetoric.
Question 8. Same sex marriage law permits self-interested spouses to leave the contract for any reason, typically at great economic harm to the faithful, socially responsible spouse.
Answer: Exactly how is SSM going to create this scenario, as it already exists, it’s called no fault divorce. Besides, for whatever reason, should one partner decide that they no longer want to be married to their hetero partner, they can divorce the other person.
This is fear mongering, like most of the questions.
Question 9. Once we call gay love “marriage,” we destroy marriage as a cultural ideal, rip down the status of child bearing, and thwart the development of the culture of marriage, which takes an effort to maintain.
Answer: more fear mongering. Like many conservative Christian statements, they like to say statement, which causes fear, but don’t explain exactly how this will happen. It’s simply a statement they use to create fear but has no data or explanation on how this might happen.
Question 10. Same sex marriage law legally and logically opens the door for polygamy, polyandry, and any group of cohabiting individuals that requests “marriage” legal status and benefits.
Answer: The discussion is about SSM and legalizing SSM, which in no way is opening the way to polygamy or polyandry, etc. Usually when no real argument is found, the slippery slope arguments are thrown in to confuse and create addional issues. This question has nothing to do with Same Sex Marriage. It is not being discussed nor is it any part of the discussion. Again, it is simply intended to confuse and create issues where there is none.
1,2,3,4: How do any of these differ from opposite-sex marriage? If anything, these points make a case FOR same-sex marriage: gay couples who are unable to marry lack the legal provisions that protect people in these situations.
5: Is that a fundamental right these days? I guess we’d better call social services on all of the single parents out there.
6: This is a separate issue entirely. I agree that there is concern and dissent over this issue, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with gay marriage.
7: Religious charities have every right to discriminate if they are willing to give up their tax-exempt status. Gay people shouldn’t have to foot the bill for the very people discriminating against them! (caveat: I’m not a lawyer, so I might not know what I’m talking about here, but this is what I’ve heard.)
8: Again, how does this differ from opposite-sex marriage?
9: How can it be a cultural ideal if it isn’t for everyone? Since when does marriage imply rearing children, and for that matter, since when are gay people unable to rear children? I know that some people would be very happy if they could prevent gay people from raising children, but the fact of the matter is that WE CAN.
10: And I guess interracial marriage opened the door for gay marriage? Besides, you seem to make the assumption that opening a door for polyamory is a bad thing, and I don’t know that I agree with you.
Really? I’m supposed to take a site that has the “Carrie Prejean Society” seriously???
I have to say, if the above 10 reasons of logic are all we have to overcome to legalize gay marriage, we can’t be too far away… LOL!
The power of the brain baffles at well thought out arguments like “Same-sex marriage law doesn’t stipulate that adult partners must stay together for any duration of time…” Uhhh, neither does – in honor of Carrie Prejean – “opposite marriage.” An officiant may say “Till death do you part” but that’s not the “law…” I guess this site didn’t know straight couples can get divorced too! Yes, if this is the logic we have to overcome, we’re pretty much safe that gay marriage will be comin’ round the mountain…
Thank you, Ron and Randy for outlining why there STILL seems to be lack of factual support for why same sex marriage laws hurt heterosexuals. I’ve been searching online for sites with good reasoning, and i keep seeing the same arguments based on opinions and not facts. If you’re going to say hetero couples are the most ideal way to raise children, cite your source with a link to a legitimate study. Beyond this, what if a same sex couple has no interest in raising children? Not every hetero couple does either. I’ve been married for 4 years and I still do not want children, I may never have any.
The link posted to the “gay sex indoctrination” article… that link is about bullying, not about gay sex. It’s a curriculum teaching children that it’s wrong to call other kids faggot. Are you then saying that we should continue to call people faggots? Even if you think the gay lifestyle is wrong, is this speech acceptable?
I’m a Christian, I pray over issues like this regularly and I’m looking to the Christian community for some reasonable direction. I keep coming up disappointed. I still do not see how a same sex couple marrying is any threat to my marriage, my ability to have or not have children or go to whatever church I please. As a Christian, I want to share my faith with people through acts of service, prayer and kindness. I don’t see how this fight helps share the love of Christ. Even if you think being gay is sinful, banning gay marriage doesn’t stop people from being gay. I think Christians falsely adopt a martyr attitude at being “persecuted” for a position against gay marriage. Instead, it’s hurting us more and more. We need to be the people to take care of the lost, sick, widowed, hungry when no one else does. We need to get out of the political business.
“Even if you think being gay is sinful, banning gay marriage doesn’t stop people from being gay.”
Truer, more apropos words were never said. 🙂
This should be in an Op/Ed section. Not one real fact.
Makes sense to me. A contract that doesn’t protect the individual rights and economic/financial realities of the parties involved ends in mass fraud and victimization at the hands of one spouse.
Take you for instance, Stephanie. If marriage law is written to include gays, then your own marriage agreement is, *from a legal standpoint*, a temporal cohabitation contract easily ended when one spouse says it’s over, with no penalty to that deserting spouse. No sensible business person with serious investment, property, and labor to protect would ever enter such a weak contract, for it offers no protections and is likely to lead the person to grave personal and financial loss. So it is with heterosexuals who marry using a legal agreement written in a very broad way. It doesn’t protect them at all and leads to their victimization and economic devastation. And the kids suffer most.
Ally Mays – you don’t really understand legal standpoints, it appears. You see, from a legal point, divorce can already be ended at any time, with no penality to the deserting spouse.
Nothing changes whatsoever. The institution of divorce exists regardless.
50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.”
Less fearmongering, more facts please. Gay marriage does not affect this. What does is the possibility to divorce. It already exists.
To Lissy and others,
Clearly you have never been through a divorce and have no concept of the actual laws concerning divorce by your ignorant statement.
The most compelling argument provided above however is the tenth reason because that is exactly what will happen. I’m always amazed at those who cry tolerance, yet continually bash Christians and those who believe in the traditional family as bigoted. Aren’t YOU in fact imposing your views on the rest of us in society? This is exactly what is happening.
These arguments barely make sense. They are laughable.
We have been waiting for a formidable opponent on this for decades and you guys keep producing the same none sense, God’s law, natural law, children, etc…
In any case, if you’d like to HELP the cause of gay marriage, folks, I encourage you to promote this top-10 list far and wide. The shakiness of the arguments is self-evident, the logic almost non-existent.
I suspect that the people who say they don’t understand the reasons listed are either too dense, too childless, or too male to understand.
Like someone said earlier, no businessperson with serious investments at stake would ever think of entering a partnership using a poorly designed contract that doesn’t address the real assets and risks or ensure legal and economic protection.
From a woman’s perspective, it makes sense.
From a woman’s perspective it makes no sense.
Also, women are just as capable of abandoning the husband and children as the men are. My dad’s a baptist minister. The first couple he performed a wedding ceremony for, close friends of the family…the wife abandoned her husband and FIVE daughters, without any repercussions, and that was in the mid-90s. It has never really been difficult for someone to abandon his/her spouse and child, and gay marriage will not make it any easier than it already is.
While it may be true that marriage contracts are bad contracts from a business standpoint, 1) marriage is not supposed to be just a random business contract and 2) that’s something that is true with or without gay marriage. If they need to be updated to be more financially secure for all who are involved, then work on updating all marriage contracts rather than merely trying to ban an additional type of marriage contract that will have no effect on whether or not it’s easy to break the contract.
I am stunned by this action taken by our President….. To me it is in direct violation of the first amendment….
Amendment I (1791)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
For I see it as governmental respecting an establishment of religion… Religion 4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith…
The first paragraph of the Presidential proclamation, establishes the fact that the honorees are in fact members of a separate society and a religion… Who are being afforded special consideration based solely upon their free-will sexual preferences.
“Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.”
Homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism are as much free-will choices, and are no more worthy of special recognition and/or celebration, than are adultery, fornication, exhibitionism, voyeurism,
sadomasochism, or swinging.
Giving oneself over to unbridled sating of whatever sexual desires that enter the mind, with the blessing of our President, is as destructive to the fabric of democratic society as is total anarchy…..
Homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism are NOT free-will choices. Your ignorance is astounding.
Princess…
With you logic anything goes and everyone from murderers to pedophiles were “born that way”….. Therefore there is no such thing as crime…. Because everyone is entitled by birthright, to do whatever they please….
Situational ethics are only useful to justify hedonism…
Princess… You are the epitome of this….
‘The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.’- Ronald Reagan
@David Hardy
Hardly. Just because homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender are not free-will choices by no way indicates that murder is a “born that way” thing.
Additionally, murder and pedophilia directly harm other individuals. Neither one is consensual and both cause direct, documented harm.
Homosexuality, bisexuality, and being transgender do not harm anyone at all, and as I said before, there is *no* legitimate documented proof that they do harm anyone.
If homosexuality is a “free-will choice” then so is heterosexuality. Therefore, your arguements can be applied to heterosexuals as well.
I’d also like to point out that a marriage license is a state document.
When a religious representative signs a marriage license he/she is doing so as a representative of the state. The religious representative must be licensed/certified by the state to sign a marriage license (now this is indeed a topic for the separation of church and state!). Simply being a preacher/pastor/etc does not qualify them to sign a marriage license.
Of course, legal marriages take place everyday without religion having a thing to do with it (ie: justice of the peace ring a bell?).
Finally, athiest can marry!
So any arguement that states marriage is religious is seriously misguided.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think anyone here has said the inclination towards homosexuality is a “free-will choice.” Also, I don’t see that religion has had anything to do with this conversation so far—at least, not in the comments.
So, Tom, have you actually read along here? The topic has focused on law and the adverse impact of bad law on whole societies.
It is incredibly ignorant to state that homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism are free-will choices.
You may be in denial, but I hope that some day you open your eyes and see the world for how it is: full of different races, religions, sexual orientations… And each one of these individuals deserves the right to make their own choices and live a happy life.
Cassandra, are you married? What does the marriage contract that you signed include that a gay marriage contract would not? Enlighten us, please. Or if you are not married, what will your contract include? Please tell us. We are waiting with bated breath.
The marriage contract I signed on to specified that my partner and I were exchanging an exclusive right to sexually reproductive activity and agreeing to partner on the decades-long project of raising the babies produced from that sexual activity. That was the enforceable legal agreement and guarantee of long-term financial and economic stability.
Marriage law written generically so as to include homosexuals would not specify any such thing and therefore is an economic death trap for women and their children, ensuring divorce, poverty, and broken unstable homes for well over half of us. We’ll continue having billions of babies worldwide, but we won’t have any legal guarantee to steady labor and economic help from the partners who produced those babies with us. That law will ensure the mass legal economic victimization of women and our children.
The marriage contract my husband and I signed said nothing whatsoever about having offspring, nor would I have signed it if it had. He and I have been married for nearly thirty years, and have never had children, nor will we ever, nor have we ever wanted them. Marriage is not about having and/or raising children. The fact that some people choose to combine the two does not require everyone else to do likewise. Many hetero married couple remain childfree, yet are still legally married. Why should gay couples be any less able to legally marry?
Julie, you are a rare case. Far less than 1% of all heterosexual couples who have ever lived on our planet have been childless. If your case was the norm, there wouldn’t be any more human race.
For sure, children are the reason humans require a legally enforceable marriage contract instead of a mere verbal agreement between adults. Routine sexual activity produces kids who require decades of highly expensive care and labor, and this childcare enterprise forces the necessity of an enforceable legal contract between the adult partners (so as to protect the kids and the economically dependent spouse from spousal abandonment and the resulting economic devastation that goes with that).
Next, you are correct that your contract said nothing about kids and offered them no protections at all (that is, if you were married after about 1970 or so). Your state marriage contract is written as if children are invisible and have no personal stake or rights and interests in marriages. Sadly, that’s precisely the cause of their constant victimization today by adults who are not compelled by law to raise and care for their kids together. The children have no legal protections or recourse against departing adults.
Importantly, the proposed gay marriage law cannot ever protect kids, for gays cannot reproduce and raise their kids together and thus can’t have a contract that says they are agreeing by law to do so. And since that gay-revised marriage code would be the same law code for everyone, heterosexuals likewise can’t be bound by law to care for the kids together. That’s totally abusive to kids. The law will be mandating continued widespread abandonment of children (and the economically dependent spouse as well).
We need to reform marriage law so that it binds all adult partners permanently to each other and their kids and penalizes harshly any spouse who tries to abandon his/her legal duties to family and child rearing.
Couldn’t find a way to respond directly to your reply, so I’m replying back here.
At the risk of repeating myself, marriage is NOT about children. Marriage is about adults who love and trust and respect each other, and who want to join their lives together, publicly and legally. None of that is impossible for gay couples, and none of it has anything to do with children.
Moreover, there are gay and lesbian couples out there right now who ARE raising children together, whether those children are biologically related to one of their parents or to neither. Are those children unworthy of the protections that legal marriage would give their families, just because some people disapprove of their parents’ love?
If you want laws to protect children (which I can understand), then lobby for marriage to include something that guarantees that, IF there are any children, whether biological or adopted, those children will be cared for by both parents until adulthood. That would apply equally to both hetero couples raising children and gay/lesbian couples raising children, regardless of whether there are any biological ties between parent and child. Or do you only believe in protecting SOME children, but not all?
Julie, marriage is the state’s contract for heterosexuals who agree to exchange the exclusive right to sexually reproductive activity–so of course marriage is about kids.
Marriage is a contract, and contracts have to do with partnerships involving grave economic risk. For heterosexuals, the risk arises from the fact that their routine sexual activity legally conscripts them into a costly long-range childcare enterprise that requires contract law. Obviously, gay sex does not produce a long-range enterprise of family, and thus does not require contract law.
That is, since heterosexual sex is procreative, and since procreation has long-range economic consequences for women and the infants sired during sex, a social contract is required to protect their material and economic well being against abandonment. No contract is necessary for mere love. Also, no contract is necessary for mere cohabitation. The state has never in history had contract law for these things.
As to gay adoptions. First, it would be unethical and unjust to intentionally deprive a child of his natural right to a mother or a father, which is what same-sex adoption always does. There are two halves of the human species, and depriving children of developmental input from half of the species is a cruelty that could only be justified in the most desperate of survival situations.
Equally important, gay marriage doesn’t legally protect the adopted children of homosexuals either. The marriage contract doesn’t stipulate that the adults are agreed to raise the kids together, and it allows easy divorce when one spouse gets bored or goes for a new partner. That’s a contract of instability, so far as children are concerned. So, marriage law won’t protect adopted kids of gay couples from abandonment and economic hardship arising from gay divorces.
You suggest having a “if you have children clause,” but such is redundant for heterosexuals. You see, Julie, heterosexuality produces children by the billions worldwide. Practically zero sexually active heterosexuals go through life without children. Marriage law, which grants exclusive rights to heterosexuals to exchange sexual activity, assumes children, since babies are the organic expected fruit of sexually reproductive acts. Children are part of the sex act itself.
If, as you keep insisting, having children is an essential part of legal marriage, then why are my husband and I legally married? Why are the other childfree hetero couples I know legally married? Your argument ignores our very real existence, and thus is invalid, being not based in fact. What about the 80-year-old widow who wants to marry an 80-year-old widower? Should they be denied the right of marriage because they won’t be having biological offspring together? Having children is something many hetero couples choose to do, but it isn’t REQUIRED for their marriages to be legally valid. And gay couples have every bit as much right to legal marriage as any other couple who will not be having biological offspring together.
As for gay adoption supposedly being wrong because the parents are of one sex only…what about single parents? Should my sister’s children have been ripped out of her arms when her husband died, leaving said children with no male parent? The reality is that there ARE children being raised without parents of both sexes, and they turn out perfectly well, so there’s no reason to deny gay couples legal adoption. For that matter, what about a person who has biological offspring, and then settles down with another adult of his/her own gender to raise the children together? Should those children be stolen away from said bio parent for no better reason than that?
Julie, children are an essential part of the marriage agreement because the agreement stipulates that the heterosexual couple is agreeing to the exclusive sharing of sexual reproductive activity. A partner who ignores the exclusivity of the agreement by sharing sexual acts with other partners has committed breach of contract—this is grounds for divorce, and recourse can be taken against the contract-breaking spouse. Do you realize this?
Julie, whether you know it or not, neither you nor your husband has the right to commit sexual acts with others outside your agreement without committing severe breach of the marriage contract. Do you realize this? If one of you should do so, the other has the right to take action for penalties and recourse. (Though no-fault divorce is making it very hard for the victimized spouse to win any real damages from the victimizer. *Sigh*) Moreover, do you realize that sexually reproductive activity among all the species of our planet is, well, reproductive?
And, by the way, having kids is not something we heterosexuals “choose to do” or not do. Rather, natural biology conscripts heterosexual couples to this child-birthing and raising enterprise quite against our will, for our sexual intercourse is innately, wildly, reproductive whether we like it or not, and we can’t seem to stop having sex! Have you forgotten your health lesson that every male orgasm during sex is the male body’s attempt at fertilizing an egg to bring forth new human life?
Julie, no matter how hard you have tried—whether by self-mutilation, chemical cocktails, or abortion—to drive a wedge between sex and your own body’s innate fecundity, none of it has changed the rabid fertility of the human race, which is presently repopulating by the billions worldwide. Moreover, even fully contracepted heterosexual women will average two babies over the course of a lifetime. We just can’t make heterosexuals barren, no matter how hard we try. Nature is destined to outsmart us, outmaneuver us, and outrun us, and so we are stuck with our natural role as reproductive beings—just like fish, rabbits, monkeys, and even flowers. Humans are not barren creatures, and marriage contract law exists because of the long-range cost and labor involved in raising our offspring for decades per child (and because the State doesn’t want to have to do that job or pay for it, so it cuts us a break).
Finally, if it’s tragic that your sister’s kids have been deprived of a father through the agent of death (and indeed it is tragic), then it’s downright evil when a society INTENTIONALLY plays the part of “death” and rips a child out of its parents’ arms, only to deprive the child of its natural right to a mommy and a daddy (which all gay adoption does). That barbaric cruelty could only be justified in a jungle or in some other life-threatening situation.
You have not managed to answer my question, so I’ll give you the answer. Why are marriages which produce no biological offspring nonetheless perfectly legal? Answer: because having biological offspring is NOT REQUIRED for legal marriage. That, in today’s United States, at least, is a LEGAL FACT, whether you like it or not. Thus there is no good reason to deny gay couples legal marriage.
Moreover, I wouldn’t boast about hetero fertility, if I were you, given that it is unchecked human reproduction which has caused most of the problems facing the human race today. Contraception exists, and it’s a good thing. Safe, legal abortion exists, and it’s a good thing. Woman are human beings, with the freedom to choose their own lives…and I choose not to be a fetus factory. If that troubles you and others like you, that’s just too damn bad.
Julie says: Why are marriages which produce no biological offspring nonetheless perfectly legal? Answer: because having biological offspring is NOT REQUIRED for legal marriage.
Cassandra: Wrong, Julie. Any contract in which heterosexual partners are agreeing to exclusive rights to sexually reproductive activities *assumes* procreation, since sex among heterosexual couples is reproductive at the highest statistical levels possible (The medical defect of infertility is extremely rare). So, you are greatly confused.
Marriage law, like all laws, is written to accommodate a RULE of human experience, not the rare exceptions to the rule. No matter how many times you root out the rarest of exceptions to the rule of heterosexual fertility, it won’t change the overwhelming rule that represents billions of humans worldwide.
Next, the State simply has no interest in offering special benefits for mere cohabitation and infertile orgasms. In contrast, the state has a massive interest in protecting and supporting the very machinery that procreates, feeds, shelters, and educates its massive citizenry—i.e., heterosexuals.
Finally, fertility does not cause human problems. Bad dictatorial governments are the direct cause of most human suffering in the world. Also, safe legal child murder is not a good thing, no matter how legal it is. Murder is among the worst injustices and evils any human can inflict on another innocent being.
Finally, Julie, no matter how much you attack your own natural body and potential children with daily chemical cocktails, self-mutilation, or abortion—all in the irrational and unhappy pursuit of being a permanently barren creature—you won’t change the biological fact that the human species is wildly fertile and called by Nature to the project of children, as is also the case for every other being on this planet.
To repeat myself (because you don’t seem to be listening, or possibly you’re just not understanding), my marriage contract said NOTHING about having offspring. My marriage is PERFECTLY LEGAL, despite the fact that it has never produced, and will never produce, biological offspring. Without stopping to think beyond immediate friends and family, I could give you specifics on nine het marriages which have never produced, nor will ever produce, any biological offspring, and yet ALL these marriages are or were perfectly legal. That demonstrates that marriage is NOT required by law to produce biological offspring; it if were, none of these marriages would be legal. And gay marriage would simply be another example of exactly the same thing: marriages in which the two partners, together, biologically, do not produce offspring. No different, and with no less right to be legally acknowledged.
As for human fertility, unchecked human reproduction results in mass starvation because the population grows beyond the number that can be fed. Having unwanted children tends to result in the abandonment, neglect, abuse or murder of said children. Thus contraception prevents unnecessary deaths. And abortion is not murder; it is perfectly justified self-defense against an uninvited intruder in one’s body (much like shooting an intruder in one’s home).
Wrong you are, Julie. Your marriage agreement assumes children. An agreement to the exclusive right to sexually reproductive activities assumes reproduction, as sex is a reproductive activity among heterosexuals at the highest statistical levels. Moreover, in the eyes of the State, the child produced in and during the sexual act *automatically* legally binds both you and your partner to the long-range care of said offspring from infancy into adulthood (whether you raise the children in the same household as your partner or not). That is, the law says neither you nor your partner may walk away from the child until it is an adult, but instead are its nature-designated guardians and parents.
The only part you are correct on is that while marriage law is written so as to address legal and economic risks/needs heterosexuals and their children incur as a result of exclusive sexual activity, the law does not hunt down every possible exception to the rule so as to produce another written code to ban it, or worse to re-write the law around the exception scenario, which is totally incompatible with the rule. But that only means that we need NOT write a separate law banning homosexual marriages. We need only create the requirements for the rule and then allow the exceptions to be excluded by reason that they did not fit the requirements the law prescribed for the majority scenario.
By the way, I dare you to count up the total number of barren heterosexual couples of history and then compare that number to the total number of reproductive heterosexual couples of history. Heterosexuals are reproducers at the highest statistical levels and barrenness is among the rarest of medical defects. Sorry to inform you of that fact.
And by the way, if you are barren by choice or by nature, your husband has a right to leave the marriage, which means that reproduction is in fact part of the legal contract you yourself agreed to, like it or not.
Next, you have yet to identify what services homosexuals as a class provide to the State that entitle them to the equal benefits heterosexual couples receive in exchange for their long-range childcare services offered to the State. Heterosexuals manufacture, feed, shelter, nurture, and educate the State’s citizenry from infancy to adulthood at great personal cost. What equivalent services do homosexuals deliver to the State at an equivalent personal cost? (Answer: none.)
Next, the earth would have no trouble feeding and housing 100 billion. The problem is not natural resources, but rather dictatorial government regimes. Dictatorial governments control the means of production and do not allow the people to have economic freedom or access to resources.
Next, the fact that some children are unwanted by selfish parents does not justify the even greater evil of the murder of those children.
Finally, nowhere does the law say abortion is a valid act of self defense against “an intruder,” as you dementedly call your own flesh and blood children growing inside you. Self defense legally applies to assault, and no infant has ever been charged with assault. Comparing an innocent infant in the womb to an intruder in one’s home would be one of the most absurd and silly comments anywhere on the World Wide Web today if it weren’t for the fact that some women are so mentally impaired by hatred of their offspring that they avail themselves of that twisted self-deception to stave off the powers of shame and conscience while committing child-murders over and over.
True feminists don’t despise motherhood but instead openly and boldly embrace their natural organic creaturely reproductive bodily design. But you’re not a true feminist, Julie. You’re a hater of natural organic womanhood. Did you know you were a hater?
Amusing to be called a ‘hater’ by a blatant misogynist and homophobe. What feminists like myself embrace is the right of women to make their own choices and live their own lives, regardless of what roles others would force upon them. Some women choose to reproduce, and take good care of their offspring. Some choose to remain childfree, and live good and useful lives. And some foolishly give birth to children they neither want nor are able to care for, and that way lies the disaster you seem bent upon foisting on everyone.
Your marriage agreement assumes children.
So if, as I cited earlier, an 80-year-old woman were to marry an 80-year-old man, the law would ‘assume’ they were planning on having babies? I don’t think so. Yet they would still be legally married. Why should gay couples be any less legally married? You haven’t given me a single sound reason — especially when you consider that some gay couples ARE raising children, regardless of whether said children are biologically related to one or to neither of the parents.
nowhere does the law say abortion is a valid act of self defense against “an intruder,”
The law may not spell out that fact, but it is still the case, both morally and ethically, and would remain the case regardless of what the law might have to say. A fetus has no more automatic right to inhabit a woman’s body against her will than would a tumor or a tapeworm or a rapist. The fact that you are unable to see that women have free choice in the matter of child-bearing proves that YOU are no true feminist.
But Julie, you are the real misogynist (and a pedophobe to boot). You hate the organic woman as she really exists in her natural normal reproductive environs. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say you despise nature itself, which has imposed the real work of reproduction upon *all* species as an overwhelming unavoidable fact. True feminists embrace the natural design of woman and celebrate it as is. You accept only a modified unnatural woman that exists in some theoretical body in some theoretical universe, not the ones we actually inhabit.
As to children, there is no question you are a pedophobe. Your insistence that marriage law ought not in any way advocate and protect the rights and interests of children is appalling and barbaric—yet totally consistent with your child-hate and general laziness in taking on the real work of life lived on earth.
Next, a child is not a “disaster,” even when not planned. A child is a human being. In fact, any infant has the same right to exist as you do, which is a beautiful thing to be celebrated.
As to 80-year-olds getting married. As was true of all your other protestations (infertile couples, etc.), elderly marriages are the rarest exception to the rule. You have a poor grasp on how law works. To be fair and equitable, laws do not need be re-written to incorporate every possible rare exception. It is enough that laws properly address the majority situation and by course passively exclude others that do not meet the requirements. While elderly marriage slips by via a loophole, marriage law was not written to address the legal and economic needs of rarely occurring elderly marriages. Non-reproductive cohabitation does not rise to the level of needing contract law.
You can’t seem to grasp that laws pertain to some majority situation involving grave economic risk. In the case of marriage, the majority situation is post-pubescent heterosexuals who are agreeing to exclusive rights to sexual activity and to the children inevitably produced from said activity. Societies don’t re-write laws to address every possible exception to the rule which may exist. (Can you imagine re-writing marriage law so broadly that it could apply to mentally retarded persons and healthy persons alike?)
Next, a child developing in the womb is in no way morally equivalent to a thief who forcibly breaks into a home. You’re a kook if you think these are analogous. Offspring generated during sexual activity are in no way foreign to human bodies or even the act of sex itself but instead are the natural fruit arising from the organic process of sexual reproduction. The child is as much a part of the sex act as sperm. Criminalizing nature itself is a mind game for total kooks.
You, Julie, had an inalienable right to live from the moment of your conception. From that time forward you were a human person with the same rights to exist as everyone else, and that right granted you immunity from being killed off as you developed in your mother’s womb.
Incidentally, this —
the earth would have no trouble feeding and housing 100 billion
is a right-wing lie.
I will repeat, in short words so that you can understand: feminism is about every woman’s right to make her own choices, to choose what is right for her, rather than what someone else claims is right for her. It is NOT about forcing women to have children they cannot care for and do not want. Forcing children on unwilling women has been a weapon of male domination for thousands of years, and it is a poor excuse for a woman (and NO kind of feminist) who buys into it.
Pedophobe, now — that I am, nor do I regret it. I do not like children, I do not trust children, and I do not want children — which is why I don’t have children. Yet you seem to think that forcing me to have children would be a good idea. For whom? Me? The children? If you truly believe that everyone should be required to have children, whether willingly or not, then you are a fool. Given our current population problems, it’s actually a shame there aren’t more of us who have the good sense to remain childfree.
And I repeat: NOTHING has any right inside a woman’s body (or a man’s, for that matter) if she does not want it there. Fetuses are no exception.
Don’t tell me what “feminism is about” Julie. As one woman to another, I’m telling you that your inorganic unnatural idealized woman is a pure fantasy that exists only in a Star Trek episode. No female creature on this planet repudiates its own fertility and grand role of mother the way you do. To the contrary, all nature celebrates this mysterious and beautiful role of the female. You might make a good “feminist” in some imaginary world where females aren’t working devotedly on the project of creation, but in our world, the natural world in which we actually live, you are no true feminist. Creation is the mystery. Creation is life. Creation is beautiful. And the female is at the center of that mystery of life. Your marred vision robs the woman of true womanhood, true femininity.
Finally, feminism must not ever claim that it is all about a woman’s right to choose to murder. A true woman protects life and comes to its aid. True feminism must never betray woman by defending some “right to murder” other human beings.
Finally, you have a twisted view of the partnership of man and woman. You see man and woman at war against each other, which is nothing but Marxism applied to gender. In real nature, man and woman are designed to be partners. Since we human have weaknesses of resolve at times, the contract of marriage has evolved to provide the necessary legal and economic protections of the parties so that neither one victimizes the other through various personal faults and failings.
Your hatred of children was evident all along. Glad to hear you confess the truth of it aloud. Perhaps it’s time in life that you go spend a day observing a mother bird, or a mother lioness with her cubs, or a mother cat or dog with her pups. Your heart of stone would soften and you would rekindle your natural gifts of empathy and love for new life, and for the role of mother in this universe. You could then cease waging war upon your own body through chemicals, self-mutilation, and abortion—you could attain true harmony with your own body as it really is in our natural biological world. You might shock yourself that you would be an amazing mother despite your ideological phobias.
Cease your senseless war against Nature, Julie. Embrace your true organic self and body. You will discover a new mysterious and exciting world of peace and wonder you never knew existed. Observe female cats playing with their children. Watch the dedicated female bird feed her babies in the nest. Take more nature walks. Rediscover the mystery of the female as she really is in nature. You, as woman, are part of Nature. You as woman, are part of the great circle of life.
No female creature on this planet repudiates its own fertility and grand role of mother the way you do.
On the contrary. Animals don’t have the option to choose contraception/sterilization/abortion for themselves, as human women do, so those who don’t want offspring end up abandoning or killing said offspring. And it does happen, whether you want to believe it or not, among every species I know. Not every female desires to be a mother. The fact that YOU personally do doesn’t give you the right to speak for any of the rest of us.
Your hatred of children was evident all along. Glad to hear you confess the truth of it aloud.
I’ve never denied it. Personally, I consider the dislike of human children to be a sign of good sense.
And you still have shown no grasp of what true feminism is, nor have you offered a single truly rational argument against either gay marriage or legal abortion. Not all legal marriages produce biological offspring; thus, the lack of biological offspring is no just grounds on which to deny any couple the right of marriage. And NOTHING has any right inside a person’s body against that person’s will; the parasite in question being a fetus rather than a tapeworm is irrelevant.
All I’ve heard from you are fetus-besotted yammerings with no rational sense to them whatsoever. I can only conclude that you are a typically brainwashed religious zealot, incapable of actual reasoning. Maybe someday your brain will reactivate; until that day, heaven help anyone who actually believes anything you say.
Julie, I’m a real feminist and you are not, for I embrace the female of a species as she really is in her natural environs. You accept on only a synthetic version propped up by chemicals, self-mutilations, and a pledge to unhappy perpetual war against both men and children.
Next, sexually active heterosexuals do not have “the option” to undo the stunning natural fertility of our species. Fully contracepted individuals average two babies per lifetime, and fighting against our natural bodies is a decades-long battle requiring daily chemical cocktails, drastic surgical self-mutilation, and other labor-intensive efforts.
We humans are products of Nature, Julie. You are naturally fertile like the cat, the rabbit, the bird, the fox, the fish. The very design of your body parts is contoured to Nature’s assignment to produce lots of offspring. The problem is not your body, Julie, but your anti-male, anti-Nature “we’re-at-war” indoctrination that filled your head with fantasies during your college years. Again, no female creature on this planet repudiates its own fertility and grand role of mother the way you do. You have become entirely unnatural in your thinking while your body has remained as fertile and natural as any rabbit or mother bird.
Hatred of children is not “good sense,” but rather misanthropy and a twisted dedication to self-extinction. It is hatred of humankind itself and hatred of our species’ innate quest for survival. It is genetic suicide.
Arguments from rare exceptions are not valid, Julie. They don’t overthrow THE RULE of the situation around which legal codes are developed. It doesn’t matter if you know nine infertile couples, for I can point to billions of wildly fertile heterosexuals who make up the overwhelming experience of 98% of humankind. They are the ones who absolutely require contract law.
Finally, no scientific research agrees with your 100% wrong claim that children in the womb are “parasites.” Offspring are not foreign agents but instead are “fruit,” and fruit is a natural product of living things, just like sweat, saliva, new cells, and oil. A child is the natural RE-production of one’s own living body and DNA, not a foreign invasion of it by an external entity. So you’re totally factually wrong. A child in your womb is merely Julie’s body reproducing ITSELF. It is Julie reproducing herself. (In partnership with the male of the species, of course.)
By the way, I am not religious, and you are not a true feminist. A true feminist embraces the female as she really is in nature. You have a synthetic ideal of womanhood which is, well, synthetic and not authentically human.
@ Princess. Yes, men also can be legally victimized by bad marriage law. (But we all know it’s women and kids who are burdened most and stuck on welfare once our partners get bored and move on to their next temporary family…and the next…and the next).
Glad you were able to see that marriage contracts–as they stand today–are absolutely dangerous contracts from the economic financial standpoint. From a marriage law perspective, what could be more harmful to a marriage partner than to be destroyed financially by bad law? And gay marriage is really bad law when applied to women and children, for the reason I listed before. (It ensures mass poverty and broken unstable homes for over half of people who marry. Really, what could be more harmful to women and children than that?)
Gay marriage has *no* effect on heterosexual couples, Cassandra. Adding laws for gay marriage would NOT change the law for heterosexual couples, nor would a gay marriage law require EITHER heterosexual couples OR gay couples be fully capable of just abandoning their partner without any recourse.
Do you even realize how high the heterosexual divorce rate is right now, Cassandra? How many homes already lie broken and how many lives destroyed? Gay marriage will not change that, at all, not for the better, nor for the worst. The status quo will be unchanged.
If you want marriage to be more financially secure for ANYONE, get off this high horse of anti-gay marriage and start lobbying the improvement of MARRIAGE CONTRACTS THEMSELVES!
Here ya go Princess…
Statistics prove that homsexual marriage only exacerbates the problem of relational breakups…
“We have seen some of the evidence for a disproportionately high rate of non-monogamous behavior in male homosexual activity. What about female homosexuality? Are there any special problems associated with lesbian relationships? While homosexual females, for their part, do not experience anything near the number of sex partners lifetime or rate of sexually transmitted disease averaged by homosexual males, they are not without their own special problems. Studies to date suggest that female homosexual unions are of even shorter-term duration than male homosexual unions. For example, a 2004 study of divorce rates for same-sex registered partnerships in Sweden from 1995 to 2002 indicates that female homosexual couples were twice as likely to divorce as male homosexual couples (see also the discussion in the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy). Even the quote that Peterson and Hedlund give from Stein, cited above in III.B., indicates that lesbian unions are twice as likely to dissolve before reaching the ten-year mark as even male homosexual unions.
Moreover, relative to both heterosexual females and homosexual males, homosexual females experience a higher level of some psychiatric disorders such as major depression and substance abuse. Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse compare the “National Lesbian Care Survey” by J. Bradford et al. (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62 [1994]: 228-42) and the work of L. Robins et al. (Psychiatric Disorders in America [Free Press, 1991]) to show that lesbian women show a threefold increase in the incidence of serious personal distress as compared to heterosexual women (Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Moral Debate [Intervarsity, 2000], 104-105). An important 2001 Dutch study of “Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders” (Archives of General Psychiatry 58.1: 85-91) showed that homosexual females were significantly more likely to experience mood disorders (49%) such as major depression (44%) than were homosexual males (39%/29%; compare rates for heterosexual females [24%/20%] and heterosexual males [13%/11%]).”
Click to access ho…mRespPart2.pdf
David, that shows nothing to support that homosexual marriage will have any effect on heterosexual marriage, nor does it show homosexuality to be harmful.
Women are more susceptible, in general, to “mood disorders,” and as lesbians, we have to deal with the usual issues of being a woman as well as added issues of being persecuted by those who think we are something horrible, not to mention the increased chance of rape due to men thinking that forcing us to have sex with them will “straighten” us out (something I have personal experience with). Gay men, while appearing to have a higher chance of being raped than straight men, still have far less to deal with and a naturally lower propensity towards mood disorders than women in general.
Citing a coincidental “relationship” between X and Y does not mean that X causes Y.
100% of everyone who ate pickles in 1852 has died. They didn’t die because they ate pickles, though. =P
Actually, murder is clearly innate. All animals murder, and most animals also steal, cannibalize, rape, and more. Humans have all these natural inborn preferences and inclinations and behaviors as well (just read today’s local paper to see it is so). Does that make all these things acceptable? Katrina’s argument would require the answer to be “yes.” (If she’s being consistent.)
And who says that sex doesn’t harm other individuals. STDs are a giant public health threat, whether its AIDS or gonorrhea, syphilis, genital herpes, and chlamydia. Same sex marriage law will do nothing to ensure life-long monogamy and instead do much to open the door to legalized polygamy. For what State could possibly be permitted to discriminate on the basis of a person’s sexual preference for multiple partners?
There is no connection between homosexuality and polygamy. Most homosexuals favor monogamy. Most heterosexuals favor monogamy. Both groups are fairly promiscuous these days, but that still has nothing to do with being polygamous.
STDs are a public health threat, yes. However, it is the responsibility of *both* partners to be cautious in regards to the possibility of STDs, and while there are *some* people out there who intentionally spread disease via sex, they are not inherently homosexual. In fact, all the police reports I’ve heard of such activity were heterosexual men intentionally spreading diseases to women.
As for everything being acceptable purely because it is natural, no, my argument does not require that answer to be “yes” for consistency.
There are two things to consider. 1) Is it natural? 2) Does it harm others.
Homosexuality: 1) Yes. 2) No.
Bisexuality: 1) Yes. 2) No.
Murder: 1) Yes. 2) Yes.
Pedophilia: 1) Yes. 2) Yes.
Similarity in the first question does not equate to similarity in the second question, and in the long run, it is the second question that is far more important, as there are many unnatural things in the world that are perfectly acceptable because they are beneficial rather than harmful.
I don’t understand how people like you can draw a connection between same sex marriage [a legally monogamous relationship] and multiple partner relationships. Similarities: zero.
@ Princess. You already admitted that marriage contracts are bad business contracts as they are currently written, so you are ultimately agreeing that same sex marriage law will in fact harm masses of women and children.
Additionally, you admitted that gay marriage will do nothing to reduce the criminally high rate of spousal abandonment. (And I believe it would even increase it.) So, again, aren’t you agreeing that the law is unjust and harmful? Undoubtedly.
Finally, you said pro-marriage people should lobby for the improvement of marriage contracts themselves. Well, that’s what the article appears to be doing, from what I can tell. From a woman’s legal standpoint, a sound U.S. marriage law must explicitly say that the partners agree to raise their babies together for a very long time–as in decades. Otherwise one partner walks away at will at any time and leaves the other running the home childcare business alone, at great harm to the women and children.
Cassandra, marriage contracts are not meant to BE business contracts. However, I would agree that they are not entirely safe financial decisions IF things go sour.
However, you are spouting complete and utter BS when you say that same-sex marriage law will harm masses of women and children. Same-sex marriage law will ONLY affect LESBIANS, BISEXUALS in HOMOSEXUAL relationships, and GAY MEN.
Your belief that it would increase the rate of spousal abandonment is completely unfounded.
I maintain that gay marriage will neither reduce NOR increase the rate. Does that make it harmful? Hell no.
Try actually using the brain God gave you, Cassandra. Think about this a moment.
If you have hundreds of people starving to death in Etheopia and you send food to the people starving in South Africa, are you going to have more or fewer people starving in Etheopia? The # of people starving in Etheopia will REMAIN UNCHANGED. Does that make it wrong to send food to the people who are starving in South Africa? No!
I will agree to one thing, Cassandra. Marriage law should put far more requisites on married couples WHO HAVE CHILDREN for BOTH spouses to be required to ensure the wellbeing of the children. Stipulation should NOT be made to require couples to have children, however.
Cassandra, what do you say to all the heterosexual married couples who choose not to have children, or in some cases, CAN’T have children? I happen to know my roommate desires to never have children. I have a cousin who’s planning to get her tubes tied so she can’t have children. I have a friend who’s been married over ten years and her and her husband have agreed to never have children.
Do you think those people should be forbidden from marriage as well, Cassandra?
Marriage is not a contract legalizing pregnancy. Pregnancy is perfectly legal outside of marriage. Our beautiful country has no law regulating when you can and can’t reproduce. What of all the women who get pregnant outside of marriage and their boyfriends abandon them? I have one friend who is trying very hard to raise her daughter alone. She never was married to begin with. I have another friend who was raised by her mother and never knew who father because her parents never bothered to marry and he abandoned the mother as soon as he found out she was pregnant.
And gay-marriage won’t change, for the better OR for the worse, any of that. It’s all something that must be handled SEPARATELY from the issue of gay marriage.
@ Princess Katrina. Marriage contracts are essentially business contracts since heterosexuals have great personal financial risk at stake in raising families. (Unlike gays, we’re very reproductive to the tune of billions.) Sit in on a divorce proceeding or two if you doubt the financial reality of the marriage contract. To protect us women, the law needs to say that we are agreeing to raise are kids together from their infancy to their adulthood. Gay marriage law can’t provide this economic justice to women and kids and instead exposes us to massive victimization and fraud by partners.
SSM will absolutely harm masses of women and our kids, because the gay law will be the same law for everyone—and that law will not say we are agreeing to raise our kids together. Moreover, the law will not mandate that we stay together for any period of time beyond day one. In other words, the kids are doomed and totally vulnerable in such a contract.
It’s very likely that the proposed redefinition of marriage will raise the rate of spousal abandonment as was the case when “no-fault divorce” redefined marriage from permanent to temporary. First, gays will abandon each other, so that’s going to up the number of divorces. Second, marriage will no longer assume or expect family/kids, so heterosexuals won’t have even the legal insinuation that they are agreeing to raise a family. Plus, you readily admit that gay marriage won’t reduce divorce. In other words, you admit it’s bad law that doesn’t help children have a stable home.
Next, the problem with pushing more requisites on couples who have children is that it is discriminatory and creates two separate and unequal codes of law (and the nonreproducers get a free lunch from the state while the producers carry the whole social burden of raising the citizenry). Remember, the reason the state privileged heterosexuals in the first place is because they produce, feed, educate, and raise the citizenry. The state has no interest in offering benefits based on mere orgasm or cohabitation. Yet heterosexual orgasms produce the citizenry and legally bind adults to their babies and the babies to the adults. And so the state obviously sees the benefit there and knows if the adults stop providing that service the State would have to do this and pay for it. Gays don’t provide any similar services to the state.
Infertility is a rare medical defect, and we write laws for the rule of things, not the rare exceptions. (The rule and the exception to the rule have different circumstances with different legal needs.)
You’re correct that some humans will mutilate their private parts and/or swallow daily chemical cocktails to alter their own bodies and thwart their own biology. However, this doesn’t change the real biology of the human species in any statistically significant way–we’re still damn prolific bunnies! So, marriage law has to be written for real humans as they really exist in nature and not for sci-fi humans as they exist nowhere in abundance.
Yes, pregnancy is perfectly legal outside of marriage–and perfectly stupid for moms and perfectly unjust and detrimental to children.
In the end, you’ve repeatedly admitted that gay marriage won’t help fix the severe legal and economic injustices that marriage law sets upon women and kids. Doesn’t that say it all, Princess? I’m for a major overhaul of marriage law, and removing the expectation of raising kids from the mix (as gay marriage contract law does) exposes women and children to massive financial and personal damage.
There is not LEGAL “insinuation” that heterosexual couples will raise a family. Any such insinuation is cultural.
It seems like the main issue you have with same-sex marriage is that the married couples wouldn’t have children, which isn’t illegal, anyway. You also mentioned about four times in the above post that gay marriage law wouldn’t do anything to fix current issues with marriage law, but it’s not meant to. The point of legalizing gay marriage is only to give homosexuals rights equal to any other (infertile) heterosexual couple.
In other words, you might as well throw points 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and 9 out the window because they’re all irrelevant to the subject at hand.
I don’t get it. Most of these points apply to heterosexual marriages, particularly the divorce/abandonment stuff.
“Plus, you readily admit that gay marriage won’t reduce divorce. In other words, you admit it’s bad law that doesn’t help children have a stable home.” ~Cassandra
Learn how to read! I admit no such thing. Gay marriage law is irrelevant to children having a stable home, aside from providing even more families willing to adopt orphans (which WILL help children have stables homes!).
The argument you’re making, Cassandra, is like saying that increasing speed limits from 70mph to 80mph on interstate highways won’t reduce the number of people who die in plane crashes, therefore it’s a bad law and should be prevented.
“(Unlike gays, we’re very reproductive to the tune of billions.) Sit in on a divorce proceeding or two if you doubt the financial reality of the marriage contract.” ~Cassandra
I HAVE set in on divorce proceedings, but homosexual marriage has ZERO impact on heterosexual marriage!
And gays are not inherently less reproductive than heterosexuals! Lesbians are fully capable of getting pregnant, especially with in vitro fertilization available, and in the case of lesbians, BOTH parents can get pregnant! Which could easily make up for the lack of gay men getting pregnant. On top of this, homosexual couples WANT to adopt and RAISE children themselves!
Homosexual Marriage law WILL NOT CHANGE HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE LAW! It will merely add a new candidacy to it and restrict Homosexuals to the SAME things it restricts HETEROSEXUALS to. If a homosexual couple adopts a child and then one spouse leaves, s/he will be JUST as subject to legal repercussions as a heterosexual parent!
And, if those repercussions are currently not strong enough, then that’s a change that will need to be made to BOTH heterosexual marriage law AND homosexual marriage law. BANNING homosexual marriage will NOT fix heterosexual marriage!
In fact, a big part of why divorce proceedings are such a financial issue is because of the couple having JOINT finances. Homosexual married couples will ALSO have JOINT finances and will have to go through ALL of the same issues to resolve that if they choose to divorce!
“the nonreproducers get a free lunch from the state while the producers carry the whole social burden of raising the citizenry”
No one gets a free lunch, so stop spouting such drivel. Those who “carry the social burden of raising the citizenry” are any person, whether single or married, who has legal custody of a child for the purpose of raising that child, regardless of if they gave birth to the child. This includes gay couples who have adopted children, lesbians who got pregnant in some manner, single mothers where the father skipped out, single fathers where the mother skipped out, and heterosexual couples who have either adopted children or given birth to a new child.
“Remember, the reason the state privileged heterosexuals in the first place is because they produce, feed, educate, and raise the citizenry.”~Cassandra
This is getting into marriage history that goes back further than recorded history and cannot be confirmed.
“The state has no interest in offering benefits based on mere orgasm or cohabitation.”~Cassandra
Many places have long-standing laws known as “Common Law Marriage” laws that merely state if a man and a woman have been COHABITATING for X amount of years, they are considered legally married, even if they haven’t had children. In fact, children are not even mentioned in those laws.
[quote]In the end, you’ve repeatedly admitted that gay marriage won’t help fix the severe legal and economic injustices that marriage law sets upon women and kids.[/quote]
It won’t fix it, no. It also won’t HARM it. It won’t CHANGE it at all. Stop lobbying against gay marriage and go follow your real passion of lobbying for fixing how marriage law in general applies to CHILDREN.
Gay couples are JUST as likely to raise children as HETERO couples and are JUST as affected by a lack of consideration for financial and personal damage from spousal abandonment as HETERO families, so PROTECT BOTH WITH MARRIAGE LAW THAT ALLOWS BOTH TO MARRY!
This is interesting…..
5) The destruction of marriage. Granting civil union status or, worse, marriage to homosexual unions will ultimately weaken marriage for everyone. The introduction of same-sex registered partnerships in Scandinavia has coincided with a sharp rise in out-of-wedlock births. Granting gay marriage or its functional equivalent has not helped marriage in these countries; it has made marriage increasingly superfluous. When eroticism is perceived as merely “more intimacy” rather than as a means to a “one-flesh” reintegration with a sexual other into a sexual whole, when the only requisite for sexual unions is commitment and fidelity (and a truncated definition of commitment and fidelity at that), when “lifelong” becomes “long-term” and “long-term” is thought of as a 5-10 year-union, when even the concept of “serial monogamy” is called into question by the high incidence of “open relationships” among male homosexual unions, when sexual unions are once and for all severed in society’s perception from a commitment to have and raise children, and when society rejects as bigotry the notion that a mother and father are both needed for the optimal development of children–when all these elements are in place, consistent with the pro-homosex agenda, the general public will cease to value marriage as a special and even sacred institution. “The profanation of marriage” will have gone full circle–both its secularization and debasement. Imagine society granting marriage licenses to any union that met the conditions of a committed friendship and ask yourself how long marriage can survive as an institution.
http://www.robgagnon.net/SecularCase.htm
To preface my thoughts, I was raised in a very liberal household. I’m a girl recently graduated from college, so I don’t remember a time when this wasn’t an issue. And I would like to chime in on this debate that when I read your ten arguments, my eyes glaze over. I don’t think it’s anything about your language – you’ve been very eloquent. I guess it’s culture shock. I’d really like to understand where you’re coming from, though, which is why I’m commenting now.
If I’m reading this right (and I’m sure I’m not – culture shock again), the major point is that marriage as a whole is a mess right now, with the divorce rate skyrocketing and people not getting married at all and, well, living in sin, and adding gay marriage to the mix just muddies the water?
I’m coming at it from a very different perspective, and I tend to assume that gay folk will still want to raise children, and that doing it with someone else is better than doing it alone (my mother did the single mom thing, and went through one divorce I remember; I have some bad memories there). It seems like there should be laws to protect kids during any divorce, gay, straight or, to choose at random, divorce on the moon. Since gay marriage isn’t yet firmly established, there hasn’t been a chance to work out the kinks of how to do that yet.
I guess, overall, my question is who you’re trying to convince with these arguments? Because it seems like they use a lot of underpining logic that liberals won’t share with you, so liberals will just end up scratching their heads and wondering what you’re talking about and whether or not you’re speaking in tongues. On the other hand, if you’re trying to convince people who agree with you to donate money to the cause, I guess that might work? I’m curious, is all. If I’m the target audience here, then it isn’t working, and if I’m not… well, then just ignore me.
@Princess
You admitted that gay marriage won’t reduce divorce. Leaving the injustice of rampant divorce as a status quo is unacceptable. Babies and women are being left to fend for themselves through easy abandonment, and gay law removes children entirely from the marriage agreement—thus ensuring their economic victimization. Children are not part of gay marriage law, and that’s the problem when applied to the heterosexual scenario.
You say gay marriage law is irrelevant to children having a stable home. Not true. Having a stable home happens if the adult partners are agreed to labor together for the sake of the children. The gay marriage contract doesn’t address this anywhere and therefore ensures instability. In other words, heterosexual women and their children are left without legal protections (such is devastating if your a women or child).
Next, gay marriages will divorce often, and so a gay couple who has adopted a child is in the same mess as the heterosexual woman. Neither the economically dependent partner nor the children have any legal assurances or protections. This is bad law because it produces rampant financial victimization at the hand of one spouse. It’s entirely unjust to the faithful spouse and the children.
If you have seen divorce proceedings, you know that marriage is quite like a business contract after all (contrary to your earlier claim that marriage isn’t really about the economic concerns and the well-being of the individual parties involved). Marriage is absolutely about the economic well-being of the parties involved (spouses/kids), and that’s why gay marriage law is bad law–it doesn’t stipulate that the partners are agreeing to raise kids together or even stay together for more than a single day. Such a contract allows one partner to easily defraud the other and get away free.
Gay sex is not reproductive, which is why the state has never imagined sponsoring it. Gay sex will never be reproductive and therefore will never have the role of creating and nurturing the citizenry. Nature has given that assignment to heterosexuals, and so the state honors that with special perks to help out.
In-vitro is extremely rare and ethically appalling. Using other people’s eggs and sperm to produce babies that are subsequently deprived of their true moms and dads is unethical and gravely cruel. Children have a normative right to be raised and nurtured by the people who produced them. You’re heading into Frankenstein territory.
Homosexual marriage changes heterosexual marriage law by removing for everyone the expectation of raising children. (Imagine you’re the child in that situation!) For heterosexual women who are biologically reproductive, this is like creating a business agreement that never discusses the assets and property and investment. Totally insane. No one could survive such legal suicide.
There are no legal repercussions for exiting marriage, thanks to “no-fault” divorce.
Homosexuals may have joint finances, but merely having joint finances is not marriage. A mother and daughter may have joint finances, but they are not “married.” The issue is about sex acts that produce joint kids and the 24/7 childcare enterprise that goes with that.
Yes, nonreproducers get a free lunch. They get equal state perks without having to deliver an equal number of citizensor related child care services to the state. It’s totally unjust and unfair. Heteros carry all the burden, but gays are going to get free perks.
Any marriage law that does not address children ends up victimizing both the women and the children. It’s easy to understand. Gay law thus victimizes women and children.
Gay couples are not likely to raise children. Gay couples can’t reproduce at all, and heterosexuals can’t help but reproduce. The reproducers therefore require a very different contract that addresses their needs. Gay marriage law can’t address kids at all.
Leaving the injustice of rampant divorce as a status quo is unacceptable
Yes, exactly. Thus, you need to work on heterosexual marriages and pass laws for them.
Meanwhile, legalizing homosexual marriages will not affect this in any way. You focussing on homosexual marriages is a part of the problem, because you waste your energy on this, when it changes nothing.
Not allowing homosexual marriage will not magically fix divorce rates. To do so, you need to fix heterosexual marriage.
It’s thats simple. You need to focus on the real issue, not made up issues.
I don’t know where you get the idea that “nonreproducers” get a free ride. Do you think childless people don’t pay taxes? We do and in fact, the childless pay higher taxes than you do because we have fewer deductions and don’t get a child credit. We also pay for services we don’t use, such as schools and playgrounds. Now I have no problem with paying for those services as they are for the common good, but in no way am I getting a “free ride.”
And I agree with Lissy. If you want marriage laws to be more just to women and children, work to change them instead of wasting energy railing about gay marriage.
No you don’t. Parents pay far more taxes than you do. Consider the consumer aspect and all the taxes paid on products not only for themselves and their households, but for their children. I don’t think anyone said that “nonreproducers” get a free ride anyway.
“the nonreproducers get a free lunch from the state while the producers carry the whole social burden of raising the citizenry”
Honey, my taxes go toward education, playgrounds, WIC, and countless other things that only benefit parents. You get tax breaks on each of your Widdle Mywakullz™.
“Raising the citizenry”? Yeah, and a damn fine job *SO* many parents make of it, given how many proudly and willfully ignorant young people I encounter. But, of course, the apple probably isn’t falling far from the tree.
@Cassandra –
Wow, definitely not a fan of adoption then, huh? Because having a child raised by people who did not produce them is obviously getting into some rather dangerous territory, amiright? By the way, good job on bringing up citizens there. Did you know that homosexuals are born out of heterosexual relationships? Yet no non-reproducers will contribute to the homosexual population. Interesting thought there.
Lucy, I think the gist of the discussion has been that legal contracts matter. They matter because they determine the outcome of a person’s life and property.
Since same sex marriage law necessarily doesn’t address children at all, heterosexual women and their millions of babies worldwide are left in a position of grave economic and legal vulnerability. The gay marriage law simply can’t work for heterosexuals.
Under the SSM law, heterosexuals have no legal agreement or expectation with the partner to raise their babies together. So, whenever one partner decides to go, that’s that, and the women and children are sent into a downward spiral of poverty and eventually to welfare.
Broken homes and single parenting are massive economic hardships, and gay marriage law ensures this outcome when applied to heterosexual women and their kids. It’s just basic legal reality.
It seems illogical that same sex marriage law would apply to marriages that are not between same sex partners. Could you clarify that for me?
Not cultural, but rather biological. The expectation that heterosexual married partners will raise families is a logical inference from the fact that the couple are agreeing to exclusive sexually reproductive acts. Heterosexuals are currently procreating all the world’s citizens and homosexuals are not. So, it’s not a cultural thing.
John, a thought: Being gay has no particular effect on whether or not you want to provide a loving home to children. It just makes it a bit more tricky to find some children to take care of. Given the number of children in the foster care system, I don’t see that there will be a problem there. (Unless you are in Florida.)
First thought: It sounds like what you really want are tougher laws on marriage that make it harder for people to break up. Why not advocate for THAT, and leave the gays alone?
Second thought: I always hear about people being against gay marriage, but I never hear what they want the gays to do instead. What would you prefer a gay couple to do?
Despite the differences being expressed, it seems everyone here agrees that same sex marriage law doesn’t provide any useful reforms to stop half of America’s families from ending in chaos and economic hard times. It can’t possibly help that the redefinition of marriage being proposed removes the rights and needs of kids altogether from the code. How can that be anything but devastating for kids?
To ensure a stable home for kids and financial protection of women (and some men), the marriage contract must be revised as (1) permanent, (2) child-focused, and (3) financially painful to the partner who attempts to swindle/cheat the other parties by departing.
That’s what any other business contract law would require. This is what U.S. marriage law must require.
Lucy Cotton:
To address your question, the law is one legal code for everyone–it binds everyone, gay or straight, to the same terms. So, the critical question becomes: what are the terms of the agreement? What exactly are the partners, gay or straight, agreeing that they will deliver to each other under penalty of law?
From the heterosexual perspective, the law either will be written to protect spouses and kids from abandonment or it won’t. Women and children suffer badly if the law doesn’t address their specific needs.
Sadly, same sex marriage revisions remove children from the mix altogether and mandate by law that the partners are not agreeing to raise families together. This bears repeating: same-sex marriage revisions mandate by law that the partners are not agreeing to raise their families together. What could be more legally harmful to the world’s billions of families, women, and children?
The legal agreement of SSM may work fine for same sex couples, who don’t procreate families. But it will cause serious economic hardships for heterosexual women and the millions of infants they reproduce and raise from babies into full grown adults.
Lisa, someone’s getting a free lunch when two groups receive equal benefits for unequal services and labor.
It is heterosexuals alone who deliver millions of new citizens and decades of childcare services to the state. It makes total sense that the state would give us breaks for providing this work. (The state would have to raise many millions of babies in the United States alone if heterosexuals simply walked away from their kids, as many spouses are doing because of bad marriage law.)
What equal services do homosexuals as a group provide to the state? And if they can’t produce equal services, why should the two groups be treated as delivering equal services to the state when in fact they do not? That’s plainly unjust and discriminatory.
“What equal services do homosexuals as a group provide to the state?”
First off, I didn’t know that the USA had turned into a Communist Country.
But to answer more seriously:
Adopting and raising orphans so that heterosexual couples can focus on raising the children they themselves produce.
So, since my hubby (of 13 years) and I aren’t ever going to have children (by choice), we should not get the same services from the state, even though we are hetero?? Yeah, that makes SOOOOO much sense. And all those heteros who can’t afford fertility treatment or adoption who are childless, they should not get the same services from the state? Yes, makes SOOOOO much sense. These are silly arguments.
So in your theory, heterosexual marriage is built around one thing and one thing ONLY – children? Nothing about love, commitment or anything shows up in your argument. Fact of the matter is, many heterosexuals get married and actually don’t WANT children – go check out how many sterilisations occur or how many childfree groups there are.
CD, I noticed that, too.
All of the arguments–specifically Cassandra’s and a few others’–are child-centric. Why?
No one, going into a marriage, must agree to bear/raise children. It’s not in the heterosexual marriage contract that I know of, and it’s not in the homosexual one either.
Homosexual marriage can be no worse for children than hetero marriage; how could it be? It is legally binding *in the same ways*. Divorce is still a long, drawn-out, craptacular process–both for those involved, and for any children they might be raising.
I think that those who are condemning homosexual marriage ought to go out and adopt some impoverished minority children over age eight. If you’re so child-focused, that’s what you do–you don’t rant at others for *wanting to provide more loving families for children who have none*.
David Hardy wrote: “The point that is not being raised is that for homosexuality to be granted any special-interest consideration is unconstitutional… They demand to be recognized for having engaged in a free-will sexual preference…”
One could say the same thing about heterosexual people, who actually are accorded special interest consideration solely because they have engaged in a free-will sexual preference.
DaVida—- One could say the same thing about heterosexual people, who actually are accorded special interest consideration solely because they have engaged in a free-will sexual preference.
Give me one example of any ongoing, multigenerational, thriving, exclusively homosexual society….. Where heterosexuality has been outlawed…. And I’ll buy your “argument.”
Your “logic” is quite flawed. The whole point is… heterosexual marriages *aren’t* outlawed, unlike homosexual marriages in most states. So who really has the special rights in those states?
John wrote: “the redefinition of marriage being proposed removes the rights and needs of kids altogether from the code”
Could you please quote the “code” so we know exactly what it is you are referring to? Please highlight whatever you say will be removed. Has this already happened?
One could say the same thing about heterosexual people, who actually are accorded special interest consideration solely because they have engaged in a free-will sexual preference.
However without our “preference” you wouldn’t be here! Our preference leads to children, which leads to more future workers, which means a stronger economy and without those workers means a weaker one. Therefore, since gays cannot provide additional children from their unions without use of a third party and the opposite sex and since they will not be engaged in childrearing on the mass scale that heterosexuals will and are they do not deserve the same protections afforded to those who undertake those responsibilities.
Let’s look at Anne Heche-she considered herself a lesbian and dated Ellen for many years but ended up marrying a man. Therefore, it is possible for people to leave homosexuality and not remain homosexual for the rest of their lives. The reverse is also true it is possible to be straight and then become homosexual. You only have to look at that governor who left his wife and kids of 20 years to be gay.
So since sexuality is a fluid dynamic and is not immutable, we shouldn’t base a set of laws on it. We also need to stop thinking about the adults in the marriage debate because marriage is not about the adults, it is about the children. It always has been. Yes some people will be unable to have children and that is unfortunate but we don’t base marriage on the unfortunate circumstances. Should they not be able to get married, well look at this way: If you are infertile and you don’t tell me before we are married I got grounds to divorce you! Next, if you don’t engage in sex during the course of your marriage it can be annulled and considered never to have happened. Why is the sex act so important, why can’t you just kiss or hold hands and have it still be valid, because sex leads to children and since children are the primary reason for marriage, so if you are not engaging in the primary reason for being married, it is null and void. So there are laws that “penalize” the childless married couple.
Marriage is not about companionship, you want companionship-get a dog. Marriage is about building a family and if that is not your intention you don’t need to be married. Cohabitating would work just fine for you in that case.
blacknright, Gay couples are a minority — always was and always will be. Granting gay couples marriage isn’t going to replace or diminish heterosexuality or the “mass scale” of childrearing, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Your argument, like so many others here, fails to address childless heterosexual couples who are routinely married everyday around the world.
Does no one remember Kinsey, or pay attention to how sexual relationships are expressed in nature? It’s not like there’s an either-or, here; by and large, bisexuality is the norm, to varying degrees. Females tend to be a little more fluid than males in their sexuality – many, many women got married to men, had kids, and then entered a sexual/companion relationship with other women later in their lives. There are gay men who got married to and had sex with women, but divorced later (sometimes after producing children) and entered into sexual relationships with other men. Others of both sexes do it the other way around.
They weren’t secretly heterosexual the whole time and just confused about which genitals they wanted to interact with; functionally, they’re bisexual, even if they have a preference for one or the other. They may even choose one or the other at different points in their lives according to other pressures or wants. The easiest way for a women to have children is to have sex with a guy, which is physically possible even if she’s actually sexually attracted only to women. and the easiest way to get elected in politics is to seem like a ‘family man,’ even if you’s rather be with another man. People are complicated, and they do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. The whole sexual attraction/companionship thing isn’t immune from that.
Your point about the importance of sex to marriage, while entertaining, is ultimately irrelevant. I’m sure a marriage can be anulled if there’s no sex (a convention of the Catholic Church, I believe), but only if one partner or the other initiates it. Similarly, divorce. There are many married couples out there who engage in very little or no sex, are perfectly happy with that arrangement, and who will never have their marriage stripped from them because of it – if one or the other of them does not act to end the marriage based on that reason, it will not end all by itself. Period. The state does not ‘unmarry’ people who choose not to have children (or sex), just as it does not unmarry those who cannot. There is no distinction – regardless of what you seem to think marriage is for, the state does not require that children be produced for a marriage to be valid.
I will point out also that individuals tend to define for themselves what they’re looking for in and what is important about a marriage – an area in which the state does not actually interfere too much. If I get married, it’s not to ‘build a family’ – a euphemism for reproducing. It would be to build a family of two: my partner and me. Maybe it’s important to me that I’m married, but I will never, ever have children. That does not make my relationship any less legitimate in the eyes of the state, nor should it be, and it’s not up to you to tell me what I do or do not ‘need’ in this area.
@blacknright
“gays cannot provide additional children from their unions without use of a third party and the opposite sex and since they will not be engaged in childrearing on the mass scale that heterosexuals will and are they do not deserve the same protections afforded to those who undertake those responsibilities”
Don’t forget this often leads to “mass scale” opportunities for adoption!
“So since sexuality is a fluid dynamic and is not immutable, we shouldn’t base a set of laws on it.”
Best argument for Same-Sex Marriage I’ve ever heard.
Who really cares if it’s a choice or not? If homosexuality is defined merely as an act, then everyone is capable of the same progress or destruction. Which, by the way, invalidates your first point.
“We also need to stop thinking about the adults in the marriage debate because marriage is not about the adults, it is about the children. It always has been.”
Psyche! Check out when marriage was actually considered a business contract between two families.
“Marriage is not about companionship, you want companionship-get a dog.”
Woah, you’re totally right. Man, too bad the law and the rest of the country don’t see it your way.
Same old argument. It gets old. No matter what, these anti-gay movements have a shaky platform for their convictions. No proof that gay people are bad parents, no proof that gay people will harm straight people, no proof at all. And they throw out statements that cause fear in the already prejudice-filled world that aren’t true at all. If they’re worried about the government forcing the churches to perform/accept gay marriages, that wouldn’t be true at all (hello, First Amendment). And children will only benefit because a) they’d have stable parents and b) they (hopefully) won’t grow up prejudiced.
If the situations were reversed and straight people couldn’t marry, they’d change their tunes.
@CD – Romantic sentiment is not the issue–romance is a temporary feeling. Think back to your childhood: would you want your stable home life and care dependent upon whether your guardians were “feeling the passion” for each other on any given month? Of course not. Instead, marriage is a long-term agreement because raising kids is a decades-long job. If kids were born as fully independent beings, there would be no such long-term contract called “marriage” for anyone. And merely falling in and out of romantic love with people doesn’t require contracts anyway. Contracts have to do with protecting economic risk and investment–especially that of the women and kids–over a specified period of time.
@Randy – no one cares what gays do in the privacy of their bedroom. The issue here is public policy and its impact on whole societies. Bad marriage law produces broken families, broken futures, and poverty. Same sex marriage law is bad marriage law that fails to address the needs and protections of women and children and therefore ensures broken homes and mass poverty for over half of people who marry.
@Lissy – You are correct that gay marriage law will continue to ensure a 50% plus divorce rate in society. Not only that, but the new law with the same-sex marriage revisions won’t even begin to stipulate that marriage partners are agreeing to raise their families together–and so the children of our society are legally being subjected to mass abandonment.
@Vina. Divorce is the issue here, for that is what breaks up homes, destabilizes lives, and kills futures. To stop divorce, marriage law must be revised as permanent in duration, insistent on raising one’s kids together, and punishing to any spouse that seeks to leave. Sadly, gay marriage law can’t ever provide this protection to women and kids, for gays can’t have kids and must leave them out of the agreement altogether. That’s a serious threat to the kids (and to the economically dependent spouse as well).
@Lisa. Heterosexuals get benefits because they are the ones nature has tasked with the creation and care of citizens. Nature has not tasked gays with this role. The state has never had any interest in granting legal benefits to everyone just for the hell of it. The state offers benefits to heterosexuals who legally commit to exclusive sexual activity and the expected long-term care of the citizens produced from that exclusively contracted sexual activity.
@ Nicole. Gay marriage will not provide stable homes for kids, for the contract doesn’t anywhere say the gay partners are coming together for raising kids. Since the law doesn’t address the needs of kids, our children will continue to suffer mass abandonment. Laws have consequences.
@Lucy. Gay marriage law will not protect adopted children placed with gay couples. The agreement does not say that the two gays have legally agreed to raise their kids together, nor does it punish one of the gay partners for abandoning the other partner and the kids. Effective marriage law must be permanent, focused on the rights and protections of kids, and economically punishing to any spouse who tries to defraud the others by leaving.
@ Katrina – Note how many times you admit that gay marriage will do nothing to stop the mass victimization of kids and spouses through legal abandonment (divorce). That’s unacceptable, Princess. Heterosexual women and kids are being financially wrecked all across the nation, and all you can say is gay marriage won’t be any worse? Are you so lacking in empathy?
Next, zero choices are involved in having black or white skin, and race is something one lives with every minute of the day. What we do in the bedroom, however, involves choices, and one is only gay or straight when one chooses to have sexual interactions with a person of the same sex. Sexual preferences are akin to food preferences.
Next, the acts of pedophilia, bestiality, incest, and polygamy are merely sexual preferences like any sexual preferences. If you are disgusted by any of these, it’s only because you have the same “bigotry” you accuse heterosexuals of having. Did you know you were a bigot like you accuse others of being?
I think I said this elsewhere, but infertility and those who are reproductively self-mutilated are rare exceptions to the vast overwhelming rule of heterosexual fertility (compare the numbers if you doubt). Marriage law, like other law, is written to address the unique needs of the majority situation, not the rare exceptions to the majority situation. And since the situations are radically different an not equivalent, separate contract laws must be created.
For sure, the gay marriage contract will do nothing but ensure mass poverty and broken unstable homes for over half of people who marry in the United States–gay or straight. It’s way past time for real legal reform of marriage law.
Cassandra, from where I’m sitting [north of the border] I’m not seeing a huge increase in poverty and I’m not seeing homes breaking down all around me. My heterosexual parents have been happily married for 30 years and the legalization of gay marriage has not changed anything for them. They are still in a committed and – get this – loving relationship.
As for asking Katrina to have some empathy, I wonder where yours is. Why are you so lacking in empathy for the committed homosexual couples in your country who want only the same legal recognition that you received without question?
Finally, I fail to understand why you continually ingnore the fact that many homosexual couples are interested in, or in some cases already actively raising children. A traditional family unit is one with two parents and offspring. The gender of the parents is totally immaterial.
Cassandra— Next, the acts of pedophilia, bestiality, incest, and polygamy are merely sexual preferences like any sexual preferences. If you are disgusted by any of these, it’s only because you have the same “bigotry” you accuse heterosexuals of having. Did you know you were a bigot like you accuse others of being?
Hi Casandra..
Excellent post..
I personally find it amusing, in a gallows humor sort of way, how homosexuals scream for equality and the only thing thay have to offer as a barganing chip, is a free-will sexual preference….
As you so eloquently put it, they are as inclined to be bigoted against pedophilia/child rape and misantropic anthropomorphic bestiality as heterosexuals are… Yet both of the aforementioned sexual acts are free-will sexual preferences… Exactly as is homosexuality…
I find homosexual logic to be rather queer…
Aren’t pedophilia, bestiality, incest and polygamy illegal? It’s rather queer logic to compare consenting adult homosexuality, which is legal in all 50 states, in case you didn’t know.
Homosexuality is not a “free-will sexual preference”
Wait, being queer is a CHOICE? Holy CRAP!…I can change my mind? Just like that, I can decide that I love men and only men…HAPPY DAY! I never thought it would happen! I always thought that my sexual “preferences” were just that–I thought that the recent research showing that biological factors heavily influenced sexual orientation were true, but now you’ve shown me that they are, indeed, a sham. For shame, scientists working on very small grants to prove very obscure biological points! How dare you trick the men and women (and transmen and transwomen) of our nation into thinking that they had no choice? Thank you, Cassandra, and thank you, David Hardy, for showing me the error of my ways.
@ Trance:
Truth be told, your sexual tastes are irrelevant to whether or not marriage law—as it stands now or as it will stand with gay revisions added—is currently helpful or harmful to society. There’s no question that bad marriage law is currently wrecking our society, and there’s no question that gay marriage revisions won’t help, but will instead fully remove the *legal* protections, interests, and considerations of children from the marriage agreement, thus exposing kids to rampant victimization/abandonment by one or more adult parents.
Having said that, perhaps it’s time in life that you though about the powers of your will. (Human will, meet Trance; Trance, meet human will.) Unlike mere animals, humans have an ability to choose to sublimate certain tastes and instincts for the sake of some other rewarding option.
For example, I don’t like certain foods that you like. While my food tastes are innate, I can use my will to choose a certain diet I may not love for the greater good of my health. In matters of sex tastes, I don’t suspect that one spouse is the most thrilling idea one could come up with, and men especially struggle with keeping faithful to one spouse. But, for the better life-long mission and common good of raising kids together, fidelity to one spouse is clearly the a free will choice that best serves the interests of everyone. And so I subordinate many of my sexual instincts for this greater good.
It’s called human will, Trance, and we all get to use it. It’s a great thing. And, by the way, unless you absolutely hate all men, they can make very good teammates for raising kids—and they are very good for sexual pleasures, too. And if you throw in basic human loyalty and decency, you can be a great mother to children and friend to a man for a lifetime (even if the sex isn’t mind blowing all the time).
Gay people have kids. Have them all the time, in fact. Many women who self-identify as lesbians have children from a previous marriage or heterosexual relationship. Similarly, there are gay men who engage in sexual relationships with women for the purposes of ‘building a family,’ but who later come out as gay. The fact that gay couples on their own cannot produce children that are biologically theirs (sharing both of their DNA) does not mean they never have children, or that they are never responsible for the “long term care of the citizens produced.”
But that doesn’t really seem to be your problem. You’re upset that out there in the world are women and kids that get the shaft from divorce and existing heterosexual marriage laws. To which I say, then what you really have a problem with is not gay marriage but support laws and a cultural attitude that encourages women to give up their autonomy and ability to support themselves to a sperm donor. You’re not complaining about all those people who actually look to marry to build a loving, interdependent relationship, and who may or may not bring children into the mix. You’re complaining about people too stupid to look for a good partner, who get knocked up without thinking, and who can’t get a job afterwards because they wanted a kid so badly that they never bothered developing any worthwhile support skills. Ultimately, you’ve got a problem with stupid people, or people acting in stupid ways – and frankly, the law can’t fix stupid.
Cassandra, for some reason, and illogically, you’ve chosen to use gay marriage as a sockpuppet for your misgivings about marriage in general, as if married gays were the whole problem. Also, sexual orientation is not at all “akin to food preferences” — the entire medical and psychological professions have long asserted otherwise. If you wish to have any credibility, you won’t gain it by rejecting mainstream science and psychology. Finally, you seem to think that gay couples are only interested in fleeting romance. It’s obvious that you don’t personally know any gay couples in long-term relationships of 10, 20, 30, 50 or 60 years. I do, and everyone of them stayed in their relationships (with some raising children) without the social and legal supports heterosexual couples have long enjoyed. Yet you wish to blame “gay marriage law” (which is the same as hetero- marriage law, a fact you ignored, insulted others over and failed to address throughout this discussion) for your troubles?
Sexual orientation isn’t just about sexual behavior; it’s also about love, emotional intimacy, happiness and human bonding. To boil all that down to a “food preference” is dishonest and woefully short of the reality.
@Chandra. The reality is that divorce breaks up homes, destabilizes children, and harms economically the dependent individuals (usually the females and kids). Easy divorce is totally unjust and injurious. And, when divorce is widespread (e.g., 50% in U.S.), the cost to society and the state is enormous. Since badly written marriage law is the root cause of high divorce rates and the resulting social devastation, the correct fix involves rewriting the marriage agreement so that it is permanent, so that it binds the adults to each other in raising their kids, and so that it harshly penalizes any partner that seeks to defraud the others by exiting.
Sadly, gay marriage law does not provide any of these necessary reforms and in fact removes kids from the legal agreement altogether, thus ensuring their continued victimization through parental abandonment, even among gay couples. And we would all have to abide under the same law.
Next, no one cares what homosexuals choose to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, for the most part; what really matters here is the legal marriage agreement and the devastating impact it is having on women, kids, and society. Gay marriage revisions do nothing to fix the problem, and do much to worsen the problem for heterosexuals, who have long-range economic risks associated with their sexuality.
Finally, kids have a normative natural right to both a mother and a father. Intentionally and institutionally depriving kids of developmental input from both genders of the human race is a cruelty I can’t believe anyone could accept in a civilized society where plenty of opposite sex couples exist. In only the most desperate of situations would it be ethical to intentionally deprive kids of a mother or a father.
As others have already pointed out, marriage and children are not synonymous, nor are they requisite. Children are not required to make a marriage valid, nor is a marriage required to make children. So, wouldn’t the solution to your problem be to enact law which addresses the responsibilities of adults who choose to have children together, whether or not they are married?
@DaVida
Homosexuality is illegal in many parts of the world.
And, really, your comment just begs the question as to WHY other people’s sexual preferences for multiple partners, for young people, for animals, or for close relatives should be outlawed when preference for the same gender is not. These are merely equal sexual inclinations found among animals and humans. Are you bigoted towards other people’s sexual behaviors? Seems kind of hypocritical of you.
As a pansexual and someone who has had both same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, I find it disgusting and insulting that you would compare my sexual orientation to things like bestiality and pedophilia. It’s a common refrain from the empty barrels–“If gays can marry, then you could marry a dog or a ten-year-old!”
Sure I could–if said dog or said child could give INFORMED CONSENT.
When one of those is an eighteen-year-old adult human who can sign a legally binding contract, such as a rental lease or, say, a MARRIAGE CONTRACT, then and only then would that argument hold any more water than your average sieve.
Sounds to me like you just look at everyone as someone you can have sex with.
First thought: It sounds like what you really want are tougher laws on marriage that make it harder for people to break up. Why not advocate for THAT, and leave the gays alone?
Second thought: I always hear about people being against gay marriage, but I never hear what they want the gays to do instead. What would you prefer a committed gay couple to do?
Legalising gay marriage will not, in any way change the laws surrounding strainght marriage. If you want them changed, focus on them and stop harping on about something with no bearing on them. The reason paedophilia is illegal is that it harms children. Consensual gay sex does not harm either partner. Gay people, and straight couples with no children pay higher taxes than straight couples with children. That’s their contribution, paying more than their share to educate your children.
Cassandra, comparing homosexuality to bestiality, pedophilia, and other non-consensual acts is sickening. An adult man falling in love with (or just having casual sex with) another consenting adult man is absolutely nothing like the rape of a young child or an animal that doesn’t understand what’s happening.
Rape is harmful, and to refer to it as a mere “sexual behavior” is completely insensitive and uncaring to those who have experienced it. There can be homosexual rape, there can be homosexual incest, and there can be homosexual pedophilia. But these things have absolutely nothing to do with the vast majority of the GLBTQ community and they are just as sickened by people that commit these crimes as you or me.
Rape, Bestiality, Incestuous rape, and Pedophilia are not love. They are dominant acts in which a criminal forces an unsuspecting victim into a horrifying and unforgettable situation. Homosexuality is love. Nobody is hurt, unless you count the mental pain that a lot of these people go through every day because bigots like you refuse to recognize their love. THAT is the difference, Cassandra.
Here’s some interesting data…
How Would Homosexual Marriage Hurt Children?
If government endorses the idea that marriage is just a legal contract between consenting adults of any gender, regardless of procreative realities, then marriage will no longer be seen as a prerequisite for bearing and raising children. Marriage will be seen as nothing more than coupling. In fact, that’s exactly how Sullivan sees marriage now. He writes, “Coupling — not procreation — is what civil marriage now is.”19
If Sullivan’s view of marriage prevails — as it will if homosexual marriage is legalized — many more couples in our society will forgo traditional marriage and have more children out of wedlock. That will hurt children because illegitimate parents (there’s no such thing as illegitimate children) often never form a family, and those parents who simply live together break up at a rate two to three times that of married parents. When illegitimacy rises, not only do children suffer, but the rest of us are forced to pay high social costs to deal with the problems that result from it, including increases in the number of neglected and troubled children, as well as in crime, poverty, and social spending.
Are these just the hysterical warnings of an alarmist? No. We can look at the results in Norway, a country that has had homosexual marriage (without legal sanction) for about a decade. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly gay “rainbow” flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared. In Nordland, more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time do so out of wedlock and nearly 70 percent of all children are born out of wedlock! Across the entire country of Norway, the out-of-wedlock birth rate rose from 39 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2000.20
Social anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.”21 Homosexual marriage is probably not solely responsible for this growing problem, but it is certainly a contributing factor. “Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage,” says Kurtz, “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.”22 When the entry standards for marriage are weakened to include same-sex couples, the perception of marriage will also be weakened; marriage and childbearing will just be considered incidental. That’s one reason why the number of illegitimate parents is exploding in Norway and it’s a major reason why we shouldn’t bring homosexual marriage to America.
http://www.equip.org/articles/homosexual-marriage
Here’s another interesting tidbit…
Wilson noted that history reveals that nations decline and eventually die when sexual immorality becomes rampant and the traditional family is discarded in favor of group sex, homosexuality,infidelity, and unrestrained sexual hedonism.
He pointed to the writings of British anthropologist J. D. Unwin,whose 1934 book, Sex and Culture, chronicled the historical decline of numerous cultures. Unwin studied 86 different cultures throughout history and discovered a surprising fact: No nation that rejected monogamy in marriage and pre-marital sexual chastity lasted longer than a generation after it embraced sexual hedonism. Unwin stated it this way, “In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence.”
Click to access deathofmarriage.pdf
@ Temper G. Marriage is society’s legal contract that grants two partners exclusive rights to exchange sexually reproductive activities together. So, of course children are central to the agreement, for sex is reproductive activity. Next, all contracts are about situations/enterprises that involve grave economic risk, and in marriage the grave long-term economic risk is the children and their long-term care–they are the reason a contract is necessary at all. Unlike heterosexuals, gays do not have long-term economic risks associated with their sex orgasms. Finally, we already have a law to address the responsibilities of adults who choose to have sexually reproductive acts: marriage law. We need only to make it more explicit so as to protect kids and compel the adults to keep their promises made at the time the contract begins. Agree?
@ Emma. It has already been stated by most everyone here that gay marriage will do nothing to reduce the current 50% divorce rate. I argue that it even makes it go higher due to the fact that it removes all hint of children from the legal agreement, making the legal contract a mere temporal cohabitation contract with no mention of children or family. Next, you have palpable bigotry towards child love, but could you explain why you’re against that mutual preference between two people simply based on some arbitrary age discrimination? Do children not have the capability to love? Do kids not have sexual impulses like you do? And what about incest between consenting adults? Or multiple spouses among consenting adults? Why are you bigoted about these sexual preferences?
@ Kat. Why do you think some sex is “sickening”? Do you know that most human beings find gay sex “sickening”? And who said anything about rape? I was talking about consensual sex between kids, between close relatives, between multiple spouses, between people and pets. Why are you so bigoted and close minded towards these loving sexual preferences? Do you think of yourself as a bigot?
Stop being willfully ignorant and disgusting. Children do not have sexual impulses until they reach the age of puberty. They also lack the reasoning skills and emotional maturity to consent to sexual activities. There is a reason age restrictions are placed on activities such as voting and driving vehicles.
I would love to know how pets are able to communicate their consent. Really, if you can explain this to me I would be grateful.
No, I don’t agree. Whatever you seem to think marriage is, it is not, in fact, a binding contract of sexual exclusivity unless the people entering it wish it to be. See ‘open marriages’ and so forth, for example. Sex also ceased to be an exclusively reproductive activity the minute humans figured out how to prevent pregnancy and just have sex for fun – something along the lines of 1000-3000 years ago, or (very likely) more.
The fact of the matter is, people have children without marriage, and they have marriage without children. Marriage law, while it might spell out obligations towards potential children, does not actually require they be produced. Arguably, when the rights, benefits, and obligations provided by marriage law are spelled out, they’re predominanly still about communal property and monetary assets, not children. Those better than 1000 rights and obligations automatically granted under marriage law are one of the reasons access to marriage is considered worth fighting for.
If protection of children and financially vulnerable adults is what you’re after, I still maintain that your best option is to agitate for laws specifically protecting them. That way, you get total coverage, regardless of the circumstances in which children were generated; as stated, a marriage license certainly isn’t required to produce them.
@ Temper G: Marriage is by law a binding contract of sexual exclusivity. Any partner can rightly accuse the other partner of breach of contract and win damages if in fact the other partner is committing adultery. (Though I think the foolish “no-fault divorce” revisions lessen the damages one can recover.)
Next, heterosexuals have not transformed sex away from its procreative biological reality. Heterosexuals are at this very moment creating billions of new citizens worldwide, and those billions of babies require that the adults be legally bound together to care for them until they arrive at adulthood. Anything less in the law is an unjust victimization of kids. (And, by the way, note that nature did not task homosexuals with that role or economic risk/burden.)
Traditional marriage law assumes an agreement to raise children, for heterosexuals are exchanging the right to exclusive sexual activity which is reproductive among heterosexuals.
You are right about communal property, but you are wrong in thinking that children are not the centerpiece heterosexual economics. Among heterosexuals, sexual acts involve the long-range economic risk of child rearing—thus the need for a contract. The labor and expenses of raising babies is the central part of the communal property among heterosexuals.
Finally, I am absolutely looking out for the protection of children and vulnerable spouses, which is why heterosexuals have no choice but to reject gay marriage law that cannot ever be a contract addressing the rights and needs of children. Unlike with heterosexuals, the gay law can’t ask or mandate that gay partners are agreeing to share sexually reproductive acts that result in children (and the expensive long-range child care that goes with it). As a result, we need to keep heterosexual marriage as a different thing altogether. If homosexuals have a need for some civil contract, great. But it can’t be the same one heterosexuals require, for they have totally unequal economic enterprises being contracted.
Actually, I’m having a hard time understanding why it is that you think allowing same sex marriage under the law will necessarily strip out those parts of the law dealing with children. As I’ve stated before, gay people are certainly capable of producing children biologically, even if not in a same-sex pairing; do you think there would have to be no allowance for those people with children already who wish to marry a same-sex partner?
This isn’t a lowest common denominator area, here. Just because some people can’t or won’t have kids in a marriage doesn’t mean responsibilities and obligations towards them get actively removed from law. I’ll never have children. If I get married, those sections of marriage law pertaining to that simply won’t apply – they aren’t in danger of being removed from the legislation simply because of my nullipara status.
@DaVida. I didn’t say gays are the problem. I said gay marriage law, which removes all legal stipulations or insinuations of raising kids from the contract, is the problem. That unjust law ensures mass abandonment of children in society, for when the adults are bored with each other, the law says they can up and leave. Can you think of any business contract that allows that kind of fraud to be perpetrated by one partner against another? Of course you can’t.
Yes, sexual orientation is the same as food orientation. I hate certain foods you like and vice versa, and our inclinations of taste are not freely chosen. And, as with our inclinations for sex, we can eat things we don’t really like much, provided there’s some greater purpose to it, like general health and well-being. Gays can, for the great purpose of raising a family of their own, abide partnering with the opposite sex of our species. They can use their willpower to do this, just like the person who eats unsatisfying health food for the sake of obtaining better health.
Finally, I don’t care about a couple’s “romance” or lack thereof. If marriage ever becomes a contract that states two people presently feel romance towards each other, children are forever doomed to rampant abandonment arising from the fickle romantic emotions of adults. And in fact, contract law exists to protect people from any and all fickle whims of adults which tend towards loss of a prior commitment or pledge.
but the difference is you don’t consciously CHOOSE what you’re attracted to. That’s like me saying I know you just get so turned on by elderly asian women.
First and foremost, you know you don’t get turned on by them and you know you COULDN’T get turned on by them because you cannot choose to. Second, I can’t speak for you.
Get it?
You can choose your partners, but not what you’re attracted to. True, some attractions can be unhealthy, but any regards to the GENDER of the person you are attracted to have nothing to do with the actions you commit with them.
“Gays can, for the great purpose of raising a family of their own, abide partnering with the opposite sex of our species.”
Or just be themselves and do the same with partners of the same sex. Just because because homosexuality is an ALTERNATIVE to heterosexuality does NOT make it inherently dangerous.
@DudeMan. I don’t choose what foods taste good to me, either. My food tastes are largely predetermined. However, I CAN use my will to eat foods that I don’t enjoy if some greater purpose is involved—such as good health. Likewise, any person CAN partner with someone of the opposite sex for the great higher purpose of raising families, which is a great thing to do with one’s life.
In truth, DudeMan, the sexual activity part of heterosexual marriage is a very small part of the job. Compared to the time one spends caring for kids and spouses, the sexual component of heterosexual marriage is practically not in the calculation. It’s there, but we’re talking about a very little fraction of time compared to everything else.
In other words, heterosexual marriage isn’t really about “attraction” or “romance” or “sexual preferences.” It’s about creating a long-term caring community for spouses and kids. The legal contract of marriage exists to ensure that everyone keeps caring for each other as was promised at the start.
You’re absolutely correct Cassandra, every bit of what you said. So why does sexuality even factor into the equation? Why shouldn’t gay people be allowed to do everything you just described if they can and are responsible in their endeavors?
Truth be told, I don’t give a damn about incest or polygamy/polyamory so long as everyone is happy and not being abused. Not my thing, but it’s not my place to say anything against it.
Your logic falters when you compare the sex between consenting adults to rape. Yes, you did say things about rape in your post when you presented a comparison between homosexuality and having sex with “young people and animals”. Pedophilia is rape, because children are too young to fully understand these emotions and make a grown-up decision. I do think that people under the age of 18 are capable of making mature decisions, but you never specified, so I’m going to assume that when you say “young people” you’re also referring to children under the age of 13.
Animals also do not understand what is happening, and they cannot speak human languages or use human body language to consent to a sexual activity. These things are not a loving sexual preference because they are taking advantage of something that can’t comprehend the situation.
Turning my argument backwards and calling me the bigot is pretty futile, because the two things are nothing alike.
It also seems like you have some pretty archaic ideas on what marriage is.
“Marriage is society’s legal contract that grants two partners exclusive rights to exchange sexually reproductive activities together.”
Two people can bork in or out of wedlock. I don’t need a legal contract to sleep with my boyfriend.
“So, of course children are central to the agreement, for sex is reproductive activity.”
Naturally, yes, sex is intended for reproduction. But with the black devil magic known as birth control, couples can now experience recreational sex better than ever. Children are a part of marriage, and a consequence of sex, but children and marriage are not synonymous.
“Unlike heterosexuals, gays do not have long-term economic risks associated with their sex orgasms. ”
That black devil BC magic comes rearing its sinful head again. You also seem to completely ignore the cast amounts of gay couples that would love nothing more than to adopt and rear their own child. I personally find it amazing – there are so many children in orphanages and foster homes, and if these couples are willing to marry and adopt, why not? More children would be saved.
I’m really not seeing your arguments here at all. Your true intent really does seem to protect women and children from abandonment, and I’m not sure why you’re choosing to scapegoat gays as part of the problem. A husband running out on his wife and kids and leaving them penniless has nothing to do with two completely unrelated women across the country exchanging vows.
Marriage laws need a lot of reworking. Gays getting married will not be the antidote to broken families BUT IT IS NOT THE POISON EITHER. The two are UNRELATED. I’m all-capsing here because you seem to be missing that when everyone else says it. Fight for protection of single, divorced parents, because that’s the real problem!
@Chandra. Children can indeed seek love and orgasms, and most do. You are discriminating based on age and personal bigotry. Next, pets communicate their consent in countless ways. We all have pets, and we all know the ways in which they show their affection and approval. I’m shocked that you use the word “disgusting” for certain sexual preferences you do not personally have. Most humans find gay sexual preferences “disgusting,” remember?
@ Kat. Glad you don’t “give a damn about incest or polygamy or polyamory.” You have just validated all those orientations/relationships as approved for “marriage” status by the State. Next, I’ve not said anything about rape; you’re the one who keeps bringing up rape. Children are capable of seeking love and orgasms, and so are animals. Why do you think it is just to deprive these of their right to happiness and pleasure? You’re clearly just being bigoted. Next, it’s true you can “bork” your boyfriend without a contract (though one is a fool to take long-term economic risks without a contract in place to guarantee one’s long-term protection). And, by the way, marriage law is society’s sex contract, and routine sexual activity among heterosexuals is undeniably procreative. As a result of this biological reality, heterosexual marriage is a contract that traditionally assumes children and their long-range care by the people who sired them. Statistically speaking, marriage and children are synonymous. (The percentage of married couples the world over who do not have any kids is miniscule.)
Gay couples who marry and adopt kids do not have any legal agreement saying they are agreed to remain together as a family. So, how would gay marriage law protect their adopted kids in any way whatsoever? And, why would society intentionally deprive a child of a mother or a father like that to begin with?
A husband running out on his wife and kids has everything to do with the law. Gay marriage revises marriage law so that nobody who marries is legally compelled to stay together or raise any kids. Such law plainly victimizes children, disadvantages the economically dependent spouse, and ensures the mass breakup of families nationwide.
children will seek orgasms? i’m twenty three and i am still seeking one also, as just a sidepoint. i thank god for divorce every day of my life. i have seen the horrible marriages that would continue if it was not possible (my maternal grandfather was an alcoholic who hit my grandmother. well nuts, its too bad he didn’t stay around to begin hitting my mother). sometimes its better for all parties to seek a divorce.
Seriously, how does it victimize children?
I’m not understanding this. I’ve read every one of your posts, most of which are nearly verbatim to one another, and I still can’t grasp why you seem to think that a law that allows two people to marry, whether they are both male or female or transmale or transfemale or whatever, will in any way affect the number of children whose parent abandons them.
I really…am just not getting it.
How does the chosen gender/sexual orientation of the parents involved in any way affect whether or not they will stick around?
Hell, my parents are divorced and I’m pretty sure one of them’s male and one’s female. No law required my father to stay and raise me and my siblings; it only required that, since he is legally our father (ie, his name is on our birth certificates or adoption contracts), he provide financial assistance on a monthly basis.
His sex has nothing to do with his assets.
Refusing to acknowledge the sexual attraction between a man and a woman is ignoring actual biblical verse. The best one that comes to mind is God describing Israel as a young woman who comes to adulthood and becomes gorgeous, and goes on to decribe breasts neck legs and other fun bits as such.
Women are hot, even God admits it, it isnt purely for procreative means. (Unless youre a hasidic jew) And you cant really blame lesbians can you? Women are great.
And it seems an important bit of my statement got cut, perhaps it was a bit too harsh.
My point originally was that it looks like by Cassandra’s logic, women are worthless if they can’t reproduce, and any sex without the intent to make sprog is unnatural.
TheFlyingScotsman — My point originally was that it looks like by Cassandra’s logic, women are worthless if they can’t reproduce, and any sex without the intent to make sprog is unnatural.– TheFlyingScotsman
If the part of your statement that didn’t make it contained the above thought, I can see why it didn’t make it… You have no concept of where Cassandra is coming from… And by all appearances, your logic is whatever you are able to easily extract from your neither regions…
For anyone who is interested….
J.D. Unwin’s Book Available for Download!
Folks,
For those of you who have spent any time at all on MRA or MGTOW sites such as this one, you’ve no doubt heard of the book, Sex & Culture, by J.D. Unwin. It was published in 1934, and has long been out of print. Today, copies are rare; when they’re available, they cost a PRETTY PENNY-IOW, an arm & a leg! Mr. Unwin was an eminent sociologist of his day, and he studied 80 civilizations. Without exception, he said that once women had full sexual freedom, then that society would decline-without exception! Here is proof that feminism and all its aims are destructive to society; indeed, any society adopting it has already committed cultural and national suicide. Is it any wonder why one can’t find this work today?
http://markymarksthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/jd-unwins-book-available-for-download.html
Here is something interesting…
174. Human Entropy. .
Such, in brief but sufficient outline, were the postnuptial
regulations of these vigorous societies ; such were their methods of regulating the, relations between the sexes. In each case they reduced their sexual opportunity to a minimum by the adoption of absolute monogamy ; in each case the ensuing compulsory continence prodUced great social energy. The group within the society which suffered the greatest continence displayed the greatest energy, and dominated the society. When absolute monogamy was preserved only for a’ short time, the energy was only expansive, but when the rigorous tradition was inherited by a number of generations the energy became. productive. As soon as the institution of modified monogamy, that is, marriage and divorce by mutual consent, became part of the inherited tradition of a complete new generation, the energy, either of the whole society or of a group within the society, decreased, and then disappeared.
Sometimes a man has been heard to declare that he wishes both to enjoy the advantages of high culture and to abolish compulsory continence-. The inherent nature of the ‘Annan organism, however, seems to be such that these desires are incompatible, even contradictory.
Pgs 411-412 — Sex And Culture — J.D.Unwin
This following sounds a lot like the militant homosexual agenda…
The reformer may be likened to – the foolish boy who desires both to keep his cake and to consume it. Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom ; the evidence is that it cannot do both- for more than one generation.
Page 412 — Sex And Culture — J.D.Unwin
@ Flying: You obviously haven’t read the comments carefully. The long-range and high-cost project of raising children is the reason heterosexuals are forced to draw up a legal contract agreement instead of merely having an informal verbal one.
Marriage is a legal contract that exists to protect partners and kids from economic ruin at the hands of a divorcing spouse. Sadly, gay contract law cannot offer legal protections to kids and spouses since the couples are *not* agreeing they will raise their kids together (for gays can’t reproduce children and can’t be legally bound to be doing any such thing together). Such a useless contract causes rampant, widespread spouse and child abandonment among heterosexual mass populations. The solution is to make marriage law permanent, inclusive of the interests of children, and economically punishing upon any adult who tries to defraud the other parties by exiting the legal contract.
It isn’t, they aren’t and often don’t, and your reasoning is highly suspect. There is currently no evidence to suggest that your apocalyptic prophesying about the future of women and children in heterosexual marriage in a world that allows same-sex marriage is true or even plausible. I’m certainly not legally bound to agree to raise kids together with my spouse if I get married, despite being a heterosexual.
TemperG said: there is currently no evidence to suggest that your apocalyptic prophesying about the future of women and children in heterosexual marriage in a world that allows same-sex marriage is true or even plausible.
Cassandra: Ah but there is. Redefining marriage to intentionally remove the legal and economic interests/provisions of kids means heterosexual marriage partners are not legally required to raise their children together and can exit at any time without any penalty or potential recourse against them. ***This is massive fraud***, and it’s already at work thanks to “no-fault divorce” laws which which gave us the 50% divorce rate after introduction in the 1970s. Bad marriage law is currently wiping out kids and moms in every state in the U.S. and this must be stopped now.
TemperG: I’m certainly not legally bound to agree to raise kids together with my spouse if I get married, despite being a heterosexual
Cassandra: That loophole must be closed as soon as possible to end the massive fraud being perpetrated upon children and adult partners by fickle/bored departing spouses. The law is causing grave concrete harm all across this country, and gay marriage revisions only open that loophole further — unfortunately. The solution is simple: marriage law must stipulate that the agreement is permanent, binding between kids and both parents, and economically punishing to the adult partner who tries to defraud all the other parties through divorce.
@Whut: Yes, kids can love each other and adults and seek orgasms, too. And if that’s what marriage is, then why do so many homosexuals want to deprive youth of their happiness in marriage? At least Kat was consistent and admitted that polygamy and incest should also be able to be called “marriage.” I think he/she also should be willing to let kids be “married.” Why discriminate on sexual preferences by age?
@ Trance. Heterosexual marriage arguments are “child-centric” because we produce the world’s billions of citizens and incur grave economic risks associated with our long-term parenting role, and because children are parties to the marriage and have their own interests and rights that must be legally protected.
Next, you are correct that no one going into a marriage is legally obligated to raise the children they produce together—and THAT’s the problem. This loophole in the law is the root cause of the mass abandonment of children and spouses in society. As a result, we must fix that loophole so that marriage partners are legally bound to raise the many children that they produce together (literally billions worldwide). Anything less would be unjust and evil to kids and economically dependent spouses.
Although heterosexual marriage law is currently in a broken down state, homosexual marriage law will be even worse, for it makes the contract a mere temporal cohabitation contract in law and fails to protect the unique economic needs of heterosexual spouses and their billions of children. Unregulated marriage law produces mass corruption and fraud, both of spouses and kids. Homosexuals don’t have much to lose from this, but heterosexuals stand to lose their entire economic stability and futures to this bad contract.
Next, I find it disgusting that a person whose sexual habits are considered disgusting by a vast majority of humans would turn around and find other people’s sexual habits disgusting. You are undeniably a bigot against people whose sexual preferences include multiple partners, close relatives, young people, and even animals. (And, yes, pets give tacit consent to everything from going for a walk to eating a treat to getting their bellies scratched—just ask Jane Goodall.)
Finally, how does bad marriage law victimize children? By permitting adults to pledge their commitment to spouse and kids one moment yet withdraw that commitment and financial investment later without grave penalty, leaving the kids and spouse to survive on their own. Legalized divorce is legalize fraud, theft, abandonment, and child abuse. Business law would never permit the deregulation and corruption we are allowing to take place in family law.
Law matters. Law determines outcomes. America’s current 50% divorce rate is caused by bad law, and the loopholes must be closed to protect women and children. Gay marriage creates only more loopholes through which adults are legally permitted to defraud spouses and kids.
Production of children is not something that can be required of marriage law. Are we agreed on that, at least? I can get married, and it’s not going to stop being a marriage if I don’t produce a child – the state isn’t coming to my door to unmarry me from my partner. Whether the adults in question choose not to have children or cannot have children, they cannot be required to make some in order for the marriage to be valid. Not now, and probably not ever.
That said, what exactly is then preventing you from agitating for the changes you want while simultaneously allowing for same sex marriage? The arrangements you’re requiring (which, for the record, I doubt could ever be spelled out definitvely, much less enforced) are an IF/THEN statement. IF there are children produced in the marriage, THEN obligation(s) X come into effect. Because heterosexual marriages will continue to happen that do not produce children, guaranteed, but that does not mean those people should not be able to be married under the law.
@TemperG. Marriage law is a contract in which two parties agree to the exclusive right to exchange sexually reproductive activities. The contract has traditionally been long-range in design/intent because those sexually reproductive acts result in children who require long-term care, labor, and investment from the adult partners who sired them.
So, everything about marriage law expects, assumes, and awaits the sexual reproduction of children among heterosexual populations. And this expectation is rarely ever disappointed, for heterosexuals are wildly reproductive creatures, producing billions of new citizens worldwide as we speak.
In truth, there would be no marriage contract anywhere on this planet if children were born as independent adults who did not require decades of expensive care and labor from the people who sired them. But children are not born as independent beings. And so “marriage law” came into existence to address this biological and legal reality.
Finally, I’m of the mainstream legal opinion (and I bet you are, too) that when people sign on to a contract, they have a legal responsibility to follow through on what that requirement is—or else face steep, steep penalties. The only place where this foundational legal guideline is ignored or not enforced is present-day marriage law. And the ones who suffer most because of it are, of course, the parties to the contract—especially kids and women.
In point of fact this is how most rights and obligations of marriage work now. They only apply if they apply; laws about custody arrangements and child support only come into effect if there are children involved – a situation which definitely does not apply to all marriages, or even many marriages at a given point in time (before children are produced, or after children are legally independent adults, for example).
This idea that marriage is, was, and always will be (or should be) solely about children is simply unfounded and untenable.
One more thing, TemperG. You asked a very good question: why don’t I agitate for stronger marriage laws while simultaneously allowing same-sex marriage?
The answer is that the same-sex contract stipulations (non-reproductive, easily dissolvable without penalty, no set duration of time) block the very reforms heterosexuals *require* to protect women and children and to reduce divorce back to single-digit percentages. (Remember, there’s only one marriage law code for everyone, gay or straight.) Let me say it again: the legal contract stipulations for gays (temporal, non-child-oriented, easily dissolvable) are the very stipulations that wreak havoc upon heterosexual couples and their many children. Likewise, the reforms that would save heterosexual marriage from divorces would prohibit gays from being able to apply.
To save kids and women from massive ongoing fraud and abandonment, heterosexual marriage law must stipulate that couples (1) are agreeing to permanence of contract (2) are agreeing to partner together in raising the natural organic result of their exclusive sexual activity, and (3) are agreeing to incur stiff penalties should a partner later breach the signed marriage requirements.
What’s the solution? The only solution is to have TWO separate codes of law: one that meets the unique needs of heterosexuals, and one that meets the very different needs of homosexuals.
You have an extraordinarily narrow view of what marriage is, under the law – one that is not borne out by even a casual view back upon history or current western society. I disagree immensely with your opinion, and I note that enacting it would have the effect of removing the protective umbrella of marriage law from those heterosexuals who cannot or choose not to reproduce. People who most definitely exist, and in fair-to-middling large numbers, I might add. As has been stated and which you have repeatedly chosen to ignore, there are many, many rights and obligations under marriage law which have nothing to do with children, and everything to do with shared property and other assets, as well as legal proxy status and other sundry effects. It is an important legal institution to many people, not simply those who wish to reproduce.
You want to reduce divorce to single digits again. To what end, and how? So the man whose wife misrepresented herself to him, sabotaged his condoms and faked being on the pill can be soaked for support for a child he never agreed to and a woman who lied to him? So the woman whose husband beat her before whe was pregnant and who might kill her when he finds out she is finds it even more difficult to leave him behind, because a child needs a father and she can’t get a divorce for that reason? So all those people of both sexes who make stupid choices are properly punished for their stupidity according to an arbitrary, state-imposed guideline?
You can’t use the law to fix stupid at the best of times. You certainly can’t use the law to force people to think before they reproduce; all avenues in this regard have failed miserably, and with good reason. However noble you might consider your intetntions, IMO the outcome you want is simply not possible through law – you’re going to have to try changing how people think about childrearing and coupling, first. Good luck with that.
But what about homosexuals who have children? If two women are raising a child together, and one abandons the other, why don’t you want that abandoned woman and child to be protected?
Jessi, Gay marriage law would would do nothing to prevent that one gay woman from leaving her partner and adopted children–and that’s a big problem. That legal loophole must be closed by making the marriage agreement permanent, oriented to the needs and protections of the children, and financially punishing to anyone who tries to get out of their duties via easy divorce.
An additional but separate point: it’s gravely unethical and cruel to intentionally deprive a child of his/her right to a mother or a father. There are two halves to our species that make up whole human development, and every child has a biological mom and a biological dad to whom they belong.
I’m glad that I didn’t have two dads only, or two moms only. We all learn many things about being human by having the different inputs from the different genders of our human race. It’s Nature’s way. It’s organic.
It sounds like you want to reform marriage law in general, so I’m not sure why you’re singling out gay marriage. Why don’t you just try to get your reforms instituted in all marriages?
As to parents, I do believe that it’s better to have parents of different genders, but I also believe that it’s usually better to have two parents than just one. You can still raise good children even if they’re only parented by one gender–ask any widow or widower with children.
Jessi, here are the reforms to marriage law that would reduce the 50% divorce rate to single digits:
(1) The adults are agreeing that the contract is permanent and grants exclusive sexual activity between the marriage partners
(2) The adults are agreeing to raise together the children produced from those sexual acts from infancy into adulthood
(3) The adults are agreeing that a partner who defrauds the family by exiting the contract will incur severe long-term financial sanctions redistributed to the spouse and children
FInally, it’s cruel and unjust to intentionally deprive children of their natural right to a mother and a father, which is what gay-based adoption is all about. It steals away the rights of kids.
@Temper. Not narrow, but rather precise.
Next, laws are written to address some situation common to a vast majority or “rule.” Never are laws written to address every exception to the rule (for the exception scenario is too different from the rule and thus requires its own stipulations). So it is with the very rare exception of infertile couples. As we all know, the rule of heterosexuality is that it is wildly reproductive, to the tune of billions of humans worldwide. Your “non-reproductive couples exception” to the rule is probably less than 1% of humans throughout all history. Simply put, the economic scenario is entirely different for reproducers and therefore requires its own contract law that addresses the unique economic realities of families and babies.
Next, the rights/benefits of marriage that the state offers are granted because heterosexuals alone have been tasked by nature with the procreation and long-range care of the state’s citizenry. The state has no interest offering perks for mere cohabitation or orgasms. In addition, unlike heterosexuals, homosexuals have zero long-range economic risks associated with their sex acts. So, the very legal and economic basis of marriage contracts among heterosexuals simply does not exist among homosexuals.
Yes, I want to reduce divorce to single digits. “No fault divorce” is legalized fraud, swindle, and material victimization of partners and children.
“So the man whose wife misrepresented herself to him, sabotaged his condoms and faked being on the pill can be soaked for support for a child he never agreed to and a woman who lied to him?”
If both partners are engaging in sexually reproductive acts, they are legally and morally bound to the babies that result from those acts. The law of marriage simply makes this obligation explicit and enforceable, for the good of the babies and the economically dependent spouse.
“So the woman whose husband beat her before whe was pregnant and who might kill her when he finds out…”
Battery is a punishable felony and also a breach of the marriage contract. The woman and children get their day in court and their full legal recourse against the abusive partner. That’s the proper just outcome for a bad breach of contract by that abusive partner.
“So all those people of both sexes who make stupid choices are properly punished for their stupidity…”
Absolutely, for they are punishing their children and each other with their stupidity and cannot be permitted to harm others materially and walk away free. These scenarios you bring up are the very essence of what laws are designed for. Laws exist to protect individuals from being victimized by crimes, fraud, abuse, etc.
“You can’t use the law to fix stupid at the best of times.”
Of course you can. We use laws, fines, and punishments “to fix stupid” each and every day in nearly every aspect of modern society. A hell bent drunk driver will eventually get fixed by the laws against drunk driving. A hell-bent speeder will eventually get fixed by the laws against speeding. And so on. And the steeper the penalty, the faster stupid gets fixed in a society.
“You certainly can’t use the law to force people to think before they reproduce.”
Of course you can. Ask the Chinese, who have a one-child legally enforced government regulation. Laws accomplish what they set out to accomplish (with law enforcement of course).
“IMO the outcome you want is simply not possible through law – you’re going to have to try changing how people think about childrearing and coupling”
All things are possible by law and law enforcement, from setting the average traffic speeds on a given road to the type of cooking oils every restaurant in a state must use. For sure, laws created the high divorce rate in the U.S., and laws alone can close the marriage loopholes and end the high divorce rate in the U.S.
“For sure, laws created the high divorce rate in the U.S., and laws alone can close the marriage loopholes and end the high divorce rate in the U.S.” – Cassandra
Be careful what you wish for! We don’t need a new law to govern every single aspect of our lives. I think a large part of the problem is that very thinking. New laws won’t end the high divorce rate. What will end the high divorce rate is a change in cultural values or a return to values period. I do, however, agree with you regarding no-fault divorce and its contribution to the problem.
——————-
To the homosexuals,
I’ve seen every side of this debate from the time of my childhood. Its funny that many gay activists seem to think all gay couples will live in happy harmony forever, and that gays are somehow some special class of citizen that is much better than the heterosexual, which is absolutely absurd. As a child I had a gay predator prey upon me with his acquaintance. I had a wife abandon the marriage and her children and engage in homosexual acts. I’ve seen other families broken by “gay love” and children abandoned simply for sexual relationships because those people had no concept of love. In every case these people were manipulative, dishonest, twisted, and frankly evil, yet claim they did nothing wrong… Are all those who claim to be homosexual this way? No. However, you don’t hear about the dark side because that debate has been silenced. I’ve heard well how does it hurt the children or anyone. For starters, it leaves mental scars and not to mention the confusion. As if divorce or abandonment were not bad enough then they have to accept two moms or two dads… It seems selfish to me to think that your actions would not affect your child.
Frankly I am sick of hearing about homosexuality. It is continually thrown in my face and has been most of my life by these same people that claim the “holy rollers” are throwing their values in their face. What a bunch of hypocrites. Every day I hear about it on the news and how I should just accept it. I’m sorry but I won’t. Do what you will and believe what you wish. Just stop telling me I cannot have my own moral values and must accept your twisted ones. A society that fails to retain its common values will fall apart, because those common values are what govern that society. This relentless onslaught by the gay lobby is pathetic and like spoiled children that aren’t getting their way and if you disagree you are demonized.
I say leave marriage alone. If you want to have your gay relationships or civil unions fine. Leave the children out of it and stop trying to further break down the core institution of civilization. Stop pushing your views upon the rest of us and for god sake stop the politically correct BS and demonizing anyone who disagrees with you.
So there are no chronic drunk drivers, no chronic speeders, no people who break laws on a daily basis? Horsepucky; people continue to be repeatedly, egregiously stupid, and occasionally they’re smacked on the knuckles for it, but they continue on their merry way. As for the one-child policy in China forcing people to think before they reproduce…do you know what they ended up with? A lot of abortions, a lot of infanticide, and a lot of child abandonment (look into all-girl orphanages, for example). The law didn’t make people think before they reproduced, it just changed what they did after they got pregnant when they weren’t supposed to be under the law. Not that it mattered, since the net result was the same; the Chinese government didn’t care how the reduced population growth was achieved, only that it happened. Still, my point is valid – it didn’t work the way you seem to think it worked.
The changes you’re advocating will not work for the same reason: trying to legislate people not to be jackasses doesn’t work. People who will stay in a marriage with children will stay, regardless of the law. People who won’t, won’t. All you’re setting up is law for a society where, instead of getting a divorce, irresponsible people will simply abandon their spouse and child(ren). The only difference is that they wouldn’t be able to get remarried under the law, but which sometimes doesn’t stop people even now. Which ends up not punishing the dependent…how, exactly?
You lost your point when you decided that fraud perpetrated by women in order to get pregnant and bring a child into a relationship without the consent of her mate was excusable; not a position that really matches someone agitating for harsh and swift punishment of fraud in marriage. Your deliberate refusal to acknowledge that valid marriages, deserving of benefits and obligations, are even possible without producing children isn’t helping your case, either. It doesn’t really matter, though. You’ll never get the changes in law with the effect that you want, because you can’t use the law to fix stupid, and you certainly can’t use it to regulate people’s sexual OR reproductive behaviour. That’s never worked – not when there were anti-miscegeneation laws, not when there were anti-sodomy laws, not when there were punitive divorce laws, not EVER. You can only use the law to punish, which usually doesn’t end up punishing the people who really need it, anyway. They just skirt the law the same way they do now, but people who really do need a way out get slapped by the system and forced to stay. Lose-lose situtation all around.
@Temper. Laws and enforcement set the behaviors of a society in any and every arena (i.e., the “norms” of the whole society).
Go check the average speed of a 35mph road near you. Is the average speed 70mph? No. It’s about 35. That’s the power of laws. Same with seat belt laws; when I was young, less than 10% of people wore their seat belts. But, once the seatbelt laws and fines came into existence, about 90% of the population now wears them. Again, that’s the power of laws and law enforcement to impact mass behavior.
How about anti-discrimination laws in the workplace? Do they work? You bet they do. What about smoking bans in major cities—have they stopped smoking in specified public places? Yes, they have. What about laws against trans-fat in fast food restaurants? Yes, those have worked too. It’s just too damn expensive to disregard these laws, and so the people and organizations are compelled to comply.
In business, contract law is very effective at protecting the investments, property, and labor of individuals, whether it’s the owners or the employees. This is what contracts are all about, Temper. They work, plain and simple.
Now, why would a sane and just society apply law to all other situations where people’s lives and property are at stake but then NOT regulate marriages, where people’s lives and children and property are also at stake?
In truth, we used to have stricter marriage laws that protected spouses and kids from divorce fraud. But then no-fault divorce *legalized divorce fraud* and gave us our 50% divorce rate. (That’s a lot of fraud and corruption, and a lot of destroyed women and kids.)
Your arguments against marriage law are arguments against all laws and law enforcement. And, by the way, you’re wrong about the result in China. Do the Chinese people average six kids or one? The answer is one. The society’s desired result is achieved, even in that most impractical of all possible scenarios (regulating population/procreation).
Hi, Jason. It was the prior change in marriage law (i.e., “no-fault divorce” – 1970s) that caused the rapid spike to our 50% divorce rate in the United States. That legal loophole, once closed, will lower divorce back to single digits in a hurry (1-3 years).
What “no fault divorce” did, Jason, was redefine marriage for all Americans as a temporary contract. Marriage in law and culture changed from being a permanent agreement to a short-term one easily dissolvable by a single bored/tired spouse. That tragic redefinition of marriage destroyed families and caused the 50% divorce rate we see today.
Gay marriage, which is another redefinition of marriage—from being child-protecting to NON-child-protecting—will further devastate heterosexual couples, who are currently producing the world’s billions of citizens and who require legal and financial protections for all those kids and care taking spouses.
Finally, Jason, nothing changes “cultural values” or causes a “return back to values” faster than laws. The opposite is also true: nothing destroys a nation’s good values faster than bad laws or no laws (lawlessness). For sure, a life-long contract to raise kids is a very difficult contract for any human being to carry out faithfully, and the overwhelming temptation is to exit when the times get tough. That’s where the law kicks in and holds people accountable to follow through on their original pledge to care for the spouse and the kids (or else face fines and other reasonable penalties for defrauding the other faithful parties to the marriage).
You think about that.
Cassandra– Finally, Jason, nothing changes “cultural values” or causes a “return back to values” faster than laws. The opposite is also true: nothing destroys a nation’s good values faster than bad laws or no laws (lawlessness). For sure, a life-long contract to raise kids is a very difficult contract for any human being to carry out faithfully, and the overwhelming temptation is to exit when the times get tough. That’s where the law kicks in and holds people accountable to follow through on their original pledge to care for the spouse and the kids (or else face fines and other reasonable penalties for defrauding the other faithful parties to the marriage).– Cassandra
While i see your point about children… And it is an excellent point.. We must also look at the downside of legislating morality… Quite frankly, it can’t be done.. Here are a couple of thoughts…
“When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, ‘there ought to be a law,’ you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.” — Dr. Thomas Sowell
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” — Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56-c.115)
“The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be.” — Lao-tzu, The Tao Te Ching (believed written in China, 6th century BC).
“People who think of government as the institution to entrust with enough power to right all the world’s wrongs seem to never consider that they must thereby give it enough power to do wrong to all the world’s rights. In fact, they seem NEVER to consider what the founders always thought was obvious: that the ‘good guys’ will NOT always be in charge!” — Bert Rand
“Any new power given to government will be abused.” — Gary Nolan
“Political power is everywhere the most serious threat to liberty. The more power politicians have, and the more able they are to disregard constitutional rules, the more serious the threat. Precedents for expanding government power are sure to be exploited by politicians more dangerous than those who set the precedents.” — Jim Powell
“Any time you give power to government, it will be abused, it will be enlarged, it will be used in ways you never intended.” – Harry Browne on The Drudge Report 7-31-99
“It’s important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want.”– Harry Browne
Laws are two-edged swords.. And they are used by lawers to eviscerate society… They rarely, if ever, truly accomplish their professed objective and more often than not, are used to further enslave the people by their government….
The only thing that will have any lasting effect is to love your children more than you love yourself….
“Self-love… is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is against this enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists and religionists, as the only obstacle to the practice of morality. Take from man his selfish propensities, and he can have nothing to seduce him from the practice of virtue. Or subdue those propensities by education, instruction or restraint, and virtue remains without a competitor.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:140
@ David Hardy. A change in law is what caused our 50% divorce rate (introduction of “no-fault divorce” made divorce easy and virtually penalty free), and the closing of the of “no-fault divorce” loophole is what will stop legalized divorce, sending us back to single digit divorce percentages. That will be a day of great justice for children and economically dependent spouses.
While I understand your libertarian ideals, I don’t know any libertarians that argue for the repeal of contract law in society. Like in any business partnership, the partners and children in a marriage agreement take on grave economic risk that requires contract law to protect people and to compel the adults to follow through on their pledged duties. It is criminal behavior (fraud/theft/child abuse) to have children that one minute you say you will raise together with the spouse and a year later say you will not.
Mere verbal agreements are nice for some things, David, but NOT for long-range contracts involving severe economic risk, labor, health, and property. To respond to Sowell here, I definitely do not value the freedom to abandon one’s responsibilities, partners, and children. In fact, their personal and economic well being is so crucially important and valuable, that to refuse to offer legal contract protections is to expose them to rampant fraud and to devalue their most basic need for survival.
Donald Trump stripped Carrie Prejean of her crown..
CNN wants input… http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?33
Here is what I sent them….
While I don’t agree with the homosexual “lifestyle”…. And while I consider it to be no more normal than Pedophilia, Misanthropic Anthropomorphic Bestiality, Sadomasochism, Necrophilia or any other Paraphilia….
I’m not actively attempting to ferret these perverts out from the ranks of polite society….. However… When someone not only boasts about their sexual perversion… But flaunts it in the faces of those who find it reprehensible….. While demanding their “rights” to openly express and engage in their sexual deviation of choice… I then take issue with it….
To me by engaging in a militant homosexuality that screams in the faces of America…… “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!”… Is about as revolting to me as being forced and coerced into the acceptance of something sick and twisted, against my will….. To demand constitutional recognition based solely upon a free-will sexual preference, makes no more sense than celebrating adultery and making it legal…
Carrie Prejean is a poster child for the intolerance of the anti-American, militant homosexual agenda… They don’t want democracy… They seek an oligarchic overthrow of our country and they are pushing for hate crimes legislation that will outlaw all dissent…
Homosexuals are no more than deviant, perverted…tyrants…
wow David, you have issues. And your opinion is based on what facts other than your “ick” factor?
while i never cared for militant homosexuals, being gay myself, but after watching this country, the RR and their ilk and then read comments like yours, i’m finding the in your face refreshing to bigotry, as they don’t like being called exactly what they are.
And for your comment about Carrie Prejean, i rewrote it to reflect the other side:
“Carrie Prejean is a poster child for the intolerance of the anti-American, militant hetrosexual agenda… They don’t want democracy… ”
“They seek an oligarchic overthrow of our country and they are pushing for hate crimes legislation that will outlaw all dissent…” This is a lie, care to read the facts on the amendment or do you normally get your opinion from Focus on the (disfunctional)Family?
Wait people get married as a business contract? That would explain why divorce rates are high, homosexuality not even entering into the question. So it looks like the reason certain people want to keep homosexuality illegal is because they are bitter about their own bad business decisions. Then they tell us that allowing homosexuals to marry wouldn’t change this. We have a problem with methamphetamine in my state, and have since the 80s. Passing NAFTA didn’t fix this problem. Therefore NAFTA was a bad agreement. (It was, but this is not an economics board, so I won’t go into details) The legality of toilets hasn’t made our drug problem go away. Toilets should therefore be banned. I am sorry, but that is the logic I see being used. Any law allowing gay marriage would require the same things of the marriage as any other marriage. If the problem is that current marriage laws don’t work, fix them, but allowing same sex marriage will not change the fact that some heterosexual couples make bad decisions. PERIOD.
For the record, I am perfectly straight. I’m just not dumb enough to think my preference is a universal standard that should be enforced.
Of course marriage is a contract, Joe. And the things heterosexuals are contracting are utterly different from the things homosexuals are contracting. Therefore, you can’t use the same legal contract.
Next, divorce rates are high because marriage contract law was radically altered a few decades back so that it is now easy to defraud the partner without penalty. Marriage law used to be as strong as business law contracts or government contracts. But once marriage law was changed to resemble more of a gentlemen’s handshake agreement, couples were doomed to mass betrayal, fraud, and treachery without any legal recourse. Women and children are being personally and economically wiped out at high percentages.
Sadly, you don’t seem to comprehend law and society whatsoever. You probably aren’t married with kids, so you fail to realize that human lives, fortunes and children are at stake in this gay marriage legal issue. You’re probably still in high school with no real grasp of contract law.
Just like you don’t effectively buy and protect a home with a car rental contract, heterosexuals can’t build and protect a permanent family enterprise with a temporary love contract. Trying to do so is bad law, and bad law destroys lives.
You missed two big ones. Gay marriage increases awareness among heterosexuals of the possibility of sexual contact with another member of his or her own gender. Whether or not sexual contact with another man/woman is harmful among homosexuals, it certainly is among heterosexuals. We don’t want to be reminded, or to have our children informed or reminded of this possibility. That is huge. I don’t want my kid coming home and asking me how it can be that Mr Jenkin’s spouse can be Mr. Smith.
Avoiding future actions that would be harmful to ourselves is one of the great challenges of human existence. If we could decide right now to avoid every moral mistake that we could make in the future, we would all make that decision. But there is always the possibility that in the right circumstances I might commit a crime, or say something hurtful to a loved one, or get drunk, or have sexual contact with a woman other than my wife. There are many pitfalls out there. We try to avoid them, but with varying degrees of success. I’d like to structure my environment, and make decisions right now that reduce my chances of ever having sexual contact with another man. If I did that I think it would cause a lot of confusion about my sexual identity, and perhaps lead to further such incidents. Anything that makes it more likely is something that, frankly, I really resent. So the idea about hearing that the couple next door are Frank and Steve, who are married, is not something I care to think about. And for younger men, who are still forming their sexual identity, for those who are fundamentally heterosexual, learning of married same sex couples increases their awareness of homosexuality and could lead to experimentation with it. I think this would be very, very harmful to a lot of men. Each man wants clarity about who he is, sexually. We don’t want to be reminded of the possibility of same sex contact.
The second reason is communications. When I tell someone I’m married I want them to know, without any further explanation, that it is to someone of the opposite sex. It may seem like a little thing, but dammit I resent people trying to change the language for their own purposes. I like it just the way it is.
So it is all about conduct harmful to others, whether it is reminding someone, perhaps at a vulnerable moment, of the possibility of same sex contact, or muddying up the language and making their communications more difficult, for heaven’s sake have a small modicum of consideration for the vast majority of people who are straight.
I would also like to comment on this list:
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES ON GAY AND LESBIAN PARENTING
by – Eileen Durgin-Clinchard, Ph.D.
which is sometimes used to support the notion that same sex child rearing is as good as mother and father child rearing. All the articles are very old and I can find no way to verify their supposed conclusions or the methodology short of taking the time to go to a university library and looking them up. So, this list should not be taken as supporting what it is said to support, at all!!! What a great, big steaming, odoriferous pile of bovine fecal material it is to put up an old list like that, unverifiable save some major effort, and then claim that it proves anything at all.
Canada is in Deep trouble! Could this happen to you?
Transfer of highly sensitive documents to North American contacts.
As you will probably be aware that here in Canada we now have a law allowing gay marriage. This law to a large extent was pushed by an extremely large gay community here in Quebec, Canada, where I live. Montreal especially is becoming a very large center for sexual deviants. It is not for nothing that the first ever world gay games were held in Montreal. This was a financial disaster for the province of Quebec and the city of Montreal.
This has not stopped the flow of sexual deviants coming into Quebec and specifically Montreal.
The next step in their program is to change the law that limits marriage between two people. Yes, logically, I suppose they have some claim, once they have removed the religious aspect from the marriage law; it is difficult to argue against them.
The plan is quite simple; they want to form family units of four people. Two lesbians and two homosexuals. This family unit will then revolve around sex for pleasure and sex for reproduction! I will leave it to your imagination to discover how this family concept would be carried out.
Without marriage based on the religious premise of uniting one man and one woman, can anyone see any real legal reason why this should not come about?
Please tell me their plan will not be realized, please!
Green Party Convention
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
How did the polygamy motion make it so far?
Some people, including Green Party members, are wondering how the polygamy motion made it through the workshop stage and back to full plenary, where everyone at the convention will vote on it later this morning.
A couple of Greens approached me to say the workshop was pretty small, with a lot of other sessions going on at the same time. The polygamy motion came up in a workshop specifically for policy resolutions, which was held at the same time as training for electoral district associations and the workshop for constitutional motions.
It was an interesting debate to sit in on because the arguments were passionate. For the people who support the motion, it’s about human rights and staying out of people’s relationships. Why cover up support for those who choose a second or third life partner? They also said it’s about being the party of integrity, and not backing down over a controversial issue.
The motion eventually passed 14-8 to go to full plenary. Most people expect it to get voted down, but we’ll soon find out. Discussion is starting now – follow it through Twitter!