Gay Marriage is not "Progressive"

[stromboli]

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benefits-30190.html

Legal benefits of marriage:

Tax Benefits
Filing joint income tax returns with the IRS and state taxing authorities.
Creating a "family partnership" under federal tax laws, which allows you to divide business income among family members.
Estate Planning Benefits
Inheriting a share of your spouse's estate.
Receiving an exemption from both estate taxes and gift taxes for all property you give or leave to your spouse.
Creating life estate trusts that are restricted to married couples, including QTIP trusts, QDOT trusts, and marital deduction trusts.
Obtaining priority if a conservator needs to be appointed for your spouse -- that is, someone to make financial and/or medical decisions on your spouse's behalf.
Government Benefits
Receiving Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits for spouses.
Receiving veterans' and military benefits for spouses, such as those for education, medical care, or special loans.
Receiving public assistance benefits.
Employment Benefits
Obtaining insurance benefits through a spouse's employer.
Taking family leave to care for your spouse during an illness.
Receiving wages, workers' compensation, and retirement plan benefits for a deceased spouse.
Taking bereavement leave if your spouse or one of your spouse's close relatives dies.
Medical Benefits
Visiting your spouse in a hospital intensive care unit or during restricted visiting hours in other parts of a medical facility.
Making medical decisions for your spouse if he or she becomes incapacitated and unable to express wishes for treatment.
Death Benefits
Consenting to after-death examinations and procedures.
Making burial or other final arrangements.
Family Benefits
Filing for stepparent or joint adoption.
Applying for joint foster care rights.
Receiving equitable division of property if you divorce.
Receiving spousal or child support, child custody, and visitation if you divorce.
Housing Benefits
Living in neighborhoods zoned for "families only."
Automatically renewing leases signed by your spouse.
Consumer Benefits
Receiving family rates for health, homeowners', auto, and other types of insurance.
Receiving tuition discounts and permission to use school facilities.
Other consumer discounts and incentives offered only to married couples or families.
Other Legal Benefits and Protections
Suing a third person for wrongful death of your spouse and loss of consortium (loss of intimacy).
Suing a third person for offenses that interfere with the success of your marriage, such as alienation of affection and criminal conversation (these laws are available in only a few states).
Claiming the marital communications privilege, which means a court can't force you to disclose the contents of confidential communications between you and your spouse during your marriage.
Receiving crime victims' recovery benefits if your spouse is the victim of a crime.
Obtaining immigration and residency benefits for noncitizen spouse.
Visiting rights in jails and other places where visitors are restricted to immediate family.

These are the benefits given though marriage. One marriage license, one ceremony, all of these benefits are available to a married couple.

A gay couple living in a civil union outside of marriage does not have these benefit without pursuing them through legal channels individually. Heretofore, a heterosexual couple could though civil union after 7 years be considered as married with the same rights. However:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_union
Unions between men, between women or including transgender people in any way, independently of the sexual orientation of the partners, have been and still are considered taboo for much of the past and present societies,[1] particularly those of strongly religious taboo-derived social mores such as the Western world and societies influenced by it, but at the same time they are becoming increasingly less of a reason for moral panic even in societies with the aforementioned social role-influencing religions being still a pervasive influence, and also more and more regarded as legitimate relationships worthy of the same protections given to mixed-sex unions enjoyed by law and society.

More and more regarded, but not yet statute by law. Civil unions for gay couples at present do not offer the same protection as marriage.

It follows therefore that marriage is the simple and best solution. From the start, beginning with Prop. 8 and onward, there has never been an argument that successfully has stopped the toppling of heterosexual married laws except in those states where the prevailing attitudes are strongly religious and the legislators strongly conservative and these laws have not yet been presented to the Supreme Court

Prop 8 failed and the efforts in 37 states have failed to stop it. Simply put, EVERY SINGLE ARGUMENT in these jurisdictions did not meet the test of constitutionality required to overturn the civil marriage of gays.

Note the list above. There is no mention of specific conditions having to do with child rearing or set conditions which define what a "quality" environment for what child raising is. The state of marriage is ABOUT SPECIFIC LEGAL CONDITIONS AWARDED TO MARRIED COUPLES THAT ARE NOT AWARDED TO COHABITATING COUPLES.

That is it. you have presented several specious arguments, none backed by any specific study or anything other than your opinion about child rearing. You can argue all day that there is a specific set of circumstances wherein children are best reared; the very fact that children can and have been successfully reared outside that set of circumstances proves you wrong. The issue of gay marriage is about legal rights awarded to a married couple, period. All other arguments are merely smoke and mirrors.  Again, one more time, NO OPPOSING DEFENSE IN 37 STATES HAS BEEN ABLE TO OVERTURN THE RIGHT OF GAY MARRIAGE ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL TESTS APPLIED TO IT. IT IS ABOUT CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, PERIOD.

[PickelledEggs]

VladK, while you are not technically breaking any rules (to what I've seen)... you are voicing an unnecessarily bigoted opinion that is not based on anything factual. There may or may not be any personal attacks or name calling towards any members on here (again... to what I have seen), but your very unpopular and hate-filled position on gay marriage is pissing everyone off. I would suggest that you voluntarily not post in this thread if you are going to hold steady with what you have to say about gay marriage, being gay, single parents, etc...  Otherwise I will ban you. There is no need to keep someone as a member if the only things he/she posts unnecessarily upsets the rest of the site.

A fair heads up, you think?

[VladK]

Dude, it's your forum, if you wanted to create an echo chamber of leftists similar to Atheism Plus you could have said so from the beginning. But I guess the whole "community website for freethinkers" has some very narrow parameters in which you can think freely which just defeats the whole purpose.

Also your members are not exactly being factual or honest as evidenced by the constant strawman even after repeated clarifications, ad hominems, disingenuous equivalence between race and gender, muddying the waters tactics, evading questions, ignoring some very serious side effects of redefining marriage such as loss of religious freedom, and downright promoting dictatorial practices by implying that people have no right to object to how part of their tax money is used.

You say that I have NOTHING, NOTHING at all factual with which to back up my claims, so I guess the articles about UK and Denmark are bullshit and churches aren't actually being sued, tax benefits, housing benefits etc. for gay couples are not in fact positive rights, the statistics showing that single parent households are more likely to produce troubled youths than two parent households are bullshit too and no doubt you're probably downplaying the role lack of responsible fatherhood played in Elliot Rodger's failure to adapt to society, particulary dating women. We all know how that ended, but according to the gay activists fathers and mothers are irrelevant now to such an extent that some countries like France won't even use "father" and "mother" anymore in official documents.

Anyway, that's my final word, feel free to cancel my account, I don't care.

[stromboli]

An echo chamber of leftists? OK. Atheism plus? So his shit didn't fly over there either. Might be a clue; the one he didn't get there or here.

[SGOS]

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benefits-30190.html

Note the list above. There is no mention of specific conditions having to do with child rearing or set conditions which define what a "quality" environment for what child raising is. The state of marriage is ABOUT SPECIFIC LEGAL CONDITIONS AWARDED TO MARRIED COUPLES THAT ARE NOT AWARDED TO COHABITATING COUPLES.

Ouch!

[Atheon]

An echo chamber of leftists? OK. Atheism plus? So his shit didn't fly over there either. Might be a clue; the one he didn't get there or here.

Life lesson #1: Acting like a dick generally leads to being shown the door.

[stromboli]

A person who comes on an atheist website with an argument to condemn the actions of a specific group of people is by definition a bigot. That the arguments are cherry picked and mostly projections of his own ideas merely cements that. He will no doubt in turn condemn us for not buying into his skewed world view. I be all  sad and unhappy, boo hoo.

[Munch]

Now where have I seen this type of mentality before.. OH yes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8jQkSydeo

"I'm right and everyone else is wrong, I'm going to talk over you because I know I'm so completely right, nothing you say could touch on how right I am"

Christians and extreme right wingers are some of the most insecure people there are, they hold their fragile beliefs, which is easily broken, and go into a state of denial if it gets chipped, even aggressively so, even to accusing everyone else of being at fault. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that way of thinking the early signs of a sociopath?

[PickelledEggs]

I actually forgot that the second post he made in this thread, he basically called Mermaid a child hater because she's a single mom.

And I could accuse you of hating children (let's call it childphobia) because you don't recognize the importance of having a mother and a father, but that wouldn't be very productive would it?

That could be called a personal attack...

[Atheon]

His behavior was very similar to that of a fundie. First, he claimed to be a former supporter of gay rights, kind of like fundies often claim they were former atheists. I am higlhy skeptical of such clsims, because anti-gay to pro-gay, like relugious to atheist, is what I call an issue of one-way epiphany: it takes a major lapse of rational thinking to go in the "wrong" direction. He also had his arguments solidly debunked again and again, but simply handwaved them away. He also used tired old oft-debunked arguments of the order of "why are there still monkeys" to back up his thesis. Plus when he left, he called us "leftists"..
I guess if that means "people who value reason, freedom and equal rights, and who don't suffer fools or bigots", then I'd agree wholeheartedly.

[stromboli]

Ouch!

Was I too harsh?

[Green Bottle]

Was I too harsh?

Not at all Stromboli, you explained urself well, as did all the others in this thread, i think i can safely say that he wont be missed by any of us.

Bye Vladk, dont let the door hit you on the Arse on the way out....................

[SGOS]

Was I too harsh?

Not at all.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

if you wanted to create an echo chamber

You must be new here. We rarely agree on anything.

[Mr.Obvious]

You must be new here. We rarely agree on anything.

I say, I'm not sure I agree with you on that one.

Oh, wait...