Gay Marriage is not "Progressive"

Started by VladK, February 02, 2015, 07:40:43 AM

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stromboli

A. There are obvious reasons people get married- having to do with property rights, inheritance rights, parenting rights and so on. The law provides a specific legal standing to married couple in such instances as not being able to force a wife to testify against a husband and so on.

B. Heretofore, gays as a couple were denied those rights as defined by law; all they have asked for is the same legal concessions given to heterosexual married couples.

C. The Constitution of the U.S. does not specifically state in any way that marriage is distinct between a man and a woman. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was created under the Clinton administration to address that issue.

D. Under Obama's administration, he (and others) vacated DOMA for exactly that reason; it didn't meet the test of constitutionality.

E. The overturning of Prop 8 (for the reasons listed above) in court and affirmed in every court thereafter, effectively killed not only Prop 8 but DOMA as well. There are now more states that allow gay marriage than there are states that don't.

F. The reason that gay marriage has won so convincingly in court is that, constitutionally or otherwise, the only arguments against it are either religious based or based on cultural bias. In a secular court weighing all options purely on the basis of merit, THERE IS NO GOOD ARGUMENT AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE. WHICH IS WHY IT HAS WON SO CONVINCINGLY IN COURT.


VladK

Quote from: Solitary on February 02, 2015, 05:49:36 PM
Take your fucking delusions somewhere else, and your lying fucking mouth that you supported gay marriage.

Oh I see what your delusion is now. You think you can read minds.

How about you prove that I did not support gay marriage? Do you know me? Do you know the history of all positions I have ever advocated or opposed? No.

Quote from: Mermaid on February 02, 2015, 11:29:19 AM
What I don't get is why anyone gives a flying fuck who marries whom. It's the same thing as telling someone what color pants to wear or what to order at a restaurant. It's nobody's business.

Marriage is not entirely a private matter given that it often involes benefits that the government provides and which single people or unmarried couples don't have access to. For example tax breaks.

Can you think of any good reason why two people should be taxed differently (i.e. less) just because they fuck? I can't. Like, do you not realize that when certain people pay less in taxes, other people have to fill in the gap?

Quote from: Mermaid on February 02, 2015, 11:29:19 AMAnd being a douchebag about it isn't going to change that some people are gay.

Who says I want to "change gays"? Stick the subject which is whether or not redefining marriage in this way is a good thing or not. I also helps when you're calling people douchebags to not be one yourself.

Also it's kind of ironic you're so vocal about this, given that most homosexuals aren't even interested in marriage. Sorry it's fact. Even when the UK had civil partnership (something I don't necessarily oppose, assuming you can clearly define what that implies and how it is distinct from marriage) only about 106k people actually applied and that was over a 6 year period since its inception. The UK population is somewhere over 60 million with anywhere between 1-6% being gay. Doesn't seem like there's a lot of people rushing towards this.

Quote from: SGOS on February 02, 2015, 11:51:58 AM
What gives you the authority, knowledge, and experience to arbitrarily decide what should be changed and what should not?

I could ask you the same question. You're in the camp of those advocating for redefining marriage, one of the core institutions of society, in such a fundamental way.

Quote from: Aroura33 on February 02, 2015, 12:25:27 PM
Also, being adopted by loving people of either gender is leaps and bounds better than staying in the system.

Well sure, being adopted by a single guy who plays video games 8 hours a day is probably better than staying in the system, but that doesn't mean single parenthood is equivalent to standard father+mother parenthood, nor that the government needs to encourage these unconventional "families".

Remember that "marriage equality" implies straight couples will not have priority over gay ones in adoptions.

Anyway read my other posts again since I did address the concerns you have.

Quote from: Hydra009 on February 02, 2015, 11:20:23 AM
By the same logic, banning interracial marriages isn't discriminatory because anyone can in fact enter into marriage, they just have to find a partner of the same race.

It takes one hell of a mental gymnastics routine to not see that as discriminatory.

I already addressed why it is not comparable to interracial marriage. And as I said, there is no basis in reason or natural law to limit marriage based on race. Straight interracial couples can produce children and they can produce them healthy.

SGOS

Quote from: Solitary on February 02, 2015, 05:49:36 PM
Why does the Church, or churches, have any say in a secular society what a marriage is, or just to have children?
When I was little, I assumed you got married in a church because it was like a law or something.  It didn't occur to me until later that marriage is a state license, and the church has managed to weasel it's way into the business.  It's just sticking its nose in giving people the idea that a marriage should be done in a church to sanctify everything.  WTF??  Sanctify?  For what purpose?  It's not like it re-virginizes the bride or something. 

People don't go around asking, "Has your marriage been sanctified?  I do hope it's been sanctified?  What church sanctified your marriage?  I don't know what I'd do if my marriage was un-sanctified.  I would be living in sin, and I would probably go to Hell."

Well, I suppose there's lot's of room in the church, so you can have all your friends come and watch.  That's kind of a good thing.  You get blessed by a man of the cloth.  Although really, it's the bride and the groom marrying each other.  The guy up front with the funny hat is just for show.  He's often just some guy you hardly know.   He's sanctifying the event in the name of the Lord God.  But actually, the only benefits, like filing your income tax jointly, or being able to pull the plug on your wealthy spouse, if he/she is in a coma are awarded to you by the state.  As per usual, what you get from the church is just a bunch of diddly crap that doesn't do you one bit of good.

And when it's time to get a divorce, you have to have it approved by the state.  The church won't be anywhere around.  It only wants the fun part.

SGOS

Quote from: SGOS on Today at 11:51:58 AM
What gives you the authority, knowledge, and experience to arbitrarily decide what should be changed and what should not?

Vlad: 
I could ask you the same question.

SGOS: 
Yes, you could, but I'd disclose up front that it's my opinion, not some self evident fact that marriage has to be between a man and a woman, because, well, "it's just because it is."


Poison Tree

From For Better or Worse? The Case for Gay (and Straight) Marriage
QuoteCivilizing young males is one of any society's biggest problems. Wherever unattached males gather in packs, you see no end of trouble: wildings in Central Park, gangs in Los Angeles, soccer hooligans in Britain, skinheads in Germany, fraternity hazings in universities, grope-lines in the military and, in a different but ultimately no less tragic way, the bathhouses and wanton sex of gay San Francisco or New York in the 1970s.

For taming men, marriage is unmatched. "Of all the institutions through which men may pass--schools, factories, the military--marriage has the largest effect," Wilson writes in The Moral Sense. (A token of the casualness of current thinking about marriage is that the man who wrote those words could, later in the very same book, say that government should care about fostering families for "scarcely any other" reason than children.) If marriage--that is, the binding of men into couples--did nothing else, its power to settle men, to keep them at home and out of trouble, would be ample justification for its special status.

Of course, women and older men don't generally travel in marauding or orgiastic packs. But in their case the second rationale comes into play. A second enormous problem for society is what to do when someone is beset by some sort of burdensome contingency. It could be cancer, a broken back, unemployment or depression; it could be exhaustion from work or stress under pressure. If marriage has any meaning at all, it is that, when you collapse from a stroke, there will be at least one other person whose "job" is to drop everything and come to your aid; or that when you come home after being fired by the postal service there will be someone to persuade you not to kill the supervisor.

Obviously, both rationales--the need to settle males and the need to have people looked after--apply to sterile people as well as fertile ones, and apply to childless couples as well as to ones with children. The first explains why everybody feels relieved when the town delinquent gets married, and the second explains why everybody feels happy when an aging widow takes a second husband. From a social point of view, it seems to me, both rationales are far more compelling as justifications of marriage's special status than, say, love. And both of them apply to homosexuals as well as to heterosexuals.
[. . .]
Marriage is a deal between a couple and society, not just between two people: society recognizes the sanctity and autonomy of the pair-bond, and in exchange each spouse commits to being the other's nurse, social worker and policeman of first resort. Each marriage is its own little society within society. Any step that weakens the deal by granting the legal benefits of marriage without also requiring the public commitment is begging for trouble.
"Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches" Voltaire�s Candide

aitm

Me thinks your opinion of the origin of marriage may be a bit skewed. Marriage was the idea of men, not just any men mind you, but the lesser of the best. The strongest never had to worry about getting laid, he took what he wanted,,kinda like kings, this trickled down to his followers. But as tribes and society evolved it turned out that by gosh, every man would like to get laid once in awhile without being beat up by the strongest and his band of merry rapists. So, a kind of mutual arrangement was slowly established for the benefit of the whole, allow each man his own fuckhole and hands off to others and men can go about without trying to secretly kill each other. Lo and behold, the idea had some merits to the tribe/society as a whole and everyone saw it was good and then man made god and he agreed. The end….kinda…then religion really went fucktard and also regressed to letting the kings and leaders fuck whoever they wanted with impunity,albeit with the grace of god on their side. The end.


(no sexism was intended, but implied, sue our ancestors)
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Munch

#36
Quote from: VladK on February 02, 2015, 08:04:07 AM
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?

I consider that, while your personal opinion, to be an insult, and very small minded of you.

you think the definition of a perfect family comes into one construct, the mother and father ratio? Well what do you say to single parents raising children, where the partner has either died, or left, leaving them with the children? How many times do you think this happens in any home with children in it? Do all these children with just one parent grow up fucked up and unloved? No, and if you claim that, your a fucking moron.

Same sex parents love there children the same as a man and woman would, I know this because I knew personally a gay couple who has 4 children, raised from a donor mother who wanted a career but knew her children would be loved, and these kids where some of the happiest kids i've seen growing up, there two dads doing everything to make there lives perfect.

You have no clue about the accusations you are making here, you have no experience of it, and fail to make any other accountability other then a your bias perspective, probably garnered from some piss poor background, how dare you make this assertion without even experiencing examples of your false claims.

I don't know you personally, but for every single parent or gay parents who raised there children in loving homes, I'll speak on their behalf.

'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

stromboli

Quote from: aitm on February 02, 2015, 07:32:41 PM
Me thinks your opinion of the origin of marriage may be a bit skewed. Marriage was the idea of men, not just any men mind you, but the lesser of the best. The strongest never had to worry about getting laid, he took what he wanted,,kinda like kings, this trickled down to his followers. But as tribes and society evolved it turned out that by gosh, every man would like to get laid once in awhile without being beat up by the strongest and his band of merry rapists. So, a kind of mutual arrangement was slowly established for the benefit of the whole, allow each man his own fuckhole and hands off to others and men can go about without trying to secretly kill each other. Lo and behold, the idea had some merits to the tribe/society as a whole and everyone saw it was good and then man made god and he agreed. The end….kinda…then religion really went fucktard and also regressed to letting the kings and leaders fuck whoever they wanted with impunity,albeit with the grace of god on their side. The end.


(no sexism was intended, but implied, sue our ancestors)

Sure it was.  :biggrin: To extend that, marriage in the larger sense was a legal way of uniting tribes and clans- all the  way from the earliest hunter-gather tribes to the kings and emperors of Europe. A great deal of the reasoning behind modern marriage comes from this- the inheritance and the right of the inheritors to thrones and titles. entire wars were fought over who had the right, between brothers and sisters and cousins and illegitimate offspring, ad infinitum. That is why marriage has to be viewed strictly as a legal bond. Amongst the wealthy and royalty entire vast estate inheritance and even rulership of countries depended on who married who and whose offspring were legitimate heirs. Lesser of the best?  :eek:

VladK

#38
Quote from: Munch on February 02, 2015, 08:12:41 PM
I consider that, while your personal opinion, to be an insult, and very small minded of you.

But for some reason you don't consider it an insult or "small minded" when someone from the erm "politically correct" side of the political spectrum does it. Yeah now you know what it feels like to be accused of having some kind of "phobia" or being a "bigot" or "hating" certain people because you don't agree with a certain political position.

In this case, I say fighting fire with fire is fitting since it makes people realize how absurd their political correctness is. It also allows me to go on the offensive.

Quote from: Munch on February 02, 2015, 08:12:41 PMyou think the definition of a perfect family comes into one construct, the mother and father ratio? Well what do you say to single parents raising children, where the partner has either died, or left, leaving them with the children?

That is an unfortunate circumstance people sometimes find themselves in, if one spouse dies or is otherwise incapacitated. That doesn't mean motherhood and fatherhood is no longer the ideal. Other times, single parenthood is the result of poor life choices that could have been prevented and people need to called out for it because it's detrimental to their children and by extension to society. And studies have shown a link between single parenthood and youth dysfunctionality as youths raised by single mothers or single fathers are far more likely to:
- drop out
- do drugs
- be exploited sexually by adults
- get in trouble with authorities

Quote from: Munch on February 02, 2015, 08:12:41 PMHow many times do you think this happens in any home with children in it? Do all these children with just one parent grow up fucked up and unloved? No, and if you claim that, your a fucking moron.

I said "far more likely" you moron. That does not mean that every child raised by 2 parents will be normal and every child raised by 1 parent will be dysfunctional. Seriously pay attention more. Your entire post is strawman.

Quote from: Munch on February 02, 2015, 08:12:41 PMSame sex parents love there children the same as a man and woman would, I know this because I knew personally a gay couple who has 4 children, raised from a donor mother who wanted a career but knew her children would be loved, and these kids where some of the happiest kids i've seen growing up, there two dads doing everything to make there lives perfect.

That is a far too small sample to draw the conclusion that this whole excercise in social engineering is a good thing for society in the long run. Let's see how "happy" these kids will be once they go to high school and get bullied when all the "cool" kids find out who raises them. You've never thought of that either did you? You guys never think about anything, it's just reckless disregard of everything, all bullshit, all made up by "bigots" and "YAY EQUALITY! WE FUTURE! WE PROGRESS!", isn't it with you?

And as for surrogate mothers for gay coupes, let me ask you this. What happens if the gay couple decides to sue the surrogate for child support? Ever thought of that? Remember that any rights, even reproduction, come with responsibilities.

Quote from: Munch on February 02, 2015, 08:12:41 PMYou have no clue about the accusations you are making here, you have no experience of it, and fail to make any other accountability other then a your bias perspective, probably garnered from some piss poor background,

Well I dunno what to say dude. Like, you want a society that has low crime and less child or teen exploitation? Then single parenthood is not something to be encouraged. It should only exist in circumstances beyond someone's control and even then it should (and can) be remedied through re-marriage.

QuoteQuality of Parenting
Regardless of family structure, the quality of parenting is one of the best predictors of children's emotional and social well-being. Many single parents, however, find it difficult to function effectively as parents. Compared with continuously married parents, they are less emotionally supportive of their children, have fewer rules, dispense harsher discipline, are more inconsistent in dispensing discipline, provide less supervision, and engage in more conflict with their children.46 Many of these deficits in parenting presumably result from struggling to make ends meet with limited financial resources and trying to raise children without the help of the other biological parent. Many studies link inept parenting by resident single parents with a variety of negative outcomes among children, including poor academic achievement, emotional problems, conduct problems, low self-esteem, and problems forming and maintaining social relationships. Other studies show that depression among custodial mothers, which usually detracts from effective parenting, is related to poor adjustment among offspring.47
http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=37&articleid=107&sectionid=692


Quote from: Munch on February 02, 2015, 08:12:41 PMhow dare you make this assertion without even experiencing examples of your false claims.

I don't know you personally, but for every single parent or gay parents who raised there children in loving homes, I'll speak on their behalf.

I'm sorry but you're simply full of shit on this one. Maybe if there's room for debate on exactly how gay parenthood affects children (since luckly it's not that common yet), the issue is long settled on single parenthood. Sorry. You lost that argument decade ago. It's very destructive to raise a child in a single parent household and I've explained why at least two or three times already.

Does that mean it should be illegal? No, it just means people need to stop pretending that they can raise children all by the themselves as good as a couple could. I'm a single guy, I'd never want to be a in a position where I have to raise one alone. And even if circumstances out of my control put me in that position (like spousal death) I would do everything in my power to remarry as soon as possible.

PS: Go fuck yourself. :)



Quote from: stromboli on February 02, 2015, 08:15:54 PM
Sure it was.  :biggrin: To extend that, marriage in the larger sense was a legal way of uniting tribes and clans- all the  way from the earliest hunter-gather tribes to the kings and emperors of Europe. A great deal of the reasoning behind modern marriage comes from this- the inheritance and the right of the inheritors to thrones and titles. entire wars were fought over who had the right, between brothers and sisters and cousins and illegitimate offspring, ad infinitum. That is why marriage has to be viewed strictly as a legal bond. Amongst the wealthy and royalty entire vast estate inheritance and even rulership of countries depended on who married who and whose offspring were legitimate heirs. Lesser of the best?  :eek:

Even so, children are still central to marriage and always have been, especially in circumstances of uniting tribes of clans. It's not union itself so much as the off-spring that unites them. If your union does not produce a child, you'll never be united.

Same with royal marriages of convenience. The union itself means nothing without off-spring. No off-spring = no legacy.

Mermaid

Stating your personal opinion as if it were fact makes you sound like a complete idiot. Even your own argument has many holes.
LOTS of gay people have kids. A lot of them are *gasp* biological! I know, it's hard to imagine. A lot of straight couples have kids that are *gasp* biological. A lot are also not biological.

I think your plan was just to waste the time of the people of this forum. Forum trolling is about the most useless habit I can fathom. If you put 5% of that effort into something productive, you might find yourself a happier person.
A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities â€" all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. -TR

SGOS

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/religious-freedom-gives-m_b_6598628.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
Quote
Religious Freedom Gives Me the Constitutional Right to Violate Your Constitutional Rights, Right?

Conservatives just love the Constitution -- or at least they say they do. The thing is that they don't seem to have any idea how it works. At least that's a more charitable explanation than saying they don't care how the Constitution works and merely use it as a fig leaf while they undermine the rights it guarantees.

GSOgymrat

I know posting this is completely futile but...

Your assumption that heterosexual parents are better than homosexual parents isn't based in research.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/05/nation/la-na-court-gay-parents-20130406

WASHINGTON â€" During last week's Supreme Court arguments on gay marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia asserted that "there's considerable disagreement" among experts over whether "raising a child in a single-sex family is harmful or not." Two other justices agreed that gay parenting was a new and uncertain development.

Those comments startled child development experts as well as advocates of gay marriage, because there is considerable research showing children of gay parents do not have more problems than others.

"This is not a new phenomenon. We have 30 or 40 years of studies, and there has been no hint of a problem," said Dr. Ellen C. Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center.

"There is a fundamental, scholarly consensus that children raised by same-sex couples do just fine," said Stanford sociologist Michael J. Rosenfeld. ...


Even if the research is wrong and two heterosexual parents is the ideal and the purpose of marriage is to create a stable enduring environment for children, marriage should happen after the woman becomes pregnant or when a couple decides to adopt. You say the government should only be involved in marriage because of children so, since the government is going to be involved, let's really do something to help kids. If we are serious about providing children with optimal living conditions then parents should not pay taxes or should receive a stipend so only one parent works and the other stays home with the children. The expecting couple should also be required to take parenting, nutrition and human growth and development classes. I also recommend regular welfare visits from Department of Social Services to provide additional support and resources for the family. Divorce should only be granted under exceptional circumstances and when family therapy interventions have failed. I'm being completely serious here. As a society we can greatly improve child welfare if we make parenting a serious responsibility and if people without children, like myself, accept responsibility for assisting parents buy paying a greater percentage of taxes. I would gladly give up marriage if marriage meant raising children and gladly pay more taxes if it meant better welfare for children-- yes, I'm one of those "progressives" you don't care for.

The problem is marriage currently isn't about raising children. If you ask the majority of people why they marry they will say because they love each other and want to spend their lives together. Old people get married, infertile people marry, people who have no intention of having children marry and no one has concerns. Marriage would need to be redefined to be less inclusive instead of more and there is no indication that society is moving in that direction.

I'm getting married to my same-sex partner of 22 years within the next two weeks. We are not doing it because of love or to be recognized by society, and we certainly are not having a wedding ceremony. We are doing it for money and to protect our assets. My partner is having hip replacement surgery and with his recent heart attack and history of medical problems should he pull a Joan Rivers I stand to lose about $500,000 because the law says I have to be a legal spouse. There is no other legal way around this. We worked hard for this money and if we have to get married to protect ourselves that is what we are going to do.

Munch

Quote from: GSOgymrat on February 03, 2015, 08:38:08 AM

I'm getting married to my same-sex partner of 22 years within the next two weeks. We are not doing it because of love or to be recognized by society, and we certainly are not having a wedding ceremony. We are doing it for money and to protect our assets. My partner is having hip replacement surgery and with his recent heart attack and history of medical problems should he pull a Joan Rivers I stand to lose about $500,000 because the law says I have to be a legal spouse. There is no other legal way around this. We worked hard for this money and if we have to get married to protect ourselves that is what we are going to do.

Aww, congratulations dude *cuddles*, though I understand why your doing it isn't quite the same as the standard marriage reasons and is for legal reasons. I just hope things will be alright.
'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

stromboli

Congrats, GSO. And I hear you, seriously. My wife has MS and I have been her caregiver for now 15 years. This is exactly what I'm talking about and have referred to. the rights conferred to a married couple should extend to gays just as they do for heteros.

VladK

#44
Quote from: GSOgymrat on February 03, 2015, 08:38:08 AM
I'm getting married to my same-sex partner of 22 years within the next two weeks. We are not doing it because of love or to be recognized by society, and we certainly are not having a wedding ceremony. We are doing it for money and to protect our assets. My partner is having hip replacement surgery and with his recent heart attack and history of medical problems should he pull a Joan Rivers I stand to lose about $500,000 because the law says I have to be a legal spouse. There is no other legal way around this. We worked hard for this money and if we have to get married to protect ourselves that is what we are going to do.

You'll have to elaborate on this one. How exactly are you going to lose 500k $ if your partner dies?

Maybe I'm missing something here since I'm not from America. Are you refering to life insurance? Inheritance? Something else? Common sense tells me you don't implement big solutions to relatively small problems. This sounds like an issue that could be solved with laws that better reflect property rights. Which is ironic given that gay marriage activists are typically on the left and don't respect property rights much.

One thing I'd do is make it so wills cannot be contested by relatives on any other basis other than fraud. That way people can decide fully what happens to their assets once they die.

EDIT:

"We are doing it for money and to protect our assets."

I'd also like to point out that any two non-romantically involved people can make this argument.

So what's next? Marriage extended to BFFs? Brothers living together? Polygamous groups? Communes?

Where does it end if you constantly redefine and expand it?