Gay Marriage
hesthefastest
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a debate coming up in Ethics class and thought it would be helpful to get a sampling of arguments from D&D on Gay Marriage. I was surprised when I couldn't find an existing thread on the topic. As I expect most, if not all, people to be in favour, I'm gonna list some of the counter-arguments I've heard in class and see how people respond.
-Marriage was designed to encourage a man and a woman to form the ideal relationship to raise children. Even if a married couple are unable (or unwilling) to reproduce, their sexual relationship is still of the same type as that which produces children. Homosexual sex not only cannot produce children, but is of a wholly different type. Encouraging healthy raising of children is the only reason government got involved in marriage in the first place. We do not expect the government to recognize and manage any other type of relationship (roomates not having sex, best friends, etc.).
-Homosexuals are, by and large, quite promiscuous. Studies have shown (as presented in class) that most homosexuals have over 50 sexual partners in their lifetime, a significant percentage have over a thousand. It was also discussed that homosexual 'committed' partners often can only stay together if they allow sex outside of the relationship. (If you have articles to counter these statements, that would help me out) Homosexuals should not be allowed to marry before they can show that they will exemplify the relationship.
-Gay marriage will harm the family. Even though people may disagree on the concept of marriage, the legal culture should embody in its law and policy the soundest, most nearly correct conception.
So, have at it. Please do not assume my position on this topic.
-Marriage was designed to encourage a man and a woman to form the ideal relationship to raise children. Even if a married couple are unable (or unwilling) to reproduce, their sexual relationship is still of the same type as that which produces children. Homosexual sex not only cannot produce children, but is of a wholly different type. Encouraging healthy raising of children is the only reason government got involved in marriage in the first place. We do not expect the government to recognize and manage any other type of relationship (roomates not having sex, best friends, etc.).
-Homosexuals are, by and large, quite promiscuous. Studies have shown (as presented in class) that most homosexuals have over 50 sexual partners in their lifetime, a significant percentage have over a thousand. It was also discussed that homosexual 'committed' partners often can only stay together if they allow sex outside of the relationship. (If you have articles to counter these statements, that would help me out) Homosexuals should not be allowed to marry before they can show that they will exemplify the relationship.
-Gay marriage will harm the family. Even though people may disagree on the concept of marriage, the legal culture should embody in its law and policy the soundest, most nearly correct conception.
So, have at it. Please do not assume my position on this topic.
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Who designed marriage? You can't say it is designed unless you say who designed it.
If anything to take its place in government, then Civil Unions - regardless of sexuality or gender. Leave the marriage to the religions and societal culture. Government has no place here.
By disallowing same-sex marriages, the state is discriminating against citizens on the basis of a religious viewpoint- which in the U.S. is a no-no.
The state that has the lowest divorce rate in the US is MA. This alone disproves that theory.
I would first of all imagine that the studies and evidence to show this are worthless. Having to "earn" the right to marry by demonstrating they "deserve" it is silly. We also hear about heterosexuals who sleep around a lot, does that put the onus on every heterosexual to "prove" that they're allowed to get married?
I suppose if you need to pull out some "preach to the choir" crap, throw them a line about how homosexuals would be less promiscuous if given the opportunity to partake in the joy of marriage . . . or something.
Again, absolutely no evidence for this.
And there are too *many* people having kids (frequently unwanted) in our world, not too *few*. If anything, we should be *encouraging* people to go gay, since they have a pretty good incentive to adopt.
I also support a "religious-bond" union in the church. Marriage, indeed, is sacred and reserved for reproducing families, but I think that the church should reach out to gay couples.
Some of us are already mortified
You seem to have misunderstood.
Everyone should be allowed to a civil union with their partner. Marriage should be meaningless legally. If a church of whatever religion wants to have a seperate ceremony to decide marriage, fine. That's them practicing their religion, but the government doesn't need to do anything with it.
Edit: I misunderstood, I had a typing error in my original post.
And some of us are both!
8-)
I can't find the link, but I printed out the text, so I'm just going to re-type it here. You could order the following on a poster or I think a throw pillow.
(Edit) Also, there's not enough lime in the world for this:
I think he actually meant to say that it should be legally abolished. I think. Don't let me put words in your mouth, KungFu.
If I'm reading it right, he's just espousing the popular idea that marriage is an inherently religious concept and that the state should go hands-off with it, rather offering civil unions to everybody, gay and straight. I'm sort of in that same area, though I could care less what people actually call it. It'll still be marriage, just with a different, fundie-friendly name. I dispute that marriage is a religious concept, but I don't really give a rat's ass as long as everybody is given equal protection.
Oh dear, I have made a typing error! You are correct.
I don't know about that. I believe that lesbian couples have a infidelity rate that is MUCH lower than heterosexuals. It's mostly gay males that make that number higher. I don't think Than's point is a founded one.
But let's run with it. Marriage is to raise children.
So now it's no longer about raising children but about making children? You realise of course that making and raising children are two different things, and not necessarily connected. You can raise an adopted child, and you can abandon the children you gave birth to.
But moving on. So if a couple got married "to make children" and are unwilling or unable to make them, doesn't that defeat the purpose?
No it's not. Once again, if the goal is to make children, then the distinction isn't between homosexual and heterosexual sex, it's between reproductive and non-reproductive sex. And in the second category, it really doesn't matter if the sex is non-reproductive because of contraceptives, a medical condition, or because they're gay. So a healthy heterosexual married couple having sex with a condom to avoid making children is not of the same type as a healthy heterosexual married couple having sex to have children, they're the same type as a gay couple.
So we're back to raising children instead of making them? Cool.
Once again, I'm pretty sure inheritance laws and next-of-kin laws had more to do with the government getting involved in marriage than healthy raising of children. Case in point: the government doesn't cancel the marriage of abusive/unfit parents, which is something they should do if they only cared about marriage in the context of raising children.
Besides, if government cared about the healthy raising of children, gay parents can be just as good as straight parents, and way better than orphanages. So the government should be encouraging marriage and adoption for gay couples.
Yes we do. Common-law marriage springs to mind. If you include courts in "the government", then it's also involved in all manners of legal relationships such as restraining orders, binding contracts, etc.
Even if true, this is also irrelevant. Many happy polyamorous relationships exist, and the average behavior of the entire group in this case should not be used to strip the rights of the many members of the group who seek stable commitments.
Only one response is appropriate to this point and that is [citation needed].
Any notion that marriage is strictly religious or in any way sacred is quickly dispelled by taking a course in contract or property law: Fathers paying dudes to marry their daughters, sons-in-law suing their mothers-in-law, guys marrying women and having children just to divorce them the day after they've immigrated to Canada, husbands murdering their wives and claiming sole ownership of their property, etc. etc.
Washed-up 90's house/electronica DJ's would finally get some work at receptions.
That would solve all problems in a non-controversial way without offending or discriminating against anyone, prevent future complications, and set a strong precedent for the government staying out of religious sacraments.
Why most people are against it I'll never understand.
Most people are against it? I had gotten the impression that it was the most widely accepted solution. Or do you mean most people are against gay marriage period?
Because many religious people do not fully believe in a seperation of church & state.
They want them to get married.
How is a homosexual sexual relationship different from an infertile heterosexual one?
This statistic is utterly meaningless without a statistic about heterosexual promiscuity collected in the same manner, simultaneously from a random sample.
Based on what?
None of the claims in this post are substantiated by anything. They're just claims. I can just as well claim that it's wrong to be straight because the earth is overpopulated and my argument would be no weaker than theirs.
Promiscuity really is none of anyone's damn business. If people who are married agree that they may sleep with other people, what business is it of anybody else? I won't argue against the claim that there are a great many promiscuous people within the gay community, but I would make the argument that heterosexual people can have partner counts in the 50s as well. Not to mention that there are plenty of polyamorous couples who choose to get married and continue to pursue relationships with people outside of their marriage.
On the child-rearing front, I agree that it is easier to raise a child with two people instead of one. And yes, barring extraordinary circumstances, a gay couple will be unable to produce a child of their own making. But I doubt people who are arguing that any couple who is unable to produce children should not be allowed to marry. I'm sure there are plenty of infertile couples out there who would take offense that their marriage isn't "real" because it's not producing offspring. It's also ignoring the fact that there are plenty of happily married couples who choose to never have children of their own. By the assumed definition of marriage, these people are not fulfilling their duty as a married couple.
I'm also not sure what basis people have on the idea of homosexuality harming "the family".
I don't know who the last one was either, and I'm not real sure on the first one. I just don't pay attention to what the "stars" do to/with one another.
I'm guessing because it doesn't roll of the tongue as easily. "We're getting civil unioned!!!!" "I'm flattered, but I'm civil unioned", "JUST CIVIL UNIONED" "We've been civil unioned for 40 years".
The idea is rational; people aren't. I guarantee you that if this solution was posited in the United States, it would fan accusations that gays are trying to destroy marriage like nothing else.
I've numbered the counter arguments because I hate multiple quotes
anyhow:
1) What is the "ideal" relationship? One between a man and a woman - that ends in failure half of the time, as has been pointed out? I believe the divorce rate for gays is, unsurprisingly, quite similar to that of straight people. Marriage was not 'designed' in the sense you (or your classmates) would understand, it's changed a great deal over the centuries. Our current judeo-christian concept of marriage was originally a sort of economic alliance between two people. In the middle ages, 2 people had a better chance going at it than just one - a wife provided assistance with work as well as a social connection. Marriage between royals was to create an alliance between two families. It wasn't based on 'love' between a man and a woman. The reason it was defined as between a man and a woman is because gays were a non issue back then - and back then the point of a marriage was indeed to have children, because everyone had as many children as possible to work the farm, help out with the business, carry on a legacy, and of course a lack of birth control. Marriage is NOT NOT NOT a union of two people to create babies. Only fertile catholics should be able to marry if this is indeed the case.
And so what if a sterile couple has the right goonads to make children? They're functionally useless. By this argument, marriage is around to birth babies, which means adoption has no place in our society. This is a confusing argument, I'll admit. The idea that marriage should be sanctioned because peg A fits into socket B is a bit strange and arbitrary.
2) So what? I don't think marriage stipulates that you have to be monogomous - if it does, it also says that you'd best be staying together through the thick and the thin, until death do you part. There are a fair number of open marriages between a man and a woman, as well - by this argument, we should surely force them to get a divorce as well. This is a hideous double standard as straight people have the capacity to be enormous sluts as well. Are supportive, loving couples that have engaged in threesomes, for instance, unable to say they have an exempilary relationship? Is a couple that is monogomous but has an empty, hate filled relationship better for it? I highly doubt it. I follow Dan Savage of the sex column Savage Love, and even though he and his boyfriend have a somewhat open relationship, they are also raising a child and have been together for quite some time. This is a mere anecedote but I imagine it's more common than you might think.
3) No, no it wont. Divorce harms the family. Places that have legalized gay marriage in the states, as well as the myriad of nations across the world that have also legalized it have not fallen into hedonistic orgy parties. Families are still going strong there. Your classmates seem to think gay marriage is a theoretical concept, but it's been legalized all over the world - and, surprise, nothing bad has happened.
I can see why someone would be uneasy about supporting the idea of gay marriage for religious and social reasons. However, you will probably note that places that have banned gay marriage have almost all banned civil unions as well. Unions are completely secular, and provide legal benefits to a partnership. Without these, no matter how long I'm with my boyfriend in most of the united states, we won't be considered anything more than friends, legally speaking. In my opinion, opposal to unions is thinly veiled bigotry that arises out of ignorance of what a gay relationship is.
Regardless of whether or not a man and a woman is the basis for the ideal familial structure, this simple recognition isn't enough to argue that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry. You'd need to demonstrate that allowing gays to marry somehow harms the integrity of these heterosexual marriages. Moreover, you'd need to demonstrate that the harm is both measurable and significant. This would be a pretty difficult thing to prove.
If it's true that homosexuals are more promiscuous (and the studies I've seen have shown that while gay men tend to be more promiscuous, gay women are actually less so than heterosexuals), that doesn't really mean much. What's relevant is whether gay couples are more susceptible to infidelity and dissolution than straight couples. Because if single gay men want to pork everything that moves, it really doesn't mean squat to the institution of marriage one way or the other.
Now, if we accept that gay men are more likely to see failed long-term relationships, we must also accept the similar studies that show gay women are less likely to see failed LTRs. Last I checked, gay men outnumbered gay women 2:1, roughly. By introducing gay men into the scene, you would admittedly introduce a less-stable class of marriages. It's a defensible argument that, whatever the current problems with straight marriage, saddling marriage with an even less stable group of marriages could further harm the institution. However, we're also introducing a class of marriages that, by the same logic, would be more stable. Whatever harm was done by the gay male marriages would largely be mitigated by the introduction of more stable marriages amongst lesbians. When you add in the fact that such instabilities are statistically pretty small to begin with, this becomes a very weak point on its own.
I'll also note that I'm assuming that gay men and lesbians would be equally likely to seek marriage, which is pretty likely false - I'd wager that lesbians are more likely to seek marriage than gays, though this is just a hunch. If that's true, it would further undermine the argument that gay marriage would provide an increase in the proportion of weak and unstable marriages.
It's true that the government has a vested interest in promoting the familial structure most likely to result in stable and loving families. However, for this to be a valid point, you'd have to show that promoting gay marriage would undermine this. In fact, allowing gays to marry will make it easier for gays to adopt, which will ease the problem we have with our gout of guardian-less children. Whether or not a gay couple makes for a worse parental experience than a straight couple - and there's little evidence that it does - it clearly makes for a better parental experience than having no parents. Increasing adoption rates will certainly not "harm the family".
In summary, we have here a collection of weak almost-points that might kinda-sorta be construed as arguing against gay marriage. Weighed against this, we have the arguments that allowing gay marriage will definitely help gays achieve equality and dignity in our nation, that it would make a whole lot of people happy, and that any harm allegedly done to non-gays would be so minor as to be easily ignored. We have a lot of tiny pseudo-points against, and several huge definite-points in favor.
QED, or something.
And thus we end up with George W. Bush in the White House for 8 years.
Because the invisible man in the sky told us another man's butt is a no-no. A woman's butt is a go-go.
Any sex other than vaginal is sodomy. That includes penis + boybutt, penis + girlbutt, penis + mouth, penis + breasts, and vagina + mouth.