Same sex marriage

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Well you must've been taught by an ill-formed teacher because when I heard the words come out of President Hinckleys mouth that we love our brother's and sister's and feel sad that they have this struggle and will do anything to help them endure it (paraphrased) I felt nothing but genuine love for the church and each and every one of it's members.

There are people like that in the church, but there also some of the sweetest people you will ever meet there and I dare you to deny it because you must have met at least one loving and genuine Mormon in your life.

Hinkley's speech only made a cold ball of hatred form in the pit of my stomach. I don't like feeling hatred, so I high-tailed it out of there and haven't looked back.

okay, so that is slightly clarified but I would like this fleshed out further. You didn't deal with the entirety of my response so i can assume that we agree largely, but am still hung up on a few things:

Correct me: "Men either like men or they don't. It is not a choice to - as a male - like a guy or not." I believe that is true for only a portion of heterosexuals, just as it is true for the portion of society that is rigidly homosexual and will never be straight regardless of societal conditioning.

Can you work that into the current framework where a preferred bias is lived out? I think I'm hung up on you saying: an acquired preference(my assertion: man-man love) is not the same as it being a choice. Leaving the ice cream example for a human context, what is choice and what role does it and preference play in the discussion? Could you rewrite your position in the current framework(as it has been fleshed out over a few posts).

Not to walk through the middle of this fest, but it took me a fair bit of read back to figure out where the chocolate ice cream [my favorite flavor in childhood] came from.

So, for the record, would not cigarettes be a better comparison? A preference, for which some individuals have a greater predisposition, with which some groups, religious or other, have problems, in which society and government feel they have an interest and which they feel they have a right to regulate. Which the fumigant population - of which Herself was formerly a member - finds bigotted and oppressive.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." - US Constitution Amendment XIV Section 1


Either gays are somehow not citizens by virtue of being gay,
or are citizens who are somehow not entitled to equal protection as is everyone else by virtue of being gay.


Dubious.

WHICH does not, to my poor eyes which only read English and a few other languages, say that the states do not have the power to tell people what they shall or shall not do. If a state says no person may enter into a marriage with a person of the same sex, or no person shall sell goat meat, or everyone must display prominently in his residence a portrait of the governor, or no person may urinate in the water supply, there is no inequality. If the law said "No person with more than two Italian grandparents may eat pizza," THAT would be inequality.

As the Supreme Court has ruled previously,
equal protection before the law is violated when laws distinctly affect specific groups unequally.

Banning gay marriage is banning marriage for gay people, whilst preserving it for straights.

Let's not play games- it is no different than "No person may enter into a marriage with a person not of their race, religion, or socioeconomic class."

I'm really not sure how else to put it.

Let's see... My favorite color is green, but I did not choose to like it. Nor was it my favorite as a child. I preferred aquamarine when I was 5-6 years old. Why the change? Hard to say, but I never made the choice. I am still quite fond of aquamarine, but green is at the top of the list and has been since I was about 12. Despite this, I have always had a fondness for green.

I'll be frank with you. I do believe some were not born with the sexual orientation they end up with as adults. Moreover, I believe most people are somewhere in the middle and not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual. It's where someone falls in the middle that can fluctuate.

Is this making sense?

No, not really. Cigarettes are inherently harmful whereas chocolate ice cream is not.

There is clearly such a thing as bisexuality. It's among bisexuals, I believe, who you find fluctuation in the matter of sexual orientation. I know from personal experience, as I'm married to a bisexual woman.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I am bisexual, Kraichgauer. I believe most are to some extent.

I admitted this earlier on as well in a less obvious way, but still an admittance. It seems fixed until one begin breaking down the definitions of acceptability that was handed to you, and gain some helpful insights on the human experience.

I - too - also think most people are also bisexual. Prison rape is a distracting example so more accurately: romance amongst same-sex inmates is an example. The love is identical, perhaps a bit easier, and is better then being alone; well anything beats aloneness. Many aspies like ourselves have confronted this alone-ness and have also explored other living arrangements to live out a fulfilling life.

well I appreciate the frankness.

And again, we don't differ. What I had argued for earlier in no way contradicts what you write, and if you disagree, I would like to know. And yes, the vast majority of humanity does fall into that large middle section between heterosexual and homosexual.

Your color example did not help but I appreciate the effort. I sort of had my own a-ha! moment on the societally constructed performances of gender but only make these opinions after much looking into the topic.

Cool!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I don't think prison rape is a valid example-
imagine for instance, someone who is among the few genuinely, strictly-heterosexuals.

Even that person would, in situations of power dynamics, of facing decades if not a lifetime of prison,
find themselves desirous of SOME form of sexual contact (and romantic affection- it is not only sex that occurs between otherwise presumed-straight inmates of the same sex) with another person, and would likely eventually seek it out with fellow inmates, if only once in a great while to sustain themselves.

I don't think that example works very well but a interesting one none-the-less. The forces at be are institutionally outside of government, but their anti-smoking efforts were not powerful enough so they needed to convince the masses that second hand smoke kills just as many, if not more non-smokers, then first hand smoke kills smokers. They needed people to drop their free associations and make this a war in which every person had a personal connection to.

It doesn't work because it is not a clear-cut example of almost all of society supporting one societal construct and everyone then falls in line, and, there is a large opposition to the banning of smoking. it is much more difficult today to engineer that today, though, large social movements and preferences like Save Darfur or the adoption of the skinny jeans still capture the masses. But just as popular as mass trends, the future is about the smaller Save Mumia Abu Jamal niche campaigns and with so many competing niches and definitions available to people, it will be more difficult to engineer rigid definitions of how to be and what to like - unless you are on the left (which has all the right cards).