Same sex marriage and the slippery slope.

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An undeveloped fetus is not a baby and it is not clear that a new born human baby is even a person. It does not have enough brain tissue to be a person.

ruveyn

Hmm.... I think that the video is flawed in assessing the judge's view, even if it is biased, the judges were trying to make a 14th Amendment case, and their case about marriage was not really focused on homosexuality, but the role of marriage in society. So, the way they framed it, was they framed the government as trying to engage in discrimination against homosexuals, as marriage had lost the major properties within society that would even begin to allow an issue with homosexual marriage to make sense. This is not exactly the same as "public opinion" as the video is trying to state.

That being said, I don't see a strong anti-gay view. All I see here is just a worry about slippery slope. It is likely true that some of this will occur, but, at the same time, I find it hard to really justify not having these marriages just on that ground. I think a real issue is just going to be setting straight the kinds of laws we will have in place, and that until there is sufficient precedent, the lawsuits are likely.


Well, the problem is that marriage has to be a legal construct given how it has changed in society. The religious elements of marriage are no longer the dominant elements, and people are married all the time by an officer of the law. They are also married within many different religions. Even non-religious people get married. It is hard to just label this a "religious construct" at this point, because while that is true, marriage has become a legal construct as well due to the government's role in recognizing and marrying individuals.

I am not sure about your point on "the family". None of those laws really condemns having a family at all, nor do I see much reason to think that adoption or fertilization methods undermine having a family unit. You'll either have to explain or backtrack.

Honestly though, I really think that a lot of where you are coming from here is likely set by Catholic dogma, and then anything you'll give will be a clear instance of a post-hoc rationalization.

Thank you ruveyn for proving my point. The logic used to justify abortion can pretty much be used to kill just about anything that society deems to be convienent. One of the biggest issues that I have is that we really do not have any real objective definition of when a human being actually becomes such. The only logical conclusion is to simply state it begins at conception, any other definition is merely convenient and does a disservice to the child. The present legal definition in most countries has almost no relationship what so ever to the rights of the unborn, since the unborn clearly can be delivered successfully increasingly premature dates. Any image of an abortion, still the only thing you cannot show on Australian and British TV, clealrly does show what is being destroyed is indeed a human being.

As to marriage, I still see it as primarily a religious concept. People in my own country get married for a good many reasons, mostly due to custom now days and almost always with little respect for the institution. AG has indicated that this has changed, that people and society have changed. Well essentially, who cares, the only result has been the breakdown of the family. I see the family as fundamentally central to society and see marriage as being directly linked to this reality. The continued breakdown of this institution can only be cited in defense of a further breakdown by a person with no sense marriage's role, or someone with a grand sense of irony.

As much as I often disagree with ace of spades, his use of the word 'blacks' makes me quiver with disgust. He is right in relation to the primary role of the family is in relation to children and the best situation for such children is in a home with both a man and a woman who love them deeply. I see no justification for social experiment on the matter in order to justify the rights of the parents.

Not frigid topic

AG, you are more enlightened than I am. You might have freon in your genes! And more loving, too.

A cold heart today is hard to find.

Last edited by sartresue on 18 Jan 2011, 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

then, should handicaped people have the right to marry and have kids, they might be handicapped too

I think that you are wholly and entirely wrong here.

Historically, I do not believe that there is any evidence that marriage was originally a religious institution.

In Jewish law marriage was celebrated directly between spouses.

In Roman Law marriage was a matter of civil, not religious law.

Christianity did not begin to impose its exclusive control over the celebration of marriage until well into the 17th century. In the law of England and Wales marriage could be (and was) celebrated at common law with no particular ceremony whatsoever. It was only with Parliamentary action in the 18th century that church marriage became the sole legal avenue to legal marriage.

If you are going to claim an exclusive pedigree for religious marriage, you had better be sure of your facts, first.



What about my family? Why are you content to undermine my family?



I have no issue with laws that favour groups that are historically or systemically disadvantaged. However, laws that favour "the family" at the expense of others who do not conform to a preconceived notion of what is an acceptable family are of questionable validity.

All you have done is confirm your personal prejudices with no justification for varied points of view.

Yeah I disagree with you a lot too, but I don't doubt your integrity cuz you can debate like a mature person.

Why does it bother you how I use the word? I'm not politically correct but I don't go out of my way to be a dick. I'm not trying to say there's some black gene that predisposes em to violent and ignorant behaviour, but that growing up in a fatherless household in poverty and internalizing juvenile concepts of manhood inspired by subcultural values is definitely gonna make that type of behaviour seem more appealing.

btw, I didn't say there SHOULD be a longitudinal study, but Vexcalibur was asking me to prove my theories and that's the wrong thing to ask since my theories were interpretations of the facts. A longitudinal study is worthless since it's not the facts that are the issue, but how one interprets these facts and attributes em to a cause.

And yeah, I'm definitely against abortion unless it's a rape victim or it risks killing the mother. I'm not really caught up in what trimester defines it as a human being, the fact that it is developing in a woman's body means petty BS should not have a higher priority than a human life. Plus I don't want social engineering to influence people to abort babies just because they're different, that's Nazism to me. I'm not some drama queen who calls everything Nazism or compares everyone I don't like to Hitler either, so I really mean it.

@ Sand: Personal prejudices my ass. Just because people believe a child is supposed to grow up with a mother and a father figure and believe that gender roles aren't mere social construction doesn't make em homophobic.

It may lead to the legalization of poly marriages, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

The rest? Yeah right. Consent is required for marriage, and children, corpses, inanimate objects, and animals cannot give consent.

Hey, gay marriage has been legal in the UK for decades and people still ain't marrying their dogs yet. Get that...

Excuse me, First Amendment. My apologies - in my defense, please note the hour at which I was posting (11:16 pm Pacific time). It's difficult to be coherent after a long day of coping with NTs, as I'm sure you're aware. However, I don't feel that it undermines my basic point - if marriage is defined by religious norms, then any governmental laws regarding it are unconstitutional, and must be repealed immediately. If, on the other hand, we regard it as being defined by societal norms, which have been religiously influenced in the past, then we can begin to progress beyond a merely religious definition into the realm of legality - where, again, the bar should be drawn based on who is able to commit to a legal contract, rather than on who your particular religion approves of. (After all, a strict reading of the Christian Gospels would forbid divorce for any reason whatsoever - other than adultery, in the least-restrictive Gospel, and even then it's only for adultery on the part of the woman, not the man. Should we then ensure the passage of laws making divorce illegal? Seems to me that would say more about "the sanctity of marriage" than laws restricting marriage's scope...)

I am actually okay with legalized polygamy. I'm even okay with incest. I draw the line at consenting adults.

Needless to say, I don't expect to see any of that in my lifetime.

91, if the state and federal governments got entirely out of the business of marriage - no certifications, no tax breaks, etc - and left marriage entirely up to the churches, that would only serve to entirely equalize gay and straight marriages. Just because your church doesn't sanction same-sex marriages, doesn't mean that there aren't other churches out there that will.

Define when someone is an adult.


The situation is that you can successfully argue from a secular standpoint that marriage should just be between one man and one woman. The argument concerns offspring can naturally result from said marriage and not end up with a situation of inbreeding. Additionally there is the environment for the child that is the result to subsequently be raised. Other instances can result in situations that would negatively effect society. Polygamy invariably ends up with inbreeding after a time, takes generations but it will eventually reduce genetic diversity (which is also why incest isn't a good idea). Homosexual marriage cannot produce children naturally so that means no future members of society. Adult/child relationships are extremely abusive and involve the adult pretty much using their authority as an adult to force the child into situations that would tramatize him/her. The last one actually has been argued by some groups that are also for gay marriage (to be fair most pro-gay marriage groups think these particular groups are nuts) to be the result of culture and nurture and that children wouldn't be traumatized if the culture was different. I wish I was making it up, but groups like NAMBLA have used this argument. Additionally these wacko groups could point to some cultures in the past as well as some cultures that exist now as a basis to try to justify their argument and that it is discrimination against a particular sexual orientation to allow age of consent laws and statutory rape laws to remains in place.

My point is that if you allow Homosexual marriage you can then argue that marriage laws are religious in nature and they can argue that their groups are being discriminated against.

@ visagrunt

I did not argue that marriage was originally anything, just that now it is a mostly religious institution. As to your points they are red herrings, however, in ancient Rome same sex marriage was specifically outlawed from Theodosius onward. The Jewish concept is interesting, it is based on Talmudic law, which is religious in origin.

As to your family, I am afraid, that if it is built around a same-sex couple I cannot support it. While this has no reflection on your value as a person, I cannot support you choices and I believe that society should support the traditional concept.

Also you have stated that marriage should not be be supported by discriminating legislation since it is not disadvantaged. Considering the consistent undermining of this institution, I think you may be misinformed.

@ AceOfSpades

My issue with you calling people blacks has nothing to do with political correctness. I think that it can be offensive and most likely will be taken as such. I would not use that sort of language unless I was sure of how people would interpret it's context. Spend some time with some racist South Africans and you understand the quiver.