Same sex marriage and the slippery slope.

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atindo
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19 Jan 2011, 1:25 am

TeaEarlGreyHot wrote:

Inuyasha wrote:

Orwell wrote:

Quote:

I was saying it is the possibility of viable offspring from a natural standpoint if they choose not to have kids fine, if they happen to be infertile fine you don't have fertility tests in nature.

Totally irrelevant to gay marriage then, if procreation is not a necessary condition for a valid marriage.

Do you have a laboratory where you can test for fertility that is built into your body to test for fertility short of actually getting someone pregnent? The point is in nature we have no way of knowing on fertility, but it takes a male and a female in nature to sire offspring.

Pretty sure that's called a fertility clinic. It's full of fertility experts, you know.

If only there were like people that studied anatomy and make tests for these things. I think they are called doc something...

skafather84
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19 Jan 2011, 1:27 am

The most slippery slopes are the ones you're least mindful on. Say like all the various slopes we've slipped on with making money and with allowing any amount of funding for lobbyists and allowing anyone to be hired as a lobbyist.

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TeaEarlGreyHot
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19 Jan 2011, 1:27 am

Inuyasha wrote:

TeaEarlGreyHot wrote:

Inuyasha wrote:

Orwell wrote:

Pretty sure that's called a fertility clinic. It's full of fertility experts, you know.

I was saying that without some artificial means to test fertility, there is no way of knowing. However, you can only naturally sire offspring when it is a man and a woman. Not two women, not two men.

Uh huh... and who says couples have to have biological children? We need more families adopting children, so your argument means zero to me.

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19 Jan 2011, 1:29 am

Inuyasha wrote:

LKL wrote:

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.

IIrc age of consent varies from state to state. Btw, nothing in your post addresses the actual point that I made above; neither has 91 addressed it as of the time that I am writing this response.

Quote:

The situation is that you can successfully argue from a secular standpoint that marriage should just be between one man and one woman.

That is a matter of opinion at best.

Quote:

The argument concerns offspring can naturally result from said marriage and not end up with a situation of inbreeding.

Gay marriage would not cause inbreeding. There are roughly as many women as men who are biologically homosexual; the overall breeding population of both genders would be somewhat reduced*, but with 6 billion people on the planet that is not exactly a problem.

*assuming that homosexuals will not reproduce, which is not the case. Gay men can and do hire surrogates, and gay women can and do buy sperm from banks.

Quote:

Additionally there is the environment for the child that is the result to subsequently be raised.

Households with two gay parents in a stable relationship have been shown to be healthier than households with single parents of either gender, or households with heterosexual parents in unhealthy relationships.

Quote:

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).

Both of those statements are false. Many species, from horses to chickens to deer, are entirely polygynous and have been for millions of years. As long as the overall population is big enough that there are multiple males with their harems, and mixing of the population in between generations, there is no danger of a significant loss of diversity in the population. Incest reduces heterozygosity in the F1 generation (to that generation's extreme detriment, and to future generations' even greater detriment), but does not necessarily result in a loss of diversity in the population as a whole. The Amish are facing an extreme inbreeding problem because of their isolationism; the genetic diversity of the American human population that includes them certainly has not decreased), but the homozygosity of the Amish has gone through the roof.

Homosexual marriage cannot produce children naturally so that means no future members of society.

*snort*
think about that a little bit. If you can't figure out why that won't be a problem, I'll spell it out for you later (hint: see the *'d comment earlier).

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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.

That's true, and has absolutely nothing to do with gay marriage.

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The last one actually has been argued by some groups that are also for gay marriage...

And there are more "men's" groups that argue for pedophilia with little girls (not to mention all of the trolls who are not a part of official groups advocating this position but argue for it as individuals online). Why is that not argued against with the same degree of mouth frothing as the possibility of pedophilia involving little boys?

Quote:

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.

marriage laws are currently religiously based and discriminatory.

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19 Jan 2011, 1:52 am

91 wrote:

Some other factors not included by AG are the fact that the heart beat begins at Around 21 days, most abortions occur on subject with a heartbeat.

This is false; the heart starts to beat around week six.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/prenatal-care/PR00112
However, it is irrelevant anyways. It is both legally acceptable and morally supported to remove the beating heart and other organs (ie, cut them up and distribute the parts) from a human body that has no brain function.

Quote:

Brain waves begin to emerge around week six...

This is not just wrong, it is very, very wrong.
http://8e.devbio.com/article.php?id=162
recognizable EEG waves do not begin to appear until well into the 3rd trimester. Before that there may be reflex arcs (ie, knee twitches and the like), and occasional electrical impulses, but not recognizable brain waves.
This link, btw, is an excellent resource on the history of views on the beginning of life and of current opinions on the beginning of human life.

91
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19 Jan 2011, 2:19 am

http://www.abortionfacts.com/online_boo ... 0to%20beat?

My references. As well as a list of other interesting points relating to the development of life (please note, each reference contains its own reference).

Also LKL even if you were correct, most abotions would still occur on subjects with heartbeats. Also, brain waves and heartbeat (it does not need to be more than a small reading) are enough to determine you are alive, why not the unborn? Interestingly you can also get a total pattern reponse at week 6.

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91
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19 Jan 2011, 2:47 am

My apologies for not responding to you LKL still typing on a rubbish platform for sort of thing. Well as I stated, I believe that same sex couples should have access to a recognized relationship. Marriage however, is off the table it is a mostley religious concept that directly relates to the family. A man and a woman is still the best place for children to be raised. Marriage, though it has a romantic aspect relates mostly to the raising of children. Legalizing same sex marriage would naturally entitle such couples to equal rights within marriage. It is on these grounds that I oppose it. As to how this relates to other religions, it does not in my view change the family aspect of the practice and so is a moot point. As to the facts cited by AG, I again repeat, citing the degradation of marriage is not grounds for going further.

Some have hinted that on my logic that I would naturally oppose multiracial marriages, of course I do not. I actually am in a multiracial relationship and i have experienced prejudice in relation to the matter. The difference between races is illusioury those between genders are not.

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Sand
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19 Jan 2011, 4:36 am

In general there seems to be neglect over what marriage is about. It is different for many couples and on the basis that two individuals of whatever sex have their own personal reasons for entering a long term relationship it should not be the business of anyone else why that decision is made as long as the relationship is consentual and nobody is harmed.

Looking at the first inter-sexual relationship in the Bible there seems to be a few things not explained. When God created Eve did he formally marry the couple or just told them to live together without explaining exactly what that entailed. Did he wish they would have children or was that to be a childless relationship and did he explain the precautions? Did he tell them to be fruitful and not explain what specific fruit they might not be full of, thus causing centuries of problems? So many things unknown!

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19 Jan 2011, 8:12 am

91 wrote:

On the matter of abortion. It is my view that people can pick all kinds of subjective criteria to decide at what point human life begins. Under AGs definition, it would be perfectly acceptable to abort just about any time before the third trimester. Under Ruveyen's definition, even a child is still not a full human being, despite being delivered. This sort of discussion might seem quite facile, however it is also mirrored in by medical and ethical experts, none of which have really, despite large amounts of time and an ever increasing acceptance of abortion as contraception, reached what could be called an objective definition. Some features are more important to one onlookers than others. Look at the posts here and you will see a great many. Along with some subtle ad homeniem about my being a Catholic.

Ok? Ruveyn's definition was not so much of a definition but a conceptual framework. He didn't define anything, and his point mirrors my own, as I've outright stated something similar, that is that a newborn is very potentially not a person.

That being said, learn to understand what an ad hominem is. I didn't argue 91 is Catholic, ergo he is wrong. I said that you were engaging in rationalization because of your Catholic background, and then I had a number of arguments supporting my position.

Quote:

Some other factors not included by AG are the fact that the heart beat begins at Around 21 days, most abortions occur on subject with a heartbeat. Brain waves begin to emerge around week six, most abortions occur after this time. So basically one can pick when it satisfies them that a person exists and development occurs at different rates. We are talking law, no objective standard should be presupposes that would allow people to be killed. It therefor follows that the only objective point is conception.

And??? Oh no, it has developed an organ that has started minor functioning! IT *MUST* be a person. As well, it has developed a few brain cells, obviously that's a sign that it is a person!

91, I'm not buying any of that as relevant. A "brain wave" just means that there are a few neurons, not that these neurons even BEGIN to look like a functioning human being. And, the justification that they do resemble a human being by much isn't given.

In *ANY* case, your point *STILL* fails, because we could also choose IMPLANTATION as the objective point of the start of life. Do I believe this should be done? No. Would this make a huge difference? Yes, yes it really would, because most emergency contraceptives only impact conceptuses that have not implanted. So, your line gets rid of emergency contraceptives, while the implantation mark keeps them, and is before any of the stuff you want to say is relevant. Ergo, why don't you consider implantation?

So, I still don't really see your case, in my side, it is obvious that resembling living persons is a sign of personhood, it is also obvious that pain is a morally relevant quality, and a good marker for the development necessary for personhood to be considered to exist, as the ability to feel pain is very basic for life. However, lots and lots and lots of creatures have brain waves, the real issue is going to be quality, and quality is going to depend on structure, so when these brain waves first emerge, we know the quality is still way too low to consider this a person, so, the metrics we have to look at are function, and honestly, I'd bet that a lot of the better function metrics happen after birth. Setting this at the conceptual possibility of feeling pain and the third trimester is really being conservative, particularly given that there is good reason to still think that pain might not be felt at that point, as the neurological development of pain is itself an interesting question. (There is a very interesting study on dogs performed by Donald Hebb, where isolated dogs were found not to feel pain)

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19 Jan 2011, 8:21 am

91 wrote:

Also LKL even if you were correct, most abotions would still occur on subjects with heartbeats. Also, brain waves and heartbeat (it does not need to be more than a small reading) are enough to determine you are alive, why not the unborn? Interestingly you can also get a total pattern reponse at week 6.

One can have minor brain activity and still be in a persistent vegetative state, and if one is in that kind of a situation, then one is usually not taken to be a person, and we do end the lives of those entities because we don't believe they are persons. Being a person requires a mind that can function though. Even further, I don't think we really measure by heartbeat, as having an artificial heart is not a sign that a person is dead. A lack of heartbeat is just a quick and dirty heuristic.

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19 Jan 2011, 8:33 am

91 wrote:

Ok, but the issue is that these other religions are valid. So your point about it being a "religious concept that directly relates to the family" is rather silly. As other religions have this concept, and don't prevent gays from being married. Even further, people can get married without ever desiring to have a family, and gay people might actually want a family and also want to get married. Finally, the ability or desire to start a family is never a quality required for one to get married, at all, so invoking this is silly. You can stick to this claim with holy fervor, but, the details of reality really show that there are other religions who validly hold to the concept of marriage, and this concept of marriage as it is currently practiced, even by heterosexual couples with healthy relationships, does not entail ever starting a family, even if a lot of these individuals do have that goal.

As for the "best place for children to be raised", ok, but even if you are right, that does not mean same sex couples should not raise children. The reason being that parental quality will vary, so there is no reason to think that the best gay couple to adopt will be worse than the minimum in quality needed for a straight family to adopt. Even further, the gay couple will still be better at raising children than the state will likely be.

Finally, for your position on the "breakdown of marriage", is this just a dogma? My *fact* was that non-religious individuals upheld the institution better than religious individuals. That's not really a sign that "going further" will destroy everything, because those damned married atheists aren't causing the religious to have marital problems. In fact, part of my claim was that your position has little to no justification, as other ideas could be invoked to explain the very same facts that you seek to explain, and that they seem to do a much better job.

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19 Jan 2011, 6:23 pm

91 wrote:

@ 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.

You miss my point--I maintain that the fallacy that marriage is a "mostly religious" institution is due entirely to the fact that religion muscled its way in on something in which it had no proper role to play. Religious control of marriage is a relatively new usurpation of legal authority that should be exposed for the power grab that it was.

I certainly concede your point about Theodosius. But since the prohibition only came into being in 342 BCE, there are about eleven centuries of Roman tradition before his reign, and only about one and a half centures after. Given that Constantius II and Constans saw a need to prohibit same-sex marriage, I take that as a pretty good indication that it was going on. After all, there's no need to ban practices that don't occur, anyway.

Quote:

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.

This has abundant reflection on my value as a person, and I will not permit you to avoid that through hypocritical weasel words. My family has just as much value as any other, and I am prepared to wager that my contribution to society (which is directly supported by my family) is a damn sight greater than that of many people in opposite sex relationships.

You know nothing of my family. You know almost nothing of me. Yet here you are passing value judgements on us. Well, I would gladly tell you to go and stuff your ignorant opinions--except that you see your way clear to using your ignorance to attempt to shape public policy.

I rarely take offence in this board--but those two sentences have offended me in a deep and profound fashion. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Quote:

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.

Utter nonsense. Opposite sex couples have cornered the market on legal and institutional advantages of marriage ever since the law decided to wander into this territory. It has only been in the last 15 years that some sops have been made to same sex couples.

Show me one practical example--just one--where "traditional" marriage has been undermined by same sex marriage. I suggest to you that the rot has come from within. If anything, same-sex marriage has reaffirmed the social value of marriage by demonstrating that there are still people who want into the institution, in contrast to the millions who demonstrate annually that they want out.

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91
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19 Jan 2011, 9:30 pm

Sorry AG I am just not prepared to make marriage about an experiment relating to the rights of adults. You have kind of give. Your position away in your last post. When you say that it does not matter if heterosexual couples are the best place to raise children. Your position clearly puts the parents in this situation first, something I cannot agree with.

Now as to arguemtne about my Catholicism, you have argued that i defend these views because I am Catholic. This rules out the possibility, that is incidentally true, that I am Catholic because I defend these views.

You have also stated that atheists experience less divorce, this is of really no importance. I have never argued that atheists cannot be moral, just that morality must be anchored in God for it to be objective. I also will not argue that atheists cannot be successful in marriage, just that citing a slight improvement in conditions does nothing to overcome the massive degradation of the family's status. The degree to which you seem to value marriage is demonstrated by your willingness to do experiments on it without regard for it's traditional place.

Now to abortion, you have now resorted to defending your own subjective criteria. This is pretty much proving my point, since you are drawing lines all over the legal definition and reinforcing just how difficult it is to actually do. Drawing the line at pain seems quite silly to me, since the ability to feel pain has nothing to do with ones status as being alive or not. As to your comments relating to looking human, I have given up on counting how many times I have heard the inverse argued by those who favor abortion. They often argue that one has to discount the fact that an aborted child looks human.

Your statements overall kind of prove my underlying beliefs on the matter, that Children are abondoned from conception, their survival to birth is not garanteed and the adult world plays games with their future in pursuit of their own selfish goals. If you want more of the same, go look at the cost, you will not have to go far to find it.

At visagrunt

You asked for my opinion, rather forcefully, I gave it to you politely. For a person advocating a rather libertarian view it seems to me quite hypocritical that you should pass a value judgement on me. The other issue that I must point out is that you have now pointed out that there exists millennia of efforts to protect the traditional view. On every continent there exists similar laws and valued it is in fact one of the few things that the majority of people on this planet actually agree on. Maybe they are right and you are wrong?

(my apologies for grammatical errors et al in this post, still typing on a touch screen)

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91
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19 Jan 2011, 9:46 pm

Here are some good academic references for life beginning at conception.

http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/artic ... otes2.html

It seems to me quite logically true that life begins when it is under construction.

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19 Jan 2011, 9:48 pm

visagrunt wrote:

I actually agree with you on this. Marriage is a cultural phenomenon that goes way beyond religion but is commonly hijacked by religious institutions.

visagrunt wrote:

I certainly concede your point about Theodosius. But since the prohibition only came into being in 342 BCE, there are about eleven centuries of Roman tradition before his reign, and only about one and a half centures after. Given that Constantius II and Constans saw a need to prohibit same-sex marriage, I take that as a pretty good indication that it was going on. After all, there's no need to ban practices that don't occur, anyway.

Did at any time these marriages have the same status as heterosexual marriages and on what do you base this?

visagrunt wrote:

Show me one practical example--just one--where "traditional" marriage has been undermined by same sex marriage. I suggest to you that the rot has come from within. If anything, same-sex marriage has reaffirmed the social value of marriage by demonstrating that there are still people who want into the institution, in contrast to the millions who demonstrate annually that they want out.

First of all, this change and many other changes (eg. the legalisation of divorce with little to no conditions and the acceptance of pre-marital sex) to the concept of marriage have pretty much reduced it to a meaningless ritual. I do not see this as progress at all.

Second, the whole "gay rights" agenda in general has a negative effect on people for reasons I already explained elsewhere :

Salonfilosoof wrote:

marshall wrote:

Quote:

marshall wrote:

I don't know. I'm not saying we should force Muslim majority countries to abandon Islamic law, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be born under Islamic law as a woman or homosexual.

Most people are MADE homosexual by Western culture. Maybe there's a small minority of people who're homosexual by nature, but I'm sure they would adapt just fine to a heterosexual lifestyle if there wasn't a gay culture that supported them to "come out of the closet". The whole "10% of the population is gay by nature" is nothing but a liberal propaganda myth.

Do you realize how completely f***ing idiotic this makes you sound? Being gay is a choice. Sure. :roll:

I'm sure you think the fact that you are heterosexual is a choice as well don't you?

Yes it is a choice. I choose to be with a woman because I find women more attractive and because sex with a woman is far more appealing to me, however considering I feel far more comfortable in the company of men than the company of women I could have made a different choice as well.

AceOfSpades wrote:

How the hell are people made gay? I didn't wake up one morning and decided to like tits and asses.

I've actually met quite a few lesbians in my life. This includes my first girlfriend, one of my best friends whom I've had a "one-day-stand" with and a few others. I'm a man, by the way...

My first girlfriend had something of a tomboy appearance but you wouldn't really say she was gay. She'd had a few boyfriends before me and had never really been with a man. After she broke up with me she fell in love with a guy who was her best friend as a child and he turned out to be gay. Somehow this made her think and conclude she was gay as well, although several years and several ex-girlfriends later she nevertheless managed to hook up with some loser she got a child with. Not they've broken up as well and she's officially lesbian again.

The best friend I was talking about mentioned a few times that she was sexually abused by a guy. She's been with a few guys and a lot of girls and told me she just uses men for pleasure but she can only fall in love with a woman. When I asked her how she found out she was gay she pointed out that she never had really fallen in love with a guy but never really questioned that until she learned about the concept of lesbianism. She then started wondering whether she might be lesbian and her tomboy appearance and somewhat boyish attitude confirmed her that she was indeed lesbian. I really wonder whether she might not be confusing her own discomfort around men as a consequence of sexual abuse and in contrast her comfort around women with lesbianism.

Then there's the girl who introduced me to my first girlfriend. When I met her, she was still heterosexual. When she broke up with her last boyfriend, she pointed out that all men were poor in bed and that she was curious to "try" a woman. Ever since then she has (to my knowledge) only had female partners and she is now officially gay.

These are but a few examples of the many lesbians I met in my life and none made my convinced that either of them were born as lesbians. In the cases when I know their personal history, I in fact have quite a lot of reasons to believe that it's at least partially because of Western culture promoting homosexuality that they are now lesbians. Now, I haven't met many male homosexuals but I do know at least one case where his homosexuality seems to have originated from bad experiences with women.

AceOfSpades wrote:

It's been proven to be neurological just like Asperger's...

I suppose you're referring to the Kinsey Reports and later studies inspired by them, but those are as pseudo-scientific as Freud's psychoanalysis and strongly biased by the "gay rights" agenda.

AceOfSpades wrote:

That being said, I do believe gender roles have a basis in nature for the most part and that gay men are more feminine. It's been proven that their digit ratios are more even than straight men, so I think the prevalence of gays in society has to do with whatever predisposes em to being more feminine from birth. Although I believe gender roles are nature for the most part, social construction does blow em outta proportion. It's not like every straight guy is a man's man and every gay guy is a limp wristing lisper.

First of all, gay couples often include one individual with strong feminine traits and one individual with strong masculine traits, each taking the gender role these traits belong to. You can't just say that homosexual men tend to be more feminine and lesbians tend to be more masculine. This simply isn't the case when looking at the phenomenon at large.

Further, the masculinisation of women and the feminisation of men is also a largely cultural phenomenon.

Salonfilosoof wrote:

TeaEarlGreyHot wrote:

Just one more thing before going...

Sexual orientation is fluid and there is no clear line drawn anywhere. Especially for those that fall under the umbrella of bisexual like I do.

One cannot assume sex is the only thing that has to do with attraction, because it's not. Not by a long shot.

That's precisely my point. IMO most people are born bisexually with a strong preference towards their own gender for friendship and a strong preference towards the other gender for sex. In a traditional culture, hese preferences are cultivated and people who deviate from the norm adapt to these preferences due to social instincts like peer pressure. In the post-modern West, however, people are actually stimulated to question their sexuality. This, in combination with whatever positive experiences people may have had with other people of the same gender, whatever negative experiences people may have had with other people of the other gender and unusual parenting situation are in my opinion the causes of people labeling themselves as homosexual or bisexual.

Salonfilosoof wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

So how exactly could homosexuality be "cultural"?
You dont have to prove your theory. Just explain how it works.

People's experiences in life strongly influence their opinions and feelings towards other people. As such, bad experiences with those of the other gender, positive experiences with those of the same gender, exposure to hard core porn (where both male and female genitals fly in your face all the time), an overly dominating mother or father, the lack of a particular parent, exposure to liberal propaganda and many other experiences can change the way people perceive themselves and the way they perceive others to a point they start questioning their own sexuality and declare themselves homosexual when they would never have done so and never have even considered the possibility in a society where heterosexuality is the norm as it used to be for most of human history. Much the same way, one could argue that people who naturally have a disposition towards homosexuality would become heterosexual in traditional society because it was the norm and they never really questioned that norm.

naturalplastic wrote:

Pistonhead wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

So how exactly could homosexuality be "cultural"?

The Greeks, 'nuff said.

You have not said anything.

So the ancient greeks were open about gayness than we are.
So what?
Whats your point?

Pistonhead references a phenomenon called pediastry. It appears that in ancient Greece there was a cultivated form of homosexuality called pediastry that existed not as an equivalent to heterosexual couples but as a supplement to it and that was pretty much limited to a mentor and his student. Unless our current interpretation of pediastry is wrong (I'm not an expert on the matter) it seems that Greek culture actually cultivated homosexuality as a norm for a particular form of relationship (that between a mentor and his student).

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19 Jan 2011, 10:28 pm

visagrunt wrote:

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