177 replies to this topic

[EAH]

I have a serious question for all those that are against civil rights for all....err I mean gay marriage.

How exactly does allowing gays to marry negatively impact your daily life?? BY allowing gays the same rights you have, what rights does it take away from you?
I really would like to know.

[The Average Joe]

Doesn't affect me at all. Same with religion. Someone wants to worship chickens, doesn't affect me at all. The fringe elements of both religion and LGBT groups are the ones trying to impose their beliefs on everyone. As long as they don't preach to me, more power to them in their pursuits.I'm all for equal legal status under the law as long as there is no infringement on churches or religion. I thought we had discussed this to death on other threads.
However, I am not for gay activism i.e. requiring schools to have a "gays in history" segment of study. Either you were historically relevant or not. Gayness has nothing to do with it unless you are doing homosexual studies, which should not be a K-12 requirement. Same for religious studies. Fascinating college courses, but indoctrinating children with state approved sexuality and/or religion should not be the role of k-12 education.

[Rich_T]

I have a serious question for all those that are against civil rights for all....err I mean gay marriage.

How exactly does allowing gays to marry negatively impact your daily life?? BY allowing gays the same rights you have, what rights does it take away from you?

I really would like to know.

If you would truly like to know, then you must start by reframing your questions, because people who voted against gay marriage didn't view your questions as being relevant to what was being decided. In short, you are asking the "wrong" questions, in order to understand. (But the answers to your irrelevant questions are "not at all" and "none".)

If you are serious, then I challenge you to try to accurately describe the point of view of many of those who took the opposite side on this topic, in such a way that they would agree with your assessment. Hint: to them, it was not about civil rights at all, and had nothing to do with bigotry or ignorance. Feel free to argue against them, but first realize why you are disagreeing, and with what you are disagreeing. It is a straw man argument to pretend that people are voting against civil rights because of bigotry.

[EAH]

If you would truly like to know, then you must start by reframing your questions, because people who voted against gay marriage didn't view your questions as being relevant to what was being decided. In short, you are asking the "wrong" questions, in order to understand. (But the answers to your irrelevant questions are "not at all" and "none".)

If you are serious, then I challenge you to try to accurately describe the point of view of many of those who took the opposite side on this topic, in such a way that they would agree with your assessment. Hint: to them, it was not about civil rights at all, and had nothing to do with bigotry or ignorance. Feel free to argue against them, but first realize why you are disagreeing, and with what you are disagreeing. It is a straw man argument to pretend that people are voting against civil rights because of bigotry.

Rich,
It was a simple very straight forward question. I don't find it irrelevant at all. Please explain to me what the opposing point of view is if it isn't bigoted, ignorant and against equal civil rights for all-especially since it doesn't- according to you- impact them in any negative way and doesn't infringe on their rights??

[Rich_T]

Rich,
It was a simple very straight forward question. I don't find it irrelevant at all. Please explain to me what the opposing point of view is if it isn't bigoted, ignorant and against equal civil rights for all-especially since it doesn't- according to you- impact them in any negative way and doesn't infringe on their rights??

You asked two questions from your perspective, but those aren't the determining questions for those who don't see it as you do. Hence they are irrelevant in terms of persuading the other side. I answered them straightforwardly ("not at all" and "none"), but they are besides the point. In other words, "what harm does it do" is not in itself a reason to enact something.

No, I want YOU to try to come up with the rationale for the other side. I'm sure you've read it in comments online over the years. You are still locked in your tunnel vision view of the topic. Everyone can pefectly understand where you're coming from, but you have not grasped where the other side is coming from.

[EAH]

Rich,
I accidentally hit +1 on your reply to me....too funny!
The fact is I pride myself on being able to " walk a mile in others shoes".
I am capable of seeing both sides to many stories, so often in fact that I have been accused of being wishy washy even. However in this scenario, I cannot come up with any reason for the oppositions view.
As you have stated on this forum, you are Mormon, and as they were the driving financial force behind Prop 8 in California, I was honestly hoping you could enlighten me.

[2kids4me]

Isn't the opposition to gay marriage basically that only a man and a woman can be married in the eyes of the church?

[EAH]

Isn't the opposition to gay marriage basically that only a man and a woman can be married in the eyes of the church?

I suppose so, but as I was raised Episcopalian, a church that does allow gay marriage, I guess it depends on what religion you are.......

[Rich_T]

Rich,
I accidentally hit +1 on your reply to me....too funny!
The fact is I pride myself on being able to " walk a mile in others shoes".
I am capable of seeing both sides to many stories, so often in fact that I have been accused of being wishy washy even. However in this scenario, I cannot come up with any reason for the oppositions view.
As you have stated on this forum, you are Mormon, and as they were the driving financial force behind Prop 8 in California, I was honestly hoping you could enlighten me.

Fair enough. I will capitulate and spill the beans. I was hoping you'd come up with something. It's been a while since I dealt with all this, and I'm not really "into it", but I'll just start writing. If you stumble onto a parse-able phrase that bothers you, please consider it within the overall context of the whole post.

Honestly, I think there are actually a variety reasons people might have had for voting yes on Prop 8, running the full gamut from the caricature of a bigot (i.e. can't handle gays, not just the marriage topic), to strict adherence to the religious view on marriage (the Biblical view for some, the LDS view in my church, which places the man/woman marriage at the center of the universe, in effect), to a more nuanced stance that finds no reason to change the definition of marriage. My own view is probably only one of many. It is not really related to being Mormon. (By the way, Mormons were simply exercising their right to support their beliefs regarding marriage, and not all Mormons voted yes on 8. They also made up perhaps 1% of voters. What killed Prop 8 was the black vote, which was over 70% yes on 8. You would have to check with those voters to see why they voted as they did - but I don't think it was a "failure to educate them", which is the off-putting way that West Hollywood liberals expressed it. It's also been "cleaner", from a liberal standpoint, for the Left to get mad at the LDS church than at blacks at large, let alone at Muslims, whose stance on gay marriage can be surmised.)

So my view is this: marriage has a purpose in our society. It doesn't even matter what forms of marriage existed in society in the past, or what the role of marriage was expected to be. For all intents and purposes, in our lifetimes, and in the lifetimes of our ancestors for at least several generations, marriage is an institution that exists solely for producing and rearing the next generation. The fact that not all married people can or wish to have children changes nothing about the reason for the institution itself. Neither does the sky-high level of out-of-wedlock births - that is merely an example of how people are falling short of the ideal. Same with divorces and bad marriages. People are people, and will fall short in many ways. And yet the institution itself remains.

I could live perfectly well with gay marriages, and would be glad for the people involved. That is almost enough to make me support the idea. But what will have happened (what WILL happen, since I believe this will end up being decided by the Supreme Court, and since they are deciding the wrong question (i.e. "fairness" and "rights"), they can only rule in favor of gay marriage) is that marriage will no longer fit the definition of "the institution designed for producing and rearing the next generation", and will instead be a catch-all for "an exclusive legal contract entered into by any two consenting adults". The new purposes of marriage will be (1) to receive certain government benefits, and (2) to display commitment and love. To me, these are not sufficient reasons for introducing a new category of marriage (one that cannot ever produce children, except by contrived means involving third parties). Meanwhile, the government benefits (tax breaks and what have you) can be handled by domestic partner laws. People are already free to make their own wills. A piece of paper famously is not needed to prove your love.

What has happened is that, by making it an issue, there is no going back, because pride and self-worth are now what's at stake. This shouldn't have been the case, but now it is. So gay marriage will become the law, in order not to offend, and to show acceptance/tolerance. Those, again, are not good enough reasons for me.

What will also happen is that gay marriage will still have an asterisk in people's minds, because it WILL be different. It will be the same in the sense of two people showing love and commitment. It will be different because there will not be a husband and wife joined together. The attraction and intimate sexual union of gay marriage partners will have no direct link to creating and rearing children. There will be Marriage Type A and Marriage Type B. To me, that's the same as saying "marriage" vs. "domestic partnership". The only reason to call both of these "marriage" is to appease and/or support those who want it, because they will otherwise feel slighted.

Some people also make the point, admittedly lame, that homosexuals are not being discriminated against today, because they can avail themselves of the same marriage laws as anyone else. Each unmarried adult has the right to marry a person of the opposite sex. In other words, this is the "civil right" involved, and it applies to all. The argument doesn't pass the common sense test however, since the real question is whether an unmarried adult can marry any other unmarried adult who consents, no matter which gender.

Some supporters of gay marriage use the interracial marriage analogy, which they should avoid, because it's a horrible comparison that (1) alienates blacks, and (2) demonstrates sloppy thinking. But that's what people who think only in terms of "civil rights" will come up with. The comeback to that point is that interracial marriages do not conflict with the core purpose of marriage, i.e. to produce and rear the next generation.

Finally, this usually produces outrage, but I think a valid consideration is that any babies or young children brought into a gay marriage (because it would be discrimination to deny that) will pay the price of being denied either a mother or a father. This is a "right" that will be refused them, in order to remain "fair" to the adults concerned. It has nothing to do with how capable the gay parents are, or how much they wish to have children.

In other words, marriage is ultimately pointless without children. If most married people didn't have kids, there would be no need for marriage at all. What if all children were raised in test tubes and then by the state, as in the novel Brave New World? In that case, there would no longer be a need for marriage at all, whether gay or "straight". Well, in my eyes, the same principle applies today for gay marriage.

Because marriage undeniably does imply kids (not for each couple, but on the whole), the next "right" that gay couples will demand will be the same priority access to adoption as heterosexual couples. (In fact, this may be true already, because the marriage argument is being conducted separately from the adoption question.) But once children are involved, the question becomes even more strongly whether society will resist the notion that a father and mother are no better than two fathers or two mothers. I say that a father and mother are better for the children, that any other outcome is inferior, and that this question cannot be bracketed out of the marriage question. I can say this because I don't consider marriage to be a civil rights issue.

I've also seen the argument put forth that it is more stable for society if gays are married than if they live together as unmarried couples, yet I don't see why that would be true. It's not a persuasive argument, in terms of redefining marriage.

In summary, marriage is a framework in which children can be raised, and is the institution that transfers social stability from one generation to the next. It also goes hand in hand with Mother Nature - the sexual drive fulfills its purpose in marriage. Gay marriage advances none of these purposes, and thus can only be at best a new class of relationship that happens to share the word "marriage" (i.e. partakes of a "civil right") without sharing its social purpose. In the end, gay marriage becomes a matter of semantics, and it will always be distinguished by an asterisk in people's minds. Therefore, because there is no ultimate reason to vote FOR gay marriage, I won't. Validating the feelings of homosexuals, after they have worked themselves up over this topic when they shouldn't have, is not a good enough reason to me. On the other hand, I fully expect the judicial system to pronounce gay marriages as valid. It won't affect my life at all, but it will not have served any genuine purpose.


So I hope all this helps explain why I don't appreciate being automatically considered a bigot or ignorant whenever the topic arises anywhere. I completely get the reasons FOR gay marriage, and yet they still fail to convince me that they are sufficiently good to change the definition of marriage. I just don't agree that an entire class of people is being discriminated against, and that it's a last vestige of bigotry that must be eradicated.

I think I am not alone in citing the above reasons for not supporting a change in the definition of marriage. I don't know if my reasons are shared by 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, or more of people who "oppose gay marriage". If I had to guess, I'd put it at about 25%. I don't even really feel like I am "opposing" gay marriage - I'm just not going to consciously support it, to please others.

After all this writing, it may seem that I care a lot about the topic. Frankly, I don't. The ones who care are the ones who think that people's rights are being violated. I personally don't recognize that any right is being violated, so I can't get worked up about it. What gets me worked up, when I let it, is knowing that some people are probably looking at me as though I were pure evil, and that they will never respect me again. (It's not like I go around proclaiming my views, but I am using myself as an example.) "Bigot", "homophobe", "hater". All because they attribute the wrong motives to me, and don't understand where I am coming from. That is why I wanted you to give it a try. The fact that you honestly could not understand my motives is telling. I don't have the opportunity to share this way to every person who resents "me and my ilk", and as a result, bad feelings simmer in the net-o-sphere. I have learned to stay out of it. I made an exception for our Folsom Forum.

This has got to be the most misunderstood dialogue of our times. And it's complicated by the fact that there ARE plenty of people I would also call "bigots". I do not automatically side with everyone who is against gay marriage. I just have my own reasons, and hope that most of those who fail to support gay marriage are doing it for similar reasons.

[chris v]

The question I have for you is how do you view straight couples that physically can't have kids that are married? Do they get the same asterisk next to their marriage as gays do?

[2kids4me]

Or even married couples who choose not to have kids?

[New Girl]

Thank you for explaining your point of view. I really could not understand where you were coming from but I do now. I am not sure I agree with you but you have put your argument well. I wish the "gun lobby" on the other thread could put together such a reasoned response.

[cw68]

Thank you for explaining your point of view. I really could not understand where you were coming from but I do now. I am not sure I agree with you but you have put your argument well. I wish the "gun lobby" on the other thread could put together such a reasoned response.

Agreed!

[Rich_T]

The question I have for you is how do you view straight couples that physically can't have kids that are married? Do they get the same asterisk next to their marriage as gays do?

Read again - the answer is in there. Such a couple can do whatever it wants about children. But it's the "category" that matters. Enough man/woman marriages DO produce children, such that the institution has a purpose. But since NO gay couple can produce children (without a third party), that entire category fails in that regard.

Or even married couples who choose not to have kids?

Same answer.

[Rich_T]

Thank you for explaining your point of view. I really could not understand where you were coming from but I do now. I am not sure I agree with you but you have put your argument well. I wish the "gun lobby" on the other thread could put together such a reasoned response.

No problem. I can only speak for myself, but I have seen others trying to make these same points, only to be bashed as bigots or ignorant. You can see why the "what harm does it do you?" argument falls flat against the reasons I am using.

I could very easily have accepted any outcome of Prop 8. What I didn't like was a politician or judge always interfering. They did so because they framed this as a civil rights issue. They still do.

Once gay marriage is the law of the land, I won't bat an eye. But that doesn't mean I am going to pretend that it helps anything. In fact, I think that there will be a sense of loss for all those who will feel that they have won a civil rights victory, because they will have no more outlet for their desire to fight such a battle. (Or they'll come up with something even lamer as their new cause.)