You state that “at the core of homosexual marriage is homosexuality…[and] whether homosexuality is moral”
If this is really the core issue, then why all the subterfuge over marriage? Why not criminalize homosexuality?
For if you cannot justify criminalizing homosexuality, its seems to me that you cannot make a good argument against banning gay marriage.
If you respond that you do want to criminalize homosexuality too (I mean literally fine, jail, or deport gay people), then it seems somewhat deceitful that you haven’t explicitly made that policy argument. It prompts questions about a “secret agenda” or “slippery slope”….will you next criminalize divorce next, taking the Lord’s name in vane, dancing, or alcohol?
We are all sinners. After the “pure Christians” finish with the gays, will they come for me next?

“. . . the opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality, its holiness.”
So what’s the opposite of heterosexuality?

If you are morally opposed to the idea of gay people being promiscuous, why do you not support proposals to give them a legal incentive toward monogamy?
Are saying gays need to be bribed to be monogamous? Loving each other and being in a committed relationship isn’t enough? You’ve got to get goodies from the state? Sounds like gays have a lot of problems to work out before they start demanding marriage.

Marriage is a fundamental building block of society. That phrase is often used but seldom explained. When I say “fundamental building block of society” I am referring to marriage’s natural creation of families.
Agreed but I think you would then also agree that it is all the more important not to exclude members of society from marriage unless there is a very good reason. In addition, you miss the trees from the forest. A family is not just a baby or child but many people. Marriage, when it works well, provides for stability for all family members. This is good for a baby but it is also good for everyone else, such as the elderly or even the single person who is alone.
According to A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D, “There is no fact that has been established by social science literature more convincingly than the following: all variables considered, children are best served when reared in a home with a married mother and father.”
OK but what does this have to do with gay marriage? By definition the only way for a gay couple to be raising a kid is if this above ideal has broken down somehow.
According to ex-gay speaker Mike Haley, the odds of a straight man contracting AIDS after one heterosexual encounter are 1 in 165,000 as opposed to 1 in 175 for gay men after one homosexual encounter.
That’s a good point in favor for gay marriage, as for the other statistics:
I have given reasons why I believe equating homosexual unions with marriage is unhealthy. Upon these grounds, I believe a rational decision can be made.
Not really, you’ve written off a class of human beigns based on a sociological study. Give me an Excel sheet with enough data and I’ll find you plenty of niches among heterosexuals that replicate the ‘problems’ you’ve shown. For example, if I demonstrated that marriages of 35+ yr old women to men between 19-24 have incidents of cheating and STDs equal or greater than the ones you cited for gays would you prohibit the recognition of such marriages? How many other members of your cohort would it take to screw up marriage so much that you’d give up your wife? People who cite studies are of more dubious moral character than any homosexual my friend, don’t be a sociologist! Tread very carefully!
The decision to allow homosexuals to marry is a moral matter because at the core of homosexual marriage is homosexuality. Your answer to the question of whether homosexuality is moral is going to determine your view of whether homosexual marriage should be accepted. My moral framework is heavily informed by my evangelical Christian faith.
1. Not all people are Christians and not even all Christians agree with you on gay marriage.
2. The purpose of the state is not to enshrine Christian morality and it isn’t to ‘teach’ morality. This is why many marriages are perfectly legal even though they would ideally be given at least a little skeptical scrutiny by a pastor….more about that below…
Recently, marriage has suffered the consequences of unhealthy ideas written into law such as no-fault divorce. Now we can put a stop to that trend.
Why don’t you show us how keeping the gay couple down the street from being able to have a legal marriage stops you from being a good father to your children or a good husband to your wife…or at least would facilitate you becoming a better one? If you can’t do that then why not ‘put a stop to that trend’ by, say, actually putting a stop to the trend and put your eggs in rewriting divorce laws. A cynic might say here you are rallying the troops behind feeling good by attacking a minority group you people do not like, do not associate with and would like to scapegoat for your own miserable failings.
As a matter of fact, why not go only as far as the Catholic Church and refuse to recognize divorced people who have remarried except under circumstances where an application for annullment has been vetted and granted? Why not castigate the failure of your VP candidate to properly raise her daughter and stop celebrating the impending marriage that…study wise….is likely to be yet another failed marriage? Timber in thine own eye indeed.

ucfengr
Loving each other and being in a committed relationship isn’t enough?
NOTE: All the moms and dads with teen kids thinking of moving in with their girlfriends or boyfriends might want to take note of this phrase from ucfengr. Take the internet filter off the p orn & block out ucfengr’s writing least you want some of his words thrown at you!

Richard Hollis wrote:
Again, I only wish I had the links available to me to read up on these studies, but as it is I simply do not believe they are accurate or reliable.
I’m not sure I understand this objection, since there were ample links to the statistic sources and the studies to which Dustin referred. Perhaps you object to the fact that some of these sources are not downloadable for free? Or is it that they are hosted on sites like Family Research Council (www.frc.org) to which you do not wish to contribute? Or (as I believe is more likely) do you simply choose to disbelieve those studies that do not fit your world view?
Don’t misunderstand me: I frankly think Prop 8 is the wrong solution to the “problem”, if “gay marriage” is a problem. I would rather that government, at all levels, have nothing to say at all about marriage. That which government controls will likely be controlled in a manner I do not approve.
Marriage is a great example of this principle. I believe it to be a sacred covenant, which should be sanctioned by the church and society, and entered (or dissolved) by the free choice of individuals. As such, the coercive power of government at any level is not only unnecessary, it distorts the societal benefit and religious meaning of the relationship. Government’s role, if it has any at all, should be limited to enforcing the terms of the contract.
Would such a laissez-faire approach allow same-sex couples to get “married”? Of course. Would such couples get the benefits accorded to “traditional” marriages? No more or less than they do now; such benefits are under the control of the institution doing the providing, whether a charity, employer, or government.
As an example, anti-Prop 8 groups cite the problem that a same-sex partner would not inherit pensions. The truth is, pensions are not inheritable, unless it is stipulated in the contract(s) that create the pension. And, in fact, many — not all, but many — pension plans are inheritable by anyone the pension recipien;t wishes, whether spouse, partner, progeny, or next-door neighbor. That some, and maybe most pensions are not so designable is not a problem with the law, it is a problem with the contract signed to create the pension.
The heritability of some government benefits is a whole ‘nother subject, but this, too, could be solved simply by removing the concept of “marriage” from the law altogether.
All of this said, I will probably vote in favor of Proposition 8. If we can’t get government out of the marriage business altogether, we can at least get them to define it in a manner that most Californians can stomach.

@Justmakingitup
I agree wholeheartedly with you that getting government altogether out of the issue is the preferable course (as I argued in the thread on the former post on the subject). Christians err when they want representative government to make it safe to believe in Christianity. The only danger that concerns me as an American is the loss of freedom of speech under hate crime regimens.

JustMakingItUp,
In theory I’m not against your libertarian take on marriage but I’m not sure it is as practical as you depict to simply replace all of it with a bunch of contracts. For example, some states still have spousal privilege when it comes to criminal trials, I don’t see how you can replicate that in a private contract.
Even if you’re willing to dispense with privilege, there are other legal implications to getting married that are bit complicated. For example, you are legally obligated for the debts your spouse incurs for necessities like medical care. This obviously has a public policy benefit….Donald Trump’s wife can’t ask for charity care on the grounds that she has no job and her husband doesn’t want to foot the bill but I don’t think you could manufacture it by having your spouse carry around a private contract.

JustMakingItUp – Hi, I’m Richard Hollis.
Actually, the reason I was not able to access the link is that I had only received a draft of Dustin’s post via e-mail and the links were not attached.
I do take your point that it was the weakest part of my response. I was taking an emotional stance rather than a logic one. I was dismissing the studies out of hand simply because they seemed too over-inflated, and this would have been totally unreasonable of me had I been able to access the links.
However, I don’t think I was totally unjustified. Studies such as these (where people are presumably asked to fill out surveys and trusted to tell the truth) are notoriously fraught with difficulties. For one thing, people lie. It may be that the researchers actually found a tendancy in homosexuals to exaggerate their sexual conquests. Perhaps the heterosexuals interviewed were in relationships, and therefore less likely to admit to any infidelities. Perhaps the researchers themselves were biased, and actively wanted to prove homosexuals were more promiscuous, and so deliberately selected people they expected to give the results they wanted to hear.
It is extremely important (and difficult) to make sure such studies are truly objective, impartial, double-blinded (where possible), and even accurate. And that is before we even discuss the implications of the findings.
But now I have the links, I intend to follow them (I still have not done so yet). I’m sure they will make interesting reading.

Richie
I do take your point that it was the weakest part of my response. I was taking an emotional stance rather than a logic one. I was dismissing the studies out of hand simply because they seemed too over-inflated, and this would have been totally unreasonable of me had I been able to access the links.
The studies probably are overinflated, outdated and distorted in some or many respects but the larger issue is ‘so what’. Statistics are always in flux and it is always possible to create the numbers that suit your agenda, and by create I don’t mean lie but simply choose your subjects carefully to get the results you want. How about the divorce rate for A-level celebrities who marry within two years of their first cover on People magazine? Domestic abuse rates for couples that meet at AA or NA meetings perhaps? If I told you bloggers have a 97% failure rate at marriage how would you feel about the state telling you it’s not going to let you get married for the sake of the ‘institution’?

I haven’t visited Evangelical Outpost for quite a while. Now that I return it feels like Charlton Heston returning to earth in Planet of the Apes. Is this some kind of Emergent Evangelicalism? From these comments, and those on other threads, it appears that many evangelicals support a redefinition of marriage and the family – beginning with gender, moving on I presume to number. A large number seem poised to support a candidate most distinguished for his promise to sweep away even the smallest impediments to the killing of unborn children as one of his first acts in office.
Freedom of the Gospel, indeed. This kind of freedom appears set to bind our nation for a very long time.
(Note: BitterClinger is merely a screenname, not intended to imply any relationship to Jamie Farr, his family or associates.)

I’ve only called 3 people here stupid. Try to think of it in a positive way….you’re like a member of an elite force here….
As I said, you are not smart enough to call anybody stupid. Perhaps you should stop trying to justify it.
Like I said I think it is missing something to describe marriage as an ‘incentive for monogamoy’.
Then talk to Ebonmuse, he was the one that asserted it was needed. Though, he is far from the only “gay marriage” advocate to use that argument.

ucfengr
Then talk to Ebonmuse, he was the one that asserted it was needed. Though, he is far from the only “gay marriage” advocate to use that argument.
If you want to conduct private debates then take it to email, otherwise any argument posted on a comment board is fair game for criticism by anyone who reads it.

If you want to conduct private debates then take it to email, otherwise any argument posted on a comment board is fair game for criticism by anyone who reads it.
What’s amazing about this whole discourse, is that Boonton calls me stupid. Here’s the path:
Ebonmuse asserts that gays need the incentive of marriage to practice monogamy.
I point out how silly that is and if it’s true (which it could be, he is not the only gay marriage supporter to put forward that argument), gays obviously have bigger problems than not being able to be married.
Boonton calls me stupid for saying gays need an incentive to be monogamous, while at the same time showing that he doesn’t understand what an incentive is (here’s a clue, marriage is the incentive).
Now that I look at it, I find myself starting to agree with Boonton; I am stupid. Who but an idiot would get stuck in orbit around the black hole of stupidity that is Boonton?

do you also think we should roll back the tax exemptions and other benefits offered to heterosexual married couples?

Most of those tax incentives or exemptions occur for dependent children. If the couple both work and earn extra money, their taxes can often be higher when their combined income pushes them into the higher tax bracket. Given how advocates brag about how homosexuals tend to earn more, that seems more likely to happen than not. One other thing to note is that depending on how much a parent spends on their child, that tax exemption does not really make a child any more affordable and only slightly mitigates the expenses of raising children. So loosing the tax exemptions and other supposed benefits given to heterosexual married couples would be worth it to me at least if it were to be traded for the elimination of monosexed marriage being recognized as valid by the government.
Do you think that the advocates for monosexed marriage would quit seeking governmental recognition of their relationship as a valid marriage if the tax exemptions and other benefits were non-existent for heterosexual marriages? I for one, do not think they would quit. I think bringing those things up is used as an evasion from having to talk about the true and underlying motives behind the activism.

I really don’t see how someone well versed in religion and theology can counter Jesus’ definition of marriage – one man and one woman. To do so implies that you find suspect at least one of his teachings. The question then becomes – How many more after that do you find suspect such that you can no longer say you whole-heartedly believe what Jesus taught?

Smmtheory – hello again.
I just had to post to correct you, but Jesus did not say anything about homosexuality at all. Nothing. Not one thing. Which is odd in itself; if homosexuality is such a great sin, you’d think he’d at least MENTION it once…

Jeong, that is a ridiculous comparrison. A marriage is a union of two consenting equals. You cannot marrying a dog because a dog has no idea what it is doing. It does not understand marriage, let alone consent to it. Therefore it is not a fair comparrison.
Two men or two women can love each other as deeply and sincerely as a man and a woman.
Requesting same-sex marriage does not go beyond tolerance at all.

Once it is allowed to redefine marriage as you prefer for Homosexuality, anybody might be able to redefine it according to their preference without restriciton. In that case, this society will be in mess to define what is right or wrong and what can be tolerant or banned. Without certain restriction of human freedom according to common social welfare, evetually this society will be uncontrolable and return to very primitive society.
If you think that man-to-man marriage is acceptable while man-to-dog is not acceptable just because dog is not humanbeing, it is completely ccontradictory logic because the man who prefer dog instead of humang being will be discriminated aaccording to your strange logic of ‘NO’ side of prop 8. If you think there is no problem to choose your partner for marriage with same sex, why does it become problem for a person to choose a dog as marriage partner. You have to keep in mind that there can be some weird people who prefer animals to humanbeing naturally, as you insist that homosexuality is innate.
Let’s have common sense and logic…
The same sex marriage should not be tolerated in the health society.
‘YES’ on Prop 8…it should be for you and me and my children and future generation and all human being.

Actually, Jesus never said anything about sex, period, except to condemn lust and adultery. He never condemned premarital sex. He did say, according to one gospel, that divorce is never permissible. This is why the Catholic church doesn’t allow divorce. Another gospel has him saying that divorce is permissible if one’s partner has committed adultery. He seems to clearly condemn remarriage after divorce. Various churches and scholars have differed sharply on what Jesus really meant about divorce and whether one can ever divorce or ever remarry after a divorce. If Christians are serious about having the law reflect Jesus’ teachings on marriage, they should push for a constitutional amendment banning divorce, except for scriptural causes. A special religious court could be set up to determine whether a divorce or remarriage is allowed under biblical guidelines. Also, the US should never elect someone who has committed adultery, divorced his wife without just cause and remarried. Like John McCain.

If Christians are serious about having the law reflect Jesus’ teachings on marriage, they should push for a constitutional amendment banning divorce, except for scriptural causes.

The way it was before No-Fault divorce laws were written in other words. Christians were steamrolled on that one too. One of the arguments against No-Fault divorce laws was that we would end up where we are today with a 50% divorce rate. A lot of good it did them to try to talk common sense into the activists and meddlers back then. And would you and the other proponents of monosexed “marriage” be sanguine about throwing out No-Fault divorce laws? HECK NO! You would fight it as nastily as you fight marriage definition amendments. Don’t even pretend otherwise. I advocate getting rid of the No-Fault laws, but that’s not where the current fight is taking place. Suggesting that that is where we should take the fight is kind of like a bait-and-switch tactic, or pointing off to space somewhere behind your opponents back and saying “What’s that?” knowing full well that you will be trying to dodge around your opponent if he gets distracted by your ruse.

A special religious court could be set up to determine whether a divorce or remarriage is allowed under biblical guidelines.

The annulment process in the Catholic Church.

He never condemned premarital sex.

Here’s the thing about pre-marital sex. It leads to adultery in one way or another. First, if a man has sex with a woman prior to marrying her, the religious view is that they should formalize the marriage they consumated. If they don’t, and then later that man gets married to a different woman, he has retroactively committed adultery. Now some people might consider the second sexual relationship the adulterous one, some might consider the first relationship the adulterous one in a kind of front-loaded sort of way. Either way, the adultery has been committed. And not just for that man, but having not married the woman he had intercourse with in the first place, they are both causing each other to commit adultery which is compounding the sin.

Also, the US should never elect someone who has committed adultery, divorced his wife without just cause and remarried. Like John McCain.

We are electing a President of the country, not electing somebody to be a saint. Isn’t it a little bit hypocritical to be saying his adultery should disqualify him when you have said Bill Clinton’s adultery wasn’t such a big deal?

Dustin:
Clearly you put a lot of effort into thinking through and depicting your position in favor of Proposition 8. However, your argument suffers from enough deficiencies that it fails to support your conclusion.
Marriage is a fundamental building block of society. That phrase is often used but seldom explained. When I say “fundamental building block of society” I am referring to marriage’s natural creation of families.
You conflate two terms here, marriage and families, base your position on the latter, and then use indirection to corral the former.
Families are the building block of society. Civil marriage is a legal construct to original purpose was to protect the property rights of women and the children that were, until the Pill, the eventually nearly inevitable outcome of sex.
Clearly, protecting the property rights of dependents is important. However, in linking families and marriage as you do, you are appealing to the same notions of human nature that animate the left: our nature and actions are determined by society.
I doubt very much you believe that; in fact, I’ll bet you believe precisely the opposite. However, without that underlying assumption, your conflation fails. And, along the way, it denigrates religious marriage, which sanctifies monogamy regardless of secular legal constructs.
According to A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D, “There is no fact that has been established by social science literature more convincingly than the following: all variables considered, children are best served when reared in a home with a married mother and father.”
I think that is close enough to objective truth to take as stipulated.
However, as a practical matter, it is presents . Within the realm of human affairs, there will always be some children who do not have such an environment available to them. Even more sadly, there are children for whom there are few options.
In order to complete that statement, it needs to consider those children for whom the options are two: an series of foster parents, or adoption by a same-sex couple.
Appealing to the advisability of married mother and father for children is pointless if that option is not on offer.
Which leaves the question that matters open and unaddressed: which is least bad, being raised by a married same-sex couple, or foster care?
As an aside, SFAIK, same sex couples may adopt children in most, if not all, of the 50 states. Whether that is a good idea or not is a subject for a separate thread that should always keep in mind the options on offer.
… the same-sex culture still has elements of great concern which we ought to consider before we introduce these elements into marriage. Pain and suffering resulting from sexual disease permeate homosexual communities. According to ex-gay speaker Mike Haley, the odds of a straight man contracting AIDS after one heterosexual encounter are 1 in 165,000 as opposed to 1 in 175 for gay men after one homosexual encounter.
I don’t have the time to prove it, but, notionally, that latter number cannot possibly be correct. Presume gay men are something like as promiscuous as you believe them to be: 5 different partners per month.
If the odds of a gay man contracting AIDS are in fact 1 in 175 unique encounters, then essentially all gay men are dead.
Except they aren’t, so that stat needs some explaining.
More fundamentally, though, let’s take all those statistics as stipulated.
So far as I know, Evangelists agree that mankind is fallen. Your statistics, at best, show that gays are somewhat more fallen than the rest of us. Which demands the question: is there a fallenness threshold beyond which marriage is not allowed?
If so, then you need to show it, and how gays fall on the far side. Otherwise, these stats, even if true, do not advance your argument even an inch towards its goal.
Your moral framework needs foremost to be informed by deciding up front whether morality applies to the situation at hand.
In order for something to assess the morality of something, one must first know the extent to which that thing involves a choice.
For instance, (although Christians once thought otherwise), there is absolutely no moral component to being left handed — there is no choice in the matter.
Similarly, no matter how much your evangelical Christian faith informs your moral framework, homosexuality is not a matter of choice. There simply is no moral component to being gay.
Now, you may counter that while there is no moral component to being gay, actualization of that fact is immoral. Unfortunately, not only does that leave you on the horns of the Euthryphro dilemma, it also presents you with a theodicy problem: why would God create a group of people and then demand that others ostracize, and even kill, them?
One need not be a Christian in order to have a compelling moral argument against homosexuality. For example, you might be Aristotelian. If so, you might consider the anatomical design of men and women and conclude that homosexual sex is against the proper function of humans.
As it happens, all mammals start existence as females. It is only through the Y-linked expression of hormones during gestation that a female body plan becomes male. What would an Aristotelian make of that? Particularly when informed the Jamie Lee Curtis is, by Aristotelian standards, male?
Your argument in favor of Prop-8, the result of which is to impose a sectarian notion upon a non-sectarian society, simply fails to make its case. The task facing you is to convince the rest of us that allowing gays to marry will somehow corrode marriages for heterosexuals.
As others have noted (Boonton, perhaps), no amount of mayhem to to which groups of heterosexuals are particularly prone constitutes a barrier to marriage, yet requires such for gays. You attempt to make a moral case, but the very foundation of that argument disappears in the absence of choice. Finally, you make an appeal to anatomical design without acknowledging its basics or contingencies.
Your position makes perfect sense for insisting evangelical Christians refuse the marriage sacrament to gays. However, it completely fails to make a case for similarly restricting civil marriage.

Whose this ‘we’ here?

The ‘we’ here is American society at large. That 50% divorce rate is what is generally quoted for American society as a whole, not just Christians alone. But you kind of prove my point about how advocates for monosexed “marriage” would fight against repeal of No-Fault just as nastily as they fight for monosexed “marriage”.

Last time I checked it was alive and well and hasn’t fallen even though it is highly unpopular among other Christians, not supported by civil marriage law and is even unpopular among many Catholics.

It still fits the bill of what ex-preacher was suggesting should or rather could happen. What’s your point? I don’t know why you continue to presume to speak for Christians when you are not one.

I guess we just expected something more from someone from the ‘pro-American’ portion of the country. It’s not the first time smmtheory has disappointed.

Well, yes, I can see where you would be disappointed about having your hypocrisy with respect to adultery pointed out. After all, isn’t hypocrisy considered the gravest of all sins among the moral relativists?

There is huge misunderstanding from ‘No’ side of prop 8. Most people in ‘No’ side of prop 8 misuderstand that the the same sex marriage is one of civi right movement in line with the past civil right movement started in 1960s.
The past civil right movoment was not about ‘WHAT’ but about ‘HOW’. In other words, the movement has targeted to break down twisted social hierachy in order to give all social members equality. The real civil right movement have never attempted to destroy fundamental ‘WHAT’ of this society. However the same sex marriage is quite different than the real civil right movement because it is targeting to destruct our society into complete mess and uncontrollable status. They are destroying the fundamental ‘WHAT’.
IT WILL EVENTUALLY TRIGGER ‘THE END OF WORLD’. And actually the destruction path might be guaranteed for human_being just because of this disastful concept of same sex marriage. Look beyond 20 years from now and consider how this world will be like. I am very concerning for my next generation just because of this kind of sinful movement. Please look at your conscience and watch for what will happen next.

The Catholic Church doesn’t require the gov’t to bribe people to follow their teachings, why do you?

And just where do you think I do require the government to bribe people to follow the civic law? If there is a specific argument I have made, please point it out. As I have stated, I would gladly give up any supposed benefits the government apportions to marriage if it meant the advocates for monosexed marriage would quit advocating for government recognition. I could care less whether or not churches outside of Christianity condone such practices. There have even been churches that were nominally inside of Christianity who have turned their backs on Christianity and condoned such practices as monosexed marriage. What I do care about is the damage that is being done to children through the government recognition of monosexed marriages. Our laws should be used to protect the least able to protect themselves, and this is being used to run roughshod over the children by adults who refuse to be adults.

1. You failed to point out any hypocrisy on my part or anyone elses.

2. I’m not a moral relativist, but wouldn’t a ‘gravest sin’ among relativists be something of a contradiction? Kind of like an underdressed nudist?

1. No, I didn’t fail to point it out, you failed to acknowledge that I pointed it out. It looks like you have a mental block against recognizing that you seem to have a problem with McCain’s adultery whereas you have no problem with Clinton’s.
2. Well if you talk like a moral relativist, you might ought to expect being pegged as a moral relativist, and hypocrisy IS a contradiction.

Smmtheory
What I do care about is the damage that is being done to children through the government recognition of monosexed marriages. Our laws should be used to protect the least able to protect themselves, and this is being used to run roughshod over the children by adults who refuse to be adults.
OK, please be specific here. Children are generated by heterosexuals except in the rather limited case of test tube babies. So what exactly are you talking about?
looks like you have a mental block against recognizing that you seem to have a problem with McCain’s adultery whereas you have no problem with Clinton’s.
I don’t have any particular problem with McCain’s adultery. I wasn’t part of his marriage, it is primarily his concern. I have my own problems to deal with.
2. Well if you talk like a moral relativist, you might ought to expect being pegged as a moral relativist, and hypocrisy IS a contradiction.
You ‘might ought’ put more effort into your own arguments.
jeong
You asked a question and I tried to answer it as best I could. Please try to return the favor. Connect the dots for us because quite frankly I have no idea what you’re talking about and I suspect you’re pumping up the rhetoric without thinking about the debts your reasoning and logic skills are going to have to make good on.

Hey Skipper
It’s tedious work but it is often interesting to probe suspect stats a bit deeper. Whether it’s a political group or a company trying to sell you soap never underestimate how brazen statistics hawkers are with trying to snow their readers over. For example:
78% of lesbians have reported domestic abuse related problems
If you follow the link you find an unfootnoted statement that:
“78% of lesbians report that they have either defended themselves or fought back against an abusive partner”
First problem, it is not specified whether ‘partner’ is only female partners or female and male (there are lesbians who have had relationships with men you know).
Second problem, the second page of this document lists ‘types of abuse’….including ‘instigates feelins of shame’ as part of sexual abuse, ‘financial abuse’ that includes using ‘monetary resources of the partner or of the relationship’ without the other’s consent….’beauty-ism’….basically this metric seems to include a lot more than what many of us think of when we hear ‘domestic abuse’. This isn’t just your ‘Burning Bed’ stuff but also what a lot of heterosexual couples would consider fighting over money and so on. Not only that, if one partner in any relationship ever felt like they were being made to feel self conscious about their looks, intelligence, money or whatnot that too counts as ‘abuse’. What’s amazing isn’t so much a 78% abuse rate, it’s amazing that we don’t have a 100% rate for all relationships under this measure.
Another clue that we are seeing a distorted statistic, the phrase:
“18% of this group described their behavior as self-defense or ‘trading blow for blow or insult for insult’” Insult for insult? Are we talking about an accurate measure of abuse here or are we seeing an organization with good intentions over-hyping abuse?
However, within the homosexual community, infidelity is the norm. Recent studies show that 95.6% of gay men report infidelity in their current relationship. Numerous studies reveal that, among self-described committed homosexual couples, each individual has had an average of 3-5 partners a year
This link is pretty amazing because it is an FRC one. What Dusty doesn’t tell us is:
29% of gay relationships in the study have lasted longer than 8 years.
29% lasted 4-7 years
31% 1-3 years
11% less than 1 year.
This is a somewhat amzing 60% of relationships lasting 4 or more years. Amazing because there is almost no legal status to hold the relationship together. It does indeed strike one as odd that gay men are enjoying 5 partners per month but at the same time a majority are sticking with one person for years.
Here is the fact, conservatives know better. Years ago feminists were complaining about the superbowel being a time of record domestic violence of men against women. Conservatives took apart the numbers and demonstrated quite nicely there was no scientific basis to them at all. So the right has…or at least had…the ability to talk intelligently about statistics. What accounts for this newfound ignorance?

Hey Skipper
It’s tedious work but it is often interesting to probe suspect stats a bit deeper. Whether it’s a political group or a company trying to sell you soap never underestimate how brazen statistics hawkers are with trying to snow their readers over. For example:
78% of lesbians have reported domestic abuse related problems
If you follow the link you find an unfootnoted statement that:
“78% of lesbians report that they have either defended themselves or fought back against an abusive partner”
First problem, it is not specified whether ‘partner’ is only female partners or female and male (there are lesbians who have had relationships with men you know).
Second problem, the second page of this document lists ‘types of abuse’….including ‘instigates feelins of shame’ as part of sexual abuse, ‘financial abuse’ that includes using ‘monetary resources of the partner or of the relationship’ without the other’s consent….’beauty-ism’….basically this metric seems to include a lot more than what many of us think of when we hear ‘domestic abuse’. This isn’t just your ‘Burning Bed’ stuff but also what a lot of heterosexual couples would consider fighting over money and so on. Not only that, if one partner in any relationship ever felt like they were being made to feel self conscious about their looks, intelligence, money or whatnot that too counts as ‘abuse’. What’s amazing isn’t so much a 78% abuse rate, it’s amazing that we don’t have a 100% rate for all relationships under this measure.
Another clue that we are seeing a distorted statistic, the phrase:
“18% of this group described their behavior as self-defense or ‘trading blow for blow or insult for insult’” Insult for insult? Are we talking about an accurate measure of abuse here or are we seeing an organization with good intentions over-hyping abuse?
However, within the homosexual community, infidelity is the norm. Recent studies show that 95.6% of gay men report infidelity in their current relationship. Numerous studies reveal that, among self-described committed homosexual couples, each individual has had an average of 3-5 partners a year
This link is pretty amazing because it is an FRC one. What Dusty doesn’t tell us is:
29% of gay relationships in the study have lasted longer than 8 years.
29% lasted 4-7 years
31% 1-3 years
11% less than 1 year.
This is a somewhat amzing 60% of relationships lasting 4 or more years. Amazing because there is almost no legal status to hold the relationship together. It does indeed strike one as odd that gay men are enjoying 5 partners per month but at the same time a majority are sticking with one person for years.
Here is the fact, conservatives know better. Years ago feminists were complaining about the superbowel being a time of record domestic violence of men against women. Conservatives took apart the numbers and demonstrated quite nicely there was no scientific basis to them at all. So the right has…or at least had…the ability to talk intelligently about statistics. What accounts for this newfound ignorance?

What exactly are you talking about?

I am referring to the violence done to children by exposing them to homosexuals pretending to be married to each other.

Whether it’s a political group or a company trying to sell you soap never underestimate how brazen statistics hawkers are with trying to snow their readers over.

…

This is a somewhat amzing 60% of relationships lasting 4 or more years. Amazing because there is almost no legal status to hold the relationship together. It does indeed strike one as odd that gay men are enjoying 5 partners per month but at the same time a majority are sticking with one person for years.

Need I say more Mr. Statistics Hawker?

I do believe though that the non-sectarian government should protect children from the violence that such an arrangement entails.
What point are you trying to make?
Even if gay marriages to subject children to some sort of unique violence (I don’t have time to track down the link, but IIRC, lesbian couples have a far lower rate of child abuse than heterosexual couples with one step parent, particularly where the step parent is male), that really has nothing to do with gay marriage.
Gays may already adopt children in many, if not most, states. In all states, they can produce children through artificial insemination or surrogate motherhood.
If that is what bothers you, than is what you should be fighting against.
However, as I mentioned above, even granting there is no fact that has been established by social science literature more convincingly than the following: all variables considered, children are best served when reared in a home with a married mother and father, that forces a false dichotomy.
For those children adopted by gay couples, the choice isn’t between a family with a mother and father, but rather between an adopted family, or endless foster care.
Given the true choice on offer, which is best for children?
Christianity isn’t wrong about that, but even if I grant you the position for argument’s sake, where is the harm of being told that it is immoral?
Oh, the same kind of harm that comes from certain Hindu sects deciding those suffering from cleft palate are possessed by the devil, or certain Christian sects having (no longer, thank goodness) that being left handed meant the same thing.
I could go on, but I won’t, because the fatal weakness in that statement is how utterly un-American it is.
You are branding every member of a group by the presumed characteristics of that group. That is pure tribalism.
In contrast, the American ideal rests upon individual merit.
Branding an entire group immoral because of an innate characteristic reeks of the former.
Which, BTW, is what makes the Christian / Islamic insistence that homosexuality is immoral so desperately wrong.
There is no morality without agency. Gays have no choice in the matter, any more than straights do.
Sex acts have no inherent moral value.
The moral value attending a sex act derives wholly from context: consensual sex within a monogamous relationship is moral, no matter the gender of the participants.
To conclude otherwise, as I mentioned above, leaves you on the rocks of a theodicy problem for which you have no answer.

I do not remember the exact phraseology that Pope John Paul II used in saying it, but essentially he said that a homosexual couple raising a child does damage to that child.
You’re right, such children should just be aborted. More seriously, though, this has nothing to do with gay marriage. The question to ask is what is the alternative? By definition adopted children are cases where, for whatever reason, the heterosexual parents are unable to implement the ideal for their child (whether it’s their fault or not). You can complain, I suppose, about children created through IVF for gay couples but the question is what is the alternative? Would you rather have life with two gay parents or have no life at all?

Why are my posts not posting?

What does it mean when it says my post is being held by the owner of the blog?

“Not so, homosexuality is a choice, not an innate quality.”
I feel that this really is at the root of a lot of misunderstandings about homosexuality. It is quite definitely not a choice. Trust me on this.
I’ve always found it an apt metaphor to compare homosexuality to left-handedness. Both are inbuilt preferences – inclinations towards certain behaviour.
Most people are right-handed, just as most people are heterosexual. Homosexuals CAN teach themselves to sleep with women in the same way that a left-handed person CAN teach themselves to write or use scissors with their right hand, but it will always feel counter-intuitive for them. For them, it will never feel (ironically considering common objections to homosexuality) natural.
It is a choice whether to admit to yourself and others around you that you are gay. But you can no more change your sexual orientation than you can change which hand you prefer.

Wow! Maybe I’m in a little gay bubble in Los Angeles, but all the gay couples I know (and I know a ton, mind you) are older and very monogamous. In fact, they are quite boring. Some have adopted, and they are wonderful parents. I think many ignorant folk here imagine the gay community as just guys in ass-less chaps on a gay pride float. It would be like thinking of heterosexuals on Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale.
I still haven’t heard from any of you a good argument on exactly how two women walking the aisle will personally ruin your own marriage

smmtheory
And not long after you wrote that, in the very same comment even, you started hawking statistics yourself.
Yea I looked at some of the reports that were being cited by YOU GUYS.
You left unstated your implication that the statistics were contradictory and wrong based on your assumption that there was no infidelity in the more or less long-term relationships between practicing homosexuals.
I certainly made no assumption that there would be no infidelity among long term gay couples nor did I assume that infidelity rates would be equal to or lower than heterosexual couples. Take a peek at post 48 if you need a refresher. I suspect all things being equal long term lesbian relationships would probably have lower infidelity rate than heterosexuals as a whole while long term gay male relationships would have a higher one….
Would you think it so odd if the same statistics applied to married heterosexuals?
No but that’s not the point. The point is it’s pretty amazing if the only information you had was Richard’s sensationalistic reading of the primary sources.

Between the two choices of foster home care and placement with a homosexual couple, the foster home placement is preferable in my opinion.
Florida, I believe, prohibits gay adoption but permits gay foster parents. Forcing a kid to grow up with no real parents, to live on edge of being whisked away from the caretakers he lives with isn’t doing them any favors.
The call that should be made here is what is best for the child, not the ideological fixations of the evangelical right. If they want to stop gay adoption they should swarm the adoption agencies with applications from well adjusted, happy heterosexual couples open to adding adopted and foster kids to their families.

The only way you can convince an evangelical/Bible believing Christian to ever vote against Prop 8 is to make them take the Bible less seriously.
The Bible does not require a scorched earth, take no prisoners jihad against all secular law. Don’t believe in gay marriage, don’t get gay married. Reject membership in any Church that has gay marriage. Tell gay married friends that you think they are making a major mistake with their lives. If they are convinced by your arguments, great. If not you leave them alone.
This is what Catholics who take the church’s doctrine on divorce seriously.

Boonton:
Thanks for the info . . .

Now my reply is being held up …

Brad:
Just so you know, you’ve erected a straw man with you theodicy problem or the Bible’s wrong canard. The doctrine of original sin answers why someone’s orientation can be perverted even from birth, and someone’s choice to act on a sinful impulse is no excuse. Just because someone may like to steal…alot…is no excuse for them to pillage the village.
No, I didn’t erect a strawman. This is very much a theodicy problem. How do you vindicate divine goodness and providence in light of the fact that God specifically created homos*xuals, who have utterly no choice in the matter, then went on to direct people to kill those caught engaging in homos*xual acts?
This goes well beyond the doctrine of original sin.
Your analogy to theft is faulty. Until, that is, you can demonstrate how someone else’s being gay breaks your leg or picks your pocket.
Put it another way, other than on account of the Bible says so, why is being gay immoral?
smmtheory:
I don’t believe that publicly funded adoption services do place homos*xual couples below heteros*xual couples.
Actually, they do. Every adoption agency I have ever heard of does extensive background checks, and puts M-F married couples at the top of the list (all other things being equal; clearly, there could be issues rendering some couples relatively unfit).
Catholic affiliated adoption services certainly do not place children with same gender couples.
Not anymore, but they have.
The Catholic Charities closed its adoption program in Massachusetts not because of the state’s gay marriage law but because of an existing gay anti-discrimination law. In fact, the charity had voluntarily placed older foster children in gay and lesbian households — the most willing to take hard-to-place children — until the church hierarchy was alerted and demanded that adoptions conform to the church’s religious teaching, which was in conflict with state law.
Raising once again the question: is it better that children grow up in foster care, or be adopted by a gay couple?
Neither your opinion, nor mine matters here. There is an objective truth out there, what is it?
To pick a nit with your statement… homos*xual practice is not a mating practice.
Strictly speaking it is, because it is the result of the drive to mate.
Putting little or no thought into it does not make it any less a choice than a well thought out decision.
Is your being straight a choice? Could you decide to become gay, even for a day?
I’m going to go out on a limb here: No, and No.
You are denying to others that which you assume for yourself.
Brad:
Here is why evangelical Christians will never accept gay marriage: The Bible says that gay behavior is sinful. Period.
That amounts to the good German defense. (See the Euthyphros dilemma, above).

Is your being straight a choice? Could you decide to become gay, even for a day?
I’m going to go out on a limb here: No, and No.

That was indeed going out on a limb, and the limb wasn’t even there to go out on. Yes, my personal s-exuality is a choice. If I chose to practice homos-exuality, I could.

In fact, the charity had voluntarily placed older foster children in gay and lesbian households — the most willing to take hard-to-place children — until the church hierarchy was alerted and demanded that adoptions conform to the church’s religious teaching, which was in conflict with state law.

Let me translate this for you since you have erred. Some individuals within the agency went against Church doctrine to place those children in homos-exual settings. It was NOT agency policy to be non-conforming to Church teaching. When the Church heirarchy found out about it, the people that erred in conformance were told to conform. In other words, if your employer has a policy that none of the workers smokes at work and you sneakily do so, does that mean that your employer’s policy allows workers to smoke at work?

Strictly speaking it is, because it is the result of the drive to mate.

No, it is borne of a desire to self-pleasure.

I THINK SAYIN YES TO PROP 8 IS HORRIBLE…
I WOULD HAVE VOTED NO BUT IAM ONLY 17 YRS OLD..
I THINK PEOPLE SHOULD MARRY PEOPLE WHO THE LOVE. THERE IS NO RIGHT TO TAKE THAT AWAY FROM CURTIAN PEOPLE.. WHAT IF THEY SAID NOBODY CANT MARRY THE LOVE OF THEIR LIVES.. ITS NOT RIGHT..
IT DOSENT MATTER WHO U MARRY OR WHAT COLOR OR RACE..
EVERYONE SHOULD GET THE SAME RIGHT AS EVERYONE IN THE WORLD.. ITS NOT EVEN PEOPLES BUISNESS WHO PEOPLE MARRY ANYWAYZ..
NO ONE SHOULD BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY..
VOTING YES TO ME IS BULLS**T..
THIS IS MY OPINION.. AND I STICK WITH IT..
EVEN IN THE CONSTITUTION SAYS PEOPLE SHOULD BE TREATED THE SAME.. SO UR GOIN AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION..

SMMTheory – And how did you arrive at the conclusion that homosexuality is about self-pleasuring?
Has it ever occured to you that gay people fall in love? They are human beings too.

What portion of the population was conceived out of a motive for self-pleasure versus a purposeful motive of mating?

We believe [the Bible] to be an infallible source of truth.
That is the problem. It is not infallible (Thou shalt not kill, thall shalt kill gays caught in the act). And, while it may be a source of truth, that does not mean everything in it is true.
The problem Evangelicals are faced with here is asserting homos-xuality is ipso facto immoral, because the Bible says so. No doubt, it clearly does.
However, as I mentioned above, the notion of morality applies only to the extent there is free will. Because of this, among the very few who still insist being gay is a matter of choice, Evangelicals are prominent. Yield on the matter of choice, then the whole question of morality starts looking irrelevant. Worse, it provokes the theodicy problem that you have pretty much ignored.
Theodicy, in its simple form, attempts to vindicate divine goodness and providence in the view of the existence of evil. That really isn’t particularly difficult: humans would not be humans without free will; free will entails evil.
However, that question gets much harder to deal with when acknowledging that God specifically created a subset of people who, having no choice in the matter, were going to be the target of God-directed ostracism, opprobrium, and murder. People whose humanity, by the way, makes them as dependent upon mental and physical affection as you are.
Of course, God can do anything God wants. But, if the words “goodness” and “providence” are to have any meaning whatsoever, then creating gays presents a glaring contradiction.
That contradiction can only be resolved by giving up on theodicy, or concluding that, in the case, the Bible is wrong: being gay is not immoral, and morality of acting on that impulse is contained wholly within context: monogamous homos-xuality is no more immoral than monogamous heteros-xuality.
Yielding that, however, admits that the Bible is not an infallible source of truth; rather, it contains assertions that are presented as true, but are, in fact, morally indefensible.
What is your authority? Man’s reason?
Well, yes. Words have meanings. In order for an action to be immoral, the actor must have a meaningful choice, the action cannot be imposed upon someone else, and the action cannot significantly impose upon those not parties to the act.
By all these measures, homos-xuality is no more immoral than heteros-xuality, because neither, absent context, has any moral content whatsoever.
In other words, on this score, the Bible’s assertions are simply wrong. Whoever wrote those words was operating under a fundamental misapprehension, and falling prey to one of the most pernicious elements of human nature: the desire to demonize those who are different.
I’m not interested in this forum in outlining all the ways in which homosexuality is harmful to those who practice it and for those who approve of it.
Well, perhaps you should be. The alternative is to insist upon the immorality of a group of people while leaving on the table precisely why they are immoral. To the extent your answers are Biblical, the insistence upon making secular marriage unavailable to gays crumbles.
There is hope for sinners in the resurrected Jesus Christ. Swindlers, fornicators et al.
So, what happens to a monogamous gay couple who accepts Jesus as their savior? Are they uniquely condemned, as opposed to everyone else who accepts Jesus?
If not, and I see no Biblical reason to conclude otherwise, then your citation of this passage doesn’t seem particularly relevant to the matter at hand.
Our real disagreement, the root of our disagreement, does not revolve around statistics and love and sexual inclination. It revolves around what you and I believe about Jesus Christ and whether or not the Bible is true. Right?
No, it doesn’t.
Full disclosure: I am an agnostic areligionist. (Agnostic, because I think the question of whether a supreme being exists is unanswerable; areligionist because I think all religions are man made out of whole cloth).
Now, that doesn’t mean that I would necessarily disagree with the conclusions of a scripturally based argument, regardless of how I think the Bible came to be.
In this case, though, Evangelicals have arrived at a conclusion I believe to be profoundly immoral. That is what this revolves around.

Hello Brad.
The Bible is 100% accurate, is it? May I ask – which version?
To name just a handful of the modern translations, there is the King James Version, the New King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version, and the New American Standard Version.
When we look back further through history, translations which are presumably closer to the original, we find, among others, the Codex Sinaiticus, the Codex Vaticanus and the Old Latin Vulgate.
Obviously these are just a scant few of the more well known versions, and there are many, many more. And here’s the point – they all say different things. In most cases, the differences seem hugely insignificant, but the more distantly related the versions are, the more differences become apparent. They cannot ALL be correct.
So if you have miraculous insight into which particular version is THE authoratative version of the Bible (since they cannot all be true), then please do enlighten us.

Richie asks what is “THE authoritative version . . .?
Good question! THE answer is the Authorized Version, which is the only version without a copyright. It has been said, you can’t copywrite the Word of God.
The two ms. that you mentioned (Sinaticus and Vaticanus), not only disagreed between themselves, but with 95% of the extant Greek ms. in existence. They formed the basis of most of the modern translations. (Even the infamous “New World Translation” used the Wescott-Hort Greek).
Of these two ms., one was found in a trash can and the other in the Vatican Library. Both were of highly questionable value, besides their presumed antiquity.
There is no such thing as a perfect translation, but the Greek ms. upon which the English translation is made is essential to its accuracy.
Check out “The Revision Revised” by John Burgon
for an eye opener.

Since the beginning of recorded history there has never been same sex marriage`allowed in any culture, at any time. But according to Skipper, in 10 years time everyone will asking “what the heck were we thinking” in refusing Prop 8?

Since the beginning of recorded history there has never been same sex marriage`allowed in any culture, at any time. But according to Skipper, in 10 years time everyone will asking “what the heck were we thinking” in refusing Prop 8?
Yep. Both demographics and people’s experience point in that direction.
Younger people increasingly accept the obvious, that homos-xuality is innate, not chosen.
Also, familiarity has failed to breed contempt. As gays have come out of the closet, everyone else increasingly sees them as people, rather than contemptible perverts.
So, I think it not only inevitable, but sooner rather than later that society will look at Prop 8 as a bloody minded denial of a minority by a majority for whom the cost would have been nil.
All based upon nothing more than “on account of Because.”
What would have been your reaction in 1998 if someone was to insist that in 2008, a black man with the last name Obama would be elected president?

qwertyu7, you are right that this is a little off-topic, but I had to answer the accusations against me. I have indeed done some research. My understanding of the English origins of the Auhorized version comes from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02141a.htm
Be that as it may, your understanding of the Biblical scholarship is obviously lacking. Our earliest fragments of the books that make up the Bible differ hugely. It was only with the invention of the printing press that any book could be reliably reproduced. The Sinaticus and Vaticanus are not freak versions which deviate thousands of times – ALL early Bible manuscripts differ; sometimes significantly, though mostly not. There is no consensus or “majority text”. For a fuller explaination, see Bart Erhman’s Misquoting Jesus, or http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vJluEnIqTVk
Finally, what is the 90% of the Bible that can be proven true? None of it can be. You are taking the Bible ENTIRELY on faith as being even 90% true. For more on the historical inaccuracies in the Bible, see http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch.html
I do see we are going off on a tangent though. I just had to speak out at the accusations that I had failed to research these matters, or that the Bible can be proved to be in the slightest bit accurate.

1. Perhaps I spoke a little strongly there. I meant no offence.
2, 3 & 4. I stand totally corrected. There IS a “majority text”. You learn something new every day.
However, according to the first site I visited, ‘The “Majority Text” is a statistical construct that does not correspond exactly to any known manuscript. It is arrived at by comparing all known manuscripts with one another and deriving from them the readings that are more numerous than any others.’
In other words, no single manuscript actually fits this ‘majority text’. It has been formed by looking at all the Bibe versions and fragments, (all of which disagree in one place or another) and in each case, favouring the most numerous interpretation.
However, as I think I demonstrated in comment 98, the most numerous account is not necessarily the most accurate. If I make two copies of a book and one copy contains a mistake, but the flawed copy simply goes on to be copied more times, then this will be the most numerous version, and therefore the one to appear in the Majority Text. The Majority Text is doubtless an interesting focal point in Biblical scholarship, but there is no reason to suppose that this is more reliable or accurate than any other version.
5. ‘Not finding anything to contradict’ is not the same as proving. It’s like asking someone to prove a negative. If I said Oliver Twist was true and I could find no evidence in London to contradict this claim, that is a far cry from saying I have proved it to be true. Indeed the most convincing argument against the inerrancy of the Bible is the lack of evidence that we would expect to find if it was all true.
See http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch.html
and
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/camel.html
for good examples of this.
6. ’2008 years since the birth of Jesus’, is the answer you are obviously fishing for. However, the BC/AD dating system was not invented until 525 AD, and was only slowly adopted in the West between the 8th and 14th centuries. The entire dating system was drawn up by men who were deeply Christian, and centuries after Jesus supposedly lived. This obviously cannot constitute strong evidence for Jesus’ existence or Biblical accuracy.
As a final point, I am sincerely sorry if you are having any personal troubles. I hope it is all sorted out soon. I won’t take it badly at all if you don’t respond. But I’m always happy to debate it you do.

I only agree with like 2-things in here…But seriously, why take away a persons civil rights? That’s just so wrong! I mean really when all these church people and white trash gay bashers move in and try to take away their rights, it doesn’t make you look like you’re “proteacting” or “saving” marriage, it just looks like you’re being a whiney little bitch about it…

Dustin,
I agree with you that there are other considerations about this issue than biblical ones. You mentioned some cultural ones, there are judicial /legal ones as well. (Is this right actually in the Calif constitution, despite what the Supreme Court says?) This is not a Christian issue. It’s about democratic majority rule, what rights are given to the minority and how to properly protect those rights. See my blog, “Life in the Big Democracy” at http://www.sophiesladder.com
P.S. I found this blog from a link on “Blue Christian”.
Regards,
Jeff Carter

rbmhw sawicuv pmcthf rynhet gnljb bahez gfnjmtcy

i personall do not support gay marrige….here are a few reasons why???
1.not natural
2.how will this going to benefit the society….instead this will ruin the society
3.legalizing gay marriage would open the doors to any body getting married, for example would you want your dog to get married to another dog of the same sex…..how is the dog going to be benefited??
4.why is there this change????…its not like divorce is not legal…i mean two people of the same sex can be good friends….how are they going to benefit the world….they can go out and watch movies or hand out together…
5.this is less meaningful to the society
6.there is a need of a family…you cant just adopt children from the orphanage…..one day the orphanage will run out of babies, then who will produces more babies or the orphanage would not want to give the baby to a gay couple…will they??
7.gay parents will raise their children to be a gay…influation…
8. gay marriage is not supported by religion
9.children would not succeed if they do not have a male parent and a female parent
10.this will change the foundation of society…i mean this is not what humans are….
now i am in a huge mess, personally this is what i think of gay marriage, and now i have been given my debate topic to be for gay marraige and i don’t even agree to one of the advantages of gay marriage…i have not even lost one debate in my life….all i can do is more research, if any one you have a strong point for gay marriage pls do tell me…

Don’t let this important debate die. Everyone who’s posted here has raised some very good points, and they should be preserved for anyone in the future who needs to learn the arguments on both sides. The best place to do that is at http://www.livingvote.org/.

The statistics offered by Steeve were an utter joke. Mr Hollis’ rebuttal was very impressive.