Gay Marriage - Your Thoughts?

[comrade_general]

I still stand by my original answer, I just think some of them use their ability to marry as part of a "blatant parade" as Marcus was saying.

[Phoenixguard09]

Yes a normal marriage is a straight parade, you are entirely correct Jubal, but it is still my opinion that it is the societal norm for a reason, namely that homosexuality is not normal.

It's all about your assumptions. In my mind (and I fully appreciate that I'm one of the minority in the circles I frequent) homosexuality is not normal and shouldn't be officially condoned. They want to have life partners? Go ahead. Pretty sure the law was changed to allow that. But marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Idiots who want to marry a dog or whatever else... well I don't know. Novelty items perhaps? Who knows. I reckon that's even weirder.

Anyway, really I couldn't care less what happens. Politics give me a massive headache and I really just could not be bothered with it. I don't like the idea of voluntarily gifting people power over me, even if I choose which douchebag in a suit gets it.

I'm not trying to argue my point because I know that I'm being very inflexible and very old-fashioned but my own views will not change on the matter. I still don't think homosexuality is normal and I don't think concessions should be made to allow them to do something that their deviance would heretofore prevent them from doing.

But of course I don't care enough to actually lodge a formal complaint or anything like that. I'll just go with the flow. I wouldn't be happy about it but its not worth fighting about.

[Son of the King]

Also, we need to consider two forms of marriage: ceremonial and legal. I'm advocating that legally, people should have the rights to marry regardless of who they are as long as both can consent. This is because the government has no place in determining who lives, sleeps, etc, with who, therefore we should give them the full range of legal options to sort out how they do that. As for the ceremonies, again it should just be left up to individual groups to decide what they want to sing, dance, or make long droning speeches about.

This. Most LGBT people I know don't care about being able to have a Christian/whatever religion marriage in a church, just to be able to be legally married and get the benefits straight people can get from this exact same thing. Discriminating against people just for their sexuality is crazy, UNLESS you have a religious/moral objection to it. By that I mean, as Jubal says, there should be no obligation to churches etc. to provide gay marriages, but the legal option should be there as the government has no right to decide two consenting adults can't display their love in the conventional way.

One other thing, why keep referring to it as gay marriage? The key thing is the desire to be able to get married, like a straight person can. Surely just marriage is a better term .  Equality is the goal. Just a little thing about this whole debate that annoys me a little.

[Jubal]

Agree with SOTK pretty much entirely.

[Andalus]

"marriage has always been between a man and a woman."

No it hasn't.

[Phoenixguard09]

I pointed out later in that passage Andalus that marriages between dogs and people and such were exempted because really that's all kinds of stupid.   I might of course be wrong but to my knowledge, marriage has been between man and woman.

[Andalus]

There were same-sex marriages in both Ancient China and Ancient Rome. There's even a Roman painting that seems to depict the marriage of two Christian saints. Then there's centuries of polygyny and polyandry in various cultures around the world. How can you claim that marriage is between "a man and a woman" when often it was between a man and dozens, if not hundreds, of women?

EDIT* armadillo, sorry Andalus I accidentally hit modify post instead of quote.

Sorry mate,
Phoenix

[comrade_general]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_FJ9NuT_L9k/T2cvH59u2aI/AAAAAAAABXc/RfuQ7QAKxuk/s1600/biblical_marriage_chart.jpg

[Silver Wolf]

Ewwww dude, same-sex marriage... That's like totally gay.


Just joking. I don't have anything against it. You can't stop looove.

[Phoenixguard09]

There were same-sex marriages in both Ancient China and Ancient Rome. There's even a Roman painting that seems to depict the marriage of two Christian saints. Then there's centuries of polygyny and polyandry in various cultures around the world. How can you claim that marriage is between "a man and a woman" when often it was between a man and dozens, if not hundreds, of women?

Well I guess that depends on your definition of marriage. I mean really, what is a marriage anyway?

I will concede your point there Andalus, although I'm not entirely sure myself as to whether I consider that a marriage. I mean I've been brought up to believe that you can only get married once, hence in my mind the dozens of other marriages with other people are null and void.

I'm not going to change my mind and by no means do I wish to change anyone else's.

[Jubal]

I found Mitt Romney's "marriage is between one man and one woman" quote recently particularly funny given the history of mormonism.

[Andalus]

I mean really, what is a marriage anyway?

An agreement between people to spend their lives together.

[Marcus]

When you say 'marriage can only happen once' I can pretty much say that this is no longer the case. 'Till death do us part' appears to have been forgotten, and there's plenty of divorces not long after many ill-conceived marriages. So the sanctity of marriage is pretty much dead in the water except for those who wish to actually stay true to their vows, and in my opinion this situation is worse than letting same-sex couples marry.

My statement above is my opinion based on general observation over the years, and not on any particular facts, so if they are wrong, feel free to tear it apart with stats.

[Jubal]

I think it's partly a materialism/consumer culture thing, people think of love as something that can be shopped around for rather than really trying to work at a relationship. Obviously there are cases where divorce is the best option - in fact in most of these cases it's probably the best option - the issue is that people are marrying who don't know well enough that they're prepared to spend their life with that person.

[Phoenixguard09]

I agree with both of the above posts completely. As I said before though Marcus, while the majority of people today may not subscribe to the "one marriage" belief, I'm not one of them.

God it's hard to argue this without falling back to, "It's against my faith." I mean it might be true but faith really shouldn't come into the debate.