Blog on Same-Sex "Marriage," Atheism, and More

[Sovereign Dream]

It's not funny. Would you think it was funny if your girlfriend or wife is dying in the hospital but you're not allowed to see them because the visitation policy of the hospital doesn't cover you? Would you think it was funny if they died without you by their side? Furthermore, would you think it was funny if some heartless bigot on the Internet who wants to prevent you from having those rights thought it would be a good idea make a "joke" out of it?

Because those very same scenarios have happened many, many times to gay and lesbian couples and it's not funny at all. Shame on you.

Oh pity pity, cry cry. Again, one needn't get married in order to obtain hospital visitation rights or indeed many other "rights" that homosexuals want access to in the first place vis-a-vis marriage (e.g. writing a will and including your homosexual partner in it, etc.). So if ssm was just about "getting the right to visit Fred when his anal warts flare up again," then the movement is kind of, say, utterly redundant for this "right" is available to individuals who are not married to one another already in the first place.

Never mind that this is just utterly point-missing. This is just pathetic. Please don't respond at all if you have no substantive responses to add and would rather waste bandwidth with this "oh I'm so offended but I look like a fool because I've missed the point anyways" drama soapbox.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Oh pity pity, cry cry. Again, one needn't get married in order to obtain hospital visitation rights or indeed many other "rights" that homosexuals want access to in the first place vis-a-vis marriage (e.g. writing a will and including your homosexual partner in it, etc.). So if ssm was just about "getting the right to visit Fred when his anal warts flare up again," then the movement is kind of, say, utterly redundant for this "right" is available to individuals who are not married to one another already in the first place.

Never mind that this is just utterly point-missing. This is just pathetic. Please don't respond at all if you have no substantive responses to add and would rather waste bandwidth with this "oh I'm so offended but I look like a fool because I've missed the point anyways" drama soapbox.

There's a lot of things that I really, really wish to say to you but I will refrain since I enjoy this forum and do not wish to be banned.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

Yes, let's use the arbitrary, irrational, unsubstantiated superstitions and social norms of ancient primitives as a basis for denying people rights, freedoms, and equality. Religious fundamentalists are welcomed to believe and practice as they wish. The problem is when they try to impose them upon others. We should be using reason and compassion as a moral compass in the modern world, rather than blindly adhering to something that instructs how to sell your own daughter into sexual slavery, and to stone people to death for wearing mixed fabrics, talking to menstruating women, for rotating crops, and for eating pork or shrimp. The bigotry toward homosexuals is unjust and asinine.

Yes, because I have mentioned the Bible so much and because I "really want" to see us turn back to the "good ol' days when we had sexual slavery and when we talked to menstruating women." And, no, we shouldn't "impose" our beliefs on others. That's why we should "like totally impose ssm by judicial fiat." Yet another poster in whose posts I will have no interest in in the future.

 

[Alceste]

Yes, and unlike many of you, I actually give reasons to think that the antecedent of that conditional is true, whereas you prefer to just say that "it's, like, your opinion, man!"



What? When did I ever mention anything about "objective morality"? All I'm doing here is considering pragmatic facts about public policy, folks. Is that just too big a cookie for you?



Talk about irrelevant comments.

Everybody's got reasons for what they think marriage means. You're nothing special in that respect, and neither are your reasons and conclusions. It's a very personal thing that could only ever possibly matter to anyone, except in the context of your own marriage.

And OF COURSE it's "only your opinion, man". You think your opinion matters more than secular opinions because you believe in God. You may not say it, but you don't need to. It's obvious to the rest of us that you're simply defending Catholic doctrine. Possibly more for your own benefit than anyone else's because you're certainly not writing for readability.

Do you know the difference between a fact and an opinion? You state your opinion as if you believe it is a fact.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

It is a big deal. That's the whole point. The more love in this world, the better. The less suffering in the world, the better. The more gay families there are, the better, especially for the unwanted progeny of careless heterosexual couplings. It's a big deal because it makes the world a more loving, fairer, less painful place. It brings one of the most abused, despised and isolated demographics in the history of European culture into the fold of general society, and says "We were wrong - we're sorry - we want to do better". What's not to celebrate?

You know the saying "two wrongs don't make a right"? You cannot possibly help the issue of divorce, adoption, the shirking away of obligations that attend upon procreation, etc., by further detaching marriage from procreation and by institutionally and intentionally detaching children from their mother and father. Do you seriously think it's a good idea to intentionally and institutionally detach children from their mother and father? I ask candidly.

I mean, if you're into hateful, paranoid, vicious nonsense, you can go ahead and imagine it's all a big mean plot against babies, but nobody else sees it that way. That's why they're singing in the video. They're singing because despite the vicious, hateful, paranoid nonsense folks like you have been promoting, love and compassion for our fellow man has prevailed.

If Christ Himself were in that room, he'd be singing along.

That's cute. Again, I'm not opposed to ssm because I "like, just really hate gays." I'm opposed to ssm because it will prove pernicious to future generations and because it is founded upon a number of assumptions which are all, each and every one of them, false.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Yes, because I'm "in favor" of the rape of children by male priests. I'd figure that, you know, given your support of institutionally subsidizing sodomy that you'd be more into that kind of thing.

Keep peddling the lie that you "don't" hate gays.

 

[Alceste]

Yes, the "oh you're opposed to ssm so you just must be a closeted gay!" Will the quality of comments ever improve? Or should I make my responses less that 20 characters for you to adequately ponder them?

Finally, here are some a facts we can discuss. Let's take a look:

Our paper describes six studies conducted in the United States and Germany involving 784 university students. Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay&#8221 and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.

The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds — long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Using this methodology we identified a subgroup of participants who, despite self-identifying as highly straight, indicated some level of same-sex attraction (that is, they associated “me” with gay-related words and pictures faster than they associated “me” with straight-related words and pictures). Over 20 percent of self-described highly straight individuals showed this discrepancy.

Notably, these “discrepant” individuals were also significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming). Thus our research suggests that some who oppose homosexuality do tacitly harbor same-sex attraction.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying that you, personally fall into the category of repressed homosexuals who spend way to more time than straight people thinking about the practicalities of man-on-man anal sex, and who is so screwed up about it that it emerges as hostility toward gays and the support of anti-gay policies, but it is a well known phenomenon. The headline about an anti-gay activist being caught in a public toilet soliciting nasty, random man on man hook-ups is so common these days it hardly even makes a splash. So to speak.

So I'm just saying, before you commit a lot of time and effort to an anti-gay blog, you might want to consider what people are likely to think of your own sexual inclinations as a result.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

I mean that you don't care about them enough to allow them access to one of the best tools we have to protect them.

So... I ask again: why do you not care enough about the children of same-sex-parented families to protect them with the rights and benefits of marriage? I get that you don't like what the parents are doing, but why hurt their kids? It just seems spiteful.

Hurt? Who says I'd be "hurting" anyone? Please, the appeals to emotion are getting intolerable.

Please describe how a same-sex couple could obtain either of the rights I described without same-sex marriage or similar legal status for their relationship (i.e. civil union).

I'm not a lawyer so I cannot give you the nitty gritty specifics, but there are legal resources available to allow person x to visit you at the hospital, or to able to put person x on your will, etc., and none of these resources have anything to do with marriage. In other words, one needn't marriage or civil unions in order to attain these "benefits" that homosexuals desire. So there's no need to implement ssm if this is what motivates it. But, of course, this is not what is motivating ssm. No, ssm is motivated by an immature desire to normalize homosexuality and same-sex parenting.

In the case of immigration sponsorship, the benefit is based on the idea that the relationship between the sponsor and sponsee is close enough that the sponsor can be relied upon to support the sponsee if needed so that he doesn't become a burden on the government of his new country.

Have you heard the saying "Nice story, bro?"

Your lack of compassion astounds me. Your life experience must be very sheltered and limited if that's what you think the rights of marriage are for. Have you ever had a relative die of disease?

More emotional appeal. More personal attacks. Any more and I might :foot:

 

[Alceste]

You know the saying "two wrongs don't make a right"? You cannot possibly help the issue of divorce, adoption, the shirking away of obligations that attend upon procreation, etc., by further detaching marriage from procreation and by institutionally and intentionally detaching children from their mother and father. Do you seriously think it's a good idea to intentionally and institutionally detach children from their mother and father? I ask candidly.
.

I don't accept your premise that the acceptance of homosexual relationships has anything whatsoever to do with "detaching children from their mother and father". Also, being a genuine straight person, I just don't spend all that much time worrying about the metaphysical implications of gay sex.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Lets' say you reject the supposition that marriage is the metaphysically comprehensive union between . . . and that its purpose is to attach . . . etc. What do supporters of ssm think that marriage is? Here is one popular answer: Marriage is the lifelong union of two persons who love each other. Marriage functions as a way of publicly acknowledging one’s love and commitment for their spouse. Because same-sex couples are capable of loving in the same way as everyone else, the law ought to make provisions for recognizing their unions as legal marriages.

Love alone cannot be sufficient for legal recognition. For one, not every loving relationship is afforded legal recognition. There are many different kinds of valuable social relationships that are simply not relevant to the public good in the way that marriage is. Companionships, for example, involve love, but nobody is calling for the government to legally recognize friendships. Love certainly motivates a couple to enter into marriage, but it is mistaken to think that marriage is essentially about love.

This is a non-issue. There's nothing stopping two friends of the opposite sex from getting married under the system you're advocating.

Heck - in many states, there's often nothing stopping one friend from adopting another. In some, you can even adopt someone who's older than you. Why do you think that there isn't an epidemic of adults adopting each other?

Key to a particular type of relationship being subject to legal recognition is its serving a public purpose. Social institutions are afforded legal recognition in virtue of their serving some good to society-at-large, not because those involved may happen to love each other.

That's just false. Individual citizens are part of the public. Even if a government measure does nothing more than making a few people a bit happier, then this itself is a public purpose.

Also, in many countries that have foundational laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender, restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples is illegal. Simply making sure that lower law doesn't violate higher law is a pretty important public purpose all by itself.

Love is an essentially private matter that involves only those people in a relationship. The state has no business poking around in this domain of life, since the state exists to regulate public goods and institutions. Some bring up the various benefits and incentives already associated with marriage as a reason to legalize same-sex relationships. According to this argument, same-sex unions should be afforded legal recognition in order to take advantage of the benefits that opposite-sex couples currently enjoy. But this is clearly question-begging. Why should anyone deserve these benefits to begin with? It cannot be because they love each other, since that’s the very issue at stake.

It's almost a tautology that when two people have inexorably linked their lives together, they ought to be treated as if they've inexorably linked their lives together.

Some libertarians have used this rationale to argue that the state should not be involved in marriage at all.

Yeah... I don't support the abolition of marriage.

If the position described in the preceding paragraphs captures what marriage amounts to, they have a point. But in fact many of us have the intuition that marriage is something special, something that the state should involve itself in. The question then becomes: Why? What’s so special about marriage that could justify this? And the only reasonable answer to that question is because marriage has to do with the union of man and a woman and their children.

Same-sex couples have children, too. Why do you want to have two legal tiers of family?

And please don't bring out that "single parent" red herring again. The law can't make a missing parent materialize. It can recognize the role a parent is having in the life of a child.

By denying this and accepting the supposition that marriage is just "recognizing loving commitments," then not only does this serve no public purpose, but it also commits you to recognizing any concievable configartions of individuals who are "lovingly committed to one another" are "married."

Stop with the straw man. Not all loving relationships involve the linking of two lives to the extent that marriage does. Not all people in loving relationships would want marriage.

No it's not. On my view, everyone can marry someone of the opposite sex. There's nothing discriminatory about that. For on my view (indeed, the correct view), the public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children to one another. And so, on this view, having two men or two women "marry" one another just makes no sense. It would be no more discriminatory to disallow two men or two women (or indeed 5 men and 10 women) to "marry" on this view than it would be "discriminatory" to disallow a man to become a member of a women's debate club, or to disallow a blind man from getting a drivers' license, etc. How many times do I have to explain this? Is this is just too hard to comprehend?

I find it hard to comprehend false, illogical arguments, so you may have to repeat it a few more times. :sarcastic

You are saying that the right to marry a woman should be allowed to men but denied to women. You are saying that the right to marry a man should be allowed to women but denied to men. On its face, this is discrimination on the basis of gender. Own up to your discriminatory position and defend it; don't pretend it's something it's not.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

More emotional appeal. More personal attacks. Any more and I might :foot:

You're attacking an entire group of people. It's like if you came on here to rant and rave against "interracial" marriage. It's just blatant prejudice. You don't have the right to whine about it.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

Finally, here are some a facts we can discuss. Let's take a look:



Now, I'm not necessarily saying that you, personally fall into the category of repressed homosexuals who spend way to more time than straight people thinking about the practicalities of man-on-man anal sex, and who is so screwed up about it that it emerges as hostility toward gays and the support of anti-gay policies, but it is a well known phenomenon. The headline about an anti-gay activist being caught in a public toilet soliciting nasty, random man on man hook-ups is so common these days it hardly even makes a splash. So to speak.

So I'm just saying, before you commit a lot of time and effort to an anti-gay blog, you might want to consider what people are likely to think of your own sexual inclinations as a result.

GotMeGood.jpg

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

And you the lie that I "hate gays." You know, for a site dedicated to rational discussion, this is just embarrassing. Oh, the alarm went off; it's been 3 minutes: you should probably launch another emotional tirade again.

You do hate gays, or at least have disdain for them. It's not like disliking them is all that much better than out and out and hatred. From your comments, you're obviously obsessing over male on male anal sex and apparently you think that's the biggest part of being gay. Is the biggest part of being hetero penis in vagina sex?

 

[Sovereign Dream]

I don't accept your premise that the acceptance of homosexual relationships has anything whatsoever to do with "detaching children from their mother and father".

Yet another "cool story, bro." Do you plan to defend that at all? Or just sort of leave there, drive-by comment style?

 

[Alceste]

Yet another "cool story, bro." Do you plan to defend that at all? Or just sort of leave there, drive-by comment style?

I don't need to defend the obvious.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

I don't need to defend the obvious.

Of course, this isn't "the obvious"; what you're denying is, though. On that note, ta da. If you're not able or willing to at least attempt to have a fruitful discussion, then far be it for me to attempt to do so in your absence.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Hurt? Who says I'd be "hurting" anyone? Please, the appeals to emotion are getting intolerable.

The legal rights of marriage matter most when we're at our most vulnerable. In the world you're arguing for, if a person is incapacitated in hospital and didn't arrange for power of attorney ahead of time, it's better for his or her partner and their kids to be evicted than it is to grant them access to the money in the partner's account to pay the rent or mortgage.

I'm not a lawyer so I cannot give you the nitty gritty specifics, but there are legal resources available to allow person x to visit you at the hospital, or to able to put person x on your will, etc., and none of these resources have anything to do with marriage. In other words, one needn't marriage or civil unions in order to attain these "benefits" that homosexuals desire. So there's no need to implement ssm if this is what motivates it. But, of course, this is not what is motivating ssm. No, ssm is motivated by an immature desire to normalize homosexuality and same-sex parenting.

So you're not against giving same-sex couples the rights of marriage; you just want them to pay lots of lawyer's fees first?

Anyhow, you didn't answer my question. Please tell me how a same-sex couple could go to a lawyer to attain the two specific rights I mentioned:

- the ability to sponsor one's same-sex partner for immigration
- job-protected leave to care for a critically ill same-sex partner

Have you heard the saying "Nice story, bro?"

I'll take that your way of saying that you don't have a relevant response. I'm glad you concede the point.

More emotional appeal. More personal attacks. Any more and I might :foot:

Don't. Please. If you choked to death, I would be heartbroken.

 

[Alceste]

Of course, this isn't "the obvious".

Sure it is. Gay marriage has nothing to do with "separating children from their parents". That is completely obvious. It doesn't need defending any more than saying the sky is blue.

 

[Father Heathen]

Yes, because I have mentioned the Bible so much and because I "really want" to see us turn back to the "good ol' days when we had sexual slavery and when we talked to menstruating women."

Given that there is no rational, real-world justification for banning same-sex marriage, why else would you want to if not scripture?

And, no, we shouldn't "impose" our beliefs on others. That's why we should "like totally impose ssm by judicial fiat." Yet another poster in whose posts I will have no interest in in the future.

How would allowing homosexuals to marry impose anything on anyone? Are you suggesting that heterosexuals would be forced into arranged marriages with people of the same sex or something?

 

[Alceste]

How would allowing homosexuals to marry impose anything on anyone? Are you suggesting that heterosexuals would be forced into arranged marriages with people of the same sex or something?

Maybe "hoping" is more like it...