Homosexual marriage II

[Tessar]

Actually it does exist as a legal contract. In several states.

[Nerdanel]

I look forward to the day when sex isn't the first thing we see when we look at a person, when gender doesn't matter and people stop being so interested in who comes on who.

[Mari]

Originally Posted by Nerdanel

I look forward to the day when sex isn't the first thing we see when we look at a person, when gender doesn't matter and people stop being so interested in who comes on who.

Hear hear!

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Nerdanel

I look forward to the day when sex isn't the first thing we see when we look at a person, when gender doesn't matter and people stop being so interested in who comes on who.

Wise words Finland

This talk of banning only makes me think of authoritarian rule..

[Mari]

I found out why they were protesting by the way. Legally everything is just fine, but they want to be able to be open about it in public as well. So no people staring when they hold hands and no parents complaining when their child's teacher admits to being gay.

And since yesterday the Christian Union is allowing gay people to hold a position in their party, but they (the CU) strongly recommend against it. This in the wake of a ruling concerning another religious party and women's rights within that party.

(Thanks for the explanation MrB )

[Rían]

I disagree. I think God made men and women (as opposed to a creature that could reproduce asexually) on purpose, for many good reasons.

[Lief Erikson]

I also strongly disagree. I've seen definite differences between men and women. They're psychological as well as physical, and they're wonderful! The masculine and feminine roles parallel the relationship between the Bride of Christ and her Husband! The marriage relationships and gender roles are wonderful signs God has put on Earth pointing toward Heaven.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I didn't say that there are no differences; in fact, if you will note, I said, "there is some truth to them". I just feel that they are often exaggerated. I certainly won't say that men and women have no psychological differences; I just think that what people see is often quite exaggerated. In the real world, it's my experience that girls often act quite ditzy, in such a manner that it's clear that they aren't actually dumb, they just do it to be "cute", or because some macho dingbats find it sexy. I find this obnoxious, because it isn't really what it is to be feminine.

In the world of the conservative Catholic college where I live, the differences are far, far more exaggerated. It's probably because I live at TAC that I have come to feel this way.

You are absolutely right, Rian, that God made man and woman different, and with good reason. I just get queasy from the excessively docile, demure, and submissive to the point of bordering on slavish manner in which girls in some conservative circles. Not to say that acting like that to some degree is bad; it's just way overdone where I live.

You, Lief, are also right. Men and women are different, and this is a sign of the mystical marriage of Christ and Church. But one has to be careful of taking these analogies too far. Similarly, the relationship of a father to his children mirrors that of God with his creation, but we'd hardly want children to start offering sacrifices to their father, or regarding him as the definitive measure of right and wrong, now would we? Similarly, I think it's important to remember that the Christ-Church relationship is like the husband-wife relationship....only raised to the power of infinity.

[Tessar]

Then by your standards, the entire point of this thread is moot (no pun intended).


To have a true, effective debate you sort of need to all be working from at least one similar assumption... We're all using the word marriage, but apparently everyone has a different definition of it .

[BeardofPants]

Wait... what? You saying that marriage can't evolve? Change? Sure, you *could* argue that marriage predates govt, but then you'd also have to say that its very basis comes from the evolutionary predecessor of government (if you believe in evolution). Certainly, marriage or pairing as a concept has come about through society of one form or another and the two are tightly linked. To say that marriage is not linked to the govt & legislation is burying your head in the sand.

I'd also like to say that marriage predates christianity too. Lets just toss that out there.

[BeardofPants]

I agree with you gaffer that you need some sort of 'community' to recognise marriage, but I'd still argue that marriage or an equivalent union predates government.

From wiki :

"The exact moment and place that the phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of very early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared.[17] By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: the Indus Valley Civilization, Sumer, Ancient Egypt and the Yellow River Civilization.[18]"

Government is still pretty recent, whereas humans have been mating & undergoing partnerships for far longer.

[The Gaffer]

Fair point, though I was thinking of marriage as something that, by definition, has ceremony as part of it. It's not just mating, even if it's for life. That implies some sort of formal convention, officially sanctioned in some sort of way. Even if it's just an assembly of a community or a bunch of elders sitting about, it's a kind of government.

I think we tend to romanticise and maybe even fetishise marriage and the family a bit when we're looking back at these things in the past. As noted, a marriage might be a wholly non-romantic, political thing. I remember when Prince Charles married Princess Di, one of these crusty old Royal commentators on the telly going on about how she was "outstanding breeding stock", probably one of the oldest motives for marriage in the world.

[BeardofPants]

Yeah, whereas I was thinking that marriage could be defined by any community sanctioned partnership. I'm sure that there were 'marriages' of a sort during the hunter-gatherer period also - if only to effect some sort of genetic diaspora.

[The last sane person]

You are in very good company then.

[Rían]

well, pretty inbred third-cousins, I imagine ...

[The Gaffer]

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins I believe. Lots of the European royals have been doing it for centuries.

Hence bug-a-lugs.

[GrayMouser]

In the category of "What more can you say?"

Some Republicans, feeling the wind blowing against them this election cycle, have re-introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment. Nothing surprising there, except the original ten co-sponsors include Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and Sen. Larry Craig (R.-Idaho).

Because after all, marriage should be defined as a union between a diaper-wielding dominatrix and a men's room toilet.

[inked]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,6057126.story

Opinion

Protecting marriage to protect children

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving. But in all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood.

By David Blankenhorn
September 19, 2008


I'm a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That's certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.

But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I've come to a different conclusion.

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.

These days, because of the gay marriage debate, one can be sent to bed without supper for saying such things. But until very recently, almost no one denied this core fact about marriage. Summing up the cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher in 1992 put it simply: "People wed primarily to reproduce." The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that "it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution."

Marriage is society's most pro-child institution. In 2002 -- just moments before it became highly unfashionable to say so -- a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that "family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

All our scholarly instruments seem to agree: For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other.

For these reasons, children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right. The last time I checked, liberals like me were supposed to be in favor of internationally recognized human rights, particularly concerning children, who are typically society's most voiceless and vulnerable group. Or have I now said something I shouldn't?

Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn't last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!

For me, what we are encouraged or permitted to say, or not say, to one another about what our society owes its children is crucially important in the debate over initiatives like California's Proposition 8, which would reinstate marriage's customary man-woman form. Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them? Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another? Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children? How many parents per child is best? Do you think that "two" is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever? If you do, be careful. In making the case for same-sex marriage, more than a few grown-ups will be quite willing to question your integrity and goodwill. Children, of course, are rarely consulted.

The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?

Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution -- marriage -- that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing -- the gift, the birthright -- that is marriage's most distinctive contribution to human society. That's a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support.

David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of "The Future of Marriage."

[Insidious Rex]

Last I checked marriage does not necessarily equal having children. Faulty reasoning.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by inked

The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?

It's hard to attribute this to the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin; that's basically philosophy 101. Any one who gives it a few minutes of thought will tell you that.