dang. I know where spell-check is on a reply. Couldn't find it for this post. please forgive any spelling errors :-)
Ask these people if they think that smoking should be encouraged or discouraged. Ask them if they think eating tons of fast food should be encouraged or discouraged.
Then ask them why a gay lifestyle is something that liberals celebrate and even encourage, when the life expectancy for gays is some 20 years below the average.
Sounds kinda like: "Tell me why 2 + 2 doesn't equal 5, but don't give me any of that mathematics junk; that stuff don't fly with me".
Speaking as someone who's parents divorced, I firmly believe that children need to be raised by their mother and father. I think I turned out ok, but now that I'm engaged I'm determined that my own children will not have to wonder about why their mom and dad don't love each other.
I would never tell this to my parents because I don't want to hurt them, and I'm sure that the first generation of children raised by gay parents feels the same way, but I know in my heart that they want the same thing: their mom and their dad to love and support each other in a lifelong committment.
The marriage amendent isn't about homosexuality or disdain for same - it's about preserving traditional marriage as an institition that is favored with our society, because of it's benefits to children. (And yes, it's a given that children are better off with a mother and a father in the home.) It's just good public policy.
Opening marriage definitions to anything else will ultimately lead to opening the definition to everything else. The slippery slope argument is VERY real in this case, because the underlying tenet for those in favor of so-called gay marriage is anti-discrimination. Ergo, how can we discriminate against ANY (and therefore ALL) definitions that come our way?
Well, Marriage is an institution that has reigned for more than 2,000 years and it is an extremely radical position for an individual to argue that a union between one man and one woman should be discarded for a tiny but vocal minority (2 percent of Americans) of homosexuals. They are merely sexual perverts and we don’t owe it to them to corrupt and destroy marriage. I’ll point out that we do prevent a siblings and cousins from marrying. We aren’t going to allow full grown adults to marry children nor allow any other sexual perversion to take precedent over Marriage for the sake of the Waffen PC.
There must be a determined value set, despite whether someone believes in God or not. Marriage is defined as between a man and a woman.
Who does it hurt? It hurts the children. For once, I'll agree it's for the children. We teach our children based upon setting examples for them. In that example, one man and one woman is embraced.
Not only by God, but by the will of the American people. And since that example has overwhelmingly passed in 11 states, gay couples are breaking the law. It's that simple. Not just God's law, but American law. And it is a lesson for all children, morally and civically, to obey the law.
Substitute the homosexual argument with an incest argument. Whatever they say, substitute Man-man with Father-daughter or Mother-son and say the same thing can be said for those relationships.
My two cents
Points to remember;
They are asking the wrong question. How does this affect children raised in this environment? Is a better question.
If they assert that "studies show" homosexual parents are just as effective as heterosexual parents - ask them to name that (those) study(s). They can't because no credible large scale studies have been done. Those that have been done have very questionable methodologies. If they attempt to state that two homosexual parents are better than one hetero parent, their argument reduces itself to a simple numbers argument i.e. If two homo parents are better than one hetero parent, aren't four mommies to be preferred over only one or two, etc?
2) Don't let them get you into an argument on whether or not homosexuals are born or become that way over time. This is a dead end that makes no difference.
Good Luck
These are separate questions. Trying to answer them both with the same argument suggests that marriage is a strictly private arrangement, like a specific sexual act at a specific time, in a specific place. First, don't be drawn into a false alternative. It's baloney.
The question is about marriage. The answer is, Throughout the history of the United States, the question of who can make a particular contract with whom, under what circumstances has been a question in law. Laws are created by majoritarian institutions, not by courts. To devolve the creation of contract law in addition to its correct regulation entirely to the courts is to place a (judicial)tyranny over nearly every aspect of private life, exactly what the proponents of "gay marriage" claim to be against.
Marriage has a number of facets: personal, psychological, cultural, social, moral, religious, and political. Some of these facets overlap, some are orthogonal. In some the state has (and can have) no interest. Proponents of "gay marriage" often confuse those aspects which have state interest with those that have none. For example, the overriding reason for state interest in marriage as a specially recognized contract is in its own future: the propagation of humans and a stable environment for immature people to become fully participating members of the polity: adults. Faced with this, homosexual advocates advance the claim that "marriage isn't just about children." Justly so, but in the wrong cause. The aspects of marriage that homosexual advocates advance--bonding through mutual physical satisfaction and other kinds of personal fulfillment--are not areas in which the state is (or should be interested). So these dimensions really aren't relevant to the argument. And homosexuals really don't advocate that they should be: they already claim these areas are beyond state supervision, and their argument for "gay marriage" is an argument for state recognition for precisely those aspects of marriage under the supervision of the state.
But that doesn't stop them from mixing irrelevancies into their arguments.
And if they want to do it, don't try to indoctrinate young people that it is a healthy lifestyle.
The first have to do with morality, religion and tradition. I think you're pretty clear on those.
The other has to do with the unlimited expansion of government because if the basis for "marriage" is that folks love one another then there are no limits. Groups of people can marry and access the public treasury through SS and healthcare. I love my grandchildren as much as any homosexual loves their other or whatever is the politcally correct term these days. If civil unions or "homosexual marriage" are enacted as law then why can I not marry one of my grandchildren so they can tap the federal treasury for SS survivors benefits for the rest of their lives?
Better to focus on the negative effects of government having ANY role in defining/registering/licensing personal relationships.
Tell them that if they believe in evolution, then homosexuality is an exception to the rule.
Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Tell 'em to invent a new word.
I'll tell you what my gay brother said. The gay lifestyle is not a monogamous one. He would have had 4 divorces by now. Why tie up courts with silly crap that should have never happened to begin with? My brother is against gay marriage. He also thinks that gay marriage is a way to force people to ligitimize homosexuality. It makes it more acceptable. And it is a slippery slope. 30 years ago we were told that abortion would NEVER be used as birth control. Once gay marriage is accepted and normalized, pedophelia is not far behind. He's against pedophelia and has given up the gay lifestyle, lives alone and no longer "dates".
1. The impact - or at least strong correlation - between state-recognized gay marriage and the decline of traditional marriage is well documented in the countries that have already crossed the line such as Sweden and the Netherlands.
2. Gay marriage advocates are asking us to take a 30-year old theory (i.e., gays are ok and it's genetic anyway) legitimizing behavior that has been condemned by every civilization and every major religion over 6000 years of recorded history. Your advocate will point to the greeks - "well, the greeks were homosexual. Just look at Socrates (who Plato has lusting after a young boy in one of the dialogues), Alexander (who Aristotle apparently lusted after), Achilles (who got all upset over the death of his (probable) male lover (but possibly just shield-mate) Patrochlos), and Sappho (an apparent lesbian from Lesbos who wrote the only female-authored fragments of poetry we have from ancient greece). The correct response is that the totality of the evidence says that homosexual behavior was just as sidelined back then as it is now. Roman poetry (I want to say lucretius, or mayby cattulus) mocks the pretty boys, male prostitutes, etc. pretty heavily. The next response is to say that most of those who are recorded in literature as practicing homosexual acts were aristocracy. Civilization is not built on or continued by aristocracy.
3. The gay marriage argument goes: Two people who love each other should have that union recognized by the state. (a) The state has been in the business of recognizing, legitimating, and subsidizing marriage only for the last 150 years or so. Before that, it was essentially up to the parties and their church to decide whether they were married. Outside of christendom, I doubt that it was any different. (b) I don't know about you, but I really don't want the state regulating on the basis of "love." The only reasonable justification I've ever heard for the state regulating and subsidizing marriage is to promote the continuation of the state (i.e., kids). No matter what the technology, gay couples don't tend to be effective kid-producing machines. Thus, the only justification is that they love each other. The state should never, never, never regulate love. For further support, talk to Winston & Julia from Orwell's 1984.
4. There's a separate civil rights argument based upon the proposition that homosexual behavior is genetically encoded. No peer-reviewed study supports this. Every study that purports to do so has been discredited. If it's a lifestyle choice, there's no legitimate civil rights discrimination argument.
This post on another thread is a wealth of information!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1275132/posts?page=42#42