Posted on 01/31/2007 6:26:35 PM PST by mojojockey
I have a friend who is very liberal and who is gay. Whenever I explain to him why gay marriage isn't a good idea he never seems to understand. So fellow Freepers please give me your input on why gay marriage is not a good idea, and how do you answer the silly argument that "Well straights are having divorces , so blah blah"
Marriage is about one thing only, procreation. Why would a gay person want to participate in anything that has the mission of supporting procreation?
There is a fundamental difference in the nature of straight and gay relationships.
To wit:
If there were no heterosexuals, there would be no gay people (or any other kind of people).
If there were no gay people, there would still be people.
Therefore, it seems completely reasonable to treat the two types of relationships differently.
If you're gay, thank a heterosexual.
Because their lifestyle is deviant.
Marriage is a religious thing. If you're going to define legal a union between two people for some reason, the only involvement the state should have is to regulate next-of-kin, inheritance and tax status - and you shouldn't have to be married to define any of those things between two people.
So the whole 'gay marriage' thing is a bit pointless. Anyone can get 'married' under whatever defines their belief system - but it has no legal weight. For the government to demand that a particular religious definition applies to a class of legal relationships, you've got your church/state UNION happening right there. You may as well move to Iran and have done with it if that's what you want.
If you and your friend can truly have thoughtful discussions, I might say something like this. Both easy divorce and gay marriage are centered around the desires of adults and discount the needs of children. When easier divorce laws were being debated in the early 1970s, some people said that it would be good for children because they wouldn't have to hear their parents fight. The child would also benefit from having two rooms, more toys and more brothers and sisters to play with. These arguments were obviously false. It will similarly take some 30 years before we really know how large numbers of children react to having been raised in lesbian/homosexual households.
Gay rights supporters frequently point to the divorce rate as a reason to support gay marriage, but both liberals and conservatives can find common ground in backing stricter divorce laws. You may tell your friend that heterosexuals have not treated marriage well over the past 40 years, but this is not a reason to back gay marriage. Heterosexuals needs to do better.
I have no doubt that homosexuals or lesbians can love their children, just as other people do, but not all of these loving situations (and I'm not being vulgar) put the interests of children first. To give extreme examples, members of the Mafia and el-Qaida probably love their children.
Children should not be used to support some agenda. Gay families entering the Easter egg event on the White House lawn are an example of this
Every gay family that deliberately brings a child into the world is placing his/her own desires first. My same-sex relationship is so important to me that you are going to go without a father or mother, in other words.
You might also point to the website of a Canadian women who was raised in a homosexual household: http://www.dawnstefanowicz.com/
These are some ideas. The web site might be good.
Marriage is beneficial to society.
Married men and women are healthier, wealthier, and they have children (it's kinda been that way since the beginning of mankind)
These children are our future, and when they are raised within the context of a marriage, they receive the benefit of having a mother and a father...which is how nature planned it.
Granted ...men and women often fail miserably - but the ideal is there, and those that live up to it prove it to be true.
homosexuality leads to a shorter life span, disease, depression.
This is not beneficial to society.
The sex is sterile - any children brought into the relationship must be adopted, or the product of one partners relationship with someone of the opposite sex.
To raise a child in this situation automatically excludes
one parent, as well as raising the risk that those children will have a sick parent - or a parent who dies young.
Recent studies have also shown that the less a child is exposed to a traditional family situation the higher the risk the child will become homosexual.
This hurts the argument that homosexuality is purely genetic.
"I would ask in reply to some of these comments:
Since when is marriage about procreating?
You can procreate perfectly well without marriage."
Everybody understands that not all couples can have children for a variety of reasons. There have always been childless marriages. Childless married heterosexuals, however, do not radically redefine marriage in a manner which never existed before even in ancient Rome or Greece. They still present the role model of a couple who could have children or adopt children. Maybe they had children in the past. Whatever the case, they don't "stick out" from the crowd, if you will. Kids can look at the couple and think of Mom and Dad whether they have kids or not. I know childless couples who get involved with their friends' kids.
The comparisons you hear between gay couples and interracial couples are inaccurate. When the debate about interracial marriage was going on, the automatic assumption was made that the couples would be heterosexual. Allowing interracial heterosexuals to marry was a true expansion of marriage. Gay marriage is a redefinition.
The reason why children are so important is that they are our entire future. The government needs new children because this is how society perpetuates itself. The government has no compelling interest in getting involved in an institution which mostly involves adults because it has little to do with the long-term future. If married heterosexuals ceased to have that many children, the government would have no compelling interest in heterosexual marriage either. The great majority of married heteros do have children, but this does not mean that childless couples are inferior.
I am disturbed by your attitude towards illegitimacy. So many illegitimate children grow up in poverty and are inadequately supervised by adults. Surely we know by now that boys especially need fathers. Listen to an inner-city minister on this subject.
Couples with kids who live together without getting married are far more likely to break up than are married folks, and do it sooner. If the father is not the child's own, there is an increased risk of child abuse. This does not mean that all unrelated fathers abuse children, but a greater percentage do this than do genetic fathers. If you're interested in another conservative web site which posts a number of articles on these topics, go to http://www.cwfa.org/main.asp and type your topic into the search button in the upper left hand corner.
along the divorce lines. i'd say divorce is just as wrong unless there is abuse involved. our society treats divorce like it's as moral as marriage. if one does get divorced, then one should never get remarried. if we are strict across the board, then maybe people wouldn't rush into marriage, and perhaps our tax dollars wouldn't have to be spent on it. marriage is for serious couples only--not people on whims.
Tax dollars spent on divorces? Tax dollars spent on marriages? See, that's a problem right there. You wanna get hitched? Pay for it yourself. You wanna get divorced? Ditto.
You are absolutely right. When homosexuals point to the divorce rate of heterosexual couples as a justification for gay marriage, the truthful response is that the divorce rate is deplorable. To demand gay marriage by attaching it to the bad behavior of those who made lifelong committments to another and broke those vows amounts to a weak argument. Two wrongs don't make a right.
PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT referring to those who have divorced for very good reasons. No one would expect a person to stay with an abusive spouse, and the abuse might not necessarily mean physical abuse.
But 50%? I don't believe they're all abuse cases. Maybe we should be looking at the wife who wants her job/career and the husband who wants the same. BUT, they also want a baby! A baby they give over to one of the Moms or to a daycare. Neither wants to stay home and be the prime caretaker of their own child! The career comes before the baby they HAD to have. In other words, they want it all.
If it's true that some (who?) touted the idea that divorce would be good for children (in some instances it would be the lesser of two evils, for sure), citing the two rooms, more brothers & sisters to play with, I never heard that nonsense.
While some of us had the insight and saw the consequences to children, due to divorce, amazingly it must have taken some others many years to wake up to it, and some still wear their selfish blinders.
What is their mantra? "If I'm happy, then my kids have to be happy." Unbelievable!
I would hope you're wrong that some children will be made to live with homosexual couples for a long time until it's proven that they have been messed up. Again, many of us already see the bad outcome, but we do not decide.
It's all very sad. Can we do more?
Unfortunately I don't remember where I read the bit about the child of divorce having two rooms, more toys, etc. I do remember that it was in one of those "Ladies Home Journal" types of magazines, but I didn't take note of what it was at the time. It was a journalist's article. It would take a bit of research to find actual sources (other than my own memory), and I'm probably too lazy to do it. It might be a topic for a graduate research paper.
You're right in noting that there are parents who treat their children like embellishments to their own self-fulfillment. We have a gay rights movement because our society is ripe for it. We've got acceptance of sex outside of marriage, birth control, cohabitation - all sorts of things that heterosexuals do make it possible for the gay rights movement to blossom and flourish.
In connection with ideas on how to combat this stuff, there isn't one quick fix. We could start by examining their methods. One of their methods (you can read this in "After the Ball: How America Will Overcome Its Fear and Loathing of Gays in the '90s" by Kirk and Madsen) is to assume the role of victim. If somebody calls you a homophobe for saying things like boys are best off when they have fathers, maybe you could say is that you feel hurt and intimidated by this insult. They talk about their feelings all the time! They want us to feel sorry for them while they call us racist bigots.
If you've got kids at home, monitor TV watching. I know that this can be difficult, but MTV is just one long porno commercial IMHO.
Getting involved in schools is a good idea. I've read posts from people on this site who examine books in their child's school library and bring it to the school's attention when they find books like "King to King", "Heather Has Two Mommies", etc.
There are various family groups, depending on your comfort level in working politically. Concerned Women for America is a Christian group. The American Family Institute has branch offices (Virginia Family Institute, etc.). There may be something in your home town. Here in my town, I helped a local group sort paper for their "pastor packets". This is not earth shattering work, but the pastor packets were being sent out in connection with the upcoming marriage amendment vote. There's a lot you can do. Just make your voice heard somehow.
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