Does "Gay" Marriage Harm the Institution of Marriage?

There are many who supported Arnold simply to get an "R" in the governor's house, thinking that a bit of a win was better than a total loss.

Well, you're treading down a very dangerous and very unlibertarian path.

The sodomy ruling was incorrect because the federal government has no constitutional authority whatsoever in that area. If your goal is to get rid of sodomy laws by any means necessary, you might as well invite the UN to do it.

At the time that ruling was handed down, some of us here predicted it would snowball and lead to gay marriage. We were assured by libertarians that it wouldn't, but in less than a year it's done just that in Massachusetts, and now those same libertarians seem to saying, "hey, gay marriage isn't such a problem, we should just roll over and accept the Massachusetts court ruling."

The idea that if we recognize normal male-female marriages we must also recognize gay ones is absurd on its face. We've recognized normal marriage for thousands of years of Western history and for the entirety of American history without recognizing unnatural relationships. Saying you can't limit marriage to the opposite sex is as silly as saying government can't provide separate restrooms in public facilities for men and women.

How did we manage to keep marriage limited to heterosexuals for all of American history if we "can't do it"?

Marriage is an institution that celebrates the uniting of the opposite sexes and solidifies their natural relationship for the protection of children and for the social benefits it provides. It is NOT LIBERTARIAN for an unelected branch of government to decide that the institution is a form of "bigotry" and to order us to change it to satisfy a few arrogant, power-hungry leftists.

Whether or not you believe in God, or live your life in a Christian manner, is in no way going to be impacted by the fact that two guys next door get married.

I respectfully disagree. It does affect the culture I live in, as it will dramatically affect this country's view of what family is and is not. Immorality degrades cultures. Finally, inviting God's sanction against our country is something I have to live with.

This is a slippery slope. Can an adult-child sexual relationship receive benefits? Can an adult-beast relationship receive benefits?

I don't like slippery slope arguments. What it comes down to is saying that the act in question is actually OK, but the person using the argument is against it, because it may lead to things that are not OK.

After all, when it comes right down to it, allowing premarital sex and oral sex between married, heterosexual couples are steps down the slippery slope.

As for the examples you put forth, the key is consent. Children and animals are not considered capable of giving such consent.

That said, I would like to see homosexual marriages as legally legitimate as tradition

I'd like to ask you some questions in all seriousness, and I'd like your best serious responses.

/1/ If marriage no longer is going to mean one man plus one woman, but can mean two men or two women, why not two men plus one woman, or three women, or five men? If we are going to toss out thousands of years of civilizations lessons, why must marriage be restricted to two people at all? What exactly is so important about the number two? If two men can be fine parents, wouldn't two men and a woman be even better for the child? How can you throw out the traditional definition of marriage, and then hold the line at the number two? Exactly on what basis now must marriage be defined as two people?

/2/ If all that matters is the loving relationship between any two consenting adults now, gay or hetero, how can you possibly prohibit the marriage of a father and son who is over 18? On what basis can you forbid the marriage of a mother and daughter or son, if they are consenting adults? Or a brother and sister? Forget the genetic arguement, we allow 45+ year old women to have babies, and there is a greater risk to children from her age. So on what basis do you now forbid the marriage of a 45 year old father and his 18 year old daughter, or son? Don't give me "tradition" because you have already blown that out of the water. What reason do you give now for forbidding incestuous marriage? What is the harm in a 36 year old father marrying his 18 year old son? Be logical, explain in detail, and remember, "tradition" doesn't count.

I await your speedy and logical replies.

It's pretty clear. Just in case you don't have your Bible handy...

"Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. And he said, "Now behold my lords, please turn aside into your servant's house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your was."...

Before they lay down, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both yound and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them." Gen 19:1-5

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Jude 1:7
In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

slam dunk!

Well, you're treading down a very dangerous and very unlibertarian path. The sodomy ruling was incorrect because the federal government has no constitutional authority whatsoever in that area. If your goal is to get rid of sodomy laws by any means necessary, you might as well invite the UN to do it.

With regard to the sodomy laws, I think the supreme court decision was quite libertarian. More to the point, the 9th Amendment states that rights not enumerated in the Constitution are still rights. Even if not explicitly stated in the Constitution, the right to consensually carry on in your own home surely exists and is protected by the 9th. It is no more unlibertarian than a law that would bar the publication of certain books.

The homosexual marriage decision is on shakier grounds in terms of libertarianism. That is because it commands the government to take certain actions. From my libertarian standpoint, however, the problem is that government is too involved in personal affairs. It shouldn't be sticking its nose into what is marriage one way or another. That should be a personal a religious issue.

If certain "marriage" contracts are drawn up, the government has a role in seeing to it that the parties don't break the contract -- which is why easy divorce and adultery bother me a lot more than homosexual marriage. However, I think the government has taken too large a role in the definition of marriage. And I'm not sure that the Massachusetts courts have done any good with regard to that.

Separation of church and state is also a separate issue. Even today, there is no requirement that a marriage have any religious aspect to it. You can fill out the proper paperwork and have a justice of the peace do your ceremony for you. If you choose to get your marriage performed by a clergyman, that's certainly your right, but you are not required to do so (nor should you be).

Marriage between man and woman has a religious aspect to it by definition. Every marriage in the world between man and woman is a tiny picture of the marriage between Jesus and the church. Many are not aware they are carrying this testimony around with them but it is the case. For the government to once have known this and to now become ignorant is quite an alarming trend.

The answer to that is that, of course, counterfeit money does threaten genuine currency. It devalues it. If a $1 bill bearing picture of Bill Clinton on it, run off on someone's HP printer, suddenly is accepted as being as legitimate as a genuine $1 bill, then all currency is devalued.

This argument is ridiculous. If the government prints another genuine $1 bill, your currency is devalued just as much as when a counterfeit bill enters circulation. The value of marriage is not due to scarcity. Is your marriage worth less when your (straight) neighbor gets married?

Marriage as a strictly religious institution was poisoned by state sanction. The civil union was the inevitable deathblow. It's too late to save that patient. I suppose it shouldnt surprise me that people get upset by a proposal to violate its corpse.

But I say, "so what?" The author needs to convince me that homosexual marriage is somehow worse than the marriage of heterosexual athiests or Wiccans. It is obviously in the interest of certain churches to recognize none of these, but how are these interests shared by the government?

In addition to what you said...

Here's an interesting angle from Howie Carr of the Boston Herald:

Once the incest and polygamy bans fall, and they will, what happens if a dying millionaire decides that the best way to avoid the inheritance tax is to divorce his wife and marry ... his son? Or his daughter? Or his daughter and his son?

If you stand to leave a million-dollar estate, you can pass down every penny, tax-free, to your spouse. If you leave it to anybody else, your heirs will pay a 55 percent death tax - $550,000.

And what if criminals start getting married, to avoid having to testify against each other? Hell, it already happens. Who could stop Whitey Bulger from taking Steve Flemmi as his bride, er, groom? Omerta isn't what it used to be, but you don't need a vow of silence if everybody in the gang is hitched to each other. This SJC insanity may yet give new meaning to the old movie, "Married to the Mob."

Of course, the natural response of the gay marriage crowd is "End spousal privilege." Now spouses will have to testify against ther husbands or wives. No more tax exemption on inheritances (never mind that the death tax is inherently unfair to begin with). Rather than open up the benefits of marriage to gays, what it will do is destroy those privileges that currently exist as a way of justifying a decision that really turns marriage into nothing more than an association of convenience.

Source

/1/ If marriage no longer is going to mean one man plus one woman, but can mean two men or two women, why not two men plus one woman, or three women, or five men? If we are going to toss out thousands of years of civilizations lessons, why must marriage be restricted to two people at all? What exactly is so important about the number two? If two men can be fine parents, wouldn't two men and a woman be even better for the child? How can you throw out the traditional definition of marriage, and then hold the line at the number two? Exactly on what basis now must marriage be defined as two people?

I support allowing consensual multi-partner marriages as well. In fact, given the households of Abraham and Jacob they have a long tradition. (For that matter, I've know of several multipartner arrangement, some of which have been together for more than 10 years -- and insofar as they have any political beliefs, they tend to be conservatives, otherwise.)

/2/ If all that matters is the loving relationship between any two consenting adults now, gay or hetero, how can you possibly prohibit the marriage of a father and son who is over 18? On what basis can you forbid the marriage of a mother and daughter or son, if they are consenting adults? Or a brother and sister? Forget the genetic arguement, we allow 45+ year old women to have babies, and there is a greater risk to children from her age. So on what basis do you now forbid the marriage of a 45 year old father and his 18 year old daughter, or son? Don't give me "tradition" because you have already blown that out of the water. What reason do you give now for forbidding incestuous marriage? What is the harm in a 36 year old father marrying his 18 year old son? Be logical, explain in detail, and remember, "tradition" doesn't count.

Intrafamily relations are close on a level that consent for sexual encounters cannot be assumed. Incestuous relations fall into the marrying children and animals category.

Surely government figures our Great Society has "evolved" beyond such parochial nonsense. We've freed ourselves from the encumberances of those outdated belief systems.

You said that children and animals can't consent.

In the case of children, the same leftists who are pushing gay marriage on us have also pushed teen abortion and teen condom distribution on us. Those things inherently presume that minors can not only consent, but have a fundamental right to engage in the behavior in question. By asserting that minors have a "right" to abortion and to birth control, the left has already laid the groundwork for adult-child sex and marriage.

How long will it be before a court like the one in Massachusetts notes that our courts have already ruled that minors are old enough to consent to abortions on their own, so why not marriage?

As for animals, they aren't required to consent to anything. Do cows consent to be slaughtered? Animals literally CAN'T consent, so why would they have to consent to marriage? Pet birds don't have to consent to be caged. Horses don't have to consent to be housed in a stall. So given the premises of judicial activism, why would lack of consent be a barrier to human-animal marriage? If it makes Leroy happy to marry a goat, isn't that all that matters? Why "discriminate" against him? Why require animals to consent to marriage when they aren't expected to consent to being leashed, caged, shot, slaughtered, forced to pull a plow, etc.?

You have in mind Ezekiel 16:49 and 50.

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.

The list starts with pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, failure aid the poor and needyand climaxes with the accusation that they "were haughty and did an abomination before me." Homosexuality is the abomination in question.

This passage has often been misused by some who yearn to downplay the homosexuality so clearly emphasized in the Genesis account. Those who try to twist it to this end tend to overlook or downplay the mention of "abomination" in v. 50.

That wasn't your plan, was it?

Dan
Biblical Christianity web site