Sorry, but that is not actual harm in the same sense that murdering or molesting someone is. Maybe to you it is, but see if your definition of harm flies in a court of law. Try suing all known homosexuals for "degredation of society." Good luck with that. Noble as your convictions may be, your point is not made valid by your unwillingness to discern the meaning of "actual harm".
And let's admit it, your mention of the AIDS problem is really only a pretext to denigrating people you don't like and disagree with culturally. What if your neighbors were a same sex couple who were completely free of STDs and remained monogamous. You wouldn't have any problem with them? I'm certain you would. So let's be done with the "societal harm" facade.
The problem is that you don't know that. There isn't a repeatable experiment we can do with two cultures where the only variable is that one supports homosexual behavior and one does not. So we can't know.
But there are some things we can know.
The first experiment we ran in the U.S. to change the nature of marriage - the free love movement - has cost dearly. There are plenty of people who died in the streets who might not have if the traditional family had been upheld by our culture instead of caving into the "consenting adult" argument. I was there when the argument was going on, and the "live and let live" argument was exactly what you are espousing now. Unfortunately, and with apologies to Sir Paul McCartney, it became "live and let die."
The Neatherlands legalized Gay marriage. I can't remember the exact percentage, but I just read recently that the number of people getting married, as opposed to cohabitating, is down something in the neighborhood of 50%. There is NO EXISTING CULTURE which accepts gay marriage.
That last one should be huge. You are asking us to simply accept a huge change in the very foundation of our society, and YOU CAN'T POINT TO A SINGLE WORKING EXAMPLE.
It's as if I asked you if I could replace all the load bearing walls in your home with a new "lumber" made out of pressed, recycled newspapers. I offer to do that at no cost to you, and put you up at the Ritz while the project is performed.
You ask me how I know the new "lumber" will work, and I say "there's no reason why it won't." You ask me if I have built any houses with this lumber before and I say, "No, I want to use your house to prove it can work."
Only a maroon would say, "Sure, I'll try."
Yet, that's what you're asking us to say in accepting homosexual marriage. We have lots of valid reservations. We can't prove they will come true, but we aren't the ones asking for a radical change to the "load bearing walls" of our society.
Show me a working homosexual society somewhere else, one that's been around for long enough to matter (at least a century) and we can talk.
Until then, try the experiment on someone else's house.
Shalom.
You mean like the disease free and monogamous couple that tortured raped and murdered Jesse Dirkhising? There is no such thing as a monogamous 'homosexual' couple. It is as much a figment of your imagination as the easter bunny.
Sorry, I thought I explained that people died.
What counts as "harm" to you?
>......see if your definition of harm flies in a court of law.
Most LEO's and grand juries get pretty sticky about dead people, even if they were, in the immortal words of Stevie Winwood, "shot dead by a gun that didn't make any noise." London police got very horsey about some young queer men who announced that they were HIV-positive and intended to spread it around, in particular to MP's, barristers, judges, and similar persons.
Try suing all known homosexuals for "degredation of society." Good luck with that.
Nice straw man. Where did you get him? An HRC posting seminar?
Noble as your convictions may be, your point is not made valid by your unwillingness to discern the meaning of "actual harm".
I'll let your statement stand like that, and let the world marvel, that your definition of "actual harm" doesn't include contagion and death -- two of the Four Horsemen.
And let's admit it, your mention of the AIDS problem is really only a pretext......
Oh, here we go -- come on, chihuahua, I want to hear you say "PHOBE PHOBE PHOBE!!!"
Funny how you keep telling people you're a foursquare conservative, but as soon as your hauteur is punctured and your fallacies of distraction penetrated, you whip out your razor blade like a Salon snap queen and start impugning people's motives vindictively, discounting moral teachment and a sense of public hygiene to nothing more than bias and bigotry.
Well, bias it is -- and so is a police detective's bias against gunplay in the street by armed knuckleheads -- but your accusation of outright bigotry "masquerading" (your precise smear) as morality or anything other than black dishonor is pure drama-queen finger-pointing and argumentum ad hominem -- the very, very most favoritest tactic of the homofascists.
So why are we supposed to think you're a conservative, again?