Posted on 11/09/2004 7:17:10 PM PST by Laissez-faire capitalist
To add to your points, in my own family my great aunt lived with another woman in what could only be called a gay marriage for DECADES. There was no infidelity that I was aware of, and they were two of the most loving and caring people around.
While I understand society's desire to keep the word "marriage" exclusive to one man and one woman, the idea of civil unions does not bother me at all.
And in a basic sense, it is irrelevant to me whether someone is born a certain way or not.
How does it involve equal treatment under the law? All people have the equal right to marry a member of the opposite sex. What gay activists are asking is that we change the law and even further promote open homosexuality in the public arena. I also believe in live and let live but when this involves the idea of marriage and appropriate sexual behavior being recast to make one very small group feel better about something that is not normal or preferable I will oppose them every time.
God gave YOU rules to live by, not US. You can only speak for yourself. I'm sure it warms God's heart to know that you are "willing" to go along with him.
It is false that all societies have rejected homosexuality, if by that word you mean sexual conduct between two members of the same sex.
1) Tokugawa Japan, modern West and ancient Rome/Greece to varying degrees approved of or at least tolerated without persecution gay relationships. Indeed, was it Spartans who actually encouraged fellow soldiers in certain platoons to become lovers and thus bind them more closely in soldiering?
2) In old SE Asia, transexuals(a form of homosexuality? to many on this board it would be) were often the head of local religious cults(I use the word cult without the modern connotations, merely meaning a local religious sect or group that may depend on worship or honoring of a local deity or spirit.) The prevalence of transexuals has continued in modern day Asia, especially in Thailand where it seems to have come down through the ages from that older culture.
Society is composed of individuals living in clusters of more or less densely populated geographical and socio-political arrangements.
There is no "society" apart from large groups of individual human beings. Society is itself an abstraction, though it is a convenient shorthand to describe aggregate trends in behavior or cultural mores.
Lesbians tend to be more monogamus but they also represent (if I remember correctly) only about 9% of all homosexuals. Homosexuality interestingly enough has the same distribution from male to female as most sexual disorders where as men represent the largest portion of such populations.
Well done. The homosexual activists have been trying to keep these truths from the public for a long time.
Forgot to ping the list with my last post...
The promiscuous gay men might SAY they want gay marriage, as a banner to "fight for," but the truth is, none of them would actually want to take on the debts of one of their partners. After the initial boom, those kind of gays will not marry.
Gays and lesbians in long-term committed relationships are as monogamous as heterosexuals, with the gay men being slightly LESS monogamous than straight married men, and lesbians being more monogamous than straight married women.
Your average gay, the one you might see at work tomorrow or on the train and not know he is gay, is much like you and does not have any agenda for ruining your life, values, and conservative institutions. I know some conservative gays who are AGAINST gay marriage.
I used to think that gay marriage would be taking away from thousands of years of civilization. I have changed my mind. It would not. It wouldn't change much at all. There are heteros who certainly trash the institution of marriage all the time, in many different ways, and there are good, solid gay citizens whose unions would remain personal and would allow them to enter the world of decent family values instead of being forced onto the fringe of society, where mores are naturally more loose.
Flame away.
It's normalizing a condition of mental illness, more precisely, an identity crisis that's the problem.
Your examples are my examples. There is no rationalization that can fit homosexuality into the paradigms of physical existence on Earth without treating it as an illness.
I argue this all the time. If an employer has 10 employees, and 5 are married with spousal coverage, what the heck difference would it make materially if the spouse was another guy? None at all. If today that gay man is single and tomorrow he is allowed to marry and get his spouse covered, how is that different from the young lady at the next desk who suddenly gets married?
And don't give me the AIDS thing. Most of the AIDS cases around here are coming from the minority populations and many of them are hetero. Maybe the guys are having bi or jail sex (AIDS is huge in prison), but when they sleep with a girl later, she gets it too. So AIDS may come from anal sex with guys but in these slovenly (criminal and promiscuous) populations they are spreading to both sexes.
Of course they will. Marriage also means taking on your spouse's DEBT. Inheriting his property. It is very serious. If you married and then cheated on the guy, you are setting yourself up for some major hurt. Ask the guy who has an affair with his secretary and loses among other things his house.
What, gays are 5% of the population? Max 10%? And you think they ALL will marry?
You seem to have a mental block.
Heterosexuals don't make Homosexuals go out and have multiple sex partners. If Homosexuals were inclined to have one "partner", they would. Their failure to do so has NOTHING to do with pressure by the heterosexual community.
ping
INTREP
Even that is high. Including bisexuals the number is 2.1%. It's a little higher for men and lower for women.
One of these days I'll post an updated copy, but the following link may prove helpful:
Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links
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