Posted on 05/29/2003 11:42:24 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
And funny isn't it that I never asked about special rights. That's your word not mine. Even after it was pointed out to you repeatedly you cling to the lie rather than admit that you didn't answer the question.
me->And what rights do they not have that we have?
you->None. That's exactly my point. Gays have the same rights as everyone else. No more and no less. Only some people (especially here) seem to have no problem refusing to recognize those rights.
Protecting and defending those rights is what I'm arguing for. Some on here seem to think it's OK to abridge someone's rights if they personally are offended by what the person might do with their freedom, or if their behavior isn't given the blessing of the government.
And just how are these rights being violated? By denying them the special right to marry someone of the same sex? I don't have that right why should they? By denying them the right to molest my children before they reach the age of consent? By denying them unsupervised access to other's children? I don't have any of these rights why should they. I don't have the right to perform sex acts in public. Why should they?
Everything you say seems to be pushing for special rights for sexual deviants since they aren't being deprived of any rights that they already have. Now unless you can show proof of where their existing rights are being denied we will have to assume that you are indeed pushing for special rights for them.
How (exactly) are their rights being violated thereby forcing them to pretend to be something they're not?
Moreover, it was originally Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of property . . . but was changed by the founders to the "pursuit of happiness" to gain general support from the masses. The founders did not actually believe in a general right of "the pursuit of happiness", which is impossible to define other than on an individual basis - and thus impossible to use to grant "rights." For instance, pedophilia makes some people happy. Does that therefore give them the "right" to do it?
In a previous post I discussed the reason for marriage. (Which of course you ignored). So I'll do it again here.
Marriage is a civil contract between a man and a woman, sanctioned by the government for the purpose of providing a safe and stable environment for the raising of children. Since only a relationship of one man to one woman produces the optimum environment for raising children, only that sort of relationship receives government sanction. In order to promote the stability of this relationship certain legal advantages are given to the partners in the contract (inheritance, medical rights etc). All these advantages are intended to maintain the stability for the children.
Since the children are the next generation of citizens and will run this society when we retire it is in everyone's best interest to provide for them the best upbringing we can. (and of course that best up bringing only happens in a married household of one man and one woman.)
Anything that threathens or weakens the marriage contract (such as imitation unions between two men, two women, a man and his sheep etc) damages each of us as it weakens the basic foundation of the next generation of this society.
Likewise, 'homosexual' adoption or fostering damages the children raised in such unhealthy homes. Due to their mental illness/damage 'homosexuals' are not fit parents.
(Now before you bring up the standard 'homosexual' talking point "what about people who are sterile or choose not to have children" let me add that the marriage contract only provides the environment for raising children, it doesn't force children to be raised. Sterile people have been known to adopt. This puts the child in a healthy environment of one man married to one woman, exactly as intended by the marriage contract. People decide sometimes much later in life to have children (my wife and I were married 15 years before we had our first child).)
If two men want to live together in a monogamous relationship for the rest of their lives they are already free to do that. They just can't get government sanction to call it a marriage (as it has no possibility of benefitting any children resulting from the union or adopted into the union). They have exactly the same rights that I do.
As you point out, most rights are balanced against other rights. The worst "right" ever written was the "pursuit of happiness." Unfortunately for us, Jefferson understood that such pursuit would be both lawful and moral. If he had been able to conceive of as perverse a society as ours growing out of the American experiment He might have phrased it differently (or retained the original).
Jefferson didn't really believe in the fallen nature of man. That's why he so fully supported the French experiment, which was a dismal failure because it did not respect G-d. Our experiment did respect G-d and has been a huge success. I say "did" not "does" and I fear the worst for the future of our experiment. If Jefferson had believed in the fallen nature of man, he might have realized that we were no less likely than Greece or Rome to confuse liberty with license, and be destroyed by it.
Shalom.
Shalom.
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