Posted on 11/19/2013 3:19:37 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Dear Greg,
Your views on gay marriage bother me. Shouldn’t consenting adults be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone? What harm is there? I know you think there could be potential damage to society if we allow the traditional marriage to be threatened, but what is the threat? It won't have any impact on traditional marriages if gays are simply allowed to make that same commitment. If you think this will just lead to the slippery slope of other compromises on marriage, like condoning marriage to animals, this is unlikely because animals are unable themselves to consent to marriage.
Bill
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Dear Bill,
Some quick comments on "gay" "marriage."
First, re: "What harm is there in letting people do what they want with their own lives?" you have made a common mistake in assuming this issue is about limiting the freedom of homosexuals. There is nothing that stops homosexuals from making lifelong commitments to each other. Gays already are allowed to make the same commitment. In fact, it’s done all the time. They already have the liberty to do what they want with their own lives. A marriage license, however, goes a step further than providing liberty. It doesn’t give liberty, it gives society's approval of that union, which homosexuals don't presently have. Homosexual marriage is not about what homosexuals are being forced by others not to do, but what society is being forced to do by homosexuals: approve. That's another issue entirely. See "When the Bride Is a Groom" on the STR web site for more development of this point.
Second, implicit in the act of altering the definition of marriage to include homosexuals is the acknowledgment that marriage isn't anything in particular, but can be defined and redefined as society likes. If marriage isn't any particular thing, then family isn't any particular thing either (this not only follows; it's an integral part of their argument). If we then concede that family isn't anything in particular, but is simply a convention, a social construct we invented and can alter at will, then this has direct ramifications for the future of the family as we know it. How can you say this isn't an impact? If this still is not clear, please read "What Marriage Is For," by Maggie Gallagher from The Weekly Standard. There's a link on our home page.
Finally, if marriage isn't anything in particular, but is merely defined by society in a way that the definition can change to meet changing conditions, then you cannot argue that "marriage" between humans and animals could never take place because animals can't consent (or can’t, as some people put it, enter into contracts). "Who are you to say" that a marriage is based on consent? "Who are you to impose" your own dogmatic definition of marriage upon others who don't happen to conform to your narrow views of morality? In other words, to quote you, "What harm is there in letting people do what they want with their own lives as long as they don't hurt anyone?"
If you respond, "But it's obvious that marriage is not the kind of thing that is for humans and animals," you are advancing my exact reasoning against homosexual marriage. You can't have it both ways. Sorry. That’s cheating. You might want to check out "You Can't Marry Your Canary" on the web site to get more detail on this.
It's also a bit stunning that your objection to humans marrying animals is grounded in the inability of animals to consent. Is this the best rejoinder you can offer? J.P. Moreland tells of a guy in Colorado, I think, who brought his horse to the courthouse to try to get a marriage license for the two of them. The clerk was flummoxed for a moment and finally turned him away because the horse wasn't 18 years old yet! I guess this was just another way of saying that the horse was under the age of consent.
My point is, I think there is a more obvious concern than mere consent. Marriage seems to be something in particular, not something we can twist any way we want. Obviously marriage isn’t for humans and animals and, just as obviously, it isn’t for members of the same sex.
Thanks for your challenge Greg Koukl
Shouldn’t consenting adults be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone?
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Sure they can do anything they want, They can even call it marriage, but it isn’t. It’s just two sick individuals who are mentally ill.
When I see gays who claim to be married I just chuckle .
Ping.
Homosexuals don’t want to get married . . . they want to put their fingers in the eyes of everyone man and woman who has married. It’s the last thing on their mind. It’s their attack on the sacrament of marriage that is so disgusting.
They are the last ones to promise faithfulness and obviously, they can’t reproduce as a couple.
What they want is to make fun of and disgrace the idea and holiness of marriage.
The consent rebuttal to the ‘animal marriage’ prospect is laughable. Animals do not need to give consent for anything. They are property. If animals had to consent before things were done to them, we’d all be vegans.
It falls under the heading of Defining Deviancy Downward. And I won't be a party to it.
The harm is when Doctors start saying that a sexual attraction to animals is a psychological condition, the same for pedophilia. You know kind of what they did for transgenders, who now can go into any bathroom they choose in our children’s schools, Gym’s, other facilities. They are now a protected class.
You all remember when the Gays in Texas said “All we want is for you to stay out of our bedroom” because Sodomy was against the law in Texas? Well that was decades ago, fast forward, now you have LGBT’s in our class-rooms,on our School boards, pushing their “reading” material onto our children.
One of the “natural” extensions of the normalization of “Same-Sex” marriage involves government run education.
I have rarely seen this discussed.
If Same-Sex marriage becomes a “Right”, then our children will be subjected to sex education classes that “must” make room for this in their curriculum.
We are talking about taking very impressionable young kids, when they are already struggling with or are seeking their own identity. Telling them that the government says it’s OK to be different and there is a new culture of acceptance.
The temporarily awkward kid that is trying to fit in with his/her peers will be enticed into a world of shame and loneliness.
It’s pure evil.
What’s the harm in a mother marrying her son, or a brother marrying his sister? What’s the harm with a 12 year old marrying a 60 year old? What’s the harm with 4 people all married to each other in a group marriage? What’s the harm with homosexual marriage?
With all these scenarios, marriage becomes meaningless.
Civil unions.
Offer a gay couple a civil contract with all the trappings of marriage - end of life decision making, life insurance beneficiary, everything.
They won’t want it. They don’t really want those things. They want legitimacy. They want the word ‘marriage’, to somehow let them believe that their lifestyle is condoned by society and considered normal.
Up until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Now, thanks to political correctness, we just indulge gays...and most are not happy, fulfilled, or mentally healthy.
You are about 20 years late in your concern. This stuff has been going on at least that long, longer in some places, but it will soon be universal through "Common Core."
Ditto EVERYTHING you said. “Gay Marriage” is just more “IN YOUR FACE AMERICA” BS from the sexual deviants. Kind of like hanging a whorehouse sign on the sacrament of marriage.
well you know what they’re all saying now: “Love is love”....
And that’s what they’ll be saying when it’s time to give approval to bestiality, polygamy, and pedophilia too.
“When I see gays who claim to be married I just chuckle .”
I thought in most states a marriage had to be consummated for it to be binding. And how is that going to happen - not the right plumbing...
Its already happening. My daughter’s high school is full of flamboyant boys, and she even had a bull dyke math teacher.
Two of the boys are brothers...because statistically that’s possible, right. Couldn’t be younger brother trying to act like the older one at all.
The meme they are taught...and they have pounded into my daughter’s head is “love, not gender”.
Some here may question why I kept her in the bull dyke classroom. It actually was very beneficial. My daughter had pretty much bought into the ‘love, not gender’ slogan. Its not just schools either, every time she would go to church with a friend, she’d come back with some gay propaganda in her head - no kidding. And, she viewed me as some sort of ancient stick in the mud stuck on old ideas.
Enter the bull dyke math teacher. Without a doubt, in her mind, the worst teacher she ever had. She often had substitutes (who knew absenteeism was a sign of mental problems), and the students would rabidly ask the substitute to explain the material, and even openly criticize the dyke teacher to the sub. Substitute days weren’t goof off days, they became the only days in which learning was possible. My daughter would also come home just amazed at this woman’s moodiness, self absorbed nature, and general lack of teaching skills. And I can tell that she was making the connection - this woman is NOT normal. Her lesbianism is indicative of severe problems, which manifest themselves in other ways that affect her ability to be a good teacher.
Marriage is first of a a religious act ..a vow of sexual nature..government it very late to the game..consider Henry the 8th..he was head of state and wanted a divorce yet he could not because the church controlled..so really do we want the state involved in what is a religious sexual vow?..no..the only aspect the state needs to be involved with in regardes to sex is the legal status of the persons created by a sexact..the not sexual aspect of what the state now bundel in to “marriage” is just legal contract and the state has no reason to tied that to sex or call it “marriage” ...
let Marrige be
1. A religious vow ith regared to sex
2. A Legal status for the product of sex..children
and thats it.
The other not sexual aspect should be a legal contract between any persons
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