What is it about "Marriage."

Now that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional (in that state) to deny marriage to homosexual partners there is a lot of noise about how politicians are reacting. Most of the nine dwarves have declared that they oppose homosexual "marriage" but support "civil unions" that look exactly the same on paper. (President Bush has stated that he supports a maintaining our traditional understanding of marriage without giving us any specifics.)

Does anybody remember the duck test? Civil unions are marriage. This is a semantic shell game. Now, don't get me wrong. I understand Democrats and their semantic shell games. They're caught because most Americans don't support homosexual marriage. But many, if not most, Americans support some kind of civil unions.

If I understand this, Americans are against homosexual marriage, but they are in favor of homosexuals being married in everything but name. Therefore the politicians have to follow the people they want to lead, and come out against homosexual marriage.

Can any FReeper help me understand what's in that name? What is it with marriage that makes it impossible to call a relationship involving sex, shared property, joint custody of children, inheritance rights, and shared benefits marriage?

One problem is that it [homosexuality] already IS public

Yep, and so is public heterosexual immorality. Which is more widespread? Do more people see some homosexual movie or a James Bond movie (used as an example - pick any movie in which sex outside of marriage is prominent)? Are there more homosexuals engaged in sexual conduct or babies born out of marriage?

One writer suggested the way to undo a knot is to start with the last tie. I think that's a bad analogy. I think a more correct analogy would be that public homosexuality is a symptom, but the disease is heterosexual immorality. We're so vastly in the majority that the problem and the solution are dominated by what we do, not what they do.

Just my opinion, but look at it this way. If we were somehow able to eliminate all homosexuals, would our society be basically moral? Would essentially all children be born into a stable family in a loving, committed relationship? Would divorce be as rare as murder? Or conversely, if we could eliminate all heterosexual immorality, would public homosexuality be a problem? Would there be any reasonable chance they could get their 'civil unions'?

I don't run the world (for which we can all be thankful) but if I did, I'm convinced I know where the leverage is to work this problem.

Apparently you see religion based morality as antiquated, imperfect, and needing updating.

Indeed, I do. I feel that religion is some form of "training wheels" needed to get humankind from the very beginnings of civilization, at the dawn of agriculture, to a world where nearly everyone is literate, educated, and politically free. Then, instead of superstition, and top-down leadership, we use intelligence and reason to arrive at various consensuses as to what to do about the world's problems. Trouble for you is, the people you have to win over from the other side have some form of this idea, too, if you could pin them down on it. They're the ones you have to convince that gay marriage is a bad turn on the path to the world that will be.

but if there are no moral absolutes, what about polygamy?

I'm sure the Moslems that you mentioned on an earlier post about the Koran would be just fine with that.

Or incest?

First cousin marriage is acceptable already in about half the states, its not in about another half, and its been that way for a very long time. One side has not imposed its will on the other side.

Gay activists initially wanted to eliminate the age of consent; now it has been softened to lowering it bit by bit so as not to outrage the natives.

Again, I hear the equation of gays with pedophiles, for every homosexual child molester, you can find several heterosexual ones.

You may say, well, adults having sex with children is wrong because the majority of people say it's wrong. Majority is an amorphous thing, changes with whoever's voice is the loudest and most insistent.

I will admit, a majority in either a democracy or a republican form of government can legalize or criminalize anything. Right now, a majority of citizens believes that drug users should be thrown in prison (taking space away from the murderers and rapists), so we do it. If, indeed, a majority can be CONVINCED that mulitple partner marriage, or brother-sister marriage, or adult-child marriage is probably harmless, yes, it could happen. I just don't see any circumstances that would cause that many minds to move in that direction. In the area of child sexual relations, we've moved the opposite way, instead of denying what the child says, we encourage kids to tell a responsible adult when someone touches them inappropriately. Look at the pedophile clergy scandals of recent years. Do you think that has engendered sympathy for adults who like to have their way with kids? It's just increased the revulsion people have for what is not really as much of a sexual relationship as it is a power trip for the perpetrator. Multiple marriage? Well, I'm not served by keeping that Tom Green fellow down in Utah in jail (I'd rather see a child molester in his place), but what I'd really like to do is to take those stupid women he's lined up, and show them what the real world looks like outside a desert, and see if they want to go back to be his breeding stock. The old hippie days of commune free love didn't work, humans are way too jealous for that.

Scripter's links contain article after article of the dangers of same sex acts in the form of disease, pedophilia and so on.

I've read Mr. Scripter's litany of links, nearly all of them are comparisons of gays to pedophilia, or recitations of diseases spread through sex. I've challenged him to tell me which of those diseases cannot be caught by promiscuous heterosexual sex, and the only thing he and I can agree on is that anal sex makes transmission of these diseases more likely. The folks in the middle who need to be convinced to write to their Congressmen and state representatives in support of a Federal Marriage Amendment are already over that, they know and work with gays who are not child molesters, or disease ridden, and won't spend a long time listening to anyone who comes at them with this approach.

The facts about homosexuality are driven from the debate by gay activists and their handmaidens, with cries of "bigot!" and "hater!", threats of lawsuits, or - as in Canada, the UK and other countries, fines and jail sentences.

Well, I'm sure our President is not going to shy away from anything he wants to do because Dickie Gephardt calls him a "miserable failure", or John Kerry calls him a "f*** up", or whatever green vomit Howard Dean spews out at him in the coming campaign. If being called a bigot or a hater drives anyone off their message, then maybe it wasn't that convincing a message, anyway. You still can't be thrown in jail in this country for telling a racist or sexist joke, but you can be reprimanded for bringing those sentiments into a workplace, where it shows that maybe the problem is not your attitudes, but your ability to be a team player and work with other people. If conservatives are worried about going into work, and seeing a picture of their gay co-worker and his or her partner on the desk in the next cubicle, yes, its going to happen, if it hasn't already. And if you stand on the photocopier and call him or her a pervert, yes, you might get a talking-to by the boss.

As for what happens in Canada or the UK, I guess I'm lucky to live in a country that fought for its freedom, that still continues to fight for the freedom not only of people around the globe, but freedom of its own law-abiding citizens. And THAT'S what the middle sees as a valid argument in the gay marriage debate.

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