Will teens, young adults embrace same-sex ‘marriage’?

BP News ^ | 3-5-04 | Michael Foust

[Eva]

The idea of Gay unions having the same legal rights as marriages complicates too many parts of our lives and interferes with religious expression as well as military
law.

You cannot have thought this out completely to come to such a conclusion. If it becomes the law that gays can marry, they will always take that a step further and sue churches which refuse to perform gay marriages, they will prosecute churches which preach against homosexuality for hate speech. Then they will go after the military and force
homosexual marriage on the military which will be an absolute nightmare of complications as far as accomodations are concerned, not to mention morale problems.

When it comes to schools or funding charities, the left can't stop jabbering about separation of church and state, but when it comes to gay marriage or campaigning inside churches, the left suddenly does a Kerry waffle.

[WOSG]

"I am a tolerant traditionalist" That's a good phrase.

Thanks. Maybe I should elaborate on it (Note to self - "manifesto of the tolerant traditionalist" to come.)

There's a massive amount of difference between tolerance and acceptance. Most people today who claim to be pushing for tolerance are really pushing for acceptance."

Yes. Actually, they want to replace one set of prejudices for another set of prejudices. It's not a societal advance at all, but a desire to displace one world-view with another. The result is the culture wars. If tolerance really reigned, there would be no culture wars.

[jimt]

Spoken like a true Libertarian.

Actually, the Libertarian (big L) position is to get government our of marriage altogether.

So if homosexuals wanted to marry, and they found someone willing to perform the ceremony, they could. However, it would not be state sanctioned, or have any legal force behind it. And in Libertopia, everyone would be free to discriminate, or stated more positively, freely associate.

There would be no laws mandating That Christian churches and businesses must hire transsexuals - or that bathhouses hire evangelistic Christians.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

Really? Ever heard of children?

Children are about much more than finances.

Thing is, you don't have to be married parents to have custody of children. You can be a single parent (as my wife was, before we married). You can have custody as grandparent, older sibling, other blood relationship, or even adoption by non-blood relations. You can be a married couple and have the mother be a surrogate parent for another couple without maintaining custody.

Heck, between the support both my parents and my wife's parents are providing, my kids are being raised by an extended family for all intents and purposes -- and I think it's even a better arrangement, on the whole than a nuclear family. Neither of my kids would've been able to attend the private school they've attended without grandparents chipping in financial support.

Yes, children about much more than finances. For better or worse, they're about a lot more than marriage, too.

[Betaille]

Ive never been divorced, never even been married yet. I'm in my early 20's. I'm not sure why that would be relevant anyway. I'm still wondering why somebody so obviously for gay marriage is on FR

[WOSG]

you are spouting ignorant cr*p.

1) The "50% of marriages end in divorce" is phony. that is based on a misunderstanding of basic statistics.
2) only 1 partner initiates a divorce, usually the woman.
3) statistics show CLEARLY that married couples who attend church HAVE A DIVORCE RATE SHARPLY LOWER than married couples who do not.

In other words, my friend, you are spouting specious nonsense. And you still refuse to answer my question of whether you support ending no-fault divorce... why?
It is not a hard question to answer let me try again:

Do you support abolishing no-fault divorce?

[Betaille]

I agree with you that the extended family can be a better situation than a Nuclear family, although I'm not quite sure what you've described is an "extended family" in the way that I understand it and have it. I still think that youre argument for gay marriage is pretty weak and seems to ignore the issues that opponents of gay marriage are tlaking about.

[WOSG]

"I'm still wondering why somebody so obviously for gay marriage is on FR"
He is probably a troll ... he is easily flammable and wont answer straight questions.

As for you, good luck in your search for a marriageable partner. Enjoy your youth, I hear it is wasted on the young. :-)

[nobody_knows]

As the saying goes..."One who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, and one who remains a socialist at 40 has no head...

amazing how our opinions change as we mature and become more aware isn't it?

[Celtjew Libertarian]

Well, we have gotten off track.

My basic argument for gay marriage is that consenting, non-blood-related adults should be allowed to arrange their lives as they see fit. Part of that is the ability to sign a legal contract that is commonly called "marriage." Mind you, that is something different than the religious rite of marriage.

To explain how this is consistent with opposition to no-fault divorce, as marriage is a contract, no-fault divorce is a breaking of the contract without cause.

I have some stuff that needs to be done, so if I don't respond quickly to any further responses, that's the reason.

[Dan from Michigan]

Most my age and younger I know don't give a damn about gays as long as it isn't in our faces. In my case, I say that it's none of my business. That goes both ways and they need to stay the hell out of the schools.

Marriage is religiously based(and for that reason I oppose gay marriage) in tradition. Personally though I think government should get out of the marriage business completely.

[Betaille]

"My basic argument for gay marriage is that consenting, non-blood-related adults should be allowed to arrange their lives as they see fit. Part of that is the ability to sign a legal contract that is commonly called "marriage." "

According to that argument you really do think that Marriage should be expanded to include any life-arrangement. That would obviously include polygamy and any other union imaginable.

[Betaille]

"Personally though I think government should get out of the marriage business completely."

So you think that Married couples shouldn't be getting any tax benefits? The reason they do is because they have the expenses of having kids, or planning to have kids in the future.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

According to that argument you really do think that Marriage should be expanded to include any life-arrangement. That would obviously include polygamy and any other union imaginable.

Among consenting, non-blood related, human adults, yes.

So I checked back in, quickly. 8>)

[Dan from Michigan]

So you think that Married couples shouldn't be getting any tax benefits? The reason they do is because they have the expenses of having kids, or planning to have kids in the future.

Well, I oppose the income tax completely and support an NRST in place of it, but that's another discussion.

[Betaille]

"Well, I oppose the income tax completely"

Thats certainly a legitimate view, but we do have an income tax now and we have to be a little pragmatic and do what we can to help families. I'm not a fan of the "all or nothing" approach that many libertarian types take.

[Betaille]

"Among consenting, non-blood related, human adults, yes."

How dare you tell a Man and a Goat that they can not get married! There was once a time where inter-racial marriage was illegal! you must be as bad as them.
That seems to be the argument coming from the gay marriage crowd.

[general_re]

"Would you support changing the law to end no-fault divorces?"

Yes.

Unfortunately, I don't really think that will have much of an impact on the divorce rate. It wasn't that long ago that the state of New York had no provision at all for no-fault divorce, and even now it's still fairly limited when compared to many other states, but the divorce rate in New York wasn't any lower than the rest of the country. Essentially, eliminating no-fault divorce only forces people - who are bound and determined to split up no matter what - to invent a reason that fits within the acceptable grounds laid out by the law. E.g., back in the day, "mental cruelty", as vague as that is, was one of the most often cited reasons for divorce, and the vast majority of the time, family court judges are loathe to really question someone's reasons for wanting a divorce - she says he's mentally abusing her, and judges don't really get too far into investigating the truth of that, particularly if the divorce is uncontested. They just rubber-stamp it and move on to the next case.

Realistically, the law has made divorce very easy since the late 1800's in most places, no-fault or not - it's really not much harder to get a divorce nowadays than it was in 1890. The difference between now and then is almost purely cultural, not legal - back then, divorce was seen as something of a badge of shame, unlike today, which had the effect of making divorces rarer than today.

This is not to say that ending no-fault divorce is somehow a bad idea, just that I don't think it's a panacea by any means. The real change will have to be cultural, not legal - when divorce is frowned upon by society, divorces will decline, regardless of what the law does or doesn't say.

[little jeremiah]

Homosexual Agenda Ping.

(Sorry folks, I have been SUPER busy, and EdReform has been sick, so no pinging lately! I'll try to do a bunch right now, so you'll have all the lastest.)

If anyone wants on/off this thread, ping me!