[realpatriot71]

The question I have here is: Why should two consenting adults be forbidden to enter into some sort of legal binding contract that allows them to share their money, homes, cars, etc.?

I understand the religious arguments against homosexual marrige, but what would the secular/legal argument be?

[Hat-Trick]

Why should two consenting adults be forbidden to enter into some sort of legal binding contract that allows them to share their money, homes, cars, etc.?

I have no problem with that. I'm among the 70% of Nebraskans who said let's not call it marriage, and let's not equate that as equal to or with traditional marriage.

How's this for a secular/legal argument:

If we set the legal precedent of "normalizing" and equating a behavior (homosexuality) with an inherent design (heterosexuality), we are opening the door for other types of behaviors to be normalized - some of which lead to the victimization of innocents unable to defend themselves.

Hat-Trick

[jwalsh07]

There is no argument, people can enter into any kind of contract they want.

However, in order to be married you have to have one from each column to satisfy the definition of the word marriage.

Secular enough?

[Remedy]

• What Is "A Homosexual" Kinsey reported that those who engaged in homosexuality were exceptionally sexually flexible, intensely sexualized, and highly venturesome. Kinsey's published data reveal that homosexuals are much more willing to "try it" with an animal, a child, a man, many women, or for that matter "something completely different."
• What Homosexuals Say About Homosexuals - Is This Gay Behavior Sick?
• Compared with their heterosexual peers, homosexual men were at greater risk for psychiatric disorders, including mood and anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, and simple phobia. ---Theo G. M. Sandfort, Archives of General Psychiatry Vol. 58, Number . , 2001. Page(s) 85-91. SO MUCH FOR HOMOPHOBIA
• Relationship violence was found to be a significant problem for homosexuals. Forty-four (44) percent of the gay men reported having experienced violence in their relationships; 13 percent reported sexual violence and 83 percent reported emotional abuse. Levels of abuse ran even higher among lesbians: 55 percent reported physical violence in their relationships, 14 percent reported sexual abuse, and 84 percent reported emotional abuse. Susan C. Turrell,Journal of Family Violence Vol. 13, Number . , 2000. Page(s) 281-293.
• Violence and Homosexuality The top six U.S. male serial killers were all gay.
• The median age of death for those who regularly engage in homosexual behavior leaned in the direction of less than 50. The data suggest a "20- to 30-year decrease in lifespan" because of "substantially evelated rates of sexually elevated diseases . . . cancer and heart conditions, and violence among homosexual men and women." Paul Cameron, Psychological Reports,Vol. 83, Number . , 1998. Page(s) 847-866.
• Almost one-third (29.7 percent) of gays and nearly one-half (47.5 percent) of lesbians reported being or having been the victim of relationship violence. In addition, 22 percent of gays and 38 percent of lesbians admitted using violence against their partners. Lisa Walder-Haugrad, Violence and Victims Vol. 12, Number . , 1997. Page(s) 173-184.
• Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do FECAL SEX About 80% of gays (see Table) admit to licking and/or inserting their tongues into the anus of partners and thus ingesting medically significant amounts of feces. Those who eat or wallow in it are probably at even greater risk. In the diary study,5 70% of the gays had engaged in this activity--half regularly over 6 months. Result? --the "annual incidence of hepatitis A in...homosexual men was 22 percent, whereas no heterosexual men acquired hepatitis A." In 1992,26 it was noted that the proportion of London gays engaging in oral/anal sex had not declined since 1984.
• Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest
• Talking Points: Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse
• Studies of Homosexual Parenting: A Critical Review, by George Rekers & Mark Kilgus illuminates the flaws of the leading social science studies on homosexual parenting and child development that are relied upon by courts, legislators, and lawyers in advocating homosexual adoption of children. ---George Rekers, a Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, is author of The Handbook of Child and Adolescent Sexual Problems. He was the recipient of the 2000 Sigmund Freud Award for Pioneering Research.--- Mark D. Kilgus is a board certified child and adolescent psychiatrist who presently serves as the Medical Director of Northpointe Behavioral Healthcare Systems in Michigan.

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986)
After being charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of his home, respondent Hardwick (respondent) brought suit in Federal District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, holding that the Georgia statute violated respondent's fundamental rights.

Held: The Georgia statute is constitutional. Pp. 190-196 .

(a) The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. None of the fundamental rights announced in this Court's prior cases involving family relationships, marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in this case. And any claim that those cases stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable. Pp. 190-191 .

(b) Against a background in which many States have criminalized sodomy and still do, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious. Pp. 191-194 .

(c) There should be great resistance to expand the reach of the Due Process Clauses to cover new fundamental rights. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily would take upon itself further authority to govern the country without constitutional authority. The claimed right in this case falls far short of overcoming this resistance. Pp. 194-195 .

(d) The fact that homosexual conduct occurs in the privacy of the home does not affect the result. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 , distinguished. Pp. 195-196 .

(e) Sodomy laws should not be invalidated on the asserted basis that majority belief that sodomy is immoral is an inadequate rationale to support the laws. P. 196 .

BURGER, C.J., Concurring Opinion

As the Court notes, ante at 192 , the proscriptions against sodomy have very "ancient roots." Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards. Homosexual sodomy was a capital crime under Roman law. See Code Theod. 9.7.6; Code Just. 9.9.31. See also D. Bailey, Homosexuality [p*197] and the Western Christian Tradition 70-81 (1975). During the English Reformation, when powers of the ecclesiastical courts were transferred to the King's Courts, the first English statute criminalizing sodomy was passed. 25 Hen. VIII, ch. 6. Blackstone described "the infamous crime against nature" as an offense of "deeper malignity" than rape, a heinous act "the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature," and "a crime not fit to be named." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *215. The common law of England, including its prohibition of sodomy, became the received law of Georgia and the other Colonies. In 1816, the Georgia Legislature passed the statute at issue here, and that statute has been continuously in force in one form or another since that time. To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.

This is essentially not a question of personal "preferences," but rather of the legislative authority of the State. I find nothing in the Constitution depriving a State of the power to enact the statute challenged here.