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To finish up my flurry of long, ranting posts about gay marriage equality, religion and all the rest I just want to summarize a bit and make a heartfelt plea.
Marriage isn't a static institution, it has taken many forms and been used for many purposes throughout history. Homosexuality has been accepted and even celebrated and embraced in many cultures throughout history, including by those great philosophers credited with founding Western civilization. The US is a secular state so religious arguments are not sufficient to deny gays the rights afforded to heterosexuals, they are not sufficient for formal, blatant discrimination. Furthermore, even if religious arguments were sufficient, there really isn't a Biblical argument for opposing gay marriage unless you also want to legalize slavery, deny equal rights to midgets and people with broken bones and exile men who don't sleep on the couch when their wife is menstruating. Marriage, in the US, is a legal institution (and therefore is Constitutionally required to be treated in a secular manner) that extends a variety of rights to those who enter into it with the underlying idea being that people who love each other and want to commit to one another in a monogamous relationship should be afforded legal rights that make it easier for them to work as a single unit under the law and as family under the law (ie. file joint-income taxes, allow the state to impartially oversee the division of property in case the couple breaks up (divorces), allow one to make decisions for their spouse if they are incapacitated, allow them to visit them in the hospital, etc). Marriage is NOT about procreation: we allow infertile people to marry, we allow people who are not planning on having children to marry, we allow married couples to use contraception so any argument about gay people being unable to have children is not legitimate as an argument against gay marriage. In fact, gay people do have children, sometimes their own, sometimes adopted, and if marriage is about improving family, then denying gay marriage equality is actually being anti-family as it denies millions of gay families with children from operating as a family - hurting the couple and, especially, their children.
Being gay isn't a choice, there is NOTHING immoral or wrong with being gay and it is fundamentally immoral, cruel and discriminatory to not allow gay people to marry when heterosexuals can marry. Not only does it hurt gay people, it hurts their families and their children.
Gay marriage doesn't undermine heterosexual marriage: anti-marriage equality bigots like to claim that if we let gays marry then marriage will be meaningless, it will be destroyed, etc. Ridiculous! Whether or not Jack and Tim who live three doors down are married or not won't change the fact that they are living together, that they are having sex with each other, that they love each other and that they think of each other the same way you think of your wife/husband - it does not affect you IN ANY WAY, but it does affect them - denying them the right to marry makes their lives harder, it demeans them, it makes them second-class citizens. How does allowing this hypothetical couple to marry hurt your marriage!? If you think it does then I've got news for you: you're marriage is already in trouble and you are just looking for a scapegoat.
Gays and lesbians just want the same right afforded to heterosexuals. We want to be able to enter into a legally recognized committed union with the person we love so as to be given the legal rights that come with such a union. My love for my boyfriend is not 'inferior' to a heterosexual man's love for his wife. It hurts no one, but denying us the rights given to others does hurt people - many people. This goes beyond marriage, it's about equality and discrimination generally. It is IMMORAL to be opposed to gay marriage as a secular, democratic institution in this country. Denying gays and lesbians the right to marry is what actually hurts families and undermines marriage.
So, to conclude and to do so very bluntly: I believe, wholeheartedly, that those of you who are opposed to marriage equality and, to an even greater extent, that those of you who would like to make gay relationships illegal and publicly denounce homosexuals as sexual deviants who are immoral destroyers of American families are ignorant, bigoted, hateful supporters of legal discrimination against minorities that you just don't like. If you do it for religious reasons, you're also just plain stupid because if you were familiar with your religion and didn't cherry pick which rules proscribed by your religious text you would either have to conclude that being gay is fine and marriage should be allowed OR you're a supporter of slavery and opposed to my jacket that's made of two different fabrics. If you do it because you believe allowing gays to marry will destroy 'legitimate' American families you're also just plain stupid because there is no logic to that argument, and, in fact, logic indicates just the opposite. If you do it because of tradition, then you're using flawed reasoning because marriage has changed tremendously over time and across cultures. Furthermore, if you are doing it because of tradition then you likely would have supported keeping interracial marriage illegal had you been around 60 years ago because at that time marriage was between a man and woman of the same race. Hey, slavery was tradition too - hell, slavery has been around LONGER than marriage historically.
Those of you who want to claim that you don't support gay marriage without admitting that you are anti-gay and pro-discrimination: you can't have your cake and eat it too. Those of you who claim that gays like me who want to call you a bigot for being opposed to allowing us to have all the democratic, human rights that YOU have obviously have no damn clue what bigotry is. The fundamental difference between you and marriage supporters is that the promotion and institutionalization of your anti-equality belief literally hurts millions of people, literally discriminates against millions of people, literally reduces millions of people's freedom while if marriage supporters succeed in promoting and institutionalizing the right for gay people to marry it won't hurt you or your family AT ALL. Hence, you're the bigot no matter hwo you want to cut it. You can say you don't believe being gay is alright, that's fine - you can choose to mark yourself as ignorant and incapable of understanding science, evidence, morality if you want. That is freedom of speech, you're allowed and I am allowed to call you out as a homophobic, hateful, pro-discrimination bigot for the same reason, it's my right to exercise freedom of speech. But when you move from voicing an inherently UNDEMOCRATIC position against gay marriage to actively trying to ensure that government policy makes it so that I have less freedom than you, so that millions of people are denied basic, core rights that you have even though it will have no effect on you... then... well, you're not just a bigot, you're actively supporting authoritarian policies, you're actively supporting discrimination no different than your ideological predecessors who supported keeping interracial marriage illegal, you're undermining democracy and you're, quite frankly, being UNAMERICAN.
I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am a citizen of a liberal democracy. As a citizen of a democracy, a democracy with an equal protection clause in its Constitution I have the RIGHT to have the same rights that heterosexuals have. To the extent that anti-gay bigots are able to deny me and all other gays and lesbians equal rights under the law, democracy is being ignored and tyranny of the majority reigns.
The tide of history is on my side. Marriage equality is close. I just wish the remaining 40% of Americans, and the 66% of Republicans, who think that I should not be afforded the democratic rights you are afforded because I was born gay would recognize that all your arguments, all your rhetoric about the sanctity of marriage, all of your fearmongering is fundamentally evil.
If Leviticus says tattoos are immoral, don't get one.
If Leviticus says eating pork or shellfish is immoral, don't eat it.
If Leviticus says clipping your hair is immoral, don't do it.
If Leviticus says wearing different weaves of fiber is immoral, don't do it.
If Leviticus says homosexual marriage is immoral, don't get one.
I've never seen anyone protesting outside of a BBQ pit, or Red Lobster, or a tattoo parlor, clothing stores or a Great Clips that they should be closed and made illegal because the bible says that they are immoral. Yet people protest gay marriage should be illegal because the bible says so in Leviticus.
To finish up my flurry of long, ranting posts about gay marriage equality, religion and all the rest I just want to summarize a bit and make a heartfelt plea.
Marriage isn't a static institution, it has taken many forms and been used for many purposes throughout history. Homosexuality has been accepted and even celebrated and embraced in many cultures throughout history, including by those great philosophers credited with founding Western civilization. The US is a secular state so religious arguments are not sufficient to deny gays the rights afforded to heterosexuals, they are not sufficient for formal, blatant discrimination. Furthermore, even if religious arguments were sufficient, there really isn't a Biblical argument for opposing gay marriage unless you also want to legalize slavery, deny equal rights to midgets and people with broken bones and exile men who don't sleep on the couch when their wife is menstruating. Marriage, in the US, is a legal institution (and therefore is Constitutionally required to be treated in a secular manner) that extends a variety of rights to those who enter into it with the underlying idea being that people who love each other and want to commit to one another in a monogamous relationship should be afforded legal rights that make it easier for them to work as a single unit under the law and as family under the law (ie. file joint-income taxes, allow the state to impartially oversee the division of property in case the couple breaks up (divorces), allow one to make decisions for their spouse if they are incapacitated, allow them to visit them in the hospital, etc). Marriage is NOT about procreation: we allow infertile people to marry, we allow people who are not planning on having children to marry, we allow married couples to use contraception so any argument about gay people being unable to have children is not legitimate as an argument against gay marriage. In fact, gay people do have children, sometimes their own, sometimes adopted, and if marriage is about improving family, then denying gay marriage equality is actually being anti-family as it denies millions of gay families with children from operating as a family - hurting the couple and, especially, their children.
Being gay isn't a choice, there is NOTHING immoral or wrong with being gay and it is fundamentally immoral, cruel and discriminatory to not allow gay people to marry when heterosexuals can marry. Not only does it hurt gay people, it hurts their families and their children.
Gay marriage doesn't undermine heterosexual marriage: anti-marriage equality bigots like to claim that if we let gays marry then marriage will be meaningless, it will be destroyed, etc. Ridiculous! Whether or not Jack and Tim who live three doors down are married or not won't change the fact that they are living together, that they are having sex with each other, that they love each other and that they think of each other the same way you think of your wife/husband - it does not affect you IN ANY WAY, but it does affect them - denying them the right to marry makes their lives harder, it demeans them, it makes them second-class citizens. How does allowing this hypothetical couple to marry hurt your marriage!? If you think it does then I've got news for you: you're marriage is already in trouble and you are just looking for a scapegoat.
Gays and lesbians just want the same right afforded to heterosexuals. We want to be able to enter into a legally recognized committed union with the person we love so as to be given the legal rights that come with such a union. My love for my boyfriend is not 'inferior' to a heterosexual man's love for his wife. It hurts no one, but denying us the rights given to others does hurt people - many people. This goes beyond marriage, it's about equality and discrimination generally. It is IMMORAL to be opposed to gay marriage as a secular, democratic institution in this country. Denying gays and lesbians the right to marry is what actually hurts families and undermines marriage.
So, to conclude and to do so very bluntly: I believe, wholeheartedly, that those of you who are opposed to marriage equality and, to an even greater extent, that those of you who would like to make gay relationships illegal and publicly denounce homosexuals as sexual deviants who are immoral destroyers of American families are ignorant, bigoted, hateful supporters of legal discrimination against minorities that you just don't like. If you do it for religious reasons, you're also just plain stupid because if you were familiar with your religion and didn't cherry pick which rules proscribed by your religious text you would either have to conclude that being gay is fine and marriage should be allowed OR you're a supporter of slavery and opposed to my jacket that's made of two different fabrics. If you do it because you believe allowing gays to marry will destroy 'legitimate' American families you're also just plain stupid because there is no logic to that argument, and, in fact, logic indicates just the opposite. If you do it because of tradition, then you're using flawed reasoning because marriage has changed tremendously over time and across cultures. Furthermore, if you are doing it because of tradition then you likely would have supported keeping interracial marriage illegal had you been around 60 years ago because at that time marriage was between a man and woman of the same race. Hey, slavery was tradition too - hell, slavery has been around LONGER than marriage historically.
Those of you who want to claim that you don't support gay marriage without admitting that you are anti-gay and pro-discrimination: you can't have your cake and eat it too. Those of you who claim that gays like me who want to call you a bigot for being opposed to allowing us to have all the democratic, human rights that YOU have obviously have no damn clue what bigotry is. The fundamental difference between you and marriage supporters is that the promotion and institutionalization of your anti-equality belief literally hurts millions of people, literally discriminates against millions of people, literally reduces millions of people's freedom while if marriage supporters succeed in promoting and institutionalizing the right for gay people to marry it won't hurt you or your family AT ALL. Hence, you're the bigot no matter hwo you want to cut it. You can say you don't believe being gay is alright, that's fine - you can choose to mark yourself as ignorant and incapable of understanding science, evidence, morality if you want. That is freedom of speech, you're allowed and I am allowed to call you out as a homophobic, hateful, pro-discrimination bigot for the same reason, it's my right to exercise freedom of speech. But when you move from voicing an inherently UNDEMOCRATIC position against gay marriage to actively trying to ensure that government policy makes it so that I have less freedom than you, so that millions of people are denied basic, core rights that you have even though it will have no effect on you... then... well, you're not just a bigot, you're actively supporting authoritarian policies, you're actively supporting discrimination no different than your ideological predecessors who supported keeping interracial marriage illegal, you're undermining democracy and you're, quite frankly, being UNAMERICAN.
I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am a citizen of a liberal democracy. As a citizen of a democracy, a democracy with an equal protection clause in its Constitution I have the RIGHT to have the same rights that heterosexuals have. To the extent that anti-gay bigots are able to deny me and all other gays and lesbians equal rights under the law, democracy is being ignored and tyranny of the majority reigns.
The tide of history is on my side. Marriage equality is close. I just wish the remaining 40% of Americans, and the 66% of Republicans, who think that I should not be afforded the democratic rights you are afforded because I was born gay would recognize that all your arguments, all your rhetoric about the sanctity of marriage, all of your fearmongering is fundamentally evil.
To finish up my flurry of long, ranting posts about gay marriage equality, religion and all the rest I just want to summarize a bit and make a heartfelt plea.
Marriage isn't a static institution, it has taken many forms and been used for many purposes throughout history. Homosexuality has been accepted and even celebrated and embraced in many cultures throughout history, including by those great philosophers credited with founding Western civilization. The US is a secular state so religious arguments are not sufficient to deny gays the rights afforded to heterosexuals, they are not sufficient for formal, blatant discrimination. Furthermore, even if religious arguments were sufficient, there really isn't a Biblical argument for opposing gay marriage unless you also want to legalize slavery, deny equal rights to midgets and people with broken bones and exile men who don't sleep on the couch when their wife is menstruating. Marriage, in the US, is a legal institution (and therefore is Constitutionally required to be treated in a secular manner) that extends a variety of rights to those who enter into it with the underlying idea being that people who love each other and want to commit to one another in a monogamous relationship should be afforded legal rights that make it easier for them to work as a single unit under the law and as family under the law (ie. file joint-income taxes, allow the state to impartially oversee the division of property in case the couple breaks up (divorces), allow one to make decisions for their spouse if they are incapacitated, allow them to visit them in the hospital, etc). Marriage is NOT about procreation: we allow infertile people to marry, we allow people who are not planning on having children to marry, we allow married couples to use contraception so any argument about gay people being unable to have children is not legitimate as an argument against gay marriage. In fact, gay people do have children, sometimes their own, sometimes adopted, and if marriage is about improving family, then denying gay marriage equality is actually being anti-family as it denies millions of gay families with children from operating as a family - hurting the couple and, especially, their children.
Being gay isn't a choice, there is NOTHING immoral or wrong with being gay and it is fundamentally immoral, cruel and discriminatory to not allow gay people to marry when heterosexuals can marry. Not only does it hurt gay people, it hurts their families and their children.
Gay marriage doesn't undermine heterosexual marriage: anti-marriage equality bigots like to claim that if we let gays marry then marriage will be meaningless, it will be destroyed, etc. Ridiculous! Whether or not Jack and Tim who live three doors down are married or not won't change the fact that they are living together, that they are having sex with each other, that they love each other and that they think of each other the same way you think of your wife/husband - it does not affect you IN ANY WAY, but it does affect them - denying them the right to marry makes their lives harder, it demeans them, it makes them second-class citizens. How does allowing this hypothetical couple to marry hurt your marriage!? If you think it does then I've got news for you: you're marriage is already in trouble and you are just looking for a scapegoat.
Gays and lesbians just want the same right afforded to heterosexuals. We want to be able to enter into a legally recognized committed union with the person we love so as to be given the legal rights that come with such a union. My love for my boyfriend is not 'inferior' to a heterosexual man's love for his wife. It hurts no one, but denying us the rights given to others does hurt people - many people. This goes beyond marriage, it's about equality and discrimination generally. It is IMMORAL to be opposed to gay marriage as a secular, democratic institution in this country. Denying gays and lesbians the right to marry is what actually hurts families and undermines marriage.
So, to conclude and to do so very bluntly: I believe, wholeheartedly, that those of you who are opposed to marriage equality and, to an even greater extent, that those of you who would like to make gay relationships illegal and publicly denounce homosexuals as sexual deviants who are immoral destroyers of American families are ignorant, bigoted, hateful supporters of legal discrimination against minorities that you just don't like. If you do it for religious reasons, you're also just plain stupid because if you were familiar with your religion and didn't cherry pick which rules proscribed by your religious text you would either have to conclude that being gay is fine and marriage should be allowed OR you're a supporter of slavery and opposed to my jacket that's made of two different fabrics. If you do it because you believe allowing gays to marry will destroy 'legitimate' American families you're also just plain stupid because there is no logic to that argument, and, in fact, logic indicates just the opposite. If you do it because of tradition, then you're using flawed reasoning because marriage has changed tremendously over time and across cultures. Furthermore, if you are doing it because of tradition then you likely would have supported keeping interracial marriage illegal had you been around 60 years ago because at that time marriage was between a man and woman of the same race. Hey, slavery was tradition too - hell, slavery has been around LONGER than marriage historically.
Those of you who want to claim that you don't support gay marriage without admitting that you are anti-gay and pro-discrimination: you can't have your cake and eat it too. Those of you who claim that gays like me who want to call you a bigot for being opposed to allowing us to have all the democratic, human rights that YOU have obviously have no damn clue what bigotry is. The fundamental difference between you and marriage supporters is that the promotion and institutionalization of your anti-equality belief literally hurts millions of people, literally discriminates against millions of people, literally reduces millions of people's freedom while if marriage supporters succeed in promoting and institutionalizing the right for gay people to marry it won't hurt you or your family AT ALL. Hence, you're the bigot no matter hwo you want to cut it. You can say you don't believe being gay is alright, that's fine - you can choose to mark yourself as ignorant and incapable of understanding science, evidence, morality if you want. That is freedom of speech, you're allowed and I am allowed to call you out as a homophobic, hateful, pro-discrimination bigot for the same reason, it's my right to exercise freedom of speech. But when you move from voicing an inherently UNDEMOCRATIC position against gay marriage to actively trying to ensure that government policy makes it so that I have less freedom than you, so that millions of people are denied basic, core rights that you have even though it will have no effect on you... then... well, you're not just a bigot, you're actively supporting authoritarian policies, you're actively supporting discrimination no different than your ideological predecessors who supported keeping interracial marriage illegal, you're undermining democracy and you're, quite frankly, being UNAMERICAN.
I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am a citizen of a liberal democracy. As a citizen of a democracy, a democracy with an equal protection clause in its Constitution I have the RIGHT to have the same rights that heterosexuals have. To the extent that anti-gay bigots are able to deny me and all other gays and lesbians equal rights under the law, democracy is being ignored and tyranny of the majority reigns.
The tide of history is on my side. Marriage equality is close. I just wish the remaining 40% of Americans, and the 66% of Republicans, who think that I should not be afforded the democratic rights you are afforded because I was born gay would recognize that all your arguments, all your rhetoric about the sanctity of marriage, all of your fearmongering is fundamentally evil.
To those who attempt to muddy the waters by throwing in the slippery slope argument of "if we allow same-sex marriage, why not polygamy?", there are obvious huge differences between a marriage of two people and a marriage of multiple people.
Same sex marriage easily fits the same current western dyadic marriage form which is designed around a couple, not a group. The legalities of polygamous marriage would be a nightmare to sort out.
Here are some questions I have rarely seen asked about group marriages which highlight the vast differences between opposite-sex marriage/same-sex marriage and polygamous marriages.
In polygamous marriages, who is married to who? If a man and several women are married what happens if he dies? Do the women remain married to each other? (That would become a same-sex polygamous marriage wouldn't it? Even if all the women are straight)
What happens if the man wants a divorce from some of the women but stay married to others. Would all the women still be married to each other?
What happens if one of the women decide they want a divorce? Does she just divorce the man or all the other wives as well?
How many people would be able to get married to each other? 4, 20, 1000? A whole town? Another poster pointed out immigration issues involved in group marriages: what happens if a US citizen wanted to marry a whole village of people from another country and bring them to the US?
If the polygamous marriage is made up of several men and women, what happens with child custody especially if some of them want a divorce and others don't?
What happens if this group live in separate houses and one wife or husband had some renovations for which they cannot pay? Can a contractor go after one of the other wives/husbands for the money as would happen in a dyadic marriage?
Then we bring in the hugely complicated tangled legal mess of income tax, property, inheritance, social security, alimony, child support etc etc especially when mixed with divorce.
Because of all those unanswered questions around the legalities and logistics of plural marriage, there is a strong 'rational basis' for the government not to legalise plural marriage. However there appears to be no 'rational basis' to deny marriage to same-sex couples. (Recent court cases have underscored this).
Then you need to get a case in court, and it will be heard based on it's own merits.
Other arguments that differentiate same-sex marriage from plural marriage but highlight the similarities with opposite-sex marriage are:
Plural marriages throughout history have often been abusive for women and girls. (However that's not to say that plural marriage could not work between consensual adults if there is a reasonable balance of power and all the tangled legalities and logistics could ever be worked out.)
From all the research over the past 40 years or so, it's becoming obvious that humans are born with their sexual orientation due to a combination of genetic factors and the hormonal effects on fetal brain development in the uterine environment. Whether it's heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or somewhere along a continuum. I am unaware of any scientific literature supporting the idea that people are born to be polygamous.
If gays and lesbians etc are born to be homosexual, is it not in society's best interest for gay and lesbian couples to be together rather than trying to force them into unhappy destructive marriages with heterosexual people? Or force them to be single and celibate? Research shows that people are happier and healthier being in a stable marriage rather than defacto relationships or single. Why deny the health benefits of marriage to gay and lesbian couples?
Arguments that marriage is only for 'procreation' and heterosexual couples raising children fall flat when we look at the census data and find that only about a half of married heterosexual couples are raising children and about a third of lesbian couples and quarter of gay male couples are raising children.
Arguments that only heterosexual married couples can be good parents are ridiculous when we look at all the stats on divorce, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect etc with many heterosexual parents. All the research shows that children do just as well in all aspects when raised by gay or lesbian parents. Gay and lesbian couples will still be raising children even they are not allowed to be married, so why deny the children of gay and lesbian couples the benefits of having parents in a stable marriage?
All the research on gay and lesbian relationships show that they are not much different from heterosexual relationships. Often communication is better because there isn't the inherent imbalance of power that can be found between men and women in many heterosexual relationships. Things like household chores and parenting responsibilities are divided much more evenly between gay and lesbian couples.
Blind Freddie can see the huge differences between opposite-sex/same-sex dyadic marriages and group marriages.
So why on earth would anyone be silly enough to use the slippery slope argument of "if we allow same-sex marriage, why not polygamy?" when discussing same-sex marriage?
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