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When the attack on the intended purpose of marriage as part of our social fabric is successfully repelled and put down. And it will be, one way or another.
Never going to happen cuz! Give it up, same sex marriage at the national level is here to stay, and a matter of when in all 50 states.
It doesn't matter whether gays were born that way or not. Any law that prohibits gays from marrying based on a RELIGION is unconstitutional and violates the 1st Amendment. No congress, including state congresses, are allowed to pass laws which establishes a religion. By codifying a ban on gay marriage, those states have established religious law - and that is a BIG no-no.
The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Prohibiting homosexuals from marriage, even if based on religious arguments, does not constitute Congress passing a law establishing a religion. Since many religions stand opposed to homosexuality (and by extension, homosexual "marriage") what religion is being "established?"
The "establishment clause" specifically was intended to prevent the government from establishing a specific sect (Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, etc) as being the only officially recognized church (as the Church of England is in the U.K.). Your argument is therefore invalid.
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Originally Posted by Shirina
I'm really getting fed up with hearing about what the Bible says about gay marriage. Who gives a crap? Not all of us are Christians and I'll be damned if I'm going to be FORCED into adhering to the Bible just because a small, loud, and vocal conservative Christian minority with deep pockets says I do. Theocratic fascism is still fascism; our country was not founded on fascism.
No, but our country was founded by people with deeply held Christian religious beliefs. The majority of Colonists were Calvinist Christians (if you do not know who John Calvin was, I suggest you do some research). In the Colonial Era, the Church was the center of community activity, even political, contrary to what today's "liberals" would have us believe.
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Originally Posted by Shirina
Unless you have a really really really good secular argument against gay marriage, then banning gay marriage means you're being a cherry-picking fascist.
Heterosexual marriage is a societal good. It provides the best environment for the raising of children.
Marriage is the fundamental building block of all human civilization, and has been across cultural and religious lines for 5000+ years. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society.
Homosexual marriage serves no state interest.
The blurring of the differences between males and females does harm to society. Ignoring those differences is to deny they exist at all. This undermines the fabric of society.
Children need both male and female role models in their lives. A homosexual couple cannot provide this, and such relationships result maladjustment and confusion in children reared by homosexual couples.
Children raised by homosexual couples are more likely to become homosexual (there is research to back this up).
The argument that homosexuals must be allowed to marry for survivor rights, visitation, and other such rights is bogus. A living will and other legal arrangements easily provide these benefits.
Children have a right to a mother and a father. They have a right to know "who they are." As children of homosexual couples, they are often not only deprived of this right, it is often impossible for them to know because of the artificial means lesbian women use for becoming pregnant.
These are only a few of the secular arguments that can be (and have been) made.
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Originally Posted by Shirina
You do understand, I hope, that just two verses before the Bible condemns homosexuality, another verse condemns adultery. My question to all of the theocratic fascists and bigots out there is - why isn't there a massive push by Christians to prevent adulterers from re-marrying? In fact, Christians say absolutely NOTHING about allowing wife-beaters and spouse-murderers to marry and remarry.
This is a bogus argument. There is a vast difference between the practice of homosexuality as a lifestyle (what God calls an "abomination"), and the sin of adultery, and to answer your argument, some Christian churches do refuse to perform marriages of adulterous individuals or divorced couples.
Secondly, research shows that there is a higher incidence of abuse among homosexual couples than heterosexual couples.
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Originally Posted by Shirina
Apparently the ONLY thing that matters to these people is whether or not the marriage is between a man and a woman. Yeah, this just gives you an idea of how twisted Christianity has become, where a person who bashes his girlfriend every night, even if he gets arrested for it, still has the right to marry that girl. Hell yeah, you could be John Wayne Gacy or Jeffery Dahlmer and you can get married behind bars! No amount of violence and sexual depravity is off the table JUST ... so long as the depravity and violence happens between a man and a woman.
It's only when two people of the SAME sex want a peaceful, loving marriage when the conservative Christians start roiling like a stormy sea. All of the sudden, they whip out their Bibles, blow the dust off them, and point to Old Testament verses to ban gay marriage.
"See? See? Right here! God condemns it! Hahaha, neener neener!"
So what? God condemns all kinds of people in those old Bronze Age verses: Witches, fortune tellers, rebellious kids, adulterers, people who work on the Sabbath, drunkards, fornicaters, prostitutes, liars, non-virgin brides, etc. etc.
And not ONE of them are banned from getting married. Not a one. Which means all of the irrational Christian bigots got together, surgically plucked these very specific anti-gay verses from the Bible, and have tried to use them as justification for being overt bigots, hypocrites, cherry pickers, and in some cases, hate-mongers. In my opinion, it isn't even about religion, it's about using religion as a weapon to ban something they just didn't like. Gays are icky and are crawling with cooties so they have to be marginalized, discriminated against, and turned into social pariahs. That's why this issue persists. Note how the biggest and loudest bigots are almost always male, and they focus an inordinate amount of time talking about the nature of gay sex. Ever wonder why that is? Because I think everyone knows the answer - and knowing that answer gives you the reason why there is such a push to ban gay marriage. Religion has almost nothing at all to do with it.
And after all of that, your Bible cannot be used as a reason to pass civil law. Period. Yet whenever this debate comes up, the anti-gay folks can't argue their side without referring to gods, holy books, and ancient Bronze Age superstitions supposedly inspired by a desert tribal god who wrote rules for a completely different group of people.
If you can't argue against gay marriage without falling back on your Bible, then don't even bother to post. Anyone with a brain can simply dismiss your argument straightaway by declaring it unconstitutional and then moving on.
The rest of your post has become an irrational jeremiad, not worthy of comment.
The anti-gay side of the fence hasn't won an argument yet.
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Originally Posted by itshim
the NEW question is whether or NOT polygamous and incestuous marriages have a legal right to follow in the footsteps of being constitutionally protected.
Was anyone asking that question 30 years ago before homosexuals began demanding their right to marry? Was it? Can you go back to the election of, say, Reagan in 1984, and honestly say that the issue of gay rights was a major issue?
So why are you asking those questions now? Oh right ... it's because, as you said, some states are allowing gay marriages. Perhaps if these questions were being asked BEFORE gays started demanding their rights, you may have fooled someone with your question. But, since you didn't, it is quite apparent that the only reason why you're asking NOW is because you think that letting gays have their rights means we have to let everyone from polygamists to pedophiles have THEIR rights.
Hence the reason why I answered as I did.
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Originally Posted by itshim
Of course NOT. That logic fails easily based on the fact that one man/one woman marriages were never banned.
Which has diddly squat to do with what I said. Whether or not straight, monogamous marriage has never been banned is completely irrelevant. The moment marriage was invented, so too was the proverbial slippery slope. It didn't start with gay marriage, it started with straight monogamous marriage.
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Originally Posted by itshim
the VERY same logic can be applied to incestuous and polygamous marriages today. While they may not be legally recognized in most states--who's to say that they won't or shouldn't be based on the same logic to "un-ban" and legally recognize gay marriages?
LOL! See? I knew this is where we would end up sooner or later, which is why I headed it off at the pass with my original argument. You know, the one you claimed had nothing to do with what you were saying? Uh huh.
Who is to say? Well, I guess we are - or our elected representatives. Once you move past gay marriage and into polygamy and incest, you stand a good chance of finding abuse taking place of one sort or another. Incest is quite often an older relative misusing his or her authority and polygamy is most often found in misogynistic cults - especially with men looking to defraud the government with welfare scams. You really can't say those things about consenting same-sex couples. They would be much more difficult to legalize due to the abuse factor.
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Originally Posted by itshim
And if it weren't for gay couples fighting to be federally and locally recognized after being banned, then incestuous and polygamous relationships would not have the legal precedent to follow in their footsteps.
Nope. The bottom line is that same-sex marriage never should have been banned to begin with. It wasn't as if gays could get married BEFORE the ban, so why was it necessary to ban something one couldn't do in the first place? Ahhh, you see, THAT made it look like an attack, a straight-up law sanctioning bigotry and fear.
And that's precisely what those laws were about. The conservative Christians - often in the same states that owned slaves, refused to ratify the 13th and 14th Amendments, and wouldn't even expand Medicaid coverage to the poor, you know, the so-called "Bible Belt" - realized that gays just might gain their right to marry, so instead of waiting around, they immediately banned gay marriage. And, not only did they ban it, they made it a state constitutional amendment!
Any free-thinking individual unfettered by the disgusting prejudices and hatreds that Southern Christianity seems to breed understands that the moment gay marriage was actually BANNED by force of law, a declaration of war had been delivered. Now, incest and polygamy have been illegal for quite some time and the majority of people are quite fine with that. However, a majority of people now favor a federal marriage equality law giving same-sex couples the right to marry. Perhaps if the usual rights-hating crowd south of the Mason-Dixon hadn't turned it into such a fiasco, the gay rights issue would have settled down and gone away.
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Originally Posted by itshim
LOL Yes you can! You can't "arbitrarily" make that statement without providing a sound, logical and salient argument for the double standard. NOPE it doesn't work that way. I'm going to call you out on it and challenge you to back your reasoning up.
Uhm, no ... you can't. Not without falling back on a logical fallacy such as "appeal to popularity" or "appeal to tradition" or "appeal to nature." I already told you what my reasoning was and it doesn't need "backed up" since it is rather self-evident. But I'll be nice and break it down for you.
Take the classic case of a snowball rolling down a mountainside gathering steam, size, and momentum. In order for this avalanche to start, someone or something has to push the snowball to get it moving. Gay marriage didn't start the avalanche. Essentially that would be claiming that the snowball did not start gaining size, speed, or momentum until it was halfway down the mountain.
No, no, no ... heterosexual monogamous marriage is what pushed the snowball, got the whole kit 'n kaboodle avalanche going. Why am I right? Because why would same-sex couples demand their right to marry if heterosexuals hadn't already obtained THEIR right to marry? Yeah! You see, NO ONE would be demanding the right to marry if heteros hadn't done it first.
So you called me out, I answered. There is NO way to deny what I've said without, as previously stated, falling back on a logical fallacy. Good luck with a refutation.
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Originally Posted by itshim
Nope you've been clear sailing on this assumption from the jump. No one ever said anything about an "avalanche"...the question was quite clear....should the Democratic Party and all of it's pro-gay marriage supporters uplift incestuous and polygamous marriages just as they have with gay marriages. Why or why not?
Your question is an obvious trap, a landmine set for the unwary - and that's why I refuse to follow the primrose path you've laid out for us. No, instead I'm going right for the motive for asking your question in the first place.
In essence, you're trying to get same-sex marriage supporters to admit that we either have to allow all forms of marriage under the Constitution or admit that we're the ones being prejudiced, bigoted, or legally unfair. Except I'm not playing that game, and for the reasons I've already mentioned.
Someone should have asked this question when the first government-recognized marriage ceremony took place. Well gee, if heterosexuals can marry, why not homosexuals? And if homosexuals ever get married, why not incestuous couples? Pedophiles? Polygamists? Except you want to remove heterosexual-monogamous marriage from this chain and pretend like allowing same-sex marriage is the point when we should begin asking these questions.
Nope, too late. Since society has allowed opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage was almost certain to follow eventually - and now time has caught up with us.
Thing is, we're more than capable of drawing a line where we say this far and no farther. But when we do, we have to make sure we're drawing that line in the right place and for the right reasons. Banning same-sex marriage simply because you don't like it, you think it's gross, it makes you uncomfortable or because of what some primitive Bronze Age holy book says, just doesn't cut the mustard. There has not been one single argument for banning gay-marriage that a) wasn't based on religion or b) didn't apply equally to straight monogamous marriages.
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Originally Posted by itshim
Try not to focus on the intent of what you think the question is asking, and just answer the damn question. How about trying that? To Urban's credit, he/she ATLEAST stuck to that and answere it. He did NOT try to derail the question to make a point because he couldn't answer it honestly, unlike what you have been attempting to do here.
LOL! No ... you just want me to obediently blunder into your verbal landmines, essentially setting up the questions to railroad people into saying what is most easy to disprove and debunk. Like I said, sorry, but I'm not playing your game. I don't follow a script you think everyone should follow.
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Originally Posted by itshim
How can you become a divorce lawyer if you can't even argue your own case correctly?
Because divorce lawyers don't have to follow your lead.
Actually, just a bunch of random guys wrote how God portrays himself, the guy didn't pen an autobiography.
This reveals your ignorance, but there would be no point in me explaining to you why that is so, because, obviously, you aren't going to believe any argument for the inspiration of scripture, nor it's absolute cohesiveness.
This reveals your ignorance, but there would be no point in me explaining to you why that is so, because, obviously, you aren't going to believe any argument for the inspiration of scripture, nor it's absolute cohesiveness.
Haha, then who wrote the bible? It didn't write itself.
Because he isn't real, just like Santa isn't real....sorry if I ruined that illusion for you.
You didn't ruin anything. Some of us know Him.
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