Gay Marriage - The War for Equality

by Inquisitor 108 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  jstalin

  Shazard - from what I understand of your argument is that since gay people cannot reproduce, they should be denied the right to marry. However, as I'm sure you are aware, there are plenty of straight couples, married and unmarried, who do not have children, either because they cannot or because they simply don't want children. Should we then deny THEM the right to marry? Marriage is far more than just children. It is about sharing legal rights and responsibilities, independent of reproduction.

  I don't really understand your argument about paying straight couples to have more children. How does gay marriage do anything to change whether or not people want children? Will it suddently make straight people not reproduce?

  There are plenty of gay couples who have adopted children and are raising them just as a straight couple, or as single straight parents. However, many states (in the USA) don't recognize gay couples, so the legal rights to those children are denied to those couples. If the legally-adopting parent dies, the partner in the relationship runs the risk of losing custody because his or her rights are explicitly denied.

  So far the arguments against gay marriage fall flat.
• 

  hamilcarr

  Homosexual marriage bears no fruit. It is sterile.

  Then, why has evolution allowed for same-sex relations to spread? (Note: the University of Leuven is one of the oldest catholic universities in the world).

  The evolution of a social construction: the case of male homosexuality.

  Adriaens PR , De Block A .

  Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. [email protected]

  Male homosexuality has been viewed by evolutionary psychologists as a Darwinian paradox, and by other social scientists as a social construction. We argue that it is better understood as an evolutionary social construction. Male homosexuality as we now know it is an 18th-century invention, but nonexclusive same-sex sexual behavior has a long evolutionary history. According to the alliance-formation hypothesis, same-sex sexuality evolved by natural selection because it created or strengthened male-male alliances and allowed low-status males to reposition themselves in the group hierarchy and thereby increase their reproductive success. This hypothesis makes sense of some odd findings about male homosexuality and helps to explain the rise in exclusive male homosexuality in the 18th century. The sociohistorical conditions around 1700 may have resulted in an increase in same-sex sexual behavior. Cultural responses to same-sex sexuality led to the spread of exclusive homosexual behavior and to the creation of a homosexual identity. Understanding male homosexuality as an evolutionary social construction can help us move beyond the traditionally polarized debate between evolutionary psychologists and social constructionists.

  PMID: 17146141 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
• 

  Shazard

  jastlin, your argument agaisnt my argument is one of logical fallacies ppl often fall into. You want to make general implications/law based on exceptional/non-natural state of other laws.
  
  Legal rights of marriage has only meaning if rights are balanced with duties. It is not reasonable to give some rights if you do not ask something back. There are natural rights, which is OK. Rights of marriage are not natural rights, they are granted rights by society. TO grant some rights means to grant them for some benefits you get back. Rights to use force are granted to police for they could perform their duties. Rights to signt papers are granted to directors so they could performe their duties - in general police and directors have some duties for benefit of whole society. They are not granted them just for their own sake and benefits. BUT there ARE policemen who never use their right to use force, they do not need it or they somehow perform their duties without applying their rights. That does not mean we should remove their rights coz they do not use them.
  
  Now back to original topic. Marriage rights and benefits are granted to stright ppl so they COULD perform their duties for benefits of society... originally... reproduction of the same society. And reproduction is not only birth, but also education, teaching, sustaining the memeber while he is able to live by himself and integrate fully into society!
  
  NOW... WHY Gays should have the same rights, if they can't performe the same duties? In the police case, WHY should I grant rights to use force for somebody who does not or is unable to perform duties of law enforcement?
  
  This is the very big mistake of Franch revolution, to create idea of RIGHTS and do not work also on DUTIES! Rights without duties is just - waste of resources - gifts you should pay for from your pocket! Are you ready... if you are... go on, I am not ready to waset my resources to give ppl righs just because they want the privilleges but does not want and even are not able to perform the duties these rigts were created for!
• 

  jstalin

  Now back to original topic. Marriage rights and benefits are granted to stright ppl so they COULD perform their duties for benefits of society... originally... reproduction of the same society. And reproduction is not only birth, but also education, teaching, sustaining the memeber while he is able to live by himself and integrate fully into society!
  
  NOW... WHY Gays should have the same rights, if they can't performe the same duties? In the police case, WHY should I grant rights to use force for somebody who does not or is unable to perform duties of law enforcement?

  But you didn't answer my original example - what about straight couples who cannot reproduce?

  Are you saying that gay couples are incapable of teaching?

  What about single parents? Are they incapable of teaching and nuturing? Why are single parents any more qualified than two loving gay parents? In fact, I think the argument could be made that two gay parents are better than a single parent.

  The only duty of straight marriage that a gay couple cannot perform is biological reproduction with each other. Haven't you heard of adoption? Surrogacy? Every single other function of marriage can be performed by a gay couple. Marriage is about companionship too. Are gay people incapable of companionship?

  Or are you arguing against gay marriage simply because you don't like it? Isn't part of a civil society the idea of alllowing people to engage in activities we don't like, as long as they aren't harming anyone else?
• 

  hamilcarr

  Experts speaking:

  Statement on Marriage and the Family from the American Anthropological Association

  "The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

  The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples."

  Accept diversity!
• 

  BurnTheShips

  Then, why has evolution allowed for same-sex relations to spread?

  You tell me. I've never heard of a man impregnating another man or a woman, a woman. As I said, it is sterile.

  There is a difference between investigating the social and psychological causes of homosexuality and actually condoning the practice, Catholicity notwithstanding.

  BTS
• 

  funkyderek

  truthseeker:

  Just using the definition above, to be truly equal everyone would have to be of the same sex or genderless.

  Not at all. Two people can be equal in value (see your first definition) under the law without being the same age, sex, colour, or sexual orientation. The (absurd) alternative is that to be truly equal everybody would have to actually be the same person.

  Shazard:

  So that's why they are granted other benefits and privilleges, so to balance their duties and resource wasting to motivate actually grow new ppl, so society can get going forward. Now you want the same RIGHTS and PRIVILLEGES grant to the ppl who are UNABLE biologically to reproduce the society. So society want to grant some Society Resoures to couples which can't give anything back to the Society... so Society is making actual suicide as society.
  NOW... if you GIVE the rights to gays, then you have to PAY extra for heterosexual couples to motivate them to reproduce society members. Otherway why should I waste MY resources for YOUR benefits?

  If I can cut through the broken English, you seem to be saying that gay couples shouldn't be given certain rights because they cannot biologically reproduce. Does that mean that you want the same rights denied to heterosexual couples who cannot biologically reproduce? Given that the world is overpopulated, why should we be encouraging people to reproduce anyway? And what on earth makes you think that is the reason marriage has a privileged status anyway? Maybe instead of giving the kind of rights you advocate to married people we should just give them directly to parents. What do you think?
• 

  hamilcarr

  You tell me. I've never heard of a man impregnating another man or a woman, a woman. As I said, it is sterile.

  The answer is in the article I refer to:

  According to the alliance-formation hypothesis, same-sex sexuality evolved by natural selection because it created or strengthened male-male alliances and allowed low-status males to reposition themselves in the group hierarchy and thereby increase their reproductive success.

  There is a difference between investigating the social and psychological causes of homosexuality and actually condoning the practice, Catholicity notwithstanding.

  Many Belgian catholics have been supportive of same-sex marriage. The catholic priest of my parish openly speaks up for the society's acceptance of homosexuality and lives together with his male friend. All the JWs in my area refer to this disgraceful act of Babylon the Great in their ministry.
• 

  Shazard

  So my predictions for future scenarious!
  
  As gay marriage is not re-productive, but gay-rigth and gay-phylosophy needs the idea carriers which can't be grown by themselves naturally, then two scenarious are bvious!
  
  1. Society which does not reproduce (destroys natural family) dies itself, so it is short-lived and reproductive constructs prevail. So this gay-stuff is just social fluctuation which is short-term in the terms of civilization.
  2. Gays import society members, and re-indoctrinate them into their teachings. For this traditional marriage is still needed for gay-oriented-society, but the traditional marriage should be castrated to have their rights to teach their own values. So gay-oriented-society needs POWER to take over Education so they could override stight-oriented-society member world-views with gay-world-view! In this scenario stright-oriented-society is made into reproductive mechanism without rights to teach and grow their own children according to their values, so traditional family is stripped of their rights to teach values which implies stirght-oriented-family and society!
  
  So if Western World goes into #2 scenariou, we should expect growing power from pro-gay parties and groups, their infiltration into education and law-making structures, so they should rebuild society to produce for them drones, which their indoctrinate! So the target would be two-level society - elite which has benefits and control of information/world-view and lower society, which produces new humans for elite! Ofcourse this case implies two sets of rights, duties, which are not shared, and first should go rights for stright-ppl to educate their children as they see fit!
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  scotsman

  Shazard, we're already in positions of political power and as educators, we always have been. Brace yourself for the gay agenda!