The Obssession with Homosexuality

[Askthepizzaguy]

Likewise, why anger Christians by doing the same? Give gays equal treatment by all means, but there is no sense aggravating people of religious persuasion by trying to legally redefine the institutions that they think God gave them. Just call it a civil union and get rid of the legal term marriage! Don't go messing with something Christians think comes from God.

I don't think that standing in the way of what two consenting adults want to do with their lives, affording them the same rights and privileges as the rest of humanity, is something we should do just to make sure Christians don't get offended. If you've already conceded that gays have a right to be gay, have a right to do gay things together, and can be afforded ALL the rights of a couple, and the only sticking point now is that you don't like it compared to your "holier than theirs" marriage, it's time to let it go. They are going to call it marriage. You can't really stop them from getting married in their hearts, and you don't, apparently, want to stop them from having all the legal rights afforded to marriage. The bottom line is it makes you feel all icky when you have their relationships compared to your more "Godly" form of love. But at the end of the day, you have to deal with things that are offensive to your religious sensibilities, and how you personally feel about the issue does not have any bearing on the matter. Saying it makes you sad for them to have equal treatment and the same word, when you're willing to give them equal treatment, is losing the argument. It is just a word. And Christians do not have a monopoly on marriage as a word, nor does any religion. And challenging someone's legal marriage purely on the grounds you don't like it called marriage, though you don't challenge anything they do otherwise... it's absurd.

ATPG, no offense, but you are the most closed minded person I have ever talked to.

I'm not the one standing in the way of the happiness of hundreds of millions of people simply because I don't like the word they wish to associate themselves with. There are more important things in life than quibbling over words. If you've already conceded that gay people are normal upstanding equal members of our society and should be afforded the same rights as anyone else, you've also afforded them the right to call their relationship a marriage. That's part of having equal rights. You cannot monopolize a word; other people get to use it too.

You may counter that if we shouldn't quibble over words, then why am I arguing?

You have to demonstrate why they can't use that word, otherwise they can freely use it by default. The responsibility of showing why marriage can only be as you define it to be is on you, otherwise you have no basis for stopping them from calling it what you like. All I've seen so far is your religion says it's not a good idea. Not a good enough reason.