North Carolina Passes Amendment Banning Same-sex Unions

[Fragony]

If the relevant issue in the marriage debate is the ability to procreate and not religious tradition, shouldn't the fact that gay couples can now have children through various means be reason enough to extend the institution to such couples? If you do not want to micromanage fertility, then ability alone must be the deciding factor.

Gay couples shouldn't have these various means to have children, sorry Panzer the world is not ready for that yet. Even if you would do a fine job.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Gay couples shouldn't have these various means to have children, sorry Panzer the world is not ready for that yet. Even if you would do a fine job.

The world only becomes ready by doing things it isn't quite ready for yet (taking your premise as true). There's always a trial by fire. Sometimes conservatives are too pessimistic.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Welp, Obama just came out in favor of Same-Sex marriage.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...545729926.html

[Vladimir]

'bout time.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Welp, Obama just came out in favor of Same-Sex marriage.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...545729926.html

He's always supported it, yeah? Who was that a secret to?

[a completely inoffensive name]

He's always supported it, yeah? Who was that a secret to?

The millions of evangelical blacks who turn out in high numbers to prevent same sex marriage.

[Fragony]

The world only becomes ready by doing things it isn't quite ready for yet (taking your premise as true). There's always a trial by fire. Sometimes conservatives are too pessimistic.

I am absolutely not that conservative, but a lot of people still are. People will want to make a point out of it, both sides

[Strike For The South]

Gay couples shouldn't have these various means to have children, sorry Panzer the world is not ready for that yet. Even if you would do a fine job.

ಠ_ಠ

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Now you're trying to get off on a technicality. Call them plural, call them simultanious, whatever you wish, it doesn't change the fact that even today in most muslim countries one man can have more than one wife at the same time. It is clear what is expected of a man and what his duties are to each of his wives and it is legally defined.

Christian countries don't allow one man to have multiple wives, either one at a time or at the same time. Law doesn't recognize more than one wife, even though you may have your personal harem of 299 women. You're not obligated to any one of them, except the first.

Therefore, Christian concept of marriage isn't, and wasn't at any point in history, universally applied. It is not even applied fully in the Christian states. Christian dogma doesn't allow divorce, except in a few very strict circumstances while the legal concept of the divorce is different, more liberal.

I see no reason to allow Christian idea of marriage to stop me from allowing same sex couples a legally defined relationship, the same heterosexual couples are entitled to. Now, we may call it morriage instead of marriage, but that's just silly, isn't it?

It's big legal difference - in Muslim countries your marriages, however many they may be, are seperate. Marriage is still concieved in the same way as in the West, and as I said the Western prohibition again Polygamy is Roman, not Christian.

what is being proposed here is a legal chage, therefore what should be considered is legel precedent.

Not emotions.

I don't care what you try two wrap it up as, it's still a turd. You're stating that a homosexual man can't call his "life partner" his "husband", because YOU say it's not the same thing.

Legally, it isn't. A husband has a wife - not a husband, and a wife has husband - not a wife. That is currently a legal fact in the large part of the world. Further, you do not have a business "wife", you have a business "partner".

It is very clear that the three words are not interchangable, they have different historical connotations and contemporary meanings. Replacing husband and wife with "partner" in legal documents changes chose documents - it removes the gender-identification of the parties, and it removes the requirement that they have a sexual relationship.

I have been reading exactly what you say. Thanks for that good laugh though, I enjoyed YOU calling ME the bigot here. As tribsey used to say, .

Maybe you should try reading what I write. Simply telling me I am a bigot because I oppose Gay marriage is basically being a bigot.

No, you just hate the fact that they want to be treated with the same human dignity, respect, and equality that any other human being should be. Go ahead though, keep talking. I love reading your explanations of why this isn't discrimination or degrading.

I don't hate anyone, except that bastard whoes marrying the girl I have complicated and unresolved feelings about.

I don't believe that marriage can exist without the capability to procreate.

I jumped the gun there, forgetting you are English. Perhaps in England that is how they are viewed and handled. In the US, birth certificates are handled such that the legal parents are listed on the document. See here and here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_certificate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_adoption

See the part where it states an amended certificate is issued and the adoptive parents are assigned the roles, and this becomes the bottom line official document. This does contrast with how open adoption works in some states, in that the certificate is apparently not altered but the records are "sealed" and the child is prevented from gaining access to "identifying" information about their biological parents.

In the UK the original certificate is retained, and an "adoption" certificate is issued - the birth parents go on one, the legal guardians on the second. When you adopt someone you supplant the birth parents and they cease to have a legal claim.

That way, you know who the biological parents are.

I don't deny there is a shred of validity to this, but historically speaking this is an extremely rare occurrence. You're getting into a different area now. Keep in mind that some countries allow marriage between first cousins, such as Japan. While there may be some social stigmas and legal limitations on this in other nations, what is defined as "incest" varies between cultures. I for one happen to find anything where a distant relative marries another to be pretty disgusting, but that's not my decision what others do with themselves.

The original reason for marriage was to establish a legal bond between a father and his children - that is why adoption causes such potential problems, and that is why I consider Gay marriage to be nonsensical.

It makes sense to me for marriage to be restricted to relationships involving having children or potentially having children. Our marriage law and conception of marriage is pretty silly in that regard. But I don't see what the anti-gay marriage people have against people who adopt, or who use a sperm donor. PVC, exactly how different do you think that lesbian couple that you mentioned is from a man/woman couple? Why is it especially important that babies are created in the natural way that come from both parents? It would still be wrong for one of the mothers to ditch the other one and leave her to raise her kid herself wouldn't it?

There is a simple answer to this question. The Lesbian couple used a Sperm doner, therefore only one of the women in the couple is the child's mother - the father is the sperm doner. That should be reflected on the Birth Certificate.

If the other woman in the relationship wants to be the child's other legal guardian she should adopt it - but unlike a heterosexual marriage she should not be assumed to be a parent, because that is not physically possible.

I don't understand how giving two consenting adults the same benefits and authority as two other adults will irrevociably harm society.

If you want to keep the word marraige implicitly relgious I have no problem with changing the name to union.

I also don't understand the child arguement. Plenty of people have children whom should not. The fact that a man and woman can procreate does not mean they should. I don't think you should get benefits soley based on being able to perfrom a biological function

I meant against the pervailing opinion in the thread, which was a pro stance.

I am inclined to agree with the civil union in leiu of calling it gay marrige. Not that I personally care what we call it in legalese but I feel like taking the word marrige out would expidite things. I can not, in good concious give prefertiential benefits to two people becuase they can create a child. Compared to another couple who can not. But can still adopt and have a similar positive impact on society.

Not the child rearing is sole reason for a partnership but if we consider citizens to be the smallest unit of the state and families are responible for raising that unit I think the gov't has a vested interest in such things....or something like that.

The church most certainly does not have to perform a ceremony or even recognize the validity of thing but the government should

If I were a priest, I would happily perform a formal binding cermemony between two men or two women to recognise their relationship within the community. However, I would not call it marriage because a marriage involves one man, one woman, and the hope of children in the future.

If the relevant issue in the marriage debate is the ability to procreate and not religious tradition, shouldn't the fact that gay couples can now have children through various means be reason enough to extend the institution to such couples? If you do not want to micromanage fertility, then ability alone must be the deciding factor.

A Gay couple can't have children - one member of the couple can have children using a third party. Dress it up how you want, but the reality is that artificial insemination and surrogate mothers are, within the matromonial parradigm, forms of infidelity.

In a marriage you are expected to have children within the couple by coupling with eachother.

[Lemur]

I don't believe that marriage can exist without the capability to procreate. [...] In a marriage you are expected to have children within the couple by coupling with eachother.

Interesting. Two friends of mine, a man and a woman, are married. She is infertile due to some bad plumbing complicated by bad doctoring when she was young. My friend knew this when he married her.

They have adopted two children (just this year -- we're all very happy for them). What's your take on the validity of (a) their marriage, and (b) their suitability as adoptive parents?

[PanzerJaeger]

A Gay couple can't have children - one member of the couple can have children using a third party. Dress it up how you want, but the reality is that artificial insemination and surrogate mothers are, within the matromonial parradigm, forms of infidelity.

In a marriage you are expected to have children within the couple by coupling with eachother.

Is adoption infidelity as well? What is the matromonial paradigm? Where are you getting these arbitrary definitions?

@Lemur: beat me to it...

[Strike For The South]

and I beat both of you to it

What the hell

Is everyone ignoring me?

[Lemur]

and I beat both of you to it

What the hell

Is everyone ignoring me?

Who are you? How the hell did you get in here?

Nah, the "straight but infertile couple" thing is an old argument, and one that is not being satisfactorily answered. I just happen to know a couple who actually live it out, so I thought I would ground it a little. It's all fun and games to talk about abstractions, but when you can look at real people, some of that glib ideology fades. Anyway.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

what is being proposed here is a legal chage, therefore what should be considered is legel precedent.

Not emotions.

...
A Gay couple can't have children - one member of the couple can have children using a third party. Dress it up how you want, but the reality is that artificial insemination and surrogate mothers are, within the matromonial parradigm, forms of infidelity.

In a marriage you are expected to have children within the couple by coupling with eachother.

But is it really "emotions" to ask ourselves "does marriage need the children to come from coupling with each other? It's clearly the case that adoptive parents love their children just as dearly (or close enough if you insist). I don't think all of the specifics of how marriage has typically been done are central to marriage. And in legal arguments you have to consider what was merely incidental don't you?

[HoreTore]

Gay couples shouldn't have these various means to have children, sorry Panzer the world is not ready for that yet. Even if you would do a fine job.

Unless you propose taking children away from their parents and putting them in foster care, there is nothing you can do to prevent gays from having children. Sperm donations and such just makes life easier, it does not decide whether or not a gay couple has children.

[Whacker]

But is it really "emotions" to ask ourselves "does marriage need the children to come from coupling with each other? It's clearly the case that adoptive parents love their children just as dearly (or close enough if you insist). I don't think all of the specifics of how marriage has typically been done are central to marriage. And in legal arguments you have to consider what was merely incidental don't you?

People seem to have a hard time accepting that it's not just about children. Children and the legal responsibilities and priviledges that come along with that are indeed an important part of it for people who wish to reproduce. The simple fact is that there are thousands upon thousands of happily married couples who have zero desire to have children. They aren't a minority anymore by any means, I know quite a few personally, and some of the Orgahs here also fall into this category. Why get married if it's not for the children? It's pretty damn obvious actually. Legal benefits and protection, medical coverages and benefits, life insurance, power of attorney type authority in life or death situations for your partner, tax breaks (we take what we can get), the list goes on and on. So yeah, it's not primarily, just, or even mostly about children.

[Whacker]

Unless you propose taking children away from their parents and putting them in foster care, there is nothing you can do to prevent gays from having children. Sperm donations and such just makes life easier, it does not decide whether or not a gay couple has children.

I'm pretty sure Frags gets that. The point is, they cannot "naturally" conceive a child that is a direct product of their combined DNA.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Interesting. Two friends of mine, a man and a woman, are married. She is infertile due to some bad plumbing complicated by bad doctoring when she was young. My friend knew this when he married her.

They have adopted two children (just this year -- we're all very happy for them). What's your take on the validity of (a) their marriage, and (b) their suitability as adoptive parents?

My take on their marriage is that it was unfortunate, and I am sorry that it was not fortunate. My take on them is adoptive parents is that I can't really comment, knowing nothing about their relationship.

In so far as the legal situation goes though, it shouldn't be any harder for them to adopt whether they can have their own children or not. I happen to think adoption is awsome, and preferable to any of the modern jiggery-pokery doctors perform, better emotionally for child and adult. If I had a wife and I was infertile I would we should adopt, and if she couldn't accept that I would tell her she needed another man.

Is adoption infidelity as well? What is the matromonial paradigm? Where are you getting these arbitrary definitions?

@Lemur: beat me to it...

No of course it isn't.

That child is already here, you aren't creating it. Artifical insemination is exactly the same as having sex with a man when he's gagged and covered in a sheet with a hole for his little man.

The paradigm is man + woman = baby, ergo man + woman = marriage because we want the family untis staying together, rather than forming new more complex units. It's inefficient, it leads to children growing up without parents and that is bad for society.

But is it really "emotions" to ask ourselves "does marriage need the children to come from coupling with each other? It's clearly the case that adoptive parents love their children just as dearly (or close enough if you insist). I don't think all of the specifics of how marriage has typically been done are central to marriage. And in legal arguments you have to consider what was merely incidental don't you?

The Pro-Gay marriage argument always starts, "but if two people love each other..."

This is not something I am concerned with. If I got a girl pregnant I would offer to marry her, if she said no I would say we could get divorced intwo years if she didn't like me, but in the mean time and afterwards she and the child would be protected by the full force of the law and they would always know who their father was. If she still said no I would assume the child was not mine, because what I'm offering her is a much better deal legally and financially than state-enforced child support allows for.

She'd get more in the divorce, and I would make sure both she and the child were as well provided for as I could manage.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

People seem to have a hard time accepting that it's not just about children. Children and the legal responsibilities and priviledges that come along with that are indeed an important part of it for people who wish to reproduce. The simple fact is that there are thousands upon thousands of happily married couples who have zero desire to have children. They aren't a minority anymore by any means, I know quite a few personally, and some of the Orgahs here also fall into this category. Why get married if it's not for the children? It's pretty damn obvious actually. Legal benefits and protection, medical coverages and benefits, life insurance, power of attorney type authority in life or death situations for your partner, tax breaks (we take what we can get), the list goes on and on. So yeah, it's not primarily, just, or even mostly about children.

Yes, we aren't going to test them to see whether they are are going to have children or not. But people shouldn't get married if they aren't going to have children, or they should at least adjust the wedding vow accordingly: "in sickness and in health, through good times and bad, for better or poorer, till death do us part, or until we really just don't like each other anymore and aren't happy at all"--because if that last bit is true and there are no kids, people do break up, they should break up, and it's not really marriage. There should be some other route to getting some of the legal benefits. Our system is kind of a mess because it's based on assumptions that don't really hold in modern society. We aren't stuck in a certain conception of marriage just because people need to have hospital visitation rights.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

People seem to have a hard time accepting that it's not just about children. Children and the legal responsibilities and priviledges that come along with that are indeed an important part of it for people who wish to reproduce. The simple fact is that there are thousands upon thousands of happily married couples who have zero desire to have children. They aren't a minority anymore by any means, I know quite a few personally, and some of the Orgahs here also fall into this category. Why get married if it's not for the children? It's pretty damn obvious actually. Legal benefits and protection, medical coverages and benefits, life insurance, power of attorney type authority in life or death situations for your partner, tax breaks (we take what we can get), the list goes on and on. So yeah, it's not primarily, just, or even mostly about children.

Married couples who do not intend to have children are still very much the minority, and those that do not intend to have children are basically taking advantage the benefits designed to encourage marriage for procreation (the tax breaks especially).

[Sasaki Kojiro]

That child is already here, you aren't creating it. Artifical insemination is exactly the same as having sex with a man when he's gagged and covered in a sheet with a hole for his little man.

The paradigm is man + woman = baby, ergo man + woman = marriage because we want the family untis staying together, rather than forming new more complex units. It's inefficient, it leads to children growing up without parents and that is bad for society.

So I don't get why adopted children don't make it a marriage, we still want the family unit to stay together.

[HoreTore]

I'm pretty sure Frags gets that. The point is, they cannot "naturally" conceive a child that is a direct product of their combined DNA.

I'm pretty sure he gets it too.

The point is, they already have gotten tons of children "naturally". Whether or not society is able to accept gay children or not is no longer relevant. The children are herem and they have the parents they have. If society is unable to treat them properlyas the individuals they are, society needs to change. Fast.

@PVC: one of the first pro-gay arguments in this thread(mine), had nothing to do with "love", it was about personal freedom and that the state or society has no business poking in other peoples priate lives.

Also, the paragraph after the sentence about pro-gay arguments reveals a rather skewed view on what relationships are about, and what people in general think about the relations between people. To put it mildly, you voice the opinion of an extremely small minority, one I would have to assume only consists of yourself.

When this is contrasted with your calls for tradition, nature, etc, it gets weird. I can understand arguments like the ones you have made coming from someone in the majority, but not from a sexual minority, which you are.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I'm pretty sure he gets it too.

The point is, they already have gotten tons of children "naturally". Whether or not society is able to accept gay children or not is no longer relevant. The children are herem and they have the parents they have. If society is unable to treat them properlyas the individuals they are, society needs to change. Fast.

What about their actual parents, though?

This is an issue - there was even a Hollywood film about it already.

[Strike For The South]

Artifical insemination is exactly the same as having sex with a man when he's gagged and covered in a sheet with a hole for his little man.

Now it's a party

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So I don't get why adopted children don't make it a marriage, we still want the family unit to stay together.

Simple, with adopted children the family has broken down - the point of marriage is to keep the biologically family together because children generally do best with their biological parents - it's also about linking a father and his children without the need for expensive forensice investigation. However, once the father has sodded off that's already failed, hasn't it? In that case, assuming the mother had the werewithal to nail him down to begin with the marriage is the permenant hook she has in him, because even if they get divorced she's entitled to support.

So there's no particular reason for the adoptive parents to marry; granted there's no reason they shouldn't be married but in the vast majority of cases where the couple are infertile they only find out after trying to have natural children.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

"The kids are all right"? Yeah that was surprisingly negative about lesbian parenting, I think it was an independent movie based on people the writer knew though. And could easily be seen as negative about hippie parents. I do think there are some issues with the surrogate type stuff, as people seem to naturally care about genetic links and "real parents" and stuff like that.

So basically like I was saying. The clear and simple solution (legally) is to have gay marriage. But we shouldn't be fooled into thinking the cultural issues are so simple and clear cut, or that being on the right side of the legal question makes our ideas about the cultural stuff right to.

Simple, with adopted children the family has broken down - the point of marriage is to keep the biologically family together because children generally do best with their biological parents - it's also about linking a father and his children without the need for expensive forensice investigation. However, once the father has sodded off that's already failed, hasn't it? In that case, assuming the mother had the werewithal to nail him down to begin with the marriage is the permenant hook she has in him, because even if they get divorced she's entitled to support.

So there's no particular reason for the adoptive parents to marry; granted there's no reason they shouldn't be married but in the vast majority of cases where the couple are infertile they only find out after trying to have natural children.

I think if parents adopt a kid, and the father sodds off, the mother is still entitled to support. Adoption is a commitment to treat the kids like they are biologically your own, and society should treat it as such.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

"The kids are all right"? Yeah that was surprisingly negative about lesbian parenting, I think it was an independent movie based on people the writer knew though. And could easily be seen as negative about hippie parents. I do think there are some issues with the surrogate type stuff, as people seem to naturally care about genetic links and "real parents" and stuff like that.

I haven't seen it - but the dact it got made is a point in itself. If I were a child with two dads/moms I'd want to know where the other part of me came from, especially as a boy with two moms you'd want to know stuff, like am I going to got bald?

So basically like I was saying. The clear and simple solution (legally) is to have gay marriage. But we shouldn't be fooled into thinking the cultural issues are so simple and clear cut, or that being on the right side of the legal question makes our ideas about the cultural stuff right to.

If you want clear and simple I propse the following:

1. Abolish legal marriage.

2. Allow consenting adults to contract whatever "marriage like" arrangements with whatever gender/number of consenting adults they wish.

3. Abbolish annulment, you contract one of these agreements you either stay together or get a full divorce because defining what is an isn't a conjugal act is a legal nightmare. I had this argument with a Gay man earlier in the wekk, he proposed a list of legally consumating sex-acts, I can't see that working.

As far as I am personally concerned the only logical courses of action are to keep marriage between one man and one woman, or to completely liberalise it.

If we can't proscribe the geneder of the person you marry we can't proscribe anything else about your legal arrangements and I call foul on anyone who supports Gay marriage, dissagrees with this point, then calls me a bigot.

[PanzerJaeger]

Well thank you.

I'm sorry. As I said, I was reacting out of emotion and deliberately using a broad brush.

It just seems to me that religion has become a sanctuary for ignorance and hatred in this country, and it wasn't always that way. Nowhere else would the kind of vile rhetoric that I posted in the OP be openly spoken and accepted. (And I could post pages and pages of Christian leaders saying awful things about gay people.) Nowhere else would intelligent design be given any credibility. Nowhere else would abstinence only education, pro-bully anti-bully legislation, censoring teachers, and all the other base stupidity these people push in the education system get any traction.

The absurdities that Christians believe on face value would be laughed out of any fifth grade science class under any other name. These people believe that some Jew two thousand years ago, born from a woman who was essentially raped by their god, rose from the dead and walked around, based on nothing but a consistently contradictory book that sanctions slavery among other things. And these are the people that have appointed themselves the moral arbiters of our society? These are the people who feel confident in judging the worth of other people's lifestyles? People are being denied a sensible, logical extension of civil liberties based on a book of fairy tales.

Why? Why is Christianity given a special dispensation for idiocy? IMO, it is because most of us who do not accept such notions have family or friends that are Christian and do not want to offend. It is just not polite. I remember when I was being taught in Catholic high school by otherwise sane, rational adults that that nasty little wafer and that cheap wine were the body and blood of Christ, not a representation of them, but actual flesh and blood. It seemed so incredibly batshit crazy and so easily disproven, but I kept my mouth shut because I did not want to make anyone uncomfortable. The problem is that Christians have no problem offending. If they want to hold others up in judgment, they should be taken to task for their own views that make far less sense than people acting on a naturally occurring homosexual orientation.

[HoreTore]

...and that is what is meant by gay marriage.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

As far as I am personally concerned the only logical courses of action are to keep marriage between one man and one woman, or to completely liberalise it.

If we can't proscribe the geneder of the person you marry we can't proscribe anything else about your legal arrangements and I call foul on anyone who supports Gay marriage, dissagrees with this point, then calls me a bigot.

I think it's easy enough to just change it to "marriage between one man/woman and one man/woman". Conceptually it's very easy, and as long as we understand why were are doing it (aka, we don't think it's because "tradition is stupid, religion is stupid" etc) it will just stick like that. Arguing for polygamy would be a totally different logic.


@PJ: I think that's just a narrow focus, there's plenty of terrible non-christian examples of the things you mention. If christian views of evolution would get laughed out of a 5th grade classroom, the average atheists would get laughed out of an 8th grade classroom (or should). You can see it in this thread if you want. And I don't think most religious people in modern societies believe in the literal truth of that stuff you mention. Non christians accept christians because they like them as people true, but also because they don't believe in myths about rational scientific explanations for the human experience.