Then be clear about this, in the US it is the same ideological ‘camp’ carrying the banner for the pro-life issue that also routinely obstructs sex education and awareness issues, and lobby’s for abstinence as the be all end all of unwanted pregnancy prevention. They are actually against contraception availability and understanding. As I said it is a spectrum attitude, and seemingly disingenuous in some critical sense.
Unfortunately, the Vatican has had a big hand in that. Their anti-contraception stance has led to more deaths than lives saved, arguably, in a culture of pure sex. This is especially true for Africa.
It’s because their no-sex-before-marriage stance is immutable for them. They have to understand that not everyone is as devout or even believers, so they should really promote monogamy more than damn sex before marriage.
That’s another Pandora’s Box.
Now, let’s discuss women’s rights in the Islamic world. Watch as feminists conveniently try to change the subject. Their servitude to far left politics has crippled their whole movement. Their contempt for an often imaginary patriarchy often leads them to start a crusade against men that disgusts the women who don’t want their sons being taught they are worthless, dominating by nature etc.
I honestly believe that a lot of the fringe groups join up to feed on a sense of power. It’s rarely ever about doing what is truly right.
I’m only arguing this in terms of the US right now, women’s rights in the Islamic world is not anything we can impose on directly anyway. This core issue of Roe v Wade has been litigated, both in the courts and by the general population, it’s already restrictive of late term abortions and regardless of any statistics you show most women will never take the choice so lightly. So in terms of actually repealing the ruling, it’s considered a settled issue by most Americans.
Geoffrey, I’ll apologize for getting so tangential here, I got into the whole secular integrity issue because it’s been very much on my mind lately. As an illustration of why it’s becoming a genuine concern: the most money spent on any political campaign this year other than the Presidency, was for a constitutional amendment proposition in the State of California that effectively bans gay marriage, which had just been legalized in the legislature. The money came from the Mormon Church (by some route or another, and that’s probably going to go to court soon) and it’s seen as part of a campaign to ingratiate them with the Fundamentalist Christian alliance.
There’s even a theory about the post election Sarah Palin smear that just happened, since some of McCain’s campaign staff came over from Mitt Romney’s primary campaign, he was the Mormon Republican hopeful, so who really knows but… if you hear about Fundamentalists endorsing Mitt Romney in 2012, then you’ll know just how FUBAR this situation has become.
The abortion issue won’t be going away any time soon. Roe versus Wade puts the woman in charge of her body if she becomes pregnant essentially taking away any rights the child has. I won’t argue the validity of the law now that it is so firmly in place. Feminists define themselves too much through Roe v. Wade almost as if the mere thought of motherhood would automatically mean slavery. What I’ll argue is that promoting abortion as a first resort promotes irresponsibility.
In truth, it’s the whole fetus-isn’t-alive argument that is one main concern. People have been conditioned to believe that.
Prop 8… oh man. You can guess what my stance on that is. A lot of non-fundamentalists helped to push it through, too. Other incentives should be given for starting families IMO if marriage wants to be hollowed of that meaning.
I gather you see marriage as purely an economical institution where religion shouldn’t intrude?
To your question no, that is yet another clear example of secular vs religious domain. Marriage is already strictly a civil union according to the law, since it does not need to be sanctioned by any church, they may still refuse to sanction a union. Therefore homosexual marriage does not impose on the belief of any church either. Believe me I understand the sentiments involved, and if they simply dropped the word “marriage” from the issue it would probably be done with, but I can also understand how it is an issue of sentiment for both sides.
Guys, I just wanted to thank you all for putting together what is perhaps the most well-reasoned, rational, and intellectual political debate that exists on the entire internet. Seriously. The entire internet. This is how discussion needs to happen! 
And Heretic - completely agree with the usage of the marriage terminology. If the government would simply only recognize civil unions and allow those of faith to marry in whatever way they see fit, I can’t see how anyone would have any issues (that is, of course, unless this really is all about homophobia).
/Full disclosure - huge opponent of Prop 8 and was just in Sacramento marching at the state capitol on Sunday. Was great - probably a few thousand people there.
I have yet to understand at all why folks have a problem with gay marriage being legal.
If it was up to me, pretty much all things that don’t hurt others would be legal.
I’ve honestly barely spared much thought for the gay marriage issue for a long time, neither having particular sentiment for marriage itself nor any vested interest in the gay version of it… 
I never had any reason to object to it, and it seemed to me like the only rationale against it even worth considering was on the basis of marriage privileges predicated on supporting a family. Even there the first obvious problem is that heterosexual couples aren’t required to have children, nor will they ever. And from what I’ve learned more recently, there is no objective data to establish that gays make worse parents than a straight couple, or that it necessarily even translates into problems for a heterosexual child. So that being the case:
If we ignore the matter of sentiment for now, from everything I’ve heard on the subject it seems as though every objection will still trace back to one fundamental division after all argumentation is taken to it’s full conclusion. The prime example: If gays can marry what’s to stop brothers and sisters, people marrying their pets, polygamy? There is an explicit subtext to that argument, for if one cannot accept the manifest discrepancy between those examples and homosexuality, it means one does not accept the contemporary status on which the issue rests… that being gay is not a behavioral perversion and it’s not a choice.
Which reminds me of a very amusing anecdote about the Proposition 8 deal, you may have already heard something like this Abadd I dunno. I have to doubt it could be taken too seriously in legal practice, but since the purpose of Prop 8 was to make the parameters for marriage very explicit, with the way it’s written if upheld there could be grounds for the constitutional protection of sibling and filial marriage in California! 
Anyway, that’s what the debate ultimately boils down to. If as a society we have accepted the human condition to be inclusive of homosexuality - and in aggregate this society has - then it is a straightforward matter of equal protection under the law.
Well put. I have a more invested interest in gay marriage living in San Francisco, as it were. I have many friends who are affected by the outcome of prop 8, which is why I have been much more politically active this cycle.
But to your notions regarding incest, the primary issue there is with the “greatly” increased risk of Down Syndrome in incestuous relationships. It is particularly high between siblings, and while people talk of the risks when dealing with first cousins, it’s actually only an increased risk of 1~2% or so. Historically, society has accepted 1st cousins marrying - it is relatively recently that this became taboo. Siblings marrying, however, has been much less common, though there are many aboriginal cultures, and hell, royal families, in which it was relatively common. I took a class on Scandinavian folklore back in college, and it seemed like half the stories were about fathers or brothers marrying their daughters or sisters.
Aside from the risk of Down Syndrome, there are other extremely problematic genetic diseases that can come about due to incest, but we don’t necessarily stop two individuals who are unrelated from marrying due to genetic risk. To be honest, other than the sheer “wtf?!” factor, I can’t think of a single reason why you shouldn’t have the right to marry your sister. Is it f’ed up? In my opinion, dear god yes, but does that mean it should be legally banned? I’m not entirely sure.
(Parent/offspring marriage is another issue entirely. There are tons of psychological issues that you need to deal with there.)
He’s no Michael Savage, although I respect how he didn’t outright attack religion. Maybe if more people tried that things would change for the better.
The ideas, I fear, (wihout going into details about Biblical teachings) are too diametrically opposed for a compromise to be reached by everyone.
I’d love to see Micheal Savage on Bill Maher’s show or vice versa. What a verbal battle that would be.
The constitution, whether Federal or State, is meant to define personal rights and privileges not restrict them. This sort of thing has never gone over well, and hardly anyone believes the Prop 8 or equivalent amendments in other States (including mine) will hold up. Obviously I’m not for brothers and sisters marrying and I can’t imagine anyone is in general, that’s just a poke at the apparent shoddiness of the whole campaign.
They are ultimately trying to force the issue on the traditional definition of “marriage”, but this initiative was again sold in very disingenuous terms, as such I can’t see how the supposedly righteous side did themselves any real credit here. If you treat the truth as an enemy, you make of yourself an enemy of truth.
I can’t easily side against anyone in this, but on balance I think we should give the traditionalists their “marriage” since it is a patently traditional institution. I’ve heard the counter argument that it’s too complicated since the word marriage is used throughout applicable law, but that seems a little trite to me, I don’t see why some universal statute of civil equivalence wouldn’t suffice, then again I’m not a lawyer.
To a degree I cannot even fault people for seeing it as a threat to their own morality, the simple fact is it has proven more difficult to reinforce strict traditional ideology while any opposing ideology is just as visible and implicitly viable. But the US has been doing this throughout it’s history, more insular sub-cultures have always been around and they are tolerated until the nation as a whole perceives an imposition on fundamental liberties.
The prevailing mainstream religions aren’t going to budge an inche on this for good or for ill, so this leaves people seeking to put marriage solely in the hands of the government. The problem is, by making marriage strictly for heterosexual couples, it’s a government’s way of encouraging a practice they favour for the future. Even if those couples don’t have children it promotes that type of coupling. Incest wouldn’t be ideal needless to say. You could go around the issue of genetic defects if they simply used birth control, in which case, now there’s no reason to say no to them being married, but doing that advertises/promotes that type of coupling. That is how it can be harmful; it’s self-destructive for a society.
You’re right that homosexuality is seen as a lifestyle choice by the vast majority of Christians. And not a healthy one for future growth assuming civilisation has any desire to keep growing. It’s rampant in prisons for example. Not a choice? Someone is going to have to convince people that they are wrong, otherwise people are going to be paranoid that there’s an agenda that seeks to teach people to be something unnatural.
Obama seems set on making sure gay couples receive the legal benefits “of consequence” of civil government sanctioned partnerships/unions while letting mainstream religions decide if they want to recognise them or not, which isn’t a bad compromise. If they want to be married in the eyes of God then they can’t expect secular government to force it on churchs, but if they want to be married in the eyes of the people then they can content themselves with civil unions. Separate but equal? Not as far as the law goes; they get all the associated legal entitlements.
I’m not convinced the gay rights movement will be happy until they can get the government to force churchs to marry them by not allowing them to descriminate. Catholics closed down a lot of adoption agencies because they were forced to let homosexuals adopt. It helped no one and strikes me as a selfish way to bring a movement forward. Even if people are caught in the crossfire, it’s a victory apparently.
It’s already seen as being forced on religious people by very militant gay activists whether they agree with it or not because Big Brother knows best. That’s not the tolerance being preached so much. We don’t live in a genderless world, and neither do they. Go to Canada and you will find that calling homosexuality sinful is almost considered to be a hate crime.
If this was only about stealing the word marriage from religion, then it goes to show how bitter this stalemate has become.
In a sense (here a somewhat satirical sense) ‘prison sex’ is at least in part a domination dynamic that is echoed in other mammalian behavior, such as dolphins. It’s always been around and it has nothing at all to do with the issue of legitimate homosexuality, unless of course you refuse to believe in legitimate homosexuality.
The terminology in the Old Testament, may even be interpreted as a condemnation of that directly: “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman”. Since, if one is gay, one would not lie with another man as one would a woman, one lies with another man as with a man. It is proscribing a false temptation, in those terms that would indeed be perversion.
And if one was truly wired that way - as God’s creation no less - then denying it would be unnatural as well. It’s difficult for me to think Jesus would want even a man lying with a woman as with another man… either.
I used to be very settled in my beliefs on this until I started meeting people who felt that they couldn’t change the way they were no matter how hard they tried.
The Bible is very clear on the topic though. Certainly for Leviticus you could argue that those rules only applied to the times. But there is a case that can be made for it being a lifestyle choice with a decision made on a conscious or subconscious level. I mean, bisexuality is popular among Brazilian men for example. That doesn’t fit the western male fantasy perpetuated by the media so doesn’t add up. Let’s not even mention the ancient Greeks.
So you have a lot of firm believers seeing gay people as straight people sinning. And when faced with that perspective, the only course of action is to prove them wrong as opposed to forcing it on them.
Before you know it, heterosexuality becomes relegated to the status of a mere option. Maybe it’s human nature to forever rebel. Without that sense of struggle, what’s left? Peace? How boring.
You bring up some conspicuous examples there Geoffrey, and the general conclusion - that sexual response can be transferred or perverted - is inescapable. In essence it is a fetishistic form of bisexuality, and that being the case it begs a number of questions about why humans might retain such a susceptibility. It seems like there’s a fundamental conflation between the typical possessive dynamic of sex and/or marriage in ancient times, and the characteristic domination tendency of fetishistic sexual behavior.
I wont be able to explain this clearly, I’m running into a deficit of terminology since I don’t really know what I’m talking about… but if you consider the difference between the sentiment for marriage in biblical times and now, it’s just one example of how cultural reinforcements have always defined the priorities.
Plural marriage always manifests in highly martial cultures, when men are likely to be killed young and in greater numbers, and also the preferred selection parameters are narrowed, so the toughest and meanest are both the war leaders and the clear mating choice. (which is exactly like many other primates’ ‘harem’ sociology) Cultures that were most dependent on livestock (often nomadic) also became the most obsessed with breeding control, for all their chattel, and seem to manifest the most extreme ideologies of female chastity and subjugation. By a related token, the recurring theme of institutional misogyny in sub-cultures of soldiery or other manly pursuits, could perhaps be another clue to the anthropological rationale for libidinous ambivalence.
If we accept the general truth that romantic love has only been around for about eight centuries, then the greatest portion of the contemporary sentiment about marriage also didn’t exist in Old Testament times, or even Jesus’ time. “Civilization”, almost by definition, seems to accept peace and prosperity as a universal goal, and in the advancement of that ideal, familial and other interpersonal priorities have always changed… evolved. Indeed, the structure of marriage that most Christians may now hold to, has more in common with Roman custom than ancient Hebrew. And they were ostensibly a pagan society.
…
That’s all rambling, but one thing I think is actually important to consider, is that ostracizing homosexuality has only promoted the kind of heinous and depraved manifestations of it. When the human psyche believes that it’s very nature is a sin, then sin itself loses all sense of relative proportion.
A few thoughts…
Abortion - I’ve never been fond of the idea. There’s something about it that makes me feel uneasy inside, the same with pulling the plug on someone in a coma who may or may not wake up. The person may not be concious, but however you look at it, the person is being denied of a future. Certainly a tough call for whoever makes the decision though.
Gay Marriage - A bigger issue than it really needs to be, if you ask me. Allow any two adults to have a civil union and have the same rights as a married couple and you essentially solve the issue without bringing marriage into the equation. Really, what a couple does behind the scenes isn’t going to change regardless of their legal status.
Overpopulation - This a major concern. IMO, we need to stop growing as a civilisation if the planet is going to survive in it’s current form. Otherwise, much of the natural world around us will be gone. What, if anything, is Obama planning to do to address the issue of our expanding, resource consuming, western society?
[quote=“Solo Wing Dragon”]
Gay Marriage - A bigger issue than it really needs to be, if you ask me. Allow any two adults to have a civil union and have the same rights as a married couple and you essentially solve the issue without bringing marriage into the equation. Really, what a couple does behind the scenes isn’t going to change regardless of their legal status.[/quote]
If you are suggesting letting gays have civil unions while others have “marriages,” this poses a few unique issues (but if you’re just suggesting that everyone get civil unions, right on).
In the US, we have fairly clear equality laws on “separate but equal” issues. Allowing some to have marriages and others civil unions would fall under that. Another one of the problems is that some states do not recognize civil unions. The rights don’t transfer from state to state. It’s sticky.
As for abortion, yes, it is a complex issue, but the fact of the matter is that it is the woman’s body. You cannot force a woman to endure a pregnancy and potentially put her own life at risk. It’s not a question of being pro-abortion. It’s a question of choice.
The problem is Abadd, people make it sound as if motherhood is being forced on women when it’s not. Ensure proper use of contraception; that is, be responsible, and no unwanted pregnancies will ensue in the vast, vast majority of cases.
What if there was no such thing as abortion? Suddenly people would control themselves then, right? People need to be more paranoid about birth control before stripping an unborn child of his/her right to live.
Soon enough, medical science will be able to take that zygote and grow it in an artifical womb. Will it suddenly be defined as a life then?
I find the arguments presented by the pro-choice camp as ones of selfishness, and they are tenuous ones at that. Even pro-choice is a euphemism for pro-abortion. This again, shows how they have successfully turned the whole issue from one of life versus death into being all about a woman’s independence and how motherhood should be put on the sidelines in favour of careers and debauchery.
That agenda is very, very clear. Can’t you see it?
As for gay marriage, if they receive all the legal entitlements a married couple would get in a civil union, it ceases to be descrimination under the law.
This is a way of spearheading secularizing marriage altogether. If they get their rights through civil unions, what does it matter what it is called, and why take away marriage from religion?
What should be done, is to try to convince mainstream religion to accept them. Since that will probably never happen, however, the gay rights movement are trying to wield the government as a weapon to steal the term from religion.
Now if that happened in the Islamic world there would be a holy war. Christians are way more tolerant than some people paint them to be.
[quote=“Heretic Agnostic”]You bring up some conspicuous examples there Geoffrey, and the general conclusion - that sexual response can be transferred or perverted - is inescapable. In essence it is a fetishistic form of bisexuality, and that being the case it begs a number of questions about why humans might retain such a susceptibility. It seems like there’s a fundamental conflation between the typical possessive dynamic of sex and/or marriage in ancient times, and the characteristic domination tendency of fetishistic sexual behavior.
I wont be able to explain this clearly, I’m running into a deficit of terminology since I don’t really know what I’m talking about… but if you consider the difference between the sentiment for marriage in biblical times and now, it’s just one example of how cultural reinforcements have always defined the priorities.
Plural marriage always manifests in highly martial cultures, when men are likely to be killed young and in greater numbers, and also the preferred selection parameters are narrowed, so the toughest and meanest are both the war leaders and the clear mating choice. (which is exactly like many other primates’ ‘harem’ sociology) Cultures that were most dependent on livestock (often nomadic) also became the most obsessed with breeding control, for all their chattel, and seem to manifest the most extreme ideologies of female chastity and subjugation. By a related token, the recurring theme of institutional misogyny in sub-cultures of soldiery or other manly pursuits, could perhaps be another clue to the anthropological rationale for libidinous ambivalence.
If we accept the general truth that romantic love has only been around for about eight centuries, then the greatest portion of the contemporary sentiment about marriage also didn’t exist in Old Testament times, or even Jesus’ time. “Civilization”, almost by definition, seems to accept peace and prosperity as a universal goal, and in the advancement of that ideal, familial and other interpersonal priorities have always changed… evolved. Indeed, the structure of marriage that most Christians may now hold to, has more in common with Roman custom than ancient Hebrew. And they were ostensibly a pagan society.
…
That’s all rambling, but one thing I think is actually important to consider, is that ostracizing homosexuality has only promoted the kind of heinous and depraved manifestations of it. When the human psyche believes that it’s very nature is a sin, then sin itself loses all sense of relative proportion.[/quote]
You could argue that pair bonding evolves to meet the new challenges set upon it, no doubt, but the most extreme, and I would argue secular one, is that children are the accidents of sex and we should not breed at all and cure the disease known as ageing.
That’s the next step in our evolution?
This is redefining the human condition, and I’m not a big fan of it. We have children now as young as five (soon in the UK) being taught about homosexuality. Why the big push to advertise it?
This really does border on brainwashing.
All I am saying is that heterosexuality should not be relegated to a mere option, and unfortunately, it is being. That’s self-destructive for the future.
You are misrepresenting the pro-choice side with your own assumptions. I don’t know of any specific breakdowns of abortions of need vs abortions of convenience. In addition, the whole point of pro-choice is to keep it legal. Even if there were only 5% of cases where it was necessary for whatever reason (rape, health risk, etc), making abortion illegal would penalize women in those cases.
Again, misrepresenting. What happens in cultures where abortion is frowned upon is that people are forced to live with consequences. Sometimes, yes, it is their own fault. Sometimes they are the victim of circumstance. But this is also a false dichotomy - the fact of the matter is that we do have safe abortion that can be used for the powers of good, whether it be to help that percentage of people who need it, or to prevent circumstances that would otherwise ruin lives.
Tell me this - do you mean to tell me that all forms of contraceptive are 100% reliable? What if someone was being responsible and was using birth control pills correctly, but, say, the doctor gave them the wrong dosage? Unclear directions? Should the woman then be forced to deal with that consequence?
When does a zygote become an “unborn child.” Please specific the specific stage of development that this occurs, and your reasons.
What about an egg? Or a single sperm cell? Are these children? Or is a child formed when a sperm hits an egg? Do you consider it murder when fertility clinics throw out fertilized eggs? How about those “morning after” pills that flush out the woman’s system? That’s not abortion. Do you consider that denying a child of the right to live? Where do you draw the line?
All of these questions must be answered before you can make a blanket statement about the “right to live.”
I am not claiming anything about whether or not the embryo is a life. Simply, it is the mother’s choice about her own body.
Again, you are misrepresenting based on your own views and slant on the situation. I personally would not encourage anyone to have an abortion unless absolutely necessary. But I am not about to force someone to go through an unwanted pregnancy and to risk their own health, and to potentially ruin the lives of 2 people (the mother and the child).
It isn’t about a woman’s “independence.” It’s about the right for a woman to decide what to do with her own body.
And again, you make assumptions about the reasons for abortion. What if the person was being responsible and there was a faulty condom? Or a mix-up of pills at the pharmacy? Or a rape? Or a bizarre combination of medication that renders the birth control pill ineffective? Or a hundred other reasons?
Wrong again, at least in the US. We have very clear language in our laws about “separate but equal” not being equal at all. In addition, there are still places where civil unions are not recognized and marriages are.
No one is taking anything away from anyone. How do you claim gay marriage takes marriage away from religion? What about the religions that have no rules against gays? Are they not allowed to marry?
In fact, why is it that Christians pick that specific item in the Bible and spout it like it absolute, yet ignore a hundred other things. What was it that the New Testament said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?
Again, marriage != religious institution. Atheists can get married under the law. It has nothing to do with religion. It is illegal in the US for religion to be involved in the law. Churches are allowed to not marry gay couples. They can go to city hall and have a civil marriage done. How does that infringe on any religion?
By “Islamic world,” I suppose you mean the Middle East. Is this a “hey, those people over there are waaaaay worse than we are, so that makes it okay” sort of argument? Because it doesn’t work when far right wingers made the same claims about the abuses the American military were doing in the Middle East, so it sure isn’t going to work in this case.
Christians in California actively stripped people of rights. Gays had the right to marry under California law, and that right has been stripped. It wasn’t a clarification of a law, it was an amendment added to the California Constitution that specifically called out a minority group and took rights away.
If the reason for this is religious, then there are plenty of issues with that. 1) That is unconstitutional as defined by the 2nd Amendment. 2) That sets a precedent for the Christian majority to deny the rights of other religious groups for practices that they see as heretical. 3) If this is to protect the sanctity of marriage as defined by Christianity, where is the movement to outlaw divorce? 4) If this is about “traditional families,” where is the movement to require hetersexual couples to have children?
In both cases - abortion and gay marriage - the movements to support the pro-choice and pro-gay marriage are about defending the rights of individuals. The movements against these things are about taking those rights away. By legalizing abortion and by re-legalizing gay marriage, no rights are denied to anyone, not even the Christians who oppose them. They are still free to live their lives according to their faith and nobody will bother them for it. I can’t see how that is so hard to understand.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]This is redefining the human condition, and I’m not a big fan of it. We have children now as young as five (soon in the UK) being taught about homosexuality. Why the big push to advertise it?
This really does border on brainwashing. [/quote]
This blew my mind. You mean to tell me that the simple act of teaching children that there are homosexuals in the world would brainwash them into thinking they are homosexuals? If you were taught to tolerate gays when you were a child, do you think you would have turned into a homosexual? I’m not being facetious here - I’m just trying to understand why this is such a horrible thing.
I have homosexual friends and our other friends with children have no problem exposing their children to our gay friends. Most children don’t even notice it. And those that do simply ask what’s up with that. The correct way to explain is, “Well, most boys like girls. However, some boys were born liking other boys.” (of course, the girl/girl applies, too.) How is this brain washing? The child will grow up and know which one they are. But if they turn out to be gay, they will know it’s not something to be ashamed of.
There is no push to “advertise” anything. It is simply making children aware of different types of people.