When this is your argument against something… I’m all for it.
#1 consenting homosexual sexual (or other) activity is not a crime
#2 bestiality is a crime
#3 polygamy is a crime
#4 child molestation is a crime (unless you’re catholic!)
Logic dictates that homosexual marriage should be legal and the others (marrying animals, children, etc.) should not. Why is Pat more concerned about 40 year old men marrying each other (when they already live together) than 10 year old girls in Saudi Arabia getting married to 40 year old men (which was a much less reported, but true story that came out last week)?
However, this brings up something interesting. While marriage to an animal or a child would obviously be harmful to the child or animal and therefore illegal – what is the reasoning for polygamy being illegal? Divorce and remarriage creates “two dads” or “two moms” etc. anyway, so that argument is out (especially since one could assume in a polygamist household the two moms would actually get along and not use the child to get back at one another). As far as I know sexual threesomes aren’t against the law in most states… so (just like homosexuality) isn’t converting that relationship into marriage a logical step? If a man is legally allowed to have two girlfriends who live with him, why can’t they get married? Keep in mind, I’m not saying that to agree with Robertson, I’m saying Robertson actually brings up a new point. And I’m using it to show the futility of marriage in the first place. Logically speaking, any adult should be allowed to marry any other adult, or number of consenting adults. Does that sound silly? Then lets just get rid of this whole (legal) “marriage” thing. Why don’t we just take the government out of it, and leave it up to individuals? And I DON’T mean “take the government out” in the way that “yes on 8” folks would interpret it. I mean stop granting licenses to get married. Stop giving incentives to get married. Those incentives would be better spent on education as single mothers already receive plenty of hand-outs – thus offsetting the “we need to support marriage because of the kids” thing. If children need married parents why do we help single mothers? Of course, conservatives would like to have their cake and eat it too by outlawing abortion and thentaking away hand-outs for single mothers…. Does that sound like a contradiction to you? So does “smaller government” and “warrant-less wiretapping”… but I’m deviating from the point…
Eventually this will be a moot point as I don’t see the institution of marriage lasting more than another hundred or so years since the majority of adult Americans now are classified as “unmarried.”
Can any of you think of any other example where putting a new name on a preexisting legal relationship makes it illegal? It is like saying it is legal for women to drive cars, but not to get driver’s licenses…. Or legal for children to practice medicine, but not to get a license. If there was something inherently wrong with homosexuality, and it was so damaging to our society (as all the “yes on 8” campaign ads showed us) it would be illegal. It isn’t.
But, uh-oh! Homosexuality is only legal because of the supreme court – and if you ask a christian the courts are evil and can’t/shouldn’t decide anything, because our founding fathers CLEARLY wanted the bible to be the law of the land.
With the scare tactic and religious reasons removed (they are usually the same thing), the courts across America will soon have to come to the same conclusion that a few already have… The very interesting thing is that now it is the state courts (not the supreme court) that are validating homosexual relationships. In 2003 a few of the conservative justices noted their dissent with the ruling, stating that they thought the matter of homosexuality being illegal should be “a state matter.” Well, the states are speaking now Scalia and Thomas….and they don’t agree with you either.
Whenever there is a political matter, the question I ask myself is: “What is the worst that could happen if this became legal?” For example: we’ve already seen the worst that could happen with abortion–disgusting partial birth abortions.
The worst that could happen with homosexual marriage is having teenagers marrying adults. Now before you get your knickers in a twist stating it’s not legal–it already is. We already have laws that allow teenagers to marry adults in heterosexual marriages. How long after gay marriage is legalized would it be before someone cried foul and screamed, “Why aren’t you letting me marry my 17 year-old signifcant other? We love each other!” Teen marriages happen all the time for heterosexual couples. How long would it be before gay marriages took place for underage children? So yeah, it is about protecting children.
Just sayin.
right, but what you’re “just sayin” doesn’t make any sense. Why is it any more wrong for a gay guy to be with an underage boy. I don’t know why a straight guy with an underage girl is more morally okay in your eyes… think about that…
So it isn’t about protecting the children at all… otherwise you’d deem both instances equally evil and wrong… (and you’d go about banning heterosexual marriage too…)
Actually, I didn’t site underage children marrying as “morally okay” in my eyes. Those are your words, not mine. And for the record I do think both are equally bad. I just pointed out that our society already allows for underage marriages to happen. This fight has been deemed on of equality. Others claim that we are not being equal in the matter. What is to stop anyone from arguing that we are also not being equal if we do not allow underage teenagers to marry their adult same-sex partners? After all, that would not be equal. If I don’t agree with the possible outcome, I don’t support it.
At least with registered domestic partnerships teenagers are still protected. A underage child can not legally enter into a registered domestic partnership.
Defining “underage” is a separate issue from defining marriage. Just like we can legalize voting for adults and alcohol consumption for adults before defining what age “adult” begins. Again, this is like saying we shouldn’t allow adult women to have driver’s licenses because next thing you know 10 year old girls might apply for licenses…
I thought Xulien made it clear, but I guess not. If you don’t support anything with a bad “possible outcome’ then you must be (for example) a gun control extremist, because just having a gun anywhere in the house means a child might get hold of it. … or just selling guns means someone could legally obtain one and shoot someone else with it. While we’re at it… we’d have to make all harmful prescription drugs illegal as well as knives and forks… and cars… hmmm… when you’re done we’d be walking around in straight jackets on sidewalks made of rubber, because if we allow any of that stuff… it could harm someone if used the wrong way. Explain to me how legalizing the marriage of consenting adults hurts anyone.
If you really had THAT huge a problem with underage marriage you wouldn’t have endorsed the concept of marriage by…getting married.
nevermind the logical fallacy of citing Murphy’s law to justify your beliefs.
religion taken to the extreme= crusades, witch trials, murder, etc. so by your own thought process, we should ban religion.
you also fall into the trap of guilt by association. pointing at something as an example that accounts for maybe 1% of the total, as a reason to ban ALL, rather than just those that you describe as “disgusting”, makes no sense.
preventing 2 adults from marrying does not, and never will, protect children.
preventing two “homos” from getting married won’t prevent them from doing things you consider icky either… they can already legally do that in every state since 2003.
I also didn’t mention this – but I don’t understand the “it’ll devalue heterosexual marriage” argument. Is your Lexus worth less money because a gay guy in Palm Beach has one too? If anything we’ve seen the opposite, home values rise when “them sinnin’ fags” enter the neighborhood. Columbus had an interesting situation in the “Short North” area with this. A predominantly poor African American section of town was slowly being bought out by gay couples who wanted to fix up the houses. It was all very strange as the African American population screamed about gentrification and how the (predominantly white) gays were pushing them out, while the gays screamed back that they were the targets of bigotry against their sexual orientation.
Obviously the gays won as the city loved to have their higher property taxes. You can read a whopping 56 pages on this topic here: https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/410/1/GentrificationintheShortNorth.pdf