This is a subject that is intriguing, not because of the justice involved but due to the culture wars.

Marriages are given distinct privileges because society realizes that the main satisfaction in life is to procreate and to enjoy the company of your children.  It is also true that married hetro couples, on the average, give children the best chance in life.  Since society has to pay a price for each damaged adult, it is only reasonable to want a child to have the best chance possible.  Thus, the tax and social advantages given by law to committed hetro couples.  This is the bedrock logic.  Hetro marriages give a child the best chance, so they are encouraged.

A gay marriage creates no children.  Thus, there is no need to give them any social advantages.  It is not an issue of fairness, but one of reserving special privileges to encourage behavior that raises the best children which benefits us all.

The people who espouse gay marriage ignore the child rearing issue.  They also contend that a gay couple can raise children too.  While they can, a gay raised child is severely warped sexually as they have not seen the normal interaction that happens between a man and woman who are married.

This is not to say that all marriages are wonderful, they are not.  But they are head and shoulders better for raising a healthy child than shack ups, single parenting, or orphanages.

Marriage is not about depriving gays, but rewarding a committed hetro breeding couple

Ironman ... you are correct

In every sense.   Your observations about the nature and reason for marriage are dead-on and although you might take somre heat from people ... know in your heart that you (we)are right (see link below).

Having said that ... I'm OK with gay marriage.   Not that I have a personal stake in it ... it's just that I don't really see a downside to society, I don't see why they should get to stay single all their lives and have all the sex they want and  ... well ...

I'm tired of hearing them whine about it

Your website explains everything now.

I agree with most of your assessments, but I'd like to note that gay "unions" could adopt and raise children, even from infancy, and so although they might not "produce" children, they could still FUNCTION as family units that provide the latter 99% of a child's experiences and upbringing. Omnis post uterum, and for lesbians omnis post fertlization.

I think the gay marriage thing is a bit silly. I'm fighting like hell with every woman I meet to AVOID getting married, haha, and they want to have MORE opportunity? I think committed long-term couples of hetero or homo variety ought to have the right to seal the deal, in a sort of contractual way, that obliges the government to give them a few perks, like the one not having to charge the other rent if they live in the same house. But I don't think the 'rewards' given only to hetero couples ought to be as valuable as they are anyway. And I certainly don't think the government ought to be in the business of underwriting religious ceremonies. Where's my right to a Hindu polygamist's multiple weddings? Or that Mormon deal the freakazoids in Utah have worked out?

So, rather than spreading marriage out thinner to a larger variety of people, how about limiting its impact more and thus making it less offensive when we do offer it to all and sundry? The idea that a single-family unit is "best" for a child, is a religious argument, at least in part; and the idea that it's only hetero people who "ought" to have committed long-term unions, is also a religious argument. I didn't join that church. I come from America, I don't have to join a church.

So, after all is said and done, to a great extent the arguments I hear for limiting marriage to one variety of human, are indeed religious arguments, whether or not they're right. It's become a battle about fundamentalists forcing their morality upon society at large, even if rationally it ought not to have been.

The smartest thing any gay advocate I've heard lately has said, is that he'd like to stop talking about gay "marriage" and start talking about gay "civil union," so that it becomes clear what level we're talking about. It should be up to the individual cult leader (priest, rabbi, pastor...) to decide what his cult (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant ...) thinks about the religious and moral significance of the union; and up to the government to determine only the civil implications, in terms of tax dollars, public services, and the like.


-- Modified on 8/2/2003 11:43:31 AM

"...a gay raised child is severely warped sexually as they have not seen the normal interaction that happens between a man and a woman who are married".

May I barf now?

Your statement is inherantly bigoted when you consider the number of homosexual unions that have raised children who became mentally stable heterosexual adults (of which I personally know three...and have never known any where the child grew up and chose homosexuality, although I am sure there are plenty), as well as the fact that kids raised by homosexual couples can and do see mentally healthy heterosexual unions in a myraid of places in our society or within their or their parents' peer group (although I wouldn't call J. Lo and B. Af "mentally healthy" by any stretch of the imagination).  

By your argument, children raised in single parent homes where the adult doesn't date would grow up to be androgynous.  Your argument also doesn't explain all the children who have grown up to embrace homosexuality that came from traditional families where they regularly saw the "normal interaction that happens between a man and a woman", and yet turned out to be "severly warped sexually" anyway.

A progressive society will alter and improve their laws to change with the inevitable evolution of societal beliefs over time.  One could say that marital laws in this country have been altered as we have evolved to accept that not all people view life as having to be an ode to procreation, and that we, as a society, have decided to view those people and their dissenting beliefs as no less worthy of the rights and priveleges of our society simply because they dissented (or posted something as scary as Megapig's website).  However, many choose to say that it is our society's tolerance of dissent that has been the downfall of "The Great American Way".  One person's "permissive" is another person's "progressive", and it is up to the direction of society to choose what to embrace.  If you look at where things have gone over the history of civilization, society's opinions may determine its speed, but social progression is inevitable.

However, when one writes that kids in gay households are "severly warped sexually" only because they are raised outside of the biological eqution needed for procreation, you purport to make a statement, not an opinion.  Without data to back this up, all the statement relays is bigotry, whether it is malicious or not.