Against gays? Support gay marriage!

Haha, don't worry 15, this doesn't make you homophobic, I'd run from it too!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

2%? You really think it's that small? Remember that that number comes from a US Census that was taken while in many states homosexuality was criminalized. How many homosexuals are going to admit on a government form that they are a member of a group that is institutionally persecuted by law? It's like asking a group of strangers on the street to raise their hands if they're gay while you're wearing an "I hate fags" T-shirt. Plenty of us know better than to admit that we're gay to just any old one if we want to keep from getting beat.

Also I'd have to contest the idea of any segment of the population crying out that their rights are being denied if homosexuals are allowed to marry. At what point did Americans gain the right to oppress any segment of the population that they want? I don't remember that being outlined in the constitution. If your right to religious freedom makes you think that you have a right to use your religion to deny other people the same rights that you enjoy, then you're sorely mistaken, more than that you're un-American and downright dangerous to our supposedly free society.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Mystech, it depends alot where you are. In some cities it may be 10%

This is inaccurate. To may knowledge homosexuality was never criminalized, only the act may have been criminal.

First, I said "right" only to give emphasis to what I said. I do not believe that goverment sponsership of marriage is a right, but a decision based upon the merit of the institution. Further, I do not enjoy the right to marriage, simply because I'm not married. Although you could argue that I have the possibility, so do you. Now I think its clear that someone's going to be "oppressed" if marriage has a real definition. It's clear that the goverment could allow polygamist to marry, even people marrying animals.

Thus, you only have two reasons for where to decide where to draw the line: morals or pragmatics. The pragmatic reason is clearly based upon the number of people desiring to be married and the ability of the state to carry it out, while the moral reason is based upon religion or preceived justice.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I'd note that I don't go around shouting the kinsey number, one in ten, just because I haven't got much to back that up personally. However I've never really seen a study on the distribution of homosexuality through out urban/rural areas or just from region to region, so I also haven't got much to say about your "some cities" claim which I may be misinterpreting as implying that homosexuality may be more widespread in urban areas?

Making it a crime to have sexual intercourse is enough of a criminalization of homosexuality in my book.

Well I'm very grateful that I have the right to marry a woman, but somehow I have the feeling that you'd be complaining as well if marriage were purely on my terms (as it is now on yours) and you had no right but to marry another man. I don't think I'd tell you to stop being so uppity if you stood up for yourself in that situation.

Yes, there does need to be a line drawn somewhere, on that I agree. However, the primary issue here is reasonable limitations. There's absolutely no sense in banning homosexuals to marry one another. In the case of polygamy you have a very strange economic situation, the legal institution simply isn't designed for more than two people. Not to mention that being that the ratio of men to women is nearly half and half we're sure to have deficits of women if guys are making grabs to marry more than one. As for animals. . . there's just so much wrong with that I hardly know where to start. . . it's an animal, it has no rights, it receives no benefits, and it can't consent, not to mention that any illusion of an intent to marry is clearly weighted on one side of the relationship.

The idea of marriage as a union between two consenting adults, however poses few problems, and indeed if someone wasn’t already thinking of homosexuals naming that what a marriage is probably wouldn’t even bring the idea to mind.

Well, aside from the fact that this is a false dilemma, there are always more than two sides to any issue, I’d have to point out that the US government has no right basing a decision on religion. State imposition of theological ideas is a scary thing. And though you didn't bring it up directly I'd also have to note that the arbitrary will of the masses on issues upon which they have no claim, and no real stake, is poor grounds to be making decisions to govern people's lives.

 

The members of goverment have a right to form their opinions on social issues based upon religion as long as none contradict the separation between church and state. Incidently, the separation of church and state is a religious idea spawned by the reformation. Bottom line is that separation of church and state came from religious idealism, namely people wanted freedom to practice their religion.

Religion does not deal with just theological ideas. If someone argues that stealing is wrong because the bible says so, then there's no harm having laws against stealing, even if the rationale was the bible.

Well, sort of. Perhaps I should clarify that people base their decision on either pragmatics or not pragmatics. What is not pragmatics seems to include only morals. Someone could argue that we should have gay marriage to be "fair" to gays, and it would be just as convincing as arguing that gay marriage is wrong. Only with a preconceived idea of morals does the moral argument make any sense.

 

And allowing one religion to control the government and have its religious edicts passed as law is conducive to freedom to practice your own religion how?

This is a silly argument. We are not against stealing because of any justification in the bible, we are against stealing because we are selfish (used here without the negative connotation) enough to desire private property, and hence the laws of our land represent that. It is not an ineffable mandate from some unknowable supreme force, but very clearly laid out by our own thoughts and desires.

Indeed, I would say that none of our laws have a basis in the bible, the bible just happens to co-opt things people already like. Look at how many biblical laws even strict Christians flagrantly ignore! The bible allows married men to have sex with slaves and prostitutes. Shell fish are called an abomination. Your neighbors are supposed to kill your children if they become to troublesome. Widows are supposed to marry their brothers in law! We don’t pay attention to these laws because we do not base our laws off of the bible, but on what works for a responsible society that we want to live in.

 

No, I only said that members of the goverment form many of their opinions based upon religion. It's part of the freedom of religion.

Notwithstanding that someone could come to an equivalent conclusion by other means, many of those who are religous are taught that stealing is wrong in a religious setting. I know I was. Now we know that almost any time good or evil is used it's tantamount to a religious argument. I would say that belief in the existence of absolute good and evil requires supernatural belief, ergo religion.

Any moral law does require this sort of irrational ideas in the umbrella of religion. It's impossible to rationalize the harm stealing does without defining harm. Yet harm can be treated relative. Whose to say that a good Indian was a dead one? For all people there is a conscience that they use to form their ideas and motives, but basing any law on this conscience is religious argument if our conscience comes from God. Understandingly, then, only atheists can make non-religious arguments based upon their conscience given the non-existence of God.

I used the bible as an example. In fact, even the most ardent sola-scripuralist don't use only the bible to form their moral opinions. Most, however, form their beliefs on a particular interpretation of the bible, thus using religion.

It's apparent to me that the separation between church and state could only happen if religion existed. This in itself requires a religious motive: the freedom to practice and establish any religion, even none at all.

True, the Old Testament laws that you spoke of were formed in a society where it was natural for brothers to marry their brothers in law. A case in point was that this society valued the familyline, where we value freely given love. The problem is that you cannot say that our system of marriage is better than the ancient hebrews without resorting to semi-religous arguments.

Also, the Old Testament does not allow married men to have sex with slaves and prostitutes before marriage. However, interpreting the Old Testament without fullscope of the new testament is wrong.

 

Only purely theological issues require purely theological arguments. Secular reasoning can determine the merits and draw backs of any tangible real world issue, such as marriage.

 

To decide what is merit requires a religious like argument since its something that is not logic. Loosely speaking, what is meritable to us is what feels meritable. No logical argument can change that, and it just so happens that quite a few people define what is meritable by religion.

 

Secular humanists and atheists seem to get on rather well for themselves without having someone else claiming supreme authority tell them what their values are. Even many religious people form their own opinions and values that are contradictory to their religion. What constitutes good behavior is determined by an individual and society, not a god. Even in the bible you can see many examples of where the values came from the writer, as a man of his culture in his time, not so clearly from god. Don’t you yourself admit this when you explain that the old testament must be viewed in the context of the fullness of the new testament? If its all the word of god why would one part of it need to be qualified by the other?

 

Well I certainly hope that you're not so unstable that you'd actually believe this. If you're a person with any goals, then it's easy to form a logical idea of what helps and harms those goals, no religion required. If I say to myself I want to help to create a world where people are free, and don't have to worry about large groups of thugs oppressing them the bam we can then allow gay marriage. I don't see that any mystical sky father needs to be taken into account, nor what someone from another culture wrote down thousands of years ago. Helping and hindering, merits and flaws, are not entirely subjective.

 

I think your're making a false generalization here. There is obviously only two kinds of logical arguments, that which is false and that which is true. Clearly, then, theology makes use of the simple logical arguments along with a number of premises that cannot be proven. Hopefully, however, these premises are intuitative enough that they can be listed as premises, at least show the opposite belief results in some sort of universally accepted negative.

So what is "universally" good or evil cannot be shown to be so by logic alone. This is simply because logic neither defines good or evil. You cannot argue that having large groups of thugs guarding us is evil without resorting to a semi-religious argument that all free things are good.

A case in point is that before Hitler, the rich industrialists literally let thugs--read Nazis--rule the street in order to stop communists. Is that good or bad? Well, it seems good if one perceives communism is somehow worse than someone's freedom taken away. Surely we cannot read the future. Without seeing the full consequence of an action we cannot truly judge whether it is good or bad, though we can most certainly judge whether the consequence of an action is good or bad.

I don't believe that two wrongs make a right, neither do I believe that there are any situations where a wrong magically becomes a right. However, I recognize that this is religious belief--it has no place in goverment--but I also recognize that our goverment is free to make laws based on this tenet.