Well Brad I do have really good health benefits. Could I drive the cadillac when I am in town. For show we might have to hold hands. Like the french we could hug and kiss cheek to cheek. Just to get the formalities done with the justice.

Could I drive the cadillac when I am in town. For show we might have to hold hands. Like the french we could hug and kiss cheek to cheek.

Now that I think of it, money isn�t everything. No offense. But before snapping my mind shut at the prospect, are you a good cook? Do you do Chinese well? Italian? Can you make a killer lasagna?

quote:

are you a good cook? Do you do Chinese well? Italian? Can you make a killer lasagna?

I could learn.

While you guys try to work things out, I'd like to reply to a few points made by Brad earlier:

quote:

I say that it�s about time that we get out of the business of trying to coerce behavior through taxes. I think it�s time we thought more about general philosophical principles. If gays want to marry, so what? What�s it to you or anyone else? If you want to get married as a heterosexual then nobody is stopping you. And the dissolution of marriages with children is so destructive to society (not to mention to the children) that saying that gay marriages will harm society (via the supposed destruction of marriage) is an extreme instance of the pot calling the kettle black.

Actually, most couples DO stay married. The stat that 50% of marriages end in divorce is about marriages, not couples, which means that a person who marries three times has three failed marriages, and if, say, their partners all marry twice, that's five failed marriages for four people. You can drive stats up pretty fast doing things like that. Also, many of those failed marriages happen in mid-life, after the kids have mostly been raised, which means the couple was together during the children's formative years. Additionally, a lot of them break up before there are children.

So the point that heterosexual marriages are a travesty is mostly untrue; an overwhelming majority of couples do stay married, at least until mid-life, which means that most children who are born to married couples will experience the benefits of such an environment during their growing years.

That the State can do something to support this through its recognition and support of the marriage bond is a good thing, and it behooves the State to do so. Without healthy families, the future of a nation is doomed.

What doesn't make sense for me is the motivation for gay marriage. It seems to me that gays wanting marriage is more about acceptance and not acceptance of others but an acceptance for themselves. Somehow marriage will make something complete for them.

If you�re suggesting, Sister Rico, that gays might be looking for a sense of completeness from an arrangement (homosexual love) that can never be complete, that�s an interesting argument. Again, playing devil�s advocate, one need only look at heterosexual marriages to see that many people never seem to find that sense of completeness, unless one considers marriages similar to George and Estelle Costanza as complete. Whether it�s hetero sex, the presence of children, or whatever, it seems that there are enough itches not scratched by hetero marriage to not call that particularly arrangement a "fits like a glove" arrangement for human beings. And even if it�s a better arrangement (in terms of personal fulfillment) than a same-sex one, the gap in "ideal vs. reality" is big enough to leave an opening to suggest that what dangles between our legs (i.e., anatomy) is not decisive at all and that the emotional bond is at least as important.

What has been presented for same sex marriage is all legal based like partners sharing health care insurance that one partner will get compensated in the event one dies. These arguements are really meaningless in support of same sex marriage because there are other avenues that can be taken other than marriage even the tax part to assure a partner has healthcare, life insurance etc. Why marriage?

There have been homosexual relationships since probably the dawn of history. The only thing that is apparently new (from what I�ve read here and there on the web) is that only fairly recently have couples desired to set up shop together, with all the trappings, a la a typical hetero couple. So, really, one has to ask where the burden of proof lies. If two same-sex people have all the usually feelings for one another and want to spend a life together and get married, why do they have to settle for second best? And I guess this comes down to, do we believe in love or are we simply just running some kind of science experiment here where all we care about is biological reproduction?

Acceptance.

Oh, I totally agree it�s about acceptance. That�s why heteros get married as well. They�d rather be accepted as "legitimate" rather than have their children thought of as bastards and themselves as being the kind of non-conformist people who are usually pushing shopping carts around Main Street.

Marriage most importantly is about children.

Hand to my heart, if I had the choice in the womb to be raised by a sane, normal, and loving same-sex couple and the choice of what I got, I would have picked the lesbos or the queens.

Actually, most couples DO stay married. The stat that 50% of marriages end in divorce is about marriages, not couples,

You�re right, Phil. That�s one reason I would never use that bastardized statistics. Michael Medved went into that in pretty fine detail one time.

So the point that heterosexual marriages are a travesty is mostly untrue; an overwhelming majority of couples do stay married, at least until mid-life, which means that most children who are born to married couples will experience the benefits of such an environment during their growing years.

I didn�t make the point, or try to make the point, the heterosexual marriages are a travesty. My point is that enough of them bust, and with such dire consequences to society and to children, that they may have a hard time holding onto the higher moral ground in terms of the "gay marriage will undermine society" argument.

That the State can do something to support this through its recognition and support of the marriage bond is a good thing, and it behooves the State to do so. Without healthy families, the future of a nation is doomed.

I agree. And anyone who has been paying any attention these last few decades knows the extra pressures that have been put on families (on all of us, really) as the courts, lawyers and the legislators find ever new "rights" for this group or that group without considering the legitimate rights of existing groups. The theme is to tear down American and this desire has direct roots to Marxism. A great example is the Boy Scouts who have come under assault for the horrendous sin of not wanting gay Scout leaders. Or the Masters golf club for daring to have a men�s club. Or the death by a thousand other cuts to civil society.

There are some underlying premises to some of these changes in society that are illogical and that amount to little more than bashing society just because it is. A form of anarchism, if you will. But the question is, is the singular issue of gay marriage, when considered all on its lonesome, actively destructive to family? I don�t think it is, and if it is it�s only by a very light breeze in comparison to the hurricane of other pressures such as high taxes, regulation, and the coarsening of our culture through myriad and many means. I want to say "Stop, already!" as well but in this instance I can�t find airtight philosophical reasons to do so.

Betty maybe your parents were lesbians or maybe queens? Maybe all that was needed was some transgendering to take place.

Homosexualality has nothing to do with love it has everything to do with sexual behavior. As you have pointed out from personal experience that marriage does not guarantee anything least of all love. If two people have a special loving bond does marriage make a difference.

Since the beginning marriage has been between a man and a women in the union to create and nurture a family. Same sex marriage is counter to what marriage traditionally represents. The definition of marriage should change to conform to whose rights? The "union" between a man and a man or a women and women will never create a family on its own.

I think you are right about the level of effect overall that it will have either way on the instituion of marriage. I just see it more of people trying to force themselves onto everybody else that blurs the line of whose rights are being stepped on. Especially when states have referendums on voting ballots to establish what the people want and the courts or politicians strike down the will of the people expressed at the voting booth.

http://www.divorcereform.org/mel/rgeog.html

This is interesting. Your best chance of remaining married is to be a Catholic or Lutheran from the midwest, or to reside in Ted Kennedy's home state with the gay civil unions. Evangelicals are not so fortunate.

The definition of marriage should change to conform to whose rights?.

Why is there a compelling reason not to legalize gay marriage? I will agree with you until the cows come home that things like this should not be decided by the courts. We already have a legislative branch, thank you. But on what principle do you withhold marriage from gays by saying the only one man and one woman can a married couple make? Conversely, on what principle do you allow for gay marriage?

The latter is full of slippery slope arguments, almost all of them legitimate. How does one stop at just the "two people who love each other" argument? Why is two such a special number? Why not three? Surely, especially considering tradition, a man with a couple of wives is a hell of a lot more normal than a man marrying a man. So if neither sex nor numbers can define eligibility to enter into marriage, why should species make a difference? Could not a man love his camel enough to want to marry it? Is this just being silly now? Why? Surely we can not fall back on our aesthetic sensibilities, for it we did that we could never allow same sex marriages. "I now pronounce you man and man. You may kiss the groom." Oooooooo.

But the arguments on the side of "only a man and a woman" are also problematic. A lot of couples don�t have children so the "marriage is for children" argument works only so far. And it has not always been one man and one woman. The Bible is chock full of harems for the men. Making appeals to tradition may not be so easy. Heck, making appeals to biology may be problematic as well. I saw this program on TV a while back that showed how the mushroom end of the tallywhacker was shaped in order to accomplish the same thing as occurs during whale mating. Many males (I forget which species this is true for) will mate with the female, but it is the last who does so who becomes the father. The amount of sperm they eject is so copious that it washes away that of the earlier party animals. The shape of the male instrument was shown to work as a scoop to accomplish much the same thing. This is definitely not the type of thing evolution would create for a strictly "one man and one woman" species.

So we�re back to "one man and one woman" as a social construct�and a good one. And while I would not be for eliminating this construct, why is it not possible for others to coexist along with it? This is the bottom line question. Does one necessarily exclude the other? My answer is no, and that is because gayness, even taking into account that many people simply choose to act gay, will always and ever be a very small minority of society.

Back to you, sister.

Well, when animals get "copious," it is presumably only to ensure offspring, of which some of the adult copulating males may kill later to guard their territories from the young upstarts. No such behavior among human societies I'm aware of, or at least no resounding argument favoring it. As you say, there is an aesthetic sensibility at work that makes extravegances, or superficialities, almost easily recognizable. Not that "until death do us part" proves maturity and genuine love, but it's probably the closest estimate as a statistic when compared to those stepping in and out of marriages like old to new shoes.

Not that "until death do us part" proves maturity and genuine love, but it's probably the closest estimate as a statistic when compared to those stepping in and out of marriages like old to new shoes.

I think you've certainly underlined one dynamic or issue at work here, WC. A Christian view of the universe is that it is evolving towards something (right?), not just blowing off the energy of the Big Bang with the purposeless inevitability of an untied balloon blowing around the room. If so, we see "one man and one women" as a logical advance. But same sex marriage is a return to pagan times, to the times when women had no power and man-boy love was not just acceptable, it was raised to an art form. Surely we might take it as a badge of honor when called a "prude".

The moral burden of proof is on the left, on gays, to show us how they are not a regression instead of an advance. In legal terms, the burden of proof might be much different.

http://www.reason.com/0403/co.cy.opening.shtml


" To a large extent, the debate is now less about homosexuality than it is about marriage. Except on the far right, objections to same-sex marriage are rarely couched in terms of moral objections to homosexual relationships. Historically in our culture, the argument goes, marriage has meant the union of one man and one woman. Change it to include a union of two men, and who�s to say that it shouldn�t be redefined further to include one man and two women, two women and three men, or any other possible combination?

At first glance, this argument may seem like a red herring. Yet it is taken seriously by noted legal scholars who are hardly hostile to equal rights for gays, such as Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School. Volokh, who supports same-sex marriage but believes the issue should not be settled by the courts, cautions that "slippery slope" arguments should not be dismissed lightly.

Not long ago, warnings that the Equal Rights Amendment or laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would lead to the legalization of gay marriage were dismissed as "hysterical" scare tactics. Yet the Massachusetts court relied precisely on such provisions to strike down the same-sex marriage ban as discriminatory.

The Massachusetts ruling states that the right to "marry the person of one�s choice" is a fundamental right, albeit "subject to appropriate government restrictions in the interests of public health, safety, and welfare." Could it include the right to marry more than one person?

In the recent book Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution, political scientist and lawyer Evan Gerstmann argues that polygamy is different since the would-be polygamist can still marry the person of his first choice. Yet one may counter that having multiple spouses is the polygamist�s first choice -- or that, as Posner notes in his review of Gerstmann�s book in The New Republic, the woman who wants to be the polygamist�s second wife is barred from marrying the person of her first choice. (Most commentators seem to equate polygamy with polygyny.)

Indeed, gay marriage proponents have offered no substantive arguments to show that the reasoning used to assert the right to same-sex marriage could not be extended to plural marriage as well. They merely point out that at present there is no push to legalize polygamy. Likewise, the Massachusetts court majority dealt with the issue by stating that the plaintiffs in this case "do not attack the binary nature of marriage."

Yet a polygamy rights movement could certainly gather cultural and political momentum in the future. If that happens, Volokh suggests, some courts may discover a constitutional right to plural marriage, "citing the Massachusetts decision as an eminently logically applicable precedent."

Would that be such a terrible thing? If someone has two, three, or six spouses of either sex, they are presumably all consenting adults; if they are harming anyone, it is only themselves. My own belief is that polygamous relationships are likely to involve imbalances of power and even psychological abuse, and that they carry a high risk of instability and stress. "Polyamory" advocates talk a lot about transcending sexual jealousy, but plural marriages are rife with jealousy and tension even in cultures where polygamy is a longstanding tradition. (One reason plural marriage may prove far harder to legalize than same-sex marriage is that people who have been personally hurt by polygamy will be available to speak out against it.) But if that�s what some people want, should the state restrict their choices for their own good?

On the other hand, legalizing polygamy would alter the state of marriage in general far more than gay marriage could. Allowing Jane to marry Ann does not in any tangible way change Sally�s marriage to Bill; allowing Sally and Bill to marry other people while remaining married to each other changes it drastically. Even if they never exercise this option, the mere possibility of it could cause enough anxiety to destabilize a marriage subtly.

While legalizing same-sex unions is extremely unlikely to entice any heterosexual man to leave his wife and marry another man, having multiple partners could potentially be a temptation for anyone, though it�s likely that social disapproval would still discourage plural marriages for most people.

Then again, the potentially harmful consequences of polygamy could exist without legalized plural marriage. Open marriages and de facto plural marriages already exist. Such relationships may even receive a measure of legal recognition: In 2000 the longtime mistress of married television correspondent Charles Kuralt won a court dispute with his widow over a property he owned in Montana.

The primary issue is not the legal benefits for multiple spouses but the perception that the state, and by implication we as a people, will be giving sanction to something a majority of Americans regard as morally objectionable -- which, of course, is also at stake in the debate over gay marriage."