Mass. Supreme Court says "No" to Civil Unions. - Page 2

Yeah, yeah. I'm getting so sick of seeing that cut-n'-paste line in all of you WASP idiot's posts. Grow a friggin cerebelum for chrizzakes. Oh, wait, you can't. That would imply evolution.

*screams into pillow*

Matthew Sheppard and others must have loved the attention.

I´ll give him that.


I disagree

We need more discussions like this one. DIscussions where we hit the arguments hard on.

Lets try stir up more debate. Why are people straight or gay? The "right" thing to say is that thats the way people are and nothing can change that or that the genes deside that. I disagree. I believe its a social thing with a lot of factors with the genes playing a minor role. When newly born christians ex-gay people say that they suddenly realised that they weren´t gay afterall and had been living a lie that is probably true for them. Nobody is hardwired into being anything.

Oh yeah, you mean like this:


or this:

I respectfully disagree.

I've a lot of gay friends, both male and female, and I can tell you truthfully that these people were gay since birth. Of course, given the society we live in, there was a bit more confusion than most adolescents usually are required to deal with, but they luckily found their way.

I have to wonder how many of my friends growing up never found their way. I grew up in a very strict and religious household, and even I was bi for a portion of my life. But I was eventually led by my *wiring* to prefer women over men.

However, I think I'm the exception to the rule. Most of my gay friends never thought about experimenting with the opposite sex, and most of my straight friends only thought about the opposite sex. I think 95% of people (gay/straight) just *know*, and the rest have to just figure it out.

Regardless, I do indeed think we are born...or 'hardwired' as you say...with our base sexuality. Straying from that is generally just experimentation in my book.

Sorry BuonRotto, my blood just boiled and it got the best of me. My apologies.

Social thing? Sure. I'm willing to bet that more people deny being gay or bisexual than those who mistakenly believe they are gay or bisexual. Yeah, it's a social thing.

Okay. With "arguments" I meant "sitting ducks" and "hitting hard on" i meant "saying the obvious". But thats just me being biased.

I try to believe in free will, so while we might have inherent "hardwired" tendencies, being human is all about overcoming those limitations IMO. Being a slave to genetics and our precious bodily fluids qualifies humans as being alive, not being human. I think homosexuality is grossly oversimplified by both the genetic "switch" argument and the or the attention-seeker rationale.

Anyway, I suppose I should actually address the original point in the thread and say I too think this is a very good decision. Actually, I think the argument for the decision is excellent. It's why I was never a fan of the ERA and other derivatives of Jim Crow Laws, no matter how good the intentions.

What is that? Oh yeah I seem to remember someting from the 70s called "false consiousness".

People are what they believe they are. Anything else is patronising.

And I know some who went the other way who I for sure can say was gay when they were and now isn´t. There is no essence.

I could no more choose to be straight, no matter how much I might want it (not that I do), than I could will my hair to start growing blond. Now, I could cover my black hair with blond dye and effectively, to all appearances, outwardly appear and seem to be a blond, but I would still have black hair, no matter how much I pretended to be blond.

Somebody did say to fire away.

Threads on gay marriage always tend to highlight the "Creation vs Evolution" argument or the "Can people be born gay" question.

I see the issue differently.

I think gay marriage is a dumb idea. I also think it's the clearest sign yet that those who've embraced the "alternate lifestyle" choices have run out of ideas.

For the last twenty or thirty years, gay rights advocates kept harping on how different they were from the heterosexual community. After decades of being "out" and failing to create any real social instituions of their own, we're now told that the legal definition of Marriage must be "expanded" to encompass gay relationships.

This from the same people who said in the 80's that the government had no business meddling in their lives. The same people who said they only wanted to the right to live their lives, and would never "force people who disagreed with their lifestyle to approve.'

The concept of Marriage doesn't seem to fit. The idea of two homosexuals getting married, moving to the 'burbs, spending 40 years in marriage and then retiring together is as much alien to that community as fundamentalist Christianity.

It's a weird caricature of society's idea of what heterosexuality is supposed to be like. It looks to me more like a pathetic cry for help. If homosexuality is really genetic and natural as its advocates say, surely their time is better spent building their own social institutions, rather than trying to lamely mirror what life is like for the other side.

Perhaps AIDS has altered the thinking here, but if the gay community is pinning their hopes on gay marriage to lower infection rates, I think they will be sorely disappointed.

If you think it's dumb, don't marry a man, Frank.

I think some of the posts made here are pretty dumb too, but I'm not looking to pass laws or amend constitutions to prevent dumb posts from getting through.

i am seriously looking for a solid, logic-based argument opposing gay marriage. judging by this thread, such an argument does not exist, and as a person driven by logic, i support gay marriage.

and, uh, yeah. i'm still not sure if ipodandimac is serious or just trolling

I think he's pretty serious about trolling.

So you're saying you can't be "moral" or "upstanding" without being married?

That's insane.

And, mind you, my post did not say they should be legally barred from being married.

I do think, however, the cry for it shows a desperation to conform to a kind of life that was specifically built to maintain values of monogamy and heterosexuality.

I frankly don't see a value in monogamy.

there are two great reasons to get married:
1) testify to everyone, including yourself and your partner, that you are dedicated to and in love with one persor
2) you may not feel the need for a social recognition of your love, but you do want benefits of marriage, particularly access to your partner's insurance and of course the tax benefits.

1 OR 2 warrants justification for marriage and people falling in either should be able to marry if they would like to

That's funny.

If this was a thread on Christians wanting more people to stop 'living in sin' and get married, I could see chu, BR and Shawn arguing about how that 'piece of paper' didn't really matter.

I think the cry for it has more to do with too many stories of people shut out of their partners death beds because they weren't family. I could prolly think of more examples, but remember this. Marriage as Howard Stern would say is a legal contract. A contract that gives its signers legal rights and obligations and in my opinion there is just no good reason to deny these rights to homosexual couples.

I think we can safely dispense with No. 2, all those benefits would be available under present law or the civil union proposal.

At least be honest enough to admit that is about getting society's blanket approval of same-sex relationships.

The two arguments are mutually exclusive. It is my opinion that a piece of paper doesn't matter, however, it is not within my rights to forbid any group of two or more consenting adults who disagree with my opinion to get that little official paper.

It's not about getting society's approval. It's about creating a society that promotes the live and let live concept.

Monogamy is not a uniquely heterosexual concept. Virtually every gay person I know, all in their 20s, are either in a monogamous relationship, or prefer to be. Which is not to say there aren't promiscuous gay people, there are tons of them. There are also tons of promiscuous straight people.

Frank's problem is that he's trying to lump all gays into one group. But that's a load of BS. Gays are as diverse a group as any other subset of society. It just so happens that a large number of gays are now both out of the closet, and very mainstream in their political, social and ethical views (whereas before, due to the societal situation, being out and thus a public activist for gay rights was mostly a phenomenon of the leftmost fringe of the gay community).

Frank talks about gays moving to the suburbs. Sorry, dear, but we're already there. We're also in the churches, teaching at schools, practicing medicine, you name it. Gay life is as varied and broad as straight life.

And it is these mainstream gays, these gays like me who you would never think were gay unless you saw the little yellow-equal-sign-on-a-blue-background sticker on the back of their car, who want marriage. Because we are already part of the culture of mainstream America, and part of that culture is marriage. So we want full access to all the aspects of the culture we are part of the culture we help fund and support and create with our tax dollars, efforts, work, sweat and tears, just like all the straight people who are also part of mainstream American life.

The gay people that Frank wants to lump all gays in with the ones for whom mainstreaming would be considered a "betrayal" _are but a small subset of modern homosexual culture. They paved the way for the rest of us to come out, but we don't live, act or think like them. So don't treat us as if we're all of one mind.

Nowadays, there are a lot more Ted Scmidts in gay America than there are Brian Kinneys.

Pluralism

Fellows

So, regarding that concept, should the argument be made (as we all know it will) would you agree with re-defining marriage to include other kinds of relationships, polygamy, between family members etc.

After all, those would be among consenting adults as well.

Indeed.

I am in favor of polygamy. I actually believe that such an arrangement is superior to traditional marriage. As far as family members getting it on, the possibility of having a genetically messed up kid must be weighed against the individual freedoms of consenting adults. I don't have enough information to make a judgment regarding incest.

You will notice that all my posts have referenced my belief that gay marriage a terribly bad idea. My opinion.

I have not called for anyone to be barred from city hall.

... Laws were made by our predecessors who apparently had a stronger belief in religion than we do.

I don't agree with people putting the blame on nature or God for their sexual preferences. As humans, we are supposed to have control over our emotions and actions. As social beings, we do adhere to a common code which is acceptable by many living in our society. There is no such thing as true freedom. If I was into screwing animals, can I ask for civil rights after marrying an animal? Why am I not entitled to my preferences in that case?

We need to come up with genetic engineering to weed out all sexual urge in human beings and get it over with. Reproduction should be a yearly thing like in the case of other mammals. We could be using our brains for something useful in that case instead of wasting our prime trying to get laid.