Senate Homosexuality: the Thread

Gay marriage has not been prohibited. It was just never a thing. Marriage was something a man and a woman did. Two people of the same gender didn't have the requisite parts for such an endeavour. The only time gay marriage has been prohibited is in modern times.

Whatever the law says, gays, unlike siblings or cousins of opposite genders, can never be married. Even if the law treats them the same, it doesn't change the fact that they will not have a marriage. They simply cannot, anymore than a tree can be married to a fountain pen, or a rainbow to a chicken. It's simply a biological absurdity.

The ancients, whether Epicurean or pagan or Christian or whathaveyou, understood this. That's why even when homosexual behavior was permitted and condoned by society, no one clamored for their sexual relationships to be called marriage because they knew such a demand was as silly as demanding that a dog's tail be called a leg and insisting that dogs have five legs.

It's clear to me that marriage law in the United States no longer intends to reflect the marriage of natural law, so I believe that religious institutions should be prohibited from conducting legal marriages (reserved only to the state), and that people should be able to make whatever power of attorney, inheritance, visitation rights, etc. legal contracts that they want.

 

Tolerated "homosexual" behavior in many ancient civilizations tended to be wealthy men ****ing younger, often mutliple boys. No one who supports homosexual marriage should bring up those Sanduskies. Ever. Added to the fact that marriage was not for "love" pretty much until the Victorian era, there was no modern concept of homosexuality, and "tolerated" doesn't mean "accepted," of course there was no clamoring for such rights until now.

 

Why do you think ancient peoples, many of whom were not Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, opposed homosexual behavior and persecuted homosexuals?

There must be some sort of sociological reason for the taboo, as there is for the incest taboo.

This is an honest question.

 

The government determines what a marriage is and is not for legal purposes. I don't see how this is any different, on some sense, from how the government has decided that the press means more than the printing press and covers newer forms of technology as well. On one hand, OZK, yeah, you're right in that the entire point of this discussion is that marriage did not mean this in the past, but what I don't see is why we can't, as a society, decide to change that. Marriage is not some biological fact as you present it to be, it's a man-made term, and as such, can be adjusted if we see fit because it's our label.

 

Fear and bigotry. Seriously, that's all it is. If you can provide a logical argument otherwise that doesn't rely on fairy tales I'd love to hear it.

 

He's just trying to shoehorn incest and polygamy into the discussion again in his Catholic "WELL IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO FOLLOW NATURAL LAW THEN EVERYTHING IS OUT THE WINDOW!" way.

 

I think "biological absurdity" shouldn't need to be applied to the concept of marriage.

For what it's worth, I have two children and I'm not married.

Edit: My girlfriend has three children, and she's not married either!

 

It actually genuinely offends me that you'll defend the marriage rights of one group of people while dismissing, mocking, and opposing recognition of other people's marriages. I think that siblings and cousins should legally be allowed to marry. I also believe that we should have considerations for polygamists and not persecute them as we did in the past. I also believe homosexual couples should have the same legal considerations that heterosexual couples are given.

This isn't some weird argument to prove you hypocritical. As far as the law goes I see no reason not to respect polygamous and consanguineous marriages legally. So I genuinely think it should be legal.

 

Has anybody actually argued against it? I mean, I said I support both... it seems you are engaged in an argument that isn't actually happening right now, instead of taking part in the discussion that is happening.

 

OZK, I'm not sure I follow your argument as you JUST said that "gays, unlike siblings or cousins of opposite genders, can never be married". So I don't see how you're claiming that you're offended about people defending the marriage rights of one group, but mocking or opposing others, while at the same time arguing that same-sex couples can't have a marriage.

 

"Full marriage equality" isn't "full marriage equality" unless any consenting adults can get married regardless of anything but their consent.

 

He's engaged in an argument that isn't actually happening.

 

Obi-Zahn Kenobi

This 'definition of marriage by natural law' crap doesn't stand up. Marriage has not always been a contract between consenting adults, so its definition has already changed over the ages. In many cultures marriage still isn't necessarily between consenting adults of different families, so there's some variation even in the contemporary definition of your 'natural law'.

 

Uh, last I checked gays and lesbians could give their consent.

Unless your trying to imply that homosexual sex isn't 'real sex' and ergo because of that, they are incapable of giving consent, in which case I (since I've heard that line of reasoning in other places before), think that's a load of bullcrap in my view.

 

I don't know nor do I care.

 

I don't care about cousins, but siblings and vertical incest I absolutely oppose. Those relationships result from abuse, coercion, and an uneven power dynamic that often exists from birth.

Polygamy is and has historically been polygyny-- an older man with multiple younger women, often women who are or would've been considered below the age of consent. If it were legalized, it would not be the "polyamorous" people getting married (AFAIK they're usually not interested in marriage anyway). It also involves a lot of coercion and abuse. Unlike how socially accepted "homosexual" relationships have evolved from borderline pedophilia in ancient Greece to between two consenting, ostensibly loving adults today, I see no evidence that polygamy has experienced a similar change.

There. Now can we please stop ****ing conflating the two with gay marriage?

 

Well, by definition, polygamy is a man taking multiple wives... polyandry is a woman taking multiple husbands.

 

No, it's not. Polygamy technically can be either way, although it is almost always is one man, multiple women. Polygyny is multiple women, polyandry multiple men.

 

That's kind of what I just said... I just said it in heterosexual terms (not sure why, actually).

 

The point he's making there is that full marriage equality shouldn't be used unless someone is talking about the only restriction on marriage being the consent of the parties involved. So, it's not that he's saying that same-sex couples can't consent, but that adding them, while omitting other marriage options (specifically, incest and polygamy) is not full marriage equality, it's picking and choosing which consenting relationships one allows. How that fits with the rest of his points I don't see.

 

I've heard this exact line of argumentative inquiry from David Irving to justify the persecution of the Jews.