Courts Reject Gay Marriage

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:34 pm

Lulu2 wrote: Hmmmm...I wonder what the rate of mental illness might be among bigots?

My dear LuLu, you can't have it both ways. In another thread you responded to my comments about bigotry against Christians thusly:

"Your comment about prejudices/bigotry reminds me a bit of people like Al Sharpton. He's the first one to scream those words when someone criticizes an action of his or someone else of his color. It's easy to see bigots behind every bush if you're unwilling to take a close look at facts."

Fact is, scan these forums (and forums other than FG) and you will find far more hostility expressed toward religion and Christianity than you will ever see towards homosexuality. You will also notice that anyone who expresses any disagreement with policy that homosexuals favor is quickly labeled a homophobe or bigot. There was a thread at the JV board on gay marriage and I was hammered as a homophobe for simply quoting a few gay extremists. Castigated for exposing gay extremism and allegedly smearing all honest gay folk by lumping them with the extremists when in fact I was just disproving someone else's contention that there were no gay extremists.

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 11:31 pm

Lulu2 wrote: FLOPSTOCK: I'm still waiting for someone to explain (in a logical way, not a religiously based one) how it is that same-sex marriages "threaten" heterosexual ones.

And waiting...and waiting...and waiting.......:-3

I think we have been through this already at another board but can rehash it if you want. The answer is quite simple. Same sex marriage changes the purpose of marriage law. It introduces a series of changes to marriage that affects everyone, not just gay marriages. Traditional marriage serves to direct sexual and parental behavior in a direction that is beneficial to society. Gay marriage is simply to extend marriage benefits to a particular group of sexual partners.

It's not only about "marriage" but about the structure of the family. Society benefits tremendously from a stable, traditional nuclear family. Traditional families procreate, create wealth, save more, invest more, provide child care, financial support for its members, and often care for the elderly. In Scandanavia, where the marriage rate is low and cohabitation is high, the government has taken over the role of the family and is responsible for supporting each individual. In areas where the traditional family is rare, social welfare programs are an enormous burden to government.

Children also benefit tremendously from a two -biological parent household. Child Trends, a 25 year old nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to the improvement of children's lives, has the following to say:

"Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

The National Marriage Project in the "State Of Our Unions" study states:

"The losers in this social trend (away from traditional marriage), of course, are the children. They are highly dependent for their development and success in life on the family in which they are born and raised, and a convincing mass of scientific evidence now exists pointing to the fact that not growing up in an intact nuclear family is one of the most deleterious events that can befall a child. In Sweden, just as in the United States, children from non-intact families—compared to those from intact families—have two to three times the number of serious problems in life. (8) We can only speculate about the extent of psychological damage that future generations will suffer owing to today’s family trends. That the very low marriage rate and high level of parental break-up are such non-issues in Sweden, something which few Swedes ever talk about, should be, in my opinion, a cause there for national soul searching."

Gay marriages involving children deny a child either a father or a mother. Again, studies have shown that the best possible situation for children is to be raised in a stable intact home with both mother and father. Each gender has attributes that the child needs to benefit from. Children raised in the traditional nuclear family are less likely to suffer from poverty, depression, ill-health, illiteracy, etc.

The purpose of marriage is to create and build a nuclear family, raise children into productive, responsible citizens. The impossible in a gay marriage. To equate gay marriage with traditional, heterosexual marriage is to send the message that traditional marriage is outdated and that any family form, as I will show later, is equal to the traditional family.

Kari Moxnes, a Norwegian feminist, sociologist, and supporter of gay marriage published an article, "Empty Marriage", in which she argued that gay marriage was a sign of the emptiness of marriage, not the strength and praised homosexuals as social pioneers in the seperation of marriage from parenthood. She said the creation of gay marriage was a welcome death knell to marriage itself and said homosexual families prove that "relationships" are now more important that the traditional family. Same sex marriages, for the reasons above, have in fact weakened the traditional family in Norway.

The recognition of gay marriage will reshape the very meaning of marriage. No longer confined to mean a union between a man and a woman, marriage is now open to any interpretation. Polygamists are already lining up to get legal recognition for their lifestyle. Heterosexual "intimate couples" are also beginning to clamor for the benefits accorded to traditional marriages while not offering society the advantages gained by the traditional family structure.

NRO's Stanley Kurtz reports that Danish social theorist Henning Bech, "perhaps Scandinavia's most prominent gay thinker, dismisses as an 'implausible' claim the idea that gay marriage promotes monogamy." He goes on to cite Norwegian sociologist Rune Halvorsen who "suggests that the low numbers of registered gay couples may be understood as a collective protest against the expectations of (presumbably, monogamy) embodied in marriage". According to Kurtz, both Bech and Halvorsen admit that "the goal of the gay marriage movements in both Norway and Denmark was not marriage but social approval form homosexuality."

Some gay activists see gay unionsas a positive move toward the abolition of marriage. Redefine it, water it down, dilute it with polygamy and any arrange any number of people choose to join into and it cease to have meaning and cease to exist.

According to the Village Voice, "gay marriage, say proponents, subverts religion's hegemony over the institution, with its assumption of heterosexual reproductive pairing. It makes homosexuality more visible and therefore more acceptable, not just for judges or ER doctors but for the lesbian bride's formerly homophobic cousin. Because gay marriage renders queerness "normal," notes Yale legal scholar William Eskridge, it is both radical and conservative. "

Rather than to benefit society, proponents of gay marriage want to score a financial windfall. Village Voice jitters about all the governmental and non-governmental "goodies" that can be derived from gay marriage, a bargain for a $30 marriage license.

And the implementation of gay marriage comes with the removal of civil rights for its opponents. In October of 2001, Harry Hammond, an evangelical preacher in the UK was first assaulted by bystanders and then arrested and fined by police for holding up a placard that read ""Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism". In 2004 a Swedish pastor sentenced to a month in prison for preaching against homosexuality. (Gay activists are trying to get the sentenced lengthened). A Canadian minister could face prosecution for writing a letter to the paper condemning homosexuality. All across Europe and Canada hate crime legislation is being inacted that makes it a crime to speak out against homosexuality. Some gay activist want to force preacher to bless gay unions or face prosecution.

Homosexuals make up a small minority of our population yet get disproportionate attention to their agenda. Statistics in countries where gay marriage is legal shows that far less than 20% of homosexuals actually bother to get married. So we may be talking about tenths of a percent of the population. Is the demise of one of societies most important pillars worth the social experimentation?

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 1:34 am

Ooops. And it seems the issue may not be settled in Massachusetts just yet.

"The Supreme Judicial Court delivered a major victory yesterday to opponents of same-sex marriage, validating a proposed constitutional amendment that seeks to outlaw gay weddings in a 2008 ballot measure.

In a unanimous decision, the court rejected a claim by gay-rights advocates that Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly erred last year in deciding that the proposed amendment was constitutional. The court ruled that voters had a right to decide whether such a ban belongs in the state constitution."

http://www.boston.com/news/specials/gay ... _go_ahead/

Accountable · Post by **Accountable** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:33 am

Jives wrote: Anything that affects my standard of living in a negative way is threatening to my pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

You have to apply this to everyone, not just yourself, if you truly believe in freedom and democracy. Disallowing homosexual union affects their standard of living in a negative way and is threatening to their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

Marriage is no longer the political union it once was. It is based on love now. Gov't can't legislate love; it's not set up for that. That's the purview of something else - the church for some, the heart for others, or an infinite list for an infinite "others".

Right wingers argue that if we allow homosexual marriage, that we risk allowing polygamy. It makes polygamy sound worse than gay marriage, yet it's allowed in the Bible! :yh_eyebro

The answer, in my opinion, is to dissolve the legal term "marriage" altogether as a passe' term. We can relax or alter laws of inheritance, ownership, etc. to fill the resulting void.

That would remove the entire argument - thus the fun - so I know very few will support it.

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:03 am

Pinky wrote: The fact is that they should have the choice, just like everybody else.

To say that the main reason that people are against it is because of children is a little strange - I know quite a few same-sex couples who came out later in life after having children, and they certainly wouldn't call themselves hard-done by, or mentally affected. They are nice, well balanced people who get on well with their parent's partner.

There are those that choose to adopt, and that is a different matter entirely - what has any of that got to do with a couple that wants to commit to each other?

To deny anybody the right to choose whether to commit to someone else is just a little bit facsist, don't you think?

We all have the right to commit to whomever we wish. Nothing prevents that. Just as unmarried heterosexual couples can commit to one another, gay couples can do the same. What we are talking about is government recognition of unions. The government doesn't recognize every instance of heterosexual unions. I don't have time to get the link now but I saw something on the internet yesterday about a man in Russia who is petitioning the government to let him marry his cow because there are no eligible women in his town. A year or so ago, there was a story about a British woman who married a dolphin. I could find someone to marry me to a tree if i looked hard enough, but that doesn't mean the government is going to recognize it. There are regulations that we are all subject to. Just because I'm heterosexual and want to get married doesn't mean the government will recognize it. I must be of certain age. I can't already be married. My partner must be of the opposite sex. I'm sure there are a few other regs in there. But these are requirements for government sactioned marriage. It has nothing to do with people commiting to one another, something they can do anytime, anywhere. We are all equally subject to the same rules.

As for the children, I was just pointing out decades upon decades of studies that show that the best scenario for children is a stable, traditional family. Of course, some children will come out fine in other situations. There are many children who came out of poverty, broken homes, abuse, abandonment, etc that turned out great. But that doesn't mean they came out of the best circumstances. It means they overcame the circumstances. Studies show that children who are not raise in a traditional family are at higher risk of those things I mentioned above - poverty, depression, abuse, etc. As a society, we should be promoting institutions that give our children the very best possibility to flourish and succeed.

Accountable · Post by **Accountable** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:09 am

Adam Zapple wrote: We all have the right to commit to whomever we wish. Nothing prevents that. Just as unmarried heterosexual couples can commit to one another, gay couples can do the same. What we are talking about is government recognition of unions. The government doesn't recognize every instance of heterosexual unions. I don't have time to get the link now but I saw something on the internet yesterday about a man in Russia who is petitioning the government to let him marry his cow because there are no eligible women in his town. A year or so ago, there was a story about a British woman who married a dolphin. I could find someone to marry me to a tree if i looked hard enough, but that doesn't mean the government is going to recognize it. There are regulations that we are all subject to. Just because I'm heterosexual and want to get married doesn't mean the government will recognize it. I must be of certain age. I can't already be married. My partner must be of the opposite sex. I'm sure there are a few other regs in there. But these are requirements for government sactioned marriage. It has nothing to do with people commiting to one another, something they can do anytime, anywhere. We are all equally subject to the same rules.

As for the children, I was just pointing out decades upon decades of studies that show that the best scenario for children is a stable, traditional family. Of course, some children will come out fine in other situations. There are many children who came out of poverty, broken homes, abuse, abandonment, etc that turned out great. But that doesn't mean they came out of the best circumstances. It means they overcame the circumstances. Studies show that children who are not raise in a traditional family are at higher risk of those things I mentioned above - poverty, depression, abuse, etc. As a society, we should be promoting institutions that give our children the very best possibility to flourish and succeed.
Why should the gov't recognize marriage at all?

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:10 am

Accountable wrote: The answer, in my opinion, is to dissolve the legal term "marriage" altogether as a passe' term. We can relax or alter laws of inheritance, ownership, etc. to fill the resulting void.

That would remove the entire argument - thus the fun - so I know very few will support it.

See, it does impact traditional marriage. This is the result many same-sex marriage advocates hope for. Studies have shown that in areas where marriage has been abandoned in favor of cohabitation, the welfare state has grown tremendously. Look at Scandinavia. Without the traditional family structure, individuals must look more and more to government for support that might have otherwise come from the family unit. Traditional marriage benefits society in so many tangible ways. That is why governments recognize it, not because some special interest group pushed the agenda centuries ago.

I agree with you on a lot of libertarian positions but not this one.

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:11 am

Accountable wrote: Why should the gov't recognize marriage at all?

Because society benefits, therefore the government has an interest in encouraging it.

Accountable · Post by **Accountable** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:16 am

But in the US, it doesn't matter whether two adults have a traditional marriage license or not. If DNA shows parentage, the adult is responsible for the child. If two people cohabitate long enough, common law declares them married anyway.

US tradition will help or prevent us from falling into a welfare state. Marriage will have little affect.

"Traditional" marriage has already deteriorated beyond recognition. Why keep it?

Accountable · Post by **Accountable** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:17 am

Adam Zapple wrote: Because society benefits, therefore the government has an interest in encouraging it.Poor argument and I think you know it, but I gots ta get ta woik. :driving:

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:24 am

Pinky, I'm just relaying statistics from decades of studies. It's statistics, it doesn't mean that every situation is the same. And for the record, I am talking about stable, traditional families. No study says children do best in disfunctional or abusive homes. No one is promoting disfunctional or abusive home either.

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:30 am

Accountable wrote: US tradition will help or prevent us from falling into a welfare state. Marriage will have little affect.

You can't know that. You are guessing. The only model we have to exam is that in Scandinavia and that experiment tells us otherwise.

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:47 am

How can the whole case of one person wanting to marry another be based on what is good for children?

The whole case is not based on children, that is just one element but an very important one. :rolleyes:

I feel this conversation coming on:

Person 1: Seatbelts should be mandantory. They save lives, reduce insurance costs, benefit society, and protect children.

Person 2: I know somebody that doesn't wear a seatbelt and they've never been hurt. I even know somebody that was in a wreck and escaped serious injury becuase they weren't wearing a seatbelt. And why should seat belt laws be wholly predicated on protecting children. What about people that don't have children and never want to have children? Why should they be discriminated against because a few people want to have children without first thinking of the restraint requirements?

I've been up all night. I'm going to bed. Night!

Accountable · Post by **Accountable** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:11 pm

Adam Zapple wrote: You can't know that. You are guessing. The only model we have to exam is that in Scandinavia and that experiment tells us otherwise.Scandinavia didn't start where we're at, so how can we conclude we'll end at the same place?

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:18 pm

We can't. But it is evidence that we might. We have no evidence to the contrary.

Mongoose · Post by **Mongoose** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:00 am

cherandbuster wrote: Mongoose

Perhaps you misunderstood my post

My comments were directed towards Charity and not against you.

If I had something to say to you, you can be sure I would have said it.

Honestly.

We try to run a nice forum here without slinging thinly-veiled insults to relative newbies.

(Well except for Nomad but he doesn't really count);)

Ok Cher. Thanks for clearing that up

. Sorry I had a go at you.

I just get a bit fustrated that whenever debates like this come up, if you disagree with what society thinks you immediately get labled as a homphobe, bigot, narrow minded, religious nut or whatever. That just doesn't happen with homosexuality it happens with lots of other things too. I admire Adam for continuing despite the insults thrown at him. I've decided to stay out now because I could never argue my point as good as he is. Keep it up! :-6

cherandbuster · Post by **cherandbuster** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:11 am

Mongoose wrote: Ok Cher. Thanks for clearing that up

. Sorry I had a go at you.

No problem.

Just wanted you to understand what my intentions were

DesignerGal · Post by **DesignerGal** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:38 am

I find it a little disturbing that Adam has compared homosexuals to cows, dolphins and even trees. Am I the only that thinks that is weird?

Jives · Post by **Jives** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:41 pm

Well, my point ws that a homosexual lifestyle breeds disease and less life expectancy. Both things cost society, meaning you and I. I checked with the CDC and this is what I got:

http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?action=sea ... al&x=0&y=0

I seems like I'm right.

But back on topic, I completely agree that marriage should be between a man and a woman. That's how it's always been and for good reason. I'm a Christian and so I support Christian values. If you don't like that ....pffft!

It's a free forum and I'm entitled to stand up for the things I think are right and good, and to be against the things I think are wrong and bad.:wah:

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:48 pm

DesignerGal wrote: I find it a little disturbing that Adam has compared homosexuals to cows, dolphins and even trees. Am I the only that thinks that is weird?

In what way did I make that comparison? This is one of those occasions where it helps to clear ones mind of preconceived notions and open it to new ideas and really try to understand what someone is trying to say. You can do that and still disagree, but when you miss the point that badly, no one gains anything.

Jives · Post by **Jives** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:54 pm

Adam Zapple wrote: In what way did I make that comparison? This is one of those occasions where it helps to clear ones mind of preconceived notions and open it to new ideas and really try to understand what someone is trying to say. You can do that and still disagree, but when you miss the point that badly, no one gains anything.

Look out Adam, the vicious DesignerGal has you in her sights! ROFL!:yh_rotfl

DesignerGal · Post by **DesignerGal** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:55 pm

Adam Zapple wrote: In what way did I make that comparison? This is one of those occasions where it helps to clear ones mind of preconceived notions and open it to new ideas and really try to understand what someone is trying to say. You can do that and still disagree, but when you miss the point that badly, no one gains anything.

"We all have the right to commit to whomever we wish. Nothing prevents that. Just as unmarried heterosexual couples can commit to one another, gay couples can do the same. What we are talking about is government recognition of unions. The government doesn't recognize every instance of heterosexual unions. I don't have time to get the link now but I saw something on the internet yesterday about a man in Russia who is petitioning the government to let him marry his cow because there are no eligible women in his town. A year or so ago, there was a story about a British woman who married a dolphin. I could find someone to marry me to a tree if i looked hard enough, but that doesn't mean the government is going to recognize it. There are regulations that we are all subject to. Just because I'm heterosexual and want to get married doesn't mean the government will recognize it. I must be of certain age. I can't already be married. My partner must be of the opposite sex. I'm sure there are a few other regs in there. But these are requirements for government sactioned marriage. It has nothing to do with people commiting to one another, something they can do anytime, anywhere. We are all equally subject to the same rules."

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:12 pm

I know what I said. The question is, do you know what I said. I mean, what I really said.:-6

Adam Zapple · Post by **Adam Zapple** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:17 pm

Jives wrote: Look out Adam, the vicious DesignerGal has you in her sights! ROFL!:yh_rotfl

Uh-oh, should I be worried?