I'm open to just about anything between consulting adults but can't support marriage for anyone but an unrelated man and woman. I also wish it were a bit harder for anyone to just get married. How about some counseling first but that's a different discussion.
Posted by Tim at June 25, 2004 10:19 PMIt's a shame ignorance isn't painful.
Posted by: bob at June 27, 2004 11:33 PMLay two nuts and two bolts, all of the same size, on a table. Ask anyone to connect the pieces into functional units. 100% of the time, people will screw the nuts onto the bolts. No one will try to attach the bolts together, nor will he try to somehow claim that two nuts standing one on top of the other is "functional" in any sense.
My point: just as there is a purpose through design for the fasterners, there is a DESIGN that facilitates a PURPOSE in men's and women's bodies. That purpose is obviously reproduction.
That's why it feels unnatural to us all, even before we lay any political or religious lens in front of it. We know intuitively that it is unnatural.
Yeah, marriage is entered into flippantly, largely thanks to no-fault divorce laws (post-WWII), the value of self-fulfillment instead of devotion to others as the highest good (add 70s pop psychology), and the materialism that pressures two-job households with SUVs (add the 80s economic boom). The result is that marriage is just not worth (valued) what it once was. Gay "marriage" will just cheapen it more.
Posted by: Winsome at July 16, 2004 11:51 AMYou needn't be able to understand the sexual attraction a gay person has for a person of the same gender to understand that many gay people exist and that all of us come families that feature a great many heterosexuals.
Sexuality is not fully understood, it is very possible gay people, bisexual people and heterosexual people are all born that way.
Gay people are born into families and many of us have the idea of raising families of our own. Lesbians, equipped by gender for bearing children very commonly are birth parents for the children they raise. Gay men and gay women are just as human as the rest of humanity. We love, we participate in family, we enjoy comitted monogamy.
Marriage is not for everyone. But, for gay people who have been denied legitimacy as human beings much less validation for their families - it is wanted and needed.
It's about family. It's about the mother of a Gay son being able to realistically hope for a marriage and grandkids. It's about that bachelor uncle of yours being able to find happiness.
It's about the kids raised by comitted couples of Gay Men and Women being able to have married parents like all their friends. And yes, it's about being accepted as an equal to other citizens and having our relationships extended equal respect.
Posted by: Mike Cooke at July 20, 2004 12:10 PM
