Comments on: Playing Politics With Same-Sex Marriage And Undermining A Free Society

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:23:36 +0000

Not less than human, but you would think that my love, say, is less deserving of recognition than your love. You just now introduced the term “less than human”, which I'm not accusing you of. More of a “less than me” kind of sentiment, which I'm not sure is really any better when we get right down to it.
I think that the word I would use is “healthy” where you use “natural”. In which case, sure, I don't see any reason to consider it unhealthy. Nor does the APA, the AMA, the WHO, or any other authority on the subject. If you consider a flourishing human specifically one that reproduces (which, given the current world population and environmental status, isn't really helping us to flourish at all), then, and only then, I would agree. Beyond that, there's no real evidence that being homosexual negatively affects a person's functionality beyond the pressures that heterosexual society exerts on them to remain unhappy with themselves and their lives.
Furthermore, even if we did somehow establish that being homosexual was unhealthy, I don't think that refusing to acknowledge their relationships as equal to our own would “cure” anybody.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:12:35 +0000

“People can “get married” without any legal documents if they want to.”
True, and currently that's true of homosexual marriages too. The proposed laws I think we're discussing are specifically and only about legal documents, though, which I'm just saying were never in any of your God's directives.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:13:46 +0000

“A legally binding contract between a male and a female as the heart of creation? They didn't even HAVE marriage as it exists today back then.”
Sure, but why assume that marriage must take the exact form that it does today in order to be marriage? Remember that the only thing we're trying to defend here is the principle of one man and one woman in some sort of exclusive relationship. The civil institution of marriage as it is today (legal contracts and all) was simply designed to help facilitate this Biblical paradigm. People can “get married” without any legal documents if they want to.
Point is, the heart of the Bible is a covenantal God who enters into covenantal relationships with human beings and creates certain covenantal relationships for humans to enter into with each other, hence marriage.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:02:30 +0000

“Natural” in the sense I used the word in the last sentence of that paragraph doesn't just mean “occurring in nature.” I mean “natural” in the sense of being proper to human nature. Just think of any disease. It occurs in nature, but we don't say, “well, it's natural, it must be ok.” We recognize that it isn't “natural” to a flourishing human.
If you were trying to pass a law against Christianity, I would assume it would be because you recognize that I have a choice to be Christian or not. So really you're just strengthening my point. When I say that it isn't a matter of “personal identity” I don't just mean that you shouldn't take it personally in an emotional sense. This would be true of anything that we believe or do. What I am saying is that my disagreeing with some activity that you engage in doesn't mean I think you're less than human. So unless you actually think that I'm somehow less than human because I believe in something that you think is obviously irrational and absurd, then you actually agree with me in principle.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:10:39 +0000

Unless you're just omitting it for my sake, I'm not seeing the command “pair off into two-gender pairs and have yourselves legally recognized as a single unit” in “be fruitful and multiply”. But I'll cede the point about sex being a sin.
With the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” is the opposite true? Are vows of chastity a sin? Does dying childless get you into hell? Or do you, in those cases, just accept that some people want different things out of life, because it's not as icky?
Getting pretty far afield here, and I'm aware of that, but really. A legally binding contract between a male and a female as the heart of creation? They didn't even HAVE marriage as it exists today back then. If you're trying to protect traditional marriage in that sense, you're about four thousand years too late.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:04:26 +0000

Well, it would make it natural, certainly. I'd say it'd still be acceptable even if it were a choice, so no real question there. Notable difference between stealing and being gay is that being stolen from could legitimately hurt you. People being gay in your general vicinity doesn't affect you or members of your religion at all, though you like to pretend you're somehow under attack by it.
But I'm not sure you know what the word “natural” means, given how you frame your question. “Suppose something is perfectly natural. Does that automatically make it perfectly natural?” Well, yes, I'd say that something naturally occurring does make it, er, natural.
Not quite sure where you're going with the second paragraph, but how is it not an issue of personal identity? If I were trying to pass a law that would ban, say, Christianity, would you not take it personally, being a Christian? Or would you buy into my saying that simply because I think that your sinful, unnatural, disgusting way of life should be outlawed doesn't mean that I think of you as a lesser person than myself?
I mean, I'd take it personally, but maybe that's just me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:42:15 +0000

Buburubu,
I would also reccomend you look at the next post on this blog. It links to an article written by Scott Clark. He specifically addresses the issue of what marraige as a social institution means for the State and for society in general, and from a natural law perspective he makes the case for why the traditional view (recognized by Christians and Pagans alike for at least the last 2,500 years) ought to be protected. Feel free to leave more comments with your thoughts and feedback, since I think his points are worthy of discussion/debate.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:38:53 +0000

I'll check some of those things out, but I'm not sure what it would prove. My point is that even if a “gay gene” were found, why would that automatically make it natural and acceptable? What we found a certain gene that people are born with that causes them to steal more often than others? Or suppose we located a gene that causes some people to be sexually attracted to people or animals? Would automatically make any of those things natural and proper?
In any case, there's really no such thing as “homosexuals” and “heterosexuals.” There is no good philosophical or scientific reason to accept such categories. Humans are simply “sexual.” We may choose to manifest our sexual desires in a number of different ways, but there is no reason to make “being attracted to the same sex” an issue of personal identity, such that my arguing against the act of same-sex unions is somehow arguing against the very personhood or value of the individual.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:30:23 +0000

Buburubu,
No, neither the Bible nor Christianity teaches that sex is a sin. There were Platonist tendencies in the early Christian church which lead some to think that all matter is evil and only spirit is good, so many commentators had a very low view of sex. But even then, they understood that sex was necessary for procreation, so they could never deem it an actual sin.
In Genesis, God creates a man and a woman and institutes that marriage covenant. He also specifically tells them to “be fruitful and multiply.” So traditional marriage is at the very heart of creation and the natural order, according to Christianity. That's just one reason why it's also so important and, from a Christian perspective, worthy of protection.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:16:07 +0000

I'd go with anything by the APA in the last twenty years, but maybe you could specifically look up the results of Bieber's study and his attempts to “cure” homosexuality (of over two hundred homosexuals that desired not to be homosexual any longer, he claimed a 26% success rate, though when approached by Kinsey to produce a cured subject for interview, Bieber couldn't produce even one) or take a look at the results of the faith-based therapy organizations that were based on the idea that it was a choice such as Exodus International, Crossover Ministries, Courage, etcetera. Or you could talk to any gay man or lesbian who hasn't been growing up under the crush of a religious institution telling him to be ashamed of who he is and ask him when he first chose to be gay.
When did you choose to be straight? I don't recall ever having to make the decision.
Also, please, quit saying that any right I can name is already granted by civil unions. We both know it isn't. Should be, sure, but it's not. And private organizations as well as state governments will never respect a Civil Union the way they would a marriage, although some might stubbornly refuse to respect a marriage, too.
I hadn't heard of the father in Mass., and I think I'd need more details to weigh in on that in any sort of an informed manner. Typically though, when a parent is dead set on raising their child to be as ignorant as they were growing up, they pull them out of public school and home-school them, not go to the school and tell them to quit giving the children as much knowledge.
“In several countries” cannibalism is a regular practice. I'm not overly concerned with isolated events around the world. Not saying it's not true, just that the scope of my political knowledge is the modern United States, and I'll likely just dead-end a conversation about other governments.
In general, though, I think that I agree with you on the civil unions. If they weren't such a joke and were actually equivalent to marriage and as portable as marriage, I wouldn't consider this nearly as important an issue. I would still come down on the same side, though. Whether individual people want to shout from the rafters that their favorite types of people are better than all the other people is, and will be, their right. It should not be the government's right or a corporation or organization's right that receives financial protection from a government of the people. There has been no decision that every person, or any person, is legally required to respect the homosexual lifestyle, or blacks, or women, or whoever. Your position is safe. There HAS been a decision that the state as an entity, which receives tax money and obedience from these people, is. From the way you phrase the situation, I'm not sure that you get that there's a difference.