Gay couples to be paid more to offset higher tax

So where did all of these gay people come from? All of them are test tube babies? Straight parents don't have gay kids?

 

Beneath the incoherent rambling and Coulter-esque asides and one-offs, I think - I think - that printdust is trying to make the argument that most anti-gay marriage proponents make when arguing their stance to the courts. That marriage is intended to encourage biological procreation, and gays can't procreate. I think that's a pretty dated foundation at this point, though. Elderly people marry. Sterile people marry. Socially conscious couples adopt. Unmarried heterosexual couples procreate. Procreation is a component of marriage. A big one. But it is not the behemoth component it once was.

Regardless, though pd isn't a great spokesman for it, the argument against gay marriage remains a mainstream one, particularly in the courts and legislative halls of America. That being said, I don't understand how he has made the leap, especially on the other thread, to people can't procreate, so it is therefore OK to use "gay" as an insult. On one hand, he's making this allegedly rational, dispassionate argument: Gay couples can't procreate. Therefore, gay couples shouldn't marry. But then he undermines himself by vigorously standing up for Gordon Beckham and gay-bashers everywhere. He tips his hand. This is personal to him. But he won't explain why. When challenged, he'll just fall back on insulting liberals and "gay allies," without really explaining the basis of his distaste for gay men and women.

I'm struggling a little bit myself right now with the Catholic church's reaction to New York's legalization of gay marriage. For example, I read this morning that parishes are rejecting donations from legislators that voted in favor of gay marriage. I was married in a non-church ceremony as a private act of civil disobedience, I guess, because of the sexual abuse cover-ups. However, I fully have been planning on raising my children Catholic. I have even been excited about it. But I think I was being an ostrich with my head buried in the sand, ignoring its medieval stance on homosexuals. I am struggling with how to reconcile. And if I even can.

 

Still think Richie Allen's ( Done before he was Dick) dirt scratch was a more original effort than Beckham's

 

I believe it was you Dick who said you used to use the word gay in locker-room talk, but you became enlightened, or grew up. I said why don't you allow others to grow up like you and not judge them? You became enlightened by time, let them.

On the elderly, sterile, etc., OK, they can't procreate but they are doing what comes natural. Oh but wait, you say gays are doing what comes natural and perhaps I can't argue that. I certainly don't comprehend it. And no one is saying gays can't be gay, that it is some sort of crime. It's about marriage, an institution that's had a natural place as a male-female union. You say it's cultural and that we should be so enlightened as to allow for a more open definition, but what are the limits? Whose to say that polygamy, practiced in ancient times in much of the world and therefore not a Mormon invention, isn't natural? It was coded out of existence, or at least extremely limited legally. What about child marriages? In ancient times, the age was a lot less than 15 or 16, and states are all inconsistent in determining that. Where do you stop? And as for the argument that gay is not a choice, what would your reaction be if it is normalized and kids in school become conditioned to make a choice because either way is "OK." Does it cease to be "inborn" at that point?

 

(1) Um, how do you think they become "enlightened"? By listening to people who came to their senses. Being unkind to people who are different isn't just some wistful part of growing up. It is behavior - and, yes, thinking - that needs to be corrected.

(2) Being gay isn't "natural," therefore being gay isn't natural. Got it. Air right logic.

I don't buy the slippery slope argument on polygamy and child marriage. There are articulable human rights concerns about those practices. You have articulated nothing of the sort with regard to gay marriage.

 

1) But your implication was that since you got enlightened, and others aren't, that we need to legislate it. What if we'd done that when you were still unenlightened?

2) Well, about half or more of Americans are quite comfortable articulating many of the same arguments I do. Just because raging liberals don't buy those arguments doesn't invalidate them.

 

I think we as a species need to reconsider this whole internet thing. We gave it a good run. It failed and gave a voice to this.

 

Note the 1958 poll results in this article (near the bottom) and decide if this is the argument you want to continue to cling to:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/28417/most-americans-approve-interracial-marriages.aspx

 

A black man and a white woman can procreate. It's a natural relationship, and was natural in some ancient times. So it's not like people in this poll were suddenly enlightened. The world has seen it before.

 

Are you asserting there weren't any gay people before gay marriage was introduced in the United States?

 

No, but gays can't procreate. Keep up.

 

pd: What is your thought on civil unions? All the rights of marriage without the formal title.