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It boils down to this:
Marriage is a religious sacrament
Therefore can only be given by a called and ordained servant of God, also known as a priest pastor or similar individual
Same-Sex marriage and normal marriage are given by the state(country)
This means the state is violating the separation of church and state idea as the state cannot be a called or ordained servant of God as the state cannot attend seminary
I am against state sponsored marriages in general. Just call it a civil union and give the benefits to everybody.
Does this answer your question? Or were you just trying to start a fight? I will fight and flame war you if that is really what you want!
COME AT ME BRO!

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

friendlycommissar wrote:
One way to think about this issue is to think about rape. If a man has sex with a woman and she does not consent, then that is rape. An animal cannot consent, does that mean that all sex between animals is rape? Or does it mean that human sexual behavior is fundamentally different than animal sexual behavior? I think the latter.

This is the kind of confusion that happens when you reify legal categories. Giving consent is a social/linguistic act, and for the sake of sanity, large human societies tacked unto it a legal definition in order to more easily judge its infractions.

No, this kind of confusion is what happens when you try to justify human behavior by citing examples of animal behavior. The point that is being made is that treating human sexuality and animal sexuality as identical and comparable ignores the vast social complexities revolving around human sexuality that have no equivalent in the non-language using world of animals.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
For my ethics and philosophy (No google, I don't mean SYPHILIUS) books I have gotten and read over. I can say that the only defense for someone minus the religious argument of course is the superiority idea and we don't see it in nature.

Yet.... We can see this completely proven false, we aren't superior to animals in terms of muscles, cleverness, speed.

We are vastly superior to the entirety of the animal kingdom in regards to encephalization, the cognitive treatment of visual percepts and linguistic functions.

.

Hahaha. I laugh at this. We have a thing for this. It is called specisim. It is this idea that the human race is oh so superior to the animal kingdom. Lets face it one on one we are screwed against an animal. We only have our minds and aposable thumbs. Dexterity, Brain size doesn't really matter. A bigger brain is a terrible argument.

Males have bigger brains. Does that make them smarter? nope.

We have very few differences to animals.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

Yet.... We can see this completely proven false, we aren't superior to animals in terms of muscles, cleverness, speed. I know animals that could literally rip my head off, and chase me down and maim me. Or the gorilla that waits patiently and then tears my limbs off and uses me as a bat or something else. Yet we beat animals in intelligence. Yeah. Lets think about that. Lets see what humanity has contributed to earth. Pollution, war, famines, destruction, murder, climate change, extinction. If anything animals are far better than humans in every degree. So that shoots down superiority.

Actually, we have quite a lot going for us. Our manual dexterity is leagues above any other animal in existence. The way we can manipulate objects and the agility we can manipulate them with is incredibly unique. As for the impact that humanity has had on the planet, you could argue that any species that would develop to a level of sentience similar to our own would be capable of the same.

Now onto what is natural... On homoeroticism.

Because through out human history at least 15% of the human population has been gay or homosexual. I think its natures way of weeding out genetics.

Try 3%. And a 'nature's way of weeding out genetics' does not make sense, since these traits are being passed down anyway. There are hypothesis out there that suggest that homosexuality in family lines/units can actually present certain advantages, such as stronger avuncular qualities in homosexual men, as well as the suggestion that the same trait that produces homosexuality in males is also linked to increased fecundity in females.

]Yes because Manual Dexterity is so useful. Versus a giant muscle monster..... How long does it take for an animal to be able to kick ass from birth? 7 months? What about a human baby? 2 years? Maybe? Maybe 8?


It is they don't reproduce. Nature is literally making it so these people don't reproduce.

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:
It boils down to this:
Marriage is a religious sacrament

No it isn't.

Religious marriage is a religious sacrament. A marriage that does not involve religion is not.

As has been noted several times in this thread now, the concept of marriage was around for quite a while before certain religions got involved in it.

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:
Marriage is a religious sacrament

No it isn't. I am not religious at all, yet I can go to my local courthouse and get married without ever involving religion in any way.

Therefore can only be given by a called and ordained servant of God, also known as a priest pastor or similar individual

According to your religion's rules. These rules have nothing to do with the legal version of marriage that is being debated here.

This means the state is violating the separation of church and state idea as the state cannot be a called or ordained servant of God as the state cannot attend seminary

According to my religion taxation can only be done by a called and ordained servant of god, also known as me. This means that the state is violating the separation of church and state idea as the state cannot be a called or ordained servant of god as the state cannot attend seminary. Therefore abolish the IRS.

I am against state sponsored marriages in general. Just call it a civil union and give the benefits to everybody.

Why should we change the name just because your religion invented some rules about it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
Which is still a problematic explanation, since the gay's genes don't gain any advantage in increasing another individual's likelyhood of reproduction.

Sure they do, because that other individual also carries copies of the gay person's genes. Helping your immediate family produce offspring is almost as good as producing your own directly.

Also, your argument assumes that there's a single black and white gene that flips between gay and not-gay. Instead, perhaps the gene is a probability thing: if you have it you have a 10% chance of being gay. 90% of the carriers of the gene will produce offspring as usual, while 10% will not but will improve the chances of survival and continued reproduction for the other 90%.

I really think it's a communication thing- people meaning different things by "marriage". If it is simply implying a sharing of property / joining of estates, that is different than "two flesh becoming one".

The state only cares about / is involved with the former, which is why I think civil unions is such a good idea (for all people). However, calling it marriage also works, imo, it just has a different meaning when people use it in the context of the state.

I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state. On that same note, a religious organization should be protected from having to rent their space to someone they don't think meets the criteria for marriage in their religion. In some places, this would be as simple as not doing pre-marriage counseling (required in some churches!). In others, a person being of another religion (a Christian wishing to be married in a mosque). In others, activity that the religious group doesn't wish to condone (a couple already living together pre-marriage, or a homosexual couple, for example).

It will be different for each religious organization, but freedom of religion (at least in the US) means they have the right to that choice. Speaking of it generally, does Islam generally permit gay marriage? I'm guessing not, although the place of women in some Islamic groups may not make it the best example (although the same could be said of some Christian and secular groups, too!).

This has been a useful, thought provoking thread for me, so thanks to those who thoughtfully stated their opinions and reasons for them here.

 Asherian Command wrote:
Hahaha. I laugh at this.

We have a thing for this. It is called specisim.

Well, no, speciesism is discrimination based on the specie criteria. Claiming that one specie surpasses all others in regards to some capacities or criteria isn't refering to the specie criteria, but to the capacity criteria.

We only have our minds and aposable thumbs. Dexterity, Brain size don't really matter. A bigger brain is a terrible argument.

Of course brain size matters. Certain cognitive structures necessitates larger or longer strings of neurons to function. Heck, you couldn't fit a single pyramidal neuron in the entire body of most insects. Other animals have us beaten on the sense-organ side, like the very cool mantis shrimp, who'se eyes are biological marvels, but we have the entire animal beaten when it comes to the visual brain side. We dedicate more processing power to figuring out the tri-dimensional aspects of our visual world than most animals have.

Males have bigger brains. Does that make them smarter? nope.

''Smart'' is a useless term, here. There are simply too many cognitive functions to the human mind to hope to exhaustively list them. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps that human male have a few more functions than human females, or perhaps they dedicate more brain mass to certain ones. It won't be possible to say until we can compare human cognition on the gender criteria, and phenomenally, we can feel that whatever differences, if they exists, are probably of little consequences.

It is they don't reproduce. Nature is literally making it so these people don't reproduce.

But ''Nature'' isn't doing anything to them, because there cannot be a natural selection of genes that do not reproduce themselves. It's as if homosexuality is an emergent phenomenon to mammalian genetics.

 Asherian Command wrote:
Lets face it one on one we are screwed against an animal. We only have our minds and aposable thumbs.

That's hardly a fair test. The only way an animal wins is if it catches us on our own, unarmed, with our pants down, and know to attack. Most animals naturally fear humans, and with good reason: the ones that didn't died a long time ago (or were domesticated). Humans are sneaky and can use this to scare away much bigger animals. Also humans don't operate alone, we are social, living and hunting in groups (probably quite large groups naturally).

Success isn't about one on one fights, it's about survival of the species. large predators lose to humans, no contest. Even primitive people will just hunt, bait, trap, spear and generally kill them. I feel this can be summed up by the following score:

Saber-tooth tiger: 0
Humans: 7,000,000,000

 RiTides wrote:
The state only cares about / is involved with the former, which is why I think civil unions is such a good idea (for all people). However, calling it marriage also works, imo, it just has a different meaning when people use it in the context of the state.

There are a number of technical legal issues that make the civil unions option unfeasible. Either the civil unions law would have to unequivocably state that civil union is synonymous with marriage in every possible way and that the two terms are legally interchangeable, in which case why are you even bothering with it, or the term would be less clearly defined and thus be open to all sort of stupid challenges. Like imagine someone claiming their spouse couldn't get a no fault divorce because their state's no fault divorce law only allows for the dissolution of marriages, and says nothing about civil unions. You can see how that would be stupid. That's the kind of thing you'd have with civil unions define as anything but a synonym for marriage.

Plus, the anti-gay marriage activists shot themselves in the foot when they pushed for a lot of bills that prohibited gay marriage or anything that would extend the rights associated with marriage to gays, because that took the civil unions option off the table entirely and forced a lot of advocates for civil unions to become advocates for gay marriage, and thus pretty much killed the political will behind the civil unions idea. It also demonstrated that a lot of the outrage over the use of the term marriage was just a smokescreen.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure they do, because that other individual also carries copies of the gay person's genes. Helping your immediate family produce offspring is almost as good as producing your own directly.

Yes, but there's no selection pressure on the gay gene, then. If this was the case, the homosexual population would slowly decrease across ages, not maintain itself, no? Given your other response, with the odds of remaining heterosexual, I guess if the gene also marked for other advantages, that would explain the selection pressure.

Also, is the whole gene vs. exposure of fœtus to hormones debate done?

friendlycommissar wrote:
There are a number of technical legal issues that make the civil unions option unfeasible. Either the civil unions law would have to unequivocably state that civil union is synonymous with marriage in every possible way and that the two terms are legally interchangeable, in which case why are you even bothering with it, or the term would be less clearly defined and thus be open to all sort of stupid challenges. Like imagine someone claiming their spouse couldn't get a no fault divorce because their state's no fault divorce law only allows for the dissolution of marriages, and says nothing about civil unions. You can see how that would be stupid. That's the kind of thing you'd have with civil unions define as anything but a synonym for marriage.

Plus, the anti-gay marriage activists shot themselves in the foot when they pushed for a lot of bills that prohibited gay marriage or anything that would extend the rights associated with marriage to gays, because that took the civil unions option off the table entirely and forced a lot of advocates for civil unions to become advocates for gay marriage, and thus pretty much killed the political will behind the civil unions idea. It also demonstrated that a lot of the outrage over the use of the term marriage was just a smokescreen.

Of course, the other question that needs to be asked is - Why is it the people entering non-religious unions who have to call it something else, rather than the church coming up with a different name for their ceremony to distinguish it from the non-religious state-overseen version?

Actually, my wife and I just had that same conversation . It is a fair point, I think!

Also not really necessary, since I think the main realization is just that people mean different things by the term (and not just regarding same sex unions). But if a distinction were needed, that'd be an easy way to go about it.

friendlycommissar wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

friendlycommissar wrote:
One way to think about this issue is to think about rape. If a man has sex with a woman and she does not consent, then that is rape. An animal cannot consent, does that mean that all sex between animals is rape? Or does it mean that human sexual behavior is fundamentally different than animal sexual behavior? I think the latter.

This is the kind of confusion that happens when you reify legal categories. Giving consent is a social/linguistic act, and for the sake of sanity, large human societies tacked unto it a legal definition in order to more easily judge its infractions.

No, this kind of confusion is what happens when you try to justify human behavior by citing examples of animal behavior. The point that is being made is that treating human sexuality and animal sexuality as identical and comparable ignores the vast social complexities revolving around human sexuality that have no equivalent in the non-language using world of animals.

But all humans are animals which would mean that all human behavior is a type of animal behavior.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Personally I believe for some people homosexuality was a choice and for others it's not, like I've read articles about people who claim they chose to be homosexual.

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:
Marriage is a religious sacrament

Well, it is not. Marriage as you know it now can be traced back to the early years of the Roman Empire, where it was a simple legal institution designed to rule over the sharing of property and the production of legitimate heirs for the ruling nobility. It was the exclusive right of patricians, the only ones with a property to look after. - In fact, marriages had no legal value when the husband was of plebeian descent (Plebeian "marriage" was pure and simple cohabitation of a man and a woman under the same roof, with no legal strings attached). It only became a religious sacrament after Empire and Church became one and the same thing.

As Yuri Gagarin would put it, I don't see any God up, or rather, down there.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure they do, because that other individual also carries copies of the gay person's genes. Helping your immediate family produce offspring is almost as good as producing your own directly.

Yes, but there's no selection pressure on the gay gene, then. If this was the case, the homosexual population would slowly decrease across ages, not maintain itself, no? Given your other response, with the odds of remaining heterosexual, I guess if the gene also marked for other advantages, that would explain the selection pressure.

If there are two siblings, one male and one female, and they both have inherited a gene that in males makes them more androphilic, while promoting fecundity in the females, the female sibling is more likely to have a relatively large amount of children carrying the same genes providing that disposition.

Also, is the whole gene vs. exposure of fœtus to hormones debate done?

I've always been of the assumption that it's probably a combination of both factors. Afterall, sexuality is almost never black and white, and most people are strongly leaning somewhere between purely straight and purely gay.

Cos religion had dibs on us longer that science has.

If we use Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) book as point zero for science, this means we have had around 155 years to try to change people's way of thinking. That's 155 compared to when mankind first started worshiping "gods". My wife isn't religious, but she still feels compelled to acknowledge Magpies when she see's them. I'm not religious, but my dog died last week and I'm still having him cremated so he can "come" home and be with us. It's so deep in our psyche even us unbelievers can't let go.

 Wolfstan wrote:
Cos religion had dibs on us longer that science has.

The scientific method was already a couple centuries old when Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species". Other than that, you're right, religion has been around a lot longer than science has.

But law and power are as old as religion, perhaps even more. We probably said "Do this because I command you to" before "Do this because the gods want you to".

 Wolfstan wrote:

If we use Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) book as point zero for science

155 years?

Newton?

Copernicus?

Archimedes?

Aristotle?

Arabic guys with names that I don't even know?

Science is old. Very old.

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:

 Wolfstan wrote:
Cos religion had dibs on us longer that science has.

The scientific method was already a couple centuries old when Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species". Other than that, you're right, religion has been around a lot longer than science has.

But law and power are as old as religion, perhaps even more. We probably said "Do this because I command you to" before "Do this because the gods want you to".

Yeah I know there were arguments against religion already, but just used a more prominent "zero" date Even allowing for a few hundred years difference, it's still a pin prick of time compared to religion, in it's various forms.

...ok this is very odd. I thought I'd posted in a post about religion in general!?! I know it error-ed with a permissions message and I refreshed and reposted... but just realised this is a different thread!?!

 Wolfstan wrote:

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:

 Wolfstan wrote:
Cos religion had dibs on us longer that science has.

The scientific method was already a couple centuries old when Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species". Other than that, you're right, religion has been around a lot longer than science has.

But law and power are as old as religion, perhaps even more. We probably said "Do this because I command you to" before "Do this because the gods want you to".

Yeah I know there were arguments against religion already, but just used a more prominent "zero" date Even allowing for a few hundred years difference, it's still a pin prick of time compared to religion, in it's various forms.

Religion and Science didn't used to have beef, and "Origin" wasn't written as a piece against religion.

 Wolfstan wrote:

...ok this is very odd. I thought I'd posted in a post about religion in general!?! I know it error-ed with a permissions message and I refreshed and reposted... but just realised this is a different thread!?!

Yeah, the other thread seems to have been devoured by the warp. Too bad, I would have loved to watch Peregrine's one-man torch-and-pitchfork mob some more.

 Wolfstan wrote:
Yeah I know there were arguments against religion already, but just used a more prominent "zero" date Even allowing for a few hundred years difference, it's still a pin prick of time compared to religion, in it's various forms.

There have probably been arguments against religion for as long as there has been religion. Forget "a few hundred", try thousands of years, just for the ones that were recorded in permanent form. You're setting a "zero date" that has no relevance to anything.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Wolfstan wrote:
Yeah I know there were arguments against religion already, but just used a more prominent "zero" date Even allowing for a few hundred years difference, it's still a pin prick of time compared to religion, in it's various forms.

There have probably been arguments against religion for as long as there has been religion. Forget "a few hundred", try thousands of years, just for the ones that were recorded in permanent form. You're setting a "zero date" that has no relevance to anything.

Ok how stupid of me to use a "zero" date. We'll go with your "1000's". That is still a tiny time scale compared to when humans first started believe in a deity or deities. That's hell'va long time for a something to get a grip on our minds.

Sorry for veering off topic, but I don't really think this deserves a new topic.

You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv gay for no actual reason.

This has been bothering me since Harry Potter, and it's being agitated by How to Train Your Dragon 2. Since I can't have actually seen HtTYD2, I'll just try to explain with Harry Potter.

What is the point of making Dumbledor gay? What does it add to his character? If he was straight, he'd be a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a headmaster loved by everyone. He's gay, and his character is a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a Headmaster loved by everyone... him being gay doesn't do anything to change that, and it's basically a pointless, unneeded characterization.

You know who would have been better as the gay Harry Potter character? Neville. Think about it; his parents were murdered, he's lived with an Aunt (I don't remember there ever being mention of an uncle; no father figure), he's nervous as all hell because he doesn't know his place in the world, and he idolizes people who barely know he exists. Out of the entire cast of characters, Neville is the one who grows the most in the books, to what we see by the seventh. If you made him gay, it's one more hurdle he has to pass in his growth of a character, and it still makes perfect sense with his character.

One thing that just pisses me off about a lot of the entertainment industry, had to get that off my chest.....

Because they don't want to have an all-straight cast, they want to appeal to everyone, but they don't want to bother with writing a complicated character. If it makes no difference whether the character is gay or straight, then they lose nothing by making the character gay.

Dumbledor is gay?

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Dumbledor is gay?

So people say. They made no explicit reference to his sexuality in the books or films.

 Slarg232 wrote:
Sorry for veering off topic, but I don't really think this deserves a new topic.

You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv gay for no actual reason.

This has been bothering me since Harry Potter, and it's being agitated by How to Train Your Dragon 2. Since I can't have actually seen HtTYD2,

It makes perfect sense in HtTYD2. That character is totally gay. You see it even more in the cartoon series. There is nothing wrong with it, but to does flesh out the character more. While there is no reason to explicitly make it an issue in the series, there is no reason to hide it either.

Who is gay in how to train your dragon? Hiccup?

 cincydooley wrote:
Who is gay in how to train your dragon? Hiccup?