Marriage, without the legalization of 'gay marriage' is a joke anyways. 50% of marriages fail.
How does legalizing gay marriage change this?
It doesn't I'm sure the gay marriages will continue that top notch trend, this issue is about issues that matter like visitation to your partner at the hospital, being able to take care of the funeral/death wishesof your partner after death, spouse benefits, and a host of other things currently denied to gay couples in the US.
Not to mention the rest of the world where US rights for gays make them seem outright liberal and forward thinking, I'm looking at you Uganda and muslim nations.
So because I think that marriage is meant for a man and woman that makes me homophobic? That is a stretch there..
Is your issue that you define marriage as a man and a women so when someone the government trys to forcibly change your definition you take offense
or
Is your issue that you don't want Gays and Lesbians who choose to co-habitate to have the same rights as single people who co-habitate.
Now if your issue is with the government ursurping your word you are not homophobic but if you are against confering economic and social benefits on two people because of a minor difference then you are homophobic. For those against Gay Marriage I would really like to know if it is the word Marriage that bothers you or the rights being conferred.
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Liberalism is not defined by support of gay marriage. I'd say that most Calgary Puckers are either Conservatives who don't care about gay marriage or libertarians who don't think the government should decide who gets married to whom.
Whatever you may have heard, gay marriage is actually not a wedge issue between conservatives and liberals. It's a wedge issue between pious moralists who want a paternalistic state and people who see no reason for the govermnent to be poking around in people's private business.
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Liberalism is not defined by support of gay marriage. I'd say that most Calgary Puckers are either Conservatives who don't care about gay marriage or libertarians who don't think the government should decide who gets married to whom.
Whatever you may have heard, gay marriage is actually not a wedge issue between conservatives and liberals. It's a wedge issue between pious moralists who want a paternalistic state and people who see no reason for the govermnent to be poking around in people's private business.
Everyone on here is a derivation of some sort of liberal.
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Everyone on here is a derivation of some sort of liberal.
That's a very good point, actually. But I think you're using a definition of the term that is woollier and more arcane than the poster who brought it up. His meaning is the one that's used by self-anointed "conservatives" to mean "our opponents in the fake culture war that we invented in the 1970s."
But your point serves to emphasize how silly that highly polarized debate between "liberals" and "conservatives" tends to be.
It's also perhaps the worst thing about stations like Air America and MSNBC: by taking up the mantle of "liberals" as defined by the extreme-right-media, they merely contribute to the very discourse of phony oppositionalism that they pretend to oppose.
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It doesn't, I just think it is silly altogether.....
USA:
Denied hospital visits of longtime partner:
American Evangelicals goto Uganda to explain the evils of Homosexuality, now the country is feverishly anti-gay where people are outed in newspapers and being beaten for being gay is normal. If the law passes gay people can be in prison for 14yrs or in some cases be put to death.
Lets see, Gay teen suicide in the USA, Gay children have up to 3 times more likelihood to commit suicide, we have countless problems of gay kids being bullied, shunned and in some cases kicked of school teams, told they can't take a gay partner to proms, etc..
Some stats on Gay teen suicide:
These are just the tip of the iceberg, why does this all matter? Well because its wrong to treat a group in our society with such distain and ignorance.
We know that being gay isn't a choice, we know that these people suffer greatly in their early years from violence, verbal abuse and once they are adults they suffer from the continuing stigma and mistreatment of a society that views them as sinners, gross, not normal and this in the "land of the free" which claims to be a bastion of human rights for the world to set an example from.
The truth is the vast majority of opposition to gay rights, just rights not even talking marriage here is from the religious, muslims, christians, catholics, mormons, etc..
They find no problems in finding justifications in their books but ignore the hide behind the obvious ethical and modern moral standards of our society in order to not move forwards with rights for all humans.
When people are being told they will goto prison for simply being who they are, this is wrong and free people of the world should fight hard and loudly to change this craziness.
Like has been said before, 50 yrs from now people will look back at people against gay rights with utter amazement and distain.
Since legalizing gay marriage in Canada and in other countries nothing that the opposition to gay marriage has happened.
We go on living in Canada like the day before the law passed, nobody is marrying sheep, straight marriage is its usual crappy high divorce rate self, the world still turns, people still goto work in the morning.
People opposed to gay marriage never seem to talk about how all the nations who are truly 'lands of the free' have had no setbacks or complications after granting the rights to gay people which many nations have yet to do.
__________________ Allskonar fyrir Aumingja!!
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Baloney. Some of the earliest recorded writings that mention marriage are non-religious in nature. Marriage in Christianity is a religious practice maybe, but there are lots of other religions and non-religious people as well, all of whom have some form of marriage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by narbeZ
Religion defined marriage as being between a Man and a Woman.
Some religions define it such, and if you want to belong to a religion that says that have fun, but other religions don't necessarily agree, even some Christians no longer accept that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by narbeZ
I don't understand why homosexuals wan't to make something holy that isn't.
I don't think you are the one that gets to decide what is holy.
Some homosexuals are religious, and some religious groups accept and perform homosexual marriages, so obviously for them it is holy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by narbeZ
PS. this goes all into my theory that the end of the world is coming, as most people are turning away from religion, and the only people who are not are muslims. They are unified, they have obtained slow but steady growth....eh screw it I have a whole theory.
Well if one tree is bearing fruit, and another is withering, that would seem to indicate which one is actually closer to being correct...
Quote:
Originally Posted by narbeZ
In 500 years there will be no more white people, everyone will speak english, and everyone will be muslim.
Mark my words.
Wait, I thought you said the world was coming to an end, but now you're making a prediction for 500 years from now?
And wouldn't this be something you are for, everyone being religious? Or you just want everyone to be your religion..
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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Jumping in late on this but feel the need to post this letter that was written by Sharon Underwood in Vermont back in 2000 when the gay marriage issue was coming to a front there.
This letter has been forwarded all over the world after it was posted online by Andrew Tobias, the Democratic National Committee Treasurer as "The Best Thing (I've) Read All Year".
-------------------------------------
Sunday, April 30, 2000
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT)
Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.
I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.
My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.
He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.
In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."
You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.
He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.
You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.
You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.
The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?
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The idea of denying civil rights to any couple, gay or straight, is wrong. All the rights of a mixed sex marriage should belong to members same-sex marriage ie. tax breaks, inheritance laws, medical care & visitation rights etc.
I don't believe anyone is trying to advocate that churches should be forced to perform gay marriages if it goes against their religious dogma. Altho it does seem likely that as religious attendance shrinks at traditional houses of worship these strictures will loosen/fall away to get more bums in seats (to fill the collection plates if nothing else).
Typical same sex marriage thread. A whole lot of intolerance for anyone who has beliefs that are not those of the majority while treating the issue as black and white instead of shades of gray.
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<-----Check the Badge bitches. You want some Awesome, you come to me!
