How legalizing gay marriage undermines society's morals

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | December 09, 2003 | Alan Charles Raul

[John O]

1. homosexuality is a disease with a definite cure - I take it as a way that someone is, with a limited degree of changeability

The data says otherwise. Thousands have left the homosexual lifestyle (totally) see scripters database. As to being a disease, see DSM III it was dropped in IV due to political pressure Again see the database for articles detailing this

2. what constitutes public or private behavior

If someone else can see it, it's public

3. what constitutes recruiting

Any attempt to show 'homosexuality' as normal, healthy, fun, cool, hip or otherwise to be accepted is recruiting. Sexual molestation is recruiting. (see scripters database. most SADs were recruited that way).

me->...you can only quarantine them away from the healthy population

you->I'm afraid you've once again stepped way out of line, in my opinion.

We used to quarentine lepers and TB patients. Both deadly contagious diseases. What's wrong with quarentining SADs, also a deadly contagious disease? How is stating that fact stepping over the line?

[ArGee]

In fact, I argue that it is unamerican to paint all individuals in a category with the same brush.

Not when the category is based on behavior. We can, for example, paint murderers with a broad brush. They are a self-selecting group.

You have confused a behavior for a trait.

Shalom.

[ArGee]

What's one more change? What problem does this creat for you? Doesn't it have some health or stability benefit for society?

Marriage has changed in practice, but not in essence.

It has always been between men and women.

Care to cite another "tradition" so fundamental which has been thrown away?

You can't because marriage is a uniquely fundamental building block to any healthy society. Even the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not as fundamental to the health of a society as a strong family.

Again, note the history of the blacks in America. If you didn't read that post, let me know and I'll repeat it.

Shalom.

[ArGee]

The problem is that you are dealing with Constitutional issues, and Constitutional rights cannot be defined by gender.

Marriage is not a right. It is a licensed privelege.

Idjits screaming about rights is way overused, IMHO.

It is reasonable for us to discuss whether the state should license marriages and what marriages it should license, but we should not be wasting our bandwidth on the non-issue of equal rights.

Shalom.

[Ohioan]

"Gay marriage" is a double oxymoron. The mock solemnification of a perverted asexual relationship, is neither gay nor is it a marriage. It is a ridiculous sign of an intellectually sterile, and increasingly morally bankrupt era, that those with a warped self-serving agenda, can get away with such an absurd misuse of our language.

As I have pointed out before, I feel sorry for many who suffer from the unholy and dysfunctional tendencies, now being mislabeled as "gay." I am not for breaking down the doors of private residences on a witch-hunt to catch and destroy adults who voluntarily engage in deviant practices with other (consenting) adults. But this issue is coming to the fore, not because of aggressive enforcement of moral codes by the defenders of the American tradition and values. This issue has been brought to the fore by the connivance of those with a totally perverted agenda--an effort to confuse the population generally in some of its most basic concepts.

Under these circumstances, it is important that those who care about the future; those who honor the past, and understand how Western Society came to be the vehicle that has made our lives so pleasant and consistent, and mean to preserve it for the next and future generations; nay, it is mandatory, if we be not mad, that we take proper umbrage at these outrageous excesses, and make it very clear--clear to every adolescent in the land--that this is, in fact, a double oxymoron, and will not be accorded any credibility at all.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[NutCrackerBoy]

We should not be wasting our bandwidth on the non-issue of equal rights.

I agree with you but unfortunately we do not have that luxury based on what the Massachusetts SJC has done. It is a given that the concept of equal protection under the law has been interpreted to apply ouside the scope of rights protection, e.g. Bush v. Gore

If equal protection is asserted, which is what the SJC has (preposterously) done, then Luis Gonzalez unfortunately is correct.

[NutCrackerBoy]

I take it as a way that someone is, with a limited degree of changeability. -NutCrackerBoy

The data says otherwise. Thousands have left the homosexual lifestyle (totally) see scripters database.

You make a chain of reasoning, based directly on unprovable claims that you claim to be proven, leading to the most preposterous of conclusions.

I do not accept your pronouncements and I refuse to engage them. Take that as you will.

[jwalsh07]

The problem is that you are dealing with Constitutional issues, and Constitutional rights cannot be defined by gender. Citizens have rights, and "citizen" is a genderless entity.

There is no "fundamental right" to homosexual marriage Luis. For a scholarly opinion on that statement, read Standhart v Superior Court of Arizona, Nov 2003.

[NutCrackerBoy]

Thank you, breakem. It has truly been a pleasure.

By the way, my wife and I both loved Master/Commander. We have a hetero-political marriage (she is a liberal). We talked a little about how many men in those days bought their commissions.

Then we moved into university admissions. In the early 20th century, entry to the finest universities such as Harvard depended far more on breeding than intelligence. Related to that, we discussed the policy of legacy-preferred admissions (like George W. Bush getting into Yale). We also discussed how the fierce competition among the finest schools for the finest students leads these schools to invest in lavish accomodations to attract them, driving up tuition costs in these most elite of schools.

I asserted that legacy-preferred admissions benefited the universities not only in terms of donations received from legacy families, but also from the quality of the people they are admitting from those families.

I don't know if that is right, but it sure turned out to be politically incorrect to say.

Later.

[Zack Nguyen]

Good find. It is not a matter of "imposing morality" or not. The real question is: whose morality will be imposed? There is no such thing as a cultural vacuum.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"There is no "fundamental right" to homosexual marriage Luis."

That's funny.

When cornered, most conservatives would agree that rights are not granted by a document, nor are they subject to another's opinions...they simply exist, with the Constitution protecting them. That's until the moment that some "right" is brought into question which "offends" our sensitivities, then we immediately launch into all sorts of goobly-gook about whether this fundamental right, or that fundamental right exists or not.

Here's one right you do not have...the right to deny others their right to life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness based on YOUR biases.

There will be some sort of recognized civil union for same sex people, you can't stop it, the Church will not be forced to either recognize these marriages, nor perform them, and the institution of marriage will survive in spite of the best efforts of heterosexuals to destroy it.

It's all happening right in front of your eyes, and wishing that it wasn't will not make it go away.

Nearly every right confered to a legal spouse via marriage can be obtained through an attorney, and contracts, the few exceptions being Social Security benefits, and next of kin privileges in health care and surviving spouse duties. I have no problem with any person willing to enter into those agreements with another, gender arrangement be damned, you seem to have issues.

I also understand that whether gays marry or not in no way cheapen my marriage...I'm not so insecure to fear that. I know one more thing that you are not willing to accept..."they" are not going away.

Now, can you detail by what power the government denies Mormons the right to polygamy as a part of their religious observances?

Or will you continue to avoid answering the difficult questions?

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Marriage is not a right. It is a licensed privilege."

Then, the issue becomes even clearer.

The Court has found fault with the licensing procedures, and has instructed the government to removed restrictions that create inequities in the licensing for a segment of the citizenry.

[Torie]

I agree with you on the bulk of your policy points, but are you arguing that SCOTUS should decree that gays have a constitutional right to state sanctioned "marriage" or "civil unions," with benefits wholly equal to those affored heterosexual couples in a marriage? What we think is good policy in our own minds is not always co-extensive with a Constitutional right. Indeed, I would argue that it typically is not. I assume you would agree.

You have also IMO not really grappled with the argument on which John and I do agree, that "resolving" these matters by judicial fiat lends to the coarsening of the public square, irreconciable bitterness by the losing side, and such downside legacies as making judicial confirmations a partisan food fight, where in time only purported stealth moderates will be confirmable to choke point judicial positions, i.e. nominees whom folks really don't have much of a clue how they will turn out (you know, folks like Stevens, Seuter, O'Connor, Kennedy, Breyer and the like). That strikes me as a risky scheme, furthering undermining the underlying precept that is "fundamental" and "essential to the pursuit of liberty in all its spatial dimensions," that laws should have at least some nexus, however attentuated, with the consent of the governed.

I think it would be helpful to keep the two aspects of this debate (policy versus process) clearly distinct in our minds. John and I do that with each other, which is why we get along so well on this matter, as well as some others (such as the Judge Moore affair), where we are on wholly opposite sides of some aspects of a divisive issue.

Regards, as always. I am just trying to assist in constructive debate.

[breakem]

becareful about distinguishing behavior from traits. Practicing religion is a behavior and not a trait.

[breakem]

re 276 I linked over from drudge on Aug 8, 1998. Under a previous reincarnation.

[breakem]

re 275 you sould now realize the error of using the report that 73% of homos are molestors.

[breakem]

re 268 we're going around in circles. C-YA!

[Luis Gonzalez]

"I agree with you on the bulk of your policy points, but are you arguing that SCOTUS should decree that gays have a constitutional right to state sanctioned "marriage" or "civil unions," with benefits wholly equal to those affored heterosexual couples in a marriage?"

There is no such thing as a "gay" or "homosexual" citizen in the eyes of the Court, and the same people who argue against the idea of hate crime should not then turn around and argue denial of "rights" based on sexual orientation, by doing that, they give weight to the argument favoring the need for such hate crime legislation.

My argument is that neither States, or the Federal government have the Constitutional power to restrict two able-bodied, consenting adult citizens, from entering into the civil contract known as marriage, performed by government licensed magistrates, because in order to justify the refusal to license the union, either the State, or the Feds must fall back on a reason wholly based on religious beliefs as every other "societal" argument fails miserably to hold up to the light of day.

"You have also IMO not really grappled with the argument on which John and I do agree, that "resolving" these matters by judicial fiat lends to the coarsening of the public square, irreconciable bitterness by the losing side, and such downside legacies as making judicial confirmations a partisan food fight."

We don't mind fiat when the decision favors us.

I don't have a problem with the Court's findings, I believe that there is a need to provide citizens with a legal forum to fight what they view as inequities in the law as they apply to us as individuals. Expecting politicians to enact or overturn laws that are detrimental to a minority of the voters, at the expense of earning the wrath of large voting blocks is simply silly, sometimes fiat is all that's left.

I bet that there would not be a soul in FR arguing against SCOTUS making abortion illegal in the US by fiat.

[NutCrackerBoy]

My argument is that neither States, or the Federal government have the Constitutional power to restrict two able-bodied, consenting adult citizens, from entering into the civil contract known as marriage, performed by government licensed magistrates, because in order to justify the refusal to license the union, either the State, or the Feds must fall back on a reason wholly based on religious beliefs as every other "societal" argument fails miserably to hold up to the light of day.

Nonsense. Massachusetts defined, by default, civil marriage to involve the union of one man and one woman.

A runaway liberal lawless court made a preposterous ruling to the contrary.

[Torie]

I think I will leave this one for others to comment for the time being. I don't want to truncate matters.