Gay Marriage!
- Thread starter maybegirl
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People often present the argument that it will be unhealthy for children to grow up with a same-sex couple because they will be taught that it’s okay to be gay. That’s dumb, plain, and simple. I am married to a man, and we are doing everything within our power to teach our daughters to accept and embrace people regardless of their orientation or gender identity. It doesn’t take a gay couple to teach kids that it’s okay to love members of their own gender.
Homophobes also like to claim that children need a mother and a father, but they aren’t trying to forcibly remove children of parents who were widowed. In their minds, it might not be ideal, but they can accept that lots of children will grow up with single parents. If kids were better off with a mom and a dad, adding an extra one of the same sexes might not help, but it wouldn’t hurt either.
Finally, you have the ones who think that gay people will raise gay children. Even if we were to disregard all the evidence showing us that our sexual orientation is innate, the argument would still be so dumb. Haven’t they seen all the gay people who grew up with heterosexual parents? How would gay parents be able to turn their children gay when all the desperate straight parents who submitted their kids to conversion torture couldn’t turn them straight?
All arguments against gay marriage are dumb, but the ones involving the upbringing of children are super-duper dumb.
Homophobes also like to claim that children need a mother and a father, but they aren’t trying to forcibly remove children of parents who were widowed. In their minds, it might not be ideal, but they can accept that lots of children will grow up with single parents. If kids were better off with a mom and a dad, adding an extra one of the same sexes might not help, but it wouldn’t hurt either.
Finally, you have the ones who think that gay people will raise gay children. Even if we were to disregard all the evidence showing us that our sexual orientation is innate, the argument would still be so dumb. Haven’t they seen all the gay people who grew up with heterosexual parents? How would gay parents be able to turn their children gay when all the desperate straight parents who submitted their kids to conversion torture couldn’t turn them straight?
All arguments against gay marriage are dumb, but the ones involving the upbringing of children are super-duper dumb.
For most people, marriage is a religious construct in that you marry in a Church, and make your vows before God and often Christians will use the Bible as the foundation of their faith. If the bible says that homosexuality is a sin and two men screwing each other before God then naturally they are opposed to two people getting married. What most people concentrate on is the sex part, because to them two people of the same gender cannot procreate (as if all marriages take place so you can have babies) and homosexual sex is unnatural.
Seeing as I have gay friends, I err on the side of supporting gay marriage and have actually lost friendships because I have had so-called Christian friends acting like religious bigots. To me, it was blatant hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and be against two people loving each other and wanting to get married. Christians and anti-gay folks just don't seem to get it or they hide behind the Bible and their religion to act like un-Christian, closed-minded hypocritical bigots.
If two gays want to marry, it has ZERO effect on my own heterosexual relationships, my relationship with my spouse, or any other relationships I might have. What it is, is people imposing their values and belief systems on other people, based on their religious beliefs and their prejudices, and telling them who they can and cannot love and who they can and cannot marry. “Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone”, according to Jesus.
When people talk about marriage, they often conflate two separate institutions that both share the same name. There is the legal institution of marriage and the social institution of marriage. The social institution of marriage is as old as history and predates the legal institution of marriage.
From a legal perspective, the state recognizes those relationships that serve its interests. The state's interest has been served by recognizing those relationships which children have. Only heterosexual relationships produce children. The state licensed these and regulated them to foster the optimal environment for children to be born and raised. Similarly, the state offers benefits (tax breaks, rights of inheritance, etc.) for the same reason. The state simply adopted a pre-existing social marriage framework because it matched the interests of the state.
People think of marriage as much more than procreation of course, and it is, but those other things are not why the state recognizes marriages. Expanding marriage benefits to any couple can be thought of as a waste of state resources. Encouraging future population growth and an optimal environment for children by offering benefits to heterosexual marriages is an interest worthy of limited government action. Validating the love two people have for each other is not.
State recognition of a relationship shouldn't be interpreted as a judgment on the value of the relationship to the individuals involved. The states' only legitimate interest in recognizing marriages is to protect children and encourage procreation. Otherwise, the government has no interest in regulating private acts and relationships.
As an example, the state incentivizes energy projects that it sees as advancing state interests (currently: solar, wind, ethanol, etc.) with tax breaks, subsidies, etc. The state similarly ignores or disincentivizes energy projects. It feels harms state interests (currently: coal plants, oil exploration, nuclear plants). Similarly, the state encourages philanthropy because it is beneficial to the state, and discourages theft. Both are transfers of wealth that are important, or even vital to the parties involved, but the state's interests happen to coincide with the philanthropist rather than the thief.
