Posted: May 14, 2012 8:21 am
stijndeloose Crocodile Gandhi wrote:
So, my question to Lion is this...
Can Lion explain precisely how opposite-sex couples' ability to raise their own children will be affected if some gay people get married?
Thats pretty rich. You’re asking me a question about “gay marriage” and you couldn’t even explain gay marriage in answer to my last question.
You couldn’t explain what secular interest The State has in formally legalising “gay marriage” when it has no interest in doing so with ordinary platonic friendships and romantic liaisons elsewhere in society? You couldn’t give an answer to that simple question – a secular question - asking how The State could distinguish between “A” and “B” (Not even one example of the difference.) Eg. The State has an interest in legally differentiating between gay married couples and gay unmarried couples because……?
Now, I’ll give you a half a dozen reasons in answer to your question.
And I’ll be a heterosexual spokesperson on behalf of the basic social unit – the family – consisting of opposite gender parents procreating and raising their OWN biologically related offspring in the context of a gender-balanced relationship commitment traditionally known as marriage.
Your question is premised on the unsupported, unproven notion that…"our gay marriage doesn’t affect you."
1. If that really were true, you wouldn’t need to ask The State for permission to get “married”. Nobody would need to ask. The State, the tax payers, the voters wouldn’t care. If marriage and divorce had absolutely no impact on society now or in the future, there would be no matrimonial law at all. But marriage does affect society and there are very strong moral landscape reasons for its status as an institution.
2. SSM necessitates a change in the functional definition of marriage. And the dubious “mind your own business” claim that “my personal style of marriage doesn’t affect you” is a claim which could just as easily be made by an incestuous father wanting to marry his own daughter, or supporters of polygamy, or someone who wants a unique “arrangement” with a goat, (you said it not me,) or someone who wants to lower the marriageable age to 12 years. Your gay marriage will affect me and my society when it acts as a thin-edge of the wedge, logical and legal precedent for others who also want access to that benefits package called “Marriage Equality”. Remember, a key element of the “Gay Marriage” debate is the lack of clear understanding about who exactly is claiming to be discriminated against on a vast spectrum of psycho-sexual diversity – bisexuality? transvestites? pre-Op/post-Op transgenderism?
3. Your gay marriage affects me and my society because, by your own admission, one of its primary objectives differs markedly from heterosexual marriage. Namely, it seeks to validate homosexual behavior in the face of a perceived stigma. Heterosexuals aren’t motivated to enter into marriage in order to validate their preference for heterosexual sex. And to that extent, your gay marriage isn’t just an adults only, privacy of your own home, mind your own business affair at all. It’s about kids TV shows like Glee (produced by adults) which push a none-too-subtle agenda to children like the 7 year old mentioned earlier in the debate. It’s about politically correct (sexualizing) agendas being pushed on children who watch Sesame Street to have Bert and Ernie scripted into a “gay marriage” to normalize something in the minds of children – most of whom are at the age where elementary concepts like where babies come from are still asexual.
4. Your gay marriage affects me and my society because “we the people” recognise (as you do) that homosexuals have a statistically higher incidence mental illness, personality disorder and self-harm. We (the people) find persuasive evidence that same-sex partnerships are statistically prone to higher rates of infidelity, domestic violence and historically higher rates of HIV/AIDS than the heterosexual population. Now, The State in many jurisdictions allows lawful discrimination and screening driver’s license applicants for less significant factors than these. Therefore society has a stake in guarding against the potential consequences - social pathologies - of changing the law. It is a plain reality that the interests of “the many” prevail over the wishes of “the few”.
5. There is ample (statistically persuasive) evidence that childhood development outcomes are much more favorable for children raised by (their) two biologically related, opposite gender, sufficiently committed to remain with one another for the period from conception to adult maturity. Every arrangement deficient in one or more of these elements is sub-optimal to the welfare of the child. Your same-sex marriage which seeks validation of homosexuality as one motivation, affects me to the same extent ALSO as does the same-sex adoption of children which likewise seeks to validate and alleviate a perceived homosexual social stigma! The welfare of children and their entitlement to a gender-balanced upbringing, for which their TWO biological parents are responsible, is regarded by society as a right which, in increasing numbers of jurisdictions, children are deemed to have FROM CONCEPTION. And The State – rightly concerned about the long term moral landscape – is correct to put short term, hedonistic libertarianism well down the list of social priorities and instead, give greater due diligence to holistic social welfare. The democratic State is NOT an ignorant frog sitting in a pot of gradually heating water – we have elections. We have choices. And if New York and Norway want to act as gay marriage “ghetto” jurisdictions then guess what opponents of SSM say to that?
6. Your gay marriage affects me because I am one of the billions of your fellow human beings who make up the broader culture of religion which, in large part (Abrahamic Monotheism) collectively exercises the cultural prerogative to view certain behavior, (in this case yours) as something contrary to our religious convictions. And we don’t accept your unsupported, faith-based assertion regarding the non-existence of divine higher beings, extra-terrestrial realms of existence (afterlife/parallel universes) and the absence of a transcendent, objective Moral Law. So when you presume to displace our Ten Commandment family values, such as honoring ones mother (singular) AND father (singular) and our biblical disdain for adultery and instead try to elevate a “Dan Savage” moral law code of your own, which permits and promotes homosexuality, you must surely know therefore that there will be an affect in both directions and an effect on both sides.