As I mentioned in the Morning News, last night’s Hardball featured a gay-marriage discussion between Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage (the group behind the shamelessly fear-mongering “Gathering Storm” ad) and Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign, and here it is:
First impressions: Maggie Gallagher is more eloquent than I imagined, and Joe Solmonese was less eloquent than I wanted.
A key point left unaddressed is brought up by Gallagher’s repetition of the idea that “redefining marriage will change marriage forever.” This is true, and pretending it isn’t is unwise. The question is whether this disruption to the existing idea of marriage is threatening enough to deny equal rights to an entire class of citizens, and the answer is unequivocally no.
Yes, granting marriage rights to same-sex couples will “change marriage forever,” just like the civil rights movement changed public transportation forever, and the suffrage movement changed democracy forever. This is called progress, and protecting the (unfair) world that the marriage-is-only-between-a-man-and-a-woman folks have grown accustomed is in no way so pressing a concern it mandates denying equal rights to an entire group of Americans. (In other words: wrapping her brain around the new realities of 21st-century life is Ms. Gallagher’s job; it is not the government’s job to perpetuate injustice just to keep her and her ilk comfortable.)
146
That is why the polygamy argument is so compelling.
146, and to add, and say again, the comparing of animals to gay people is just a way to dehumanize gay people, much like the way Jews were called vermin. It’s easier to discriminate against folks whom you feel are less than you.
@ 151, that wasn’t involving consenting adults. That kind of polygamy IS immoral and WON’T be supported by anyone except power-hungry cult weirdos.
That’s why the polygamy argument fails.
Next…
links work better than excruciating long posts that no one is reading
151, The animals vs. human may be a compelling argument for polygamy, but polygamy isn’t a compelling argument against gay marriage.
152
plus it is really unfair and insulting to animals
155
No one thinks polygamy is an argument against gay marriage.
They know gay marriage is an argument for polygamy.
@ 154, Loveschild wanted research, Kim gave it to her. If she’s honorable she’ll read it and comment on it.
You are free to stay unenlightened.
@ 157, Look, the sockpuppet loser is moving the goalposts! Just in keeping with his stunted intellect’s capabilities.
If polygamy is NOT an argument against gay marriage, then it has no place in this discussion.
Thank you for playing.
157, Maybe it is, but it’s not a reason to disallow gay marriage. Gay marriage is a separate issue from polygamy, and the only reason it’s brought up in a discussion about gay marriage is there are no good arguments against gay marriage.
159
160
The topic is marriage and polygamy is as much a part of the discussion as gay marriage.
There have been and are more polygamous marriages in this country than gay marriages.
If you just want to carve out a narrow self serving definition of marriage then you are substituting one form of oppression for another.
161,Okay, lets play your game. If you want to divert by talking about polygamy, why are you against polygamy? If consenting adults want to be in a plural marriage, why do you care?
!41, Good Friday, Loveschild. Just a sinus headache.
To answer your question. No, I don’t. I don’t believe gender neutral marriage will automatically lead to polgamy, bestiality, (anymore than those things already exsist throughout the world), etc.
Nor do I see how insiting that “civil unions”, when they lack approx. 1,500 benefits (I rounded to the nearest hundred) isn’t discriminatory.
So let’s see if we can follow the shifting sands of the intellectual desert our sockpuppet friend finds himself wandering….
We should oppose gay marriage because it will lead the polygamists to press their case…. Yet polygamy is NOT an argument against gay marriage… and somehow, Fundie Mormons (who are NOT known for any level of toleration of GLBT folks) are allies with the gay marriage proponents (none of whom have made an argument for polygamy in any form).
Hmmmm…. I can see why you keep shifting your handle. I’d be embarrassed to let anyone know that this was how my mind worked if I were you.
162 I never said I cared.
164
You’re not following.
Fundies are not allies of gays (far far far from it), but if gays get their way it will open the door for fundies to get what they have been unable to get for 150 years.
The irony is rich.
165, So then therefor you have no argument against gay marriage, just as I said.
165 – yay! Let’s not sayanother word about it then.
@ 166, let them. They’ll have to press their own case. The two are not linked.
End of discussion.
165 Then why are you commenting on it if you don’t care? What’s your reasoning behind it? Just to give people like Rob, Matt and Kim a hard time?
To the numerous posts calling homosexuality a biological dead end I want to point out an obvious reason why homosexuality IS NOT a biological dead end. Back in day when we were barely hunter gatherers, living in large communal families, homosexual members of the group could act as caregivers, be an extra set of eyes and ears to watch children, and offer other support to their close family. So really, if you had a gay brother or sister you were likely better off for it. Yes it our biological imperative is to pass on our genes, but who says you can’t do that by helping your nieces and nephews grow into adults? It’s been suggested that this kind of social structure hints at homosexuality’s evolutionary beginnings. There was a big paper on this published, maybe last year, which I’ll post if I can find.
167
168
you boys never fail to disappoint.
try to follow.
there are compelling social reasons why homosexual marriage is a bad idea.
there are also compelling social reasons why polygamy is a bad idea.
observing that arguments for gay marriage apply even more strongly to polygamy does not endorse either.
observing that if gay marriage is legalized there will be no arguments left to oppose polygamy also does not endorse either.
.
ps- try to leave the poor animals out of it.
163 Girl I’ve been there and i don’t envy you, mst of the time is due to the change of weather, feel better soon.
As for neutral marriage as you put it I do believe like I said before that it will lead others to lose even more their morals and become more desensitize with even abusing animals like Matt stated because the lines of what’s sexually appropriate or not would have been blurred. What I’m trying to say is that when there are no moral guidelines to follow, when you can’t or don’t know what’s socially acceptable and anything goes and you can bed anyone you want when you want, any apprehension there might’ve existed in the past are done away with through all realms of human behavior.
@ 172, You have yet to present one compelling social reason against gay marriage. All your comparisons to polygamy have been shot down. You say you don’t care about polygamy then keep bringing it back up.
Poor, poor pitiful you.
172, And yet you can’t give a single reason here. I wonder why that is?
170
I’m not speaking to you
Matt said you don’t respect me 🙁
Still more:
The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that “sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences”.[80] The American Psychological Association has stated that “there are probably many reasons for a person’s sexual orientation and the reasons may be different for different people”. It stated that, for most people, sexual orientation is determined at an early age.[81] The American Psychiatric Association has stated that, “to date there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality. Similarly, no specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse”.[63]
63.^ a b American Psychiatric Association (May 2000).
80.^ “Sexual Orientation and Adolescents”, American Academy of Pediatrics Clinical Report, http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi…, retrieved on 2007-02-23
81.^ “Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality”, American Psychological Association, http://www.apahelpcenter.org/articles/ar…, retrieved on 2009-02-03
The freeing of the slaves didn’t lead to the freeing of the plow horses.
Allowing women to vote didn’t lead to cats and dogs voting.
Allowing interracial marriage didn’t lead to interspecies marriage.
Allowing gay marriage won’t lead to people marrying animals. Gay people are humans just like you.
171
And heterosexuals couldn’t act as caregivers?
Grandma and grandpa can watch the kids.
If homosexuality were a genetic trait it would scream “YOUR GENES ARE NOT GETTING PASSED ON”.
It would be a fatal defect that dies out with each individual afflicted with it.
That’s just silly, isn’t it.
Luckily it isn’t true.
173, Loveschild. Thanks.
The clock tells me it is time to be quiet, and reflect on what Good Friday means.
Jesus said, “It is finished.” John 19:30a
Best wishes to you all.
178
Rob this is really hurtful to the animals and they don’t deserve it.
181, So you think gay people are less than you, big surprise. Your hate is the only thing you have to offer in this debate. I win.
182
congratulations on your win!
You know it’s a good discussion when the anonymous biology dude get’s all “it’s a defect” in our faces.
Good Friday means ‘flying zombie jeebus says you can’t marry a man’, right?
i think loveschild is that black ‘ex-lesbian’ who used to publish a magazine about and for black lesbians. she ‘saw the light’ a year or two back and renounced her gay ‘lifestyle’. admit it, loveschild, that’s who you are, isn’t it? ‘fess up!
Loveschild @ 141
“I was asking you If you truly think that in seven years of gay marriage becoming legal things such as polygamy, bestiality and other sexual conducts like them will become immediately the law of the land?”
Let’s go over this list again:
bestiality = sexual conduct
gay marriage = NOT sexual conduct
polygamy = NOT sexual conduct
And AGAIN:
GAY MARRIAGE = NOT SEXUAL CONDUCT
POLYGAMY = NOT SEXUAL CONDUCT
@179
Of course. I never said they couldn’t. I only said having a homosexual family member would be a benefit. Your problem is that you refuse to see any good in the situation, only the ridiculously far-fetched negative.
And ponder this: it’s been suggested that the male “gay” gene is passed through the mother’s line. It has also been suggested that this gene acts much the same way the gene that causes Sickle Cell Anemia does. Two copies gives you the blood disorder, while one copy gives you immunity to malaria (And to make this clear I AM NOT equating being gay to having Sickle Cell Anemia). And it has also been suggested that two copies of the “gay” gene in women enhances their inclination for nurturing. Obviously this is a trait that would benefit society. Now this is all speculation for the most part. But it is obvious there are many reasons why it would be beneficial for some part of society to be homosexual (um hello population control?), and if you would stop with the hate and the negativity I’m sure you could think of a few all on your very own.
@179
“If homosexuality were a genetic trait it would scream “YOUR GENES ARE NOT GETTING PASSED ON”. It would be a fatal defect that dies out with each individual afflicted with it.”
And yet genes still exist that make man and women sterile. Your lack of basic genetic knowledge is amazing. When humans procreate, a copy of both chromosomes are passed on. Not ONE copy from ONE parent. These chromosomes contain many genes. Genes can be dominant or rec…..
you know what, you suck. educate yourself.
@97
You appear to have either no sense of, or no tolerance for human nature.
But to rain on your pathetic parade, your post-industrial-age ideal of a nuclear family featuring a married couple (featuring one caregiver and one breadwinner) is inherently flawed, not just because it often doesn’t work out — couples often discover they are incompatible after wedlock or the dysfunction of a single parent can break the structure of an entire family — but the lack of redundancy makes it very fragile to circumstance or hardship. From an anthropological perspective, the proverbial village of at least ten adults and a ratio of around one adult to a child, serves as a more resilient ideal.
And get this, the more diverse the community is, including such elements as belief systems, aptitudes, foibles, and yes, gender alignments and sexual orientations, the more prepared the children will be for dealing with diversity as adults.
Now it seems few people are prepared to hear or understand this, but polygamy is ultimately on our agenda and in our future. Not polygyny as we see it in Islam and fundamental Mormonism, where old men swap and marry each other’s thirteen year old progeny so that they have a continuous supply of underaged brides*, but rather legitimized polyfidelity, where bands of consenting adults, a mix of men and women, can form together to create that village structure that IS ideal for child-rearing. Last I checked, the Church of All Worlds (CAW) experimented in this sort of thing, but considering the resistance we’re seeing to gay marriage, and what we saw to interracial marriage, and considering what polygamy looks like in its present practices, I don’t expect we’ll be considering legalizing it within this century.
* Oddly, this is something about which the communities of faith are content to remain silent. It is LEGAL for good Christian men to get themselves some thirteen-year-old poon so long they marry it first (and divorce the last one), but when it comes to two gay adults who love each other getting married and raising kids, that’s just not in God’s plan.
And incidentally, Wikipedia may have been subject to common errors five years ago, but its accuracy is now comparable to the big name traditional encyclopedias. If you really are concerned about a given article, look up its cited sources, and get your data from them.
188
Homosexuality as Mother Nature’s birth control?
It seems a very poor system.
Because homosexuals are biologically fully capable of reproducing just like everyone else.
We just have to take their word for it that they don’t have interest in the opposite sex.
And a big percentage of ‘homosexuals’ in fact do have/father children at some time in their lives.
So if that is the plan we have to give Mother Nature an F.
A better plan would be to simply render people sterile.
No possibility of cheating.
A better plan yet would be to spontaneously abort the fetus.
If population control is the objective why have the individual born and live and suck up resources and just hope they won’t cheat and have kids when they grow up?
Kill them then and there and spare mom the heartbreak of finding out her kid is gay.
@179
Grandma and Grandpa in caveman days? You think there were palaeolithic retirement homes where cavemen went when they were tired of running from predators? Hilarious.
190
We’re speechless.
We never dreamed the
HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA
had as it’s ultimate goal
polygamy for us all.
And even kindly providing
a supply of homosexual
nannies for the clan.
193 – you’ve already been refuted.
@191
Homosexuality as Mother Nature’s practical joke?
It seems a very poor system.
Because left handers are biologically fully capable of using their right hands just like everyone else.
We just have to take their word for it that they don’t have interest in using their right hand.
And a big percentage of ‘left-handers’ in fact do now or have tried writing with their right hands at some time in their lives.
So if that is the plan we have to give Mother Nature an F.
P.S>
Kill them then and there and spare mom the heartbreak of finding out her kid is gay.
And people wonder why gay kids commit suicide.
I’m sorry. When I personally speak of “we” or “our” I refer to those of us who support the full human rights agenda (not just the gay rights agenda). Y’know, the true patriots who wish to make our country something worthy of emulation by others by making it the epitome of liberty, equality, prosperity, and generosity.
Contrast those who figure patriotism is waving flags, and chanting “USA! USA! USA!” longer than anyone else.
Or the Dominionists, who feel this country isn’t great until every living family is functioning in accordance to their perfect model, in accordance to (their interpretation of) the bible.
U.
To quote Kim in Portland, rewind:
That first “Homosexuality” should read “Left Handedness”
195
Don’t be a wimp-
genetic population control is not for the squeemish!
@198
And yet, despite the inability of gays to reproduce, history records their percentage of the total population as more or less constant.
Damn that inscrutable mother nature.
@199
Gays are able to reproduce.