Godot

At the risk of having this devolve further into the argument sketch: Looking familiar to anyone?
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I have little respect for your position as you have steadfastly refused to clarify or substantiate your position at any time. I have specifically asked you a number of questions intended to further elucidate information from you so I could better understand your position.
This is the same position that has essentially been boiled down to "I'm right because I said so."
In refusing to provide evidence or elaborate on your points suggests to me that you are an agitator with no actual interest in discussing the issue in a thoughtful and rational manner. Of course, another word comes to mind...... I think it starts with a "T"......
....Never mind. I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough.

PandaJoe

Let's be honest, it didn't really start as anything else. It's things like this, combined with his refusal to answer any question with a substantive response, the frequent insults, and his condescending nature that makes me wonder what he hopes to accomplish here.

Oh, and one more thing-

No it isn't!

yguy

Single parent families are generally inferior to the traditional nuclear family, though there are obvious exceptions.

Any particular such marriage? Of course not. However, it IS based on an implicit determination to deprive the child of one role model or the other.

Swell. Since the roof is leaking, lets burn the house down.

It is self-evident to me that gender-confused people have to some degree forgotten who they are, having been pressured or seduced into the lifestyle. Having failed to respond properly to such influence themselves, they will tend generally, when their children encounter them, to be at a loss to help them - or they may unknowingly be that bad influence.

I'd imagine problems similar to those in any disfunctional family, only more so.

Godot

How so? And the child cannot have a positive role model of the deficient gender from elsewhere?

Quote:

Swell. Since the roof is leaking, lets burn the house down.

I live in a cave on the other side of the world. You and I do not share the same concerns, though it is a bit drafty in here...

Quote:

It is self-evident to me that gender-confused people have to some degree forgotten who they are, having been pressured or seduced into the lifestyle. Having failed to respond properly to such influence themselves, they will tend generally, when their children encounter them, to be at a loss to help them - or they may unknowingly be that bad influence.

Ah.
Well in that case,

Quote:

I'd imagine problems similar to those in any disfunctional family, only more so.

So the only appreciable difference between hetero and homo relationships is the degree of dysfunction in the unit?

scigirl

Here's some things I researched tonight:
Apparently yguy is talking about a different America than the one I'm familiar with.

http://www.lambdalegal.org/cgi-bin/i...rd?record=1067
Racism and Marriage: At one point, 40 states prohibited the marriage of a white person to a person of color. These marriages were condemned as "immoral" and "unnatural."

Women In Marriage: For hundreds of years, women had few or no legal rights once married. Married women had no independent legal existence: they could not form contracts, have full ownership and control of property, or maintain their own names. Some of these inequalities continued well into the 20th century.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/legisla...000/panel.html
Nancy F. Cott, a professor of history and American studies at Yale University, told the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that at the time of the American Revolution polygamy was the more normal practice around the world. Marriage, she said, was "often polygamous, often informal and often not life-long."

"Christian monogamists were a minority," Cott said. "But they were a crusading minority because they thought they were right."

http://www.indiebride.com/interviews/cott/
Marriage has been important in race politics and citizenship. In the book, you discuss how the government used marriage to "Americanize" and control ex-slaves, Native Americans, and immigrants. Can you talk more about that?

In terms of the racial aspect of the story, it is interesting how consistently I found that the national government held coercive policies on marriage towards groups designated as nonwhite. This was certainly true for African Americans, Native Americans and immigrants, primarily Asians, but also true for Mormons. Because the Mormons practiced polygamy (which was seen as characteristic of Asia and Africa), they were figuratively "nonwhite.”

http://www.geocities.com/mollyjoyful/marriage.html
Heterosexual marriage began as a method of firming tribal alliances, procreation and tracing inheritance rights. Historical marriages documented in the Bible were barbarous, in which women were seized during warfare to become wives. Parents viewed their daughters as child-bearing commodities, and just as frequently sold their children into slavery. Polygamy was frequent, especially in early Biblical marriages, such as the stories of Solomon and his "700 wives, princesses and 300 concubines,” as related in 1 Kings 11:3 (Revised Standard Version).

In England and early United States, wives were not legally allowed to inherit money or property after the death of their husband, and all money and property were given to the closest male relative. Young American women raised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries constantly added clothing and furniture to their dowries, in order to enhance their marriageability.
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Some interesting parallels for everyone to think about:

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/CCCi...cked=3&item=12
But the views of some CCC members go beyond wistfulness for lost white privilege and disfavor toward encroaching minorities and multicultural change. In an article posted on the Arkansas Web site, for instance, Dr. James Owens, a former Dean of the American University School of Business, hypothesizes that a second civil war is imminent and suggests that Southern states secede from "the Union" in hope of creating segregated living spaces for the country's different races. In his scenario, the "silent, white majority" will become shocked into taking action by the catastrophic genetic effects of interracial marriage and by the inevitable rise of an accompanying police state.

It was this story which Henry Pratt Fairchild, past president of the American Sociological Association, expressed in 1926 when he said: "If America is to remain a stable nation, it must continue a white man's country for an indefinite period to come."
The differential punishment for interracial cohabitation was directed not "against the person of any particular color or race, but against the offense, the nature of which is determined by the opposite color of the cohabiting parties," an offense whose "evil tendency" was greater than if both parties were of the same race, as it might lead to "a mongrel population and a degraded civilization."

Justice Buchanan assured Virginia authorities…. "No such claim for the intermarriage of the races could be supported; by no sort of valid reasoning could it be found to be a foundation of good citizenship or a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." He could find nothing in the U.S. Constitution, he wrote, that would "prohibit the State from enacting legislation to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens, or which denies the power of the State to regulate the marriage relation so that it shall not have a mongrel breed of citizens."
Less than 30 years ago many in this Nation believed that
allowing interracial couples to marry would seriously denigrate
American society, and many State laws reflected that.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/04n...louis.htm#Only
There were many justifications to uphold the laws which stated that marriage between races were forbidden and criminal. Three major justifications are explained by the author which are: White supremacy, protection of White womanhood, and the prevention of mixed race offspring. The third justification was based on popular belief that children of interracial marriages were mentally and physically inferior to pure White race children.

scigirl

NHGH

Well, maybe I just don't watch enough TV, but I am unaware of a single example of this in the media. Can you cite any examples?

OK, I don't think you explicitly said this in so many words, but let's recap the discussion on this point heretofore. (It diverges into a couple of subthreads, but I've tried to include all the relevant discussion in as clear a manner as possible.)

As I read this exchange, your point was originally that the "selfishness" embodied in gay relationships is harmful to children and thus we should oppose gay marriage (even going so far as to assert at one point that "it's not 'gay' relationships per se, but any sexual relationship based on mutual use that is the problem"). That line of argument just won't fly unless you assume that gay relationships are more likely to be "selfish" than straight relationships, so I assumed that you were at least implicitly making that claim.

But now, you've had to back off from that point because it was completely untenable, so you're arguing instead that gay marriage "would have a corrosive effect on our moral foundation" and "would degrade the institution as a whole." To this I can only say: How? Even if we grant the dubious premise that gay relationships are somehow morally “inferior” to straight relationships, how does it “have a corrosive effect on our moral foundation” if we legally recognize their domestic relationships, grant them the same civil benefits as “traditional” marriages, establish some degree of legally enforced commitment in order to lend a measure of stability, etc? How does it affect anyone else’s marriage if a handful of men (women) decide to marry other men (women)? Would that make your marriage, if any, less significant? What do the private domestic arrangements of one couple have to do with those of another?


Another contentious assertion, and in my view, lacking proper foundation as well: I don't see how permitting gay marriages constitutes "[a]cceptance of gender confusion as normal". I think most Americans are intellectually sophisticated enough that they can distinguish between the government conferring its stamp of approval on gay marriage, and simply recognizing that the private domestic arrangements of its citizens are not an appropriate subject matter for public policy.

That much is obvious. What's less obvious is why this would be objectionable. I mean, I can see why a two-parent family might be preferable to a single-parent family when practicable, just for logistical reasons, i.e. the necessity of supporting a family economically while also providing adequate supervision for children. I don't see where gender enters into this, though.

But assuming for the sake of argument that gay marriage is indeed a "problem" for this reason, let me throw out this suggestion: suppose a (male) gay couple and a lesbian couple were to move into a single large house together and raise their children jointly. Would this alleviate your concerns about those children being deprived of either a father or a mother?

I've already addressed this point above.

Of course, others, including myself, have doubts. But then, since you grant that "[n]o significant effect will be seen in the short term, or possibly even in our lifetimes," the assertion is conveniently untestable.

"Contentious" would be an understatement. Here we're veering perilously close to out-and-out conspiracy theory.

If true, however, this would be (if you'll pardon the expression) a pretty limp-wristed effort at intimidation. The only way I can see that this would intimidate anyone is if that person had arrogated to himself the right to dictate to others what domestic arrangements they might or might not enter into, and thus took the legal recognition of the rights of others to determine their own domestic arrangements as a sort of personal encroachment.

As far as I know, it still is.

I don't suppose you can provide a link to some evidence for this claim...

Again, care to provide a cite?

But frankly, if what you meant by "do[ing] for pedophilia what it did for homosexuality" was simply to remove it from the DSM as a mental disorder, then I fail to see how that constitutes "acceptance of pedophilia", any more than, say, removing kleptomania from the DSM would constitute acceptance of theft.

yguy

And why did some of those inequalities NOT continue? Because this is a nation which can admit when it's wrong - an integral component of nobility.

You've utterly lost me on this one. What on earth do worldwide marriage practices have to do with whether traditional marriage is a good thing? Is this the "Eat s***, 10 billion flies can't be wrong" defense?

It appears to this observer that indeed they were substantially correct. Those who think the world would have been better off having been carved up by the Axis powers in WWII would have a different view, I suppose.

That a decent institution can be used by government to nefarious ends I don't deny. You'll never find anything that's immune to that.

This is merely an attempt to trivialize marriage by focusing on the more material aspects of it

I don't advocate any of that, and I don't know of any mainstream Christians who do either.

Although polygamy was not prohibited by Mosaic law that I'm aware, neither did it have the divine seal of approval. The precedent started with Abraham, who found it convenient to obey his wife's idiotic suggestion, which produced the progenitor of the Arab race which troubles Israel to this day. Hardly a glowing testimonial for polygamy. Likewise, both David and Solomon had earthly hell to pay for their promiscuity.

The parallel doesn't work unless you can show that homosexuality is as much a product of genetics as skin color.

So scigirl, while you have indeed pointed out some flaws in early American society, it seems you have not done much damage to my assertion regarding America's virtue, since I never claimed we were ever perfect.

scigirl

Here's a question for the audience - why do homophobes and anti-gay/lesbian-rights people insist on this fact?

Why does yguy think it's totally ok to discriminate against someone for something a person chooses. Such as, perhaps, religion? Can any rational person explain this to me?

I'm so tired of gay and lesbian bigotry - will we ever see the day when people like yguy realize the error of their ways, like as yguy pointed out, we did with slavery (finally)? It's funny that he points that out, yet he can't see his own unfounded bigotry staring him in the face.

Sigh,

well maybe I'll move to the netherlands after all.

Amen-Moses

These were the same Axis powers that argued for complete monogomy, the execution of homosexuals and severe punishments for premarital sex? Seems to me you would welcome them with open arms!

Actually come to think of it these Axis poweres you speak of were almost exclusively monogomist, nuclear family centric and highly religiously ethically minded, how come they didn't win?

Amen-Moses

yguy

Of course it does, because you're the kind of person who would try to make me out to be Hitler if I had the same haircut as he did.

The pharisees were all that stuff too.