yguy

They're all wrong.

I don't remember it coming up before. At least until recently, Christians were never in danger of becoming a persecuted minority, except maybe by other Christians - so I wouldn't have any particular reason to desire such protection were I a Christian.

Philosoft

If homosexuality is wrong, then it should be outlawed.
Who said anything about Christians needing protection? These kinds of laws exist primarily to protect the minority groups from persecution by the majority group. What would a majority group need protection from?

yguy

In theory, yes, but we haven't the moral authority to do that, any more than the Jews had moral authority to stone the adulterous woman in John, though she had it coming.

I thought that was what I just said. The only way Christians could have been in the minority in the 60's is with respect to other Christians - as in a Protestant employer discriminating against a Catholic.

Just to clarify though, there is a world of difference in my mind between an employer firing someone for his religion who doesn't make an issue of it, and an employer declining to hire someone who declares on her resume that she is a witch, for instance.

dk

Salmon of Doubt: And I don't agree that children always learn what jobs to do from their fathers. It can be a factor, but I don't see why this is so important, and why having two mothers or two fathers would affect it.
dk: Today 50% of kids are considered “at risk” so its important because children in families absent a father become “at risk” children. From 1960 to 2000 9% x-family became(grew) 32% x-family, and 3 of the 5 “high risk” categories apply to x-families. Poverty was only one 1 Risk Factor.

Salmon of Doubt: A stable loving family, whatever sex the parents are is always going to be better than a family split apart by violence or arguments or any situation where the parents part on bad terms. A family where the participants have the determination, commitment and finances to go about adopting children or having them by artificial insemination surely has to be a family that will survive many difficulties successfully and give the kids a good start in life.
dk: Poverty was one factor of five the Census Bureau used to tag “High Risk Children”. For 30 or 40 years the best synthesized methods employed by social scientists showed welfare moms provided very stable and loving homes. It was a shock when it turned out most daughters grew up to become welfare moms, and young boys detached from their own family left home to play “drive by shooting” with other boys. The University of Bergin says, “The studies indicate that children raised by lesbian women do not experience adverse outcomes compared with other children. The same holds for children raised by gay men, but more studies should be done.” ---- Outcomes for children with lesbian or gay parents. A review of studies from 1978 to 2000 - The real problem likely falls somewhere between a degenerative norm and a politically correct social problem.
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The social sciences have such a bleak record dating back to the 1960s with federal welfare, divorce reform, HUD, and public education it is difficult to take them seriously. As it turns out these reforms engineered by social scientists spent trillions creating ghettos in the sky, running the middle class tax payers out of big cities, and turning public education into high paid baby sitters. It would appear the “best synthesized method” used by social sciences have little merit apart the albatrosses they build to suit demagogues and political hacks . Truth stranger than fiction.

Salmon of Doubt: My parents divorced amicably, but if I were hypothetically forced to choose between having two mothers or two fathers who loved me and having parents who fought all the time and split up in an unpleasant way, I would choose the gay family. I admit I would prefer to have two mothers rather than two fathers, but I still don't think it harms children.
Oh and my name is Salmon of doubt, not Solmon of Doubt. Thanks.
dk: That’s how it appears to work, many children of divorced parents understand divorce as a favorable outcome. Why?…Because its politically correct for broken family commitments to normalize broken homes. But unacceptable high rates of teenage deaths caused by driving drunk, murders, suicide, incidence of MSM, and drug addiction indicate a need for less politically correct problem statements. dk: I find it a crime that over 250,000 gay men are dead, and another 500,000+ will die from an incidence of MSM (male sex with men). I find it a crime that 4% of gay teens per year will become HIV+ from an incidence of MSM. I find the disproportionate incidence of gay teens prostitutes a crime. I find the disproportionately high rate at which gay teens commit suicide and become drug addicts a crime. I find it a crime that HIV+ bisexual men infect (HIV+) as many women with heterosexual sex as IDU incidence. The numbers are all buried in the Surveillance Reports published by the NIH, CDC and Justice department. The problem is that if a gay teen or gay man commits a crime it gets rationalized as an identity crisis caused by homophobes. Obviously the people most threatened by gays are gays teens, hemophiliacs, health care workers, young promiscuous women and vulnerable youths. Ironically the people tagged by gay doctrine as homophobes have the least to fear from gay men. The only threat gays pose to straight men entails blood products and MDR Microbes incubated in overmedicated immune deficient densely populated gay communities, and those risks are shared by the greater society at large.
dk: A few gay leaders are elected, but most have parleyed academia credentials, political connections and/or personal wealth into a leadership role. Gay leaders & organizations are no different than other leaders & organization, except they represent gay values and gay culture.
dk: :Let me see, I think public venues for anonymous sex qualSSify as scandalous, and sex museums, pornography, etc… By the way pornography is a $10billion industry, and GM, AT&T, and AOL are some of the largest profiteers. I don’t mean to imply that gays are any more scandalous than corporate America. But Corporate America isn’t asking for marriage rights. Maybe gays and lesbians should look into acquiring the benefits the government gives to corporations and leave the nuclear family alone.
dk: I don’t follow, women aren’t subject to the same laws as men, biologically or legally. For example Title IX distinguishes women athletics from male, and medical doctors prescribe different treatment to women than men. You need to be more specific I have no idea what you think I’m implying.

dk

FOIL: Okay, but what's the necessary causal link between same-sex marriage and your #3 or #4? A lesbian couple who opt for artificial insemnation need not keep the father anonymous or even out of the picture at all.
dk: I don’t think I used the phrase, “causal link”, but “connected by”. In the case of a single women using the services of a sperm donor and/or IVF the donor doesn’t acknowledge being the child’s father, and the child has no rights to a father. I believe the laws governing surrogate mothers vary from state to state, nation to nation.

FOIL: #4 and #5 are also not linked for the same reason.
dk: Agreed, and thank you for the correction, they are explanatory text and I’ve moved them under #2.
dk: The Moynihan Report found, ”Negro children without fathers flounder -- and fail. “ and explained, “Children today still learn the patterns of work from their fathers even though they may no longer go into the same jobs.” Perhaps if social scientists and engineers hadn’t thrown the Moynihan in the trash as more, “blame the victim” rhetoric we’d have a fuller understanding today. Still this is the most credible social research we have. It was extrapolated from real data about real people that has been time tested. I suspect history will look back upon the Moynihan Report as an overlooked opportunity. Oh well.
dk: There’s no doubt the US government through social engineers, courts and public education can reform the nuclear family into the x-family. The question is at what cost? This poses a humpty dumpy scenario, “All the King’s men and all the King’s horses couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again”. So far the governments incompetent efforts to socially engineer Black equality have left black women up a crick without a paddle. They are widely debased by black men as two legs with something good in-between. Educated Black men from x-families increasingly turn to white educated white women, and most uneducated black men spend their youth in prison. The government’s effort to engineer a more perfect union (racial equality) has been less than successful, and the x-family ina and of itself an unintended side affect of social engineering. We surely must deal with x-family, but the plan to institutionalize the x-family with gay & lesbian marriage is ludicrous. The nuclear family may rebound from the wounds inflicted by the Great Society, but not the x-family. Its time we wake up.

FOIL: Consider cases in which children are "switched at birth" in hospitals. Why would the courts even consider returning a 5-year old to his biological parents and taking him away from the only real parents he's ever known? That seems like madness to me. Biology is clearly insufficient to determine a child's best interests.
dk: That was the basis of Rawl’s “Theory of Justice”. Hippies loved it, but then they grew up to become materialistic Yuppies. I don’t mean that as a valid criticism, I’m merely pointing out that social theories in practice often fail. The hallucinogenic optimism of the hippie generation faded with x-generation, and when the old hippies turned 30 they became the enemy.

dk: x-families exist, and escalate their problems to the courts. The courts have no magic wand or crystal ball to know the future. They simply make judgments based on a list of criterion and hope for the best like everybody else. In my opinion, after collecting all the information on all the involved parties, all the courts know for sure is that the wrong discussion is better than no decision.

Foil: I also don't see any necessary connection between your identification of the "x-family" and your vision of "legal ramifications". At its most basic level, SSM is about legal rights. What is it about that alone that will cause husbands and wives to split up and abandon their children? I'm sorry if I seem dense, but I just don't get it.
dk: The courts apply the facts of law to the facts found in evidence. New laws (or new interpretation of law) like same sex marriage have broad implications that require both the facts of law and the facts found in evidence to be re-evaluated. Gay and Lesbian Marriage changes both law and subsequently the evidence. This opens up whole new avenues of appeal in all kinds of bitter custody cases previously decided. The courts must apply the same laws to x-families and nuclear families because all people are equal in the eyes of the law. The x-family being a broader definition re-formats the nuclear family in its image. Bye, bye nuclear family, at least as a basis of law. How the courts will reinterpret laws and evidence is anybody’s guess.

Philosoft

Who is "we" and why do "we" lack moral authority to outlaw something you claim is "wrong"?
I'm not sure I follow. Is the former not acceptable and the latter acceptable?

yguy

We as a society lack that authority because we, are guilty of the same thing for which we would chastize homosexuals, just different manifestations of it - as Christ pointed out to the Jews who were about to stone the adulteress. Knowing that, those of us who see the activity as wrong are subconsciously constrained from calling a spade a spade. Some of us merely pretend not to see it for what it is, and some go so far as to embrace it. If you can't beat'em, join'em.

Correct.

Philosoft

Dr. Freud,

Hopefully you'll understand if I am consistently underwhelmed at your attempts to cram allegations of moral turpitude into a "subconscious," where it is conveniently hidden from observation. In any case, your knowledge of modern psychology is lacking. You might want to read something from around the turn of this century.
Why? Is one religion more socially acceptable than another?

yguy

Give me a reason to. Tell me EXACTLY what is wrong with what I just said, rather than cravenly running behind the skirts of academia as is your wont.

IMO, yes - but that is irrelevant. Substitute any in-your-face religionist for "witch" and the statement holds.

Dr Rick

Now yguy is claiming that he didn't posit any similarity between homosexuality and pedophilia but still finds them in some way the same. He's claiming theft, murder, homosexuality, and pedophilia are wrong, but they have no similarity, yet they are all the same in that they are "wrong".

It's a desperate strawman argument that you brought-up

So do nuclear weapons.

You posted "For instance, heterosexuals have no more right than anyone else to have sex under tables in restaurants" as analagous is some bizzare way to your arguments in favor of oppressing homosexuals