yguy

If you refer to marriage, you have as much right to marry a man as I have to marry a woman. If you refer to sexual freedom, heterosexuals have no more right to sex out of wedlock than homosexuals, in my view. If you refer to the right to raise a child, I don't think you have that right, although I can see society granting it as a privilege in the case of adoption.

Where do you think rights come from? Could society give pedophiles the right to have sex with children, or would that merely be acquiescence by consensus? If the latter, what makes your "rights" any more inalienable? I don't mean to link homosexuality to pedophilia here, I just cite it as an example that we can agree on.

You're gonna think I'm paternalistic as hell for saying this...but you are sounding to me rather like a spoiled child who thinks a parent evil for not letting her have another dish of ice cream. The "denial of rights" you speak of is not rooted in hatred of anyone, at least not in me. I am aware that there are many who hold views similar to mine who enjoy looking down their noses at homosexuals and feeling a sense of superiority; I am not one of them.

Look, I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip on you, to have you grovel before American beneficence. The whole point was that, had America been a nation of pleasure-seekers such as Holland is today, it wouldn't have been there to help you guys out. Maybe Britain would have won anyway, but it would have cost more British lives. Maybe your parents' or grandparents'.

OK, fair enough.

Dr Rick

Huh? Have you been trying to argue all along that someone owes you money?

They've made sex safer; you should read about it.

Rick

dk

Seems to me you guys are determined to look past the logic, to give your all for the PGMed response.

PGM (pro-gay marriage)

Dr Rick

We're just countering prejudice and ignorance with facts and logic.

dk

Not me, all those poor gay people paying huge doctor bills for the stds they caught having "safe sex". That's kinda like false advertizing don't you think?

Hey, maybe there are some parellels between the condom industry and tobacco industry. Lots a people that used condoms still got stds, so should be able to file a class action suit against the condom industry, PP, SIECUS..... For example condoms provide little or no protection against HPV and herpes. What do you think, was this false advertizing?

Dr Rick

You're the one making false claims. No responsible person or group has claimed that condoms make promiscuous sex completely safe, but you have falsely argued otherwise; perhaps it is you that owes the rest of us money.

To support a claim of "false advertising," one must show that something was advertised falsely; provide us evidence that the "condom industry" did so.

In the abscense of such evidence, it is only reasonable to conclude that you are once again demonstrating a tragic mix of ignorance and prejudice.

dk

I already have, HPV infects 20mil people in the US. It causes cervical cancer and infertility. Condoms are of little deterrence to HPV and that makes "Safe Sex" a misnomer. Perhaps condoms, stds and promiscuous sex are disconnected manifestations of some psychopathological oddity as yet undiscovered, but its hard to get past the much derided moral law to find the positive.

dk

Hi Salmon of Doubt,
Salmon of Doubt: When you talk about someone 'messing' with kids, or with your family, what do you mean by it? Are you talking only about paedophilia, or adoption as well? Because, I got to tell you, gay people are not going to lead a raid on your house and try to steal your children. And gay marriage is not going to devalue your family, unless you yourself value your own family for all the wrong reasons. Feel free to personally dislike the idea of gay families, but it has no bearing on your own family. Gay people adopt kids who have been abandoned by their own families, and have nowhere else to go. Unless you put your kids up for adoption, gays will have nothing to do with them! "Wanting the children of other people" is an emotionally laden statement that has nothing to do with the reality. do you condem straight couples who adopt for wanting other people's children?
dk: “it” addresses the x-family that replaces the nuclear family as the archetype of Western Civilization, the basic social unit. We are a nation founded on laws not individuals, so equality under the law implies broad changes across a wide spectrum of institutions.

Salmon of Doubt: Could you please answer me why it is you feel your family is threatened by gay people adopting children and getting married? Without reference to people stealing your children or paedophilia please, as we have already pointed out that it is totally seperate from homosexuality.
dk: Structurally speaking the nuclear family is self sufficient, self replicating, autonomous and irreducible. Gay marriage severs all the bonds that hold the nuclear family together in law. From an historical context, and on a smaller scale, the only parallel legal precedent was no-fault that flattened the nuclear family. This only weakened the covenant bonds between a husband and wife without making a structural change, but in a few decades the divorce rate shot up to 50%. I don’t mean to imply a causal relationship, but no-fault divorce was undoubtedly one pivotal factor.

Salmon of Doubt: Are you afraid that someone will make your child gay?
dk: Gay marriage alters how children understand the human family, and therefore their identity. I think gay leaders understand gay marriage as a Holy Grail of gay rights movement. I would like to think I could protect my family from the erosion of moral law, but I know that’s foolishness.

Salmon of Doubt: And incidentally, condoms do work in real life, when the sex education is there to back them up. See studies on the Netherlands and other European countries for further evidence. Condoms fail when abstinence is preached at the same time, as people don't know how to use them, or thre is social stigma attached to their use.
dk: The proposition’s been shredded with HPV alone
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Infection

• An estimated 20 million people in the United states are infected with HPV, and as many as 5.5 million new infections occur each year.1
• Cervical infection with oncogenic types of HPV is associated with more than 80 percent of cases of invasive cervical cancer.11
• An estimated 13,700 cases of invasive cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 1998.12
• In 1998, an estimated 4,800 American women will die of cervical cancer.12
• Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women. More than 425,000 new cases and 195,000 deaths occurred in 1997.4
• In the United States, total costs associated with HPV (excluding HPV-related cervical cancer) were an estimated $3.8 billion in 1994 in the United States.3

----- NIAIAD Fact Sheet 1998
Total costs associated with HPV-related cervical cancer totalled approximately $737 million in the United States in 1994.3

Kimpatsu

So what you're really arguing, DK, is dollars and cents against saving lives?

dk

I accept that we live in a nation of secular laws where all values can be expressed in relationship to money. I don't like it, but that's what we've become.