ZF,

Thanks for sharing. Without delving too much into the issue, I would argue that there are a myriad of reasons for the decline in family values. The mere fact that some other person is gay is not one of them.

Given that gay couples will continue to cohabitate, are you opposed to defining a new marriage-like institution, gay unions, that provide the denied benefits of marriage you mention?

Such a compromise would allow you to claim marriage is a special institution between a man and a woman. It might remove the issue from television shows and the front page of newspapers as they would move on to the next hot-button issue.

R.D. Silverman,

[QUOTE]You are entitled to any silly beliefs that you want. But keep them in your home and church. Stop shoving them at the rest of us.
[/QUOTE]When did I start doing that? I was [i]asked specifically to share my beliefs[/i]. I didn't shove them at anyone. :huh:

-------------------------------------------------

garo,

[QUOTE]A few questions. From your religious position it seems you are against sex outside marriage as well. Can you clarify whether you support making sex outside marriage illegal since it "harms the fabric of society".[/QUOTE]Well, that is a tricky question. In some instances I would think it appropriate, and in others not. (For example, in heaven I don't imagine it is wrong for God to make it 'illegal'. But here and now, I don't know that it would be effective.) It all comes down to what kind of society we all want to live in, and what laws we want applied to us.

But, personally, I think a more effective curb to sex outside of marriage than making it illegal is simpling teaching our children how to restrain themselves until they are married.

[QUOTE]I find your list of negative impacts of gay marriage rather arbitrary. You do not have any proof of that.[/QUOTE]I agree. I wrote it late at night, since I stayed up late programming, and I'm a little sick, so some of it was a little arbitrary and not-well-thought-out.

I also agree that I don't have any proof of it. I also don't have proof that God exists, or that life, of some sort or another, continues after death. But that doesn't mean these beliefs aren't based on some rationality. Or that I should abandon them.

I've personally seen homes destroyed by lust, both homosexual and non. These experiences clearly skew my take on such things. I can only go on what I've seen first hand, and what I've seen sickens me.

[QUOTE]I also find your statement that the abundance of "latch-key kids" was negative and the cost of child-care outweighs the "gains in the workplace". I grew up as a latch-key kid so I speak from personal experience. I thought and continue to think that it was great that both my parents worked. I never thought I was deprived because my mother was not home in the afternoons after I came back from school.[/QUOTE]That's great. I'm glad you had a good experience. However, you (just as I was) are speaking only from personal experience. Sociologists tell us, very VERY clearly, that this has been negative (on the AVERAGE) for children.

[QUOTE]You talk about gains in the work-place but what about the massive impact it has had on women? They have more freedom and are not dependent on their husbands financially to the extent they used to be. Now you may argue that has led to an increase in divorces. I agree but the cause is not financial independence for women. The cause is unfair treatment of women. Financial independence allows them to get out of relationships they may not want to stay in.[/QUOTE]I agree that financial independence is a good thing. I just believe there are more important things in life, and that the problem of having a bad relationship should, more often than not, be worked through than worked out of. I'm speaking on average here, and most people (due to this new independence) choose to lose something more than they gained.

[QUOTE]By repressing women and gays, you are not going to make society "healthier".[/QUOTE]Who's talking about "repression" here? *Not supporting* gay unions is NOT the same thing as repressing the soul.

By the way, I also do NOT support repressing women. I just think that being a stay-at-home mother is a noble endeavor. Period. Women who don't stay home have made their choice, and they live with it, for good or ill. I'm personally very glad that it worked out in your home.

As an aside, my wife is a computer programmer. I think working out of the home was a good experience for her too. But we chose (TOGETHER) that it would be better if she stayed home with our children (when they came). This wasn't an easy choice, since it means a drastic reduction in the amount of money we make (I'm only a lowly graduate student) but we don't regret that choice.

[QUOTE]Allowing gay marriage is not the same as "throwing away traditional marriage".[/QUOTE]I agree. But it is the same as modifying it drastically, with little evidence that this change won't hurt society.

[QUOTE]PS: I know your arguments were probably more hardline than you actual beliefs. So my post is in the response to those arguments and not your beliefs.[/QUOTE]No problem. Sometimes I like to play devil's advocate.

[QUOTE=Prime95]Thanks for sharing. Without delving too much into the issue, I would argue that there are a myriad of reasons for the decline in family values. The mere fact that some other person is gay is not one of them.[/QUOTE]I agree. If I gave that impression, I apologize.

[QUOTE]Given that gay couples will continue to cohabitate, are you opposed to defining a new marriage-like institution, gay unions, that provide the denied benefits of marriage you mention?[/QUOTE]I think any government *support* of such institutions is inappropriate. However, I don't feel it would be bad to have an easier time of getting inheritances, or dual insurances.

[QUOTE]Such a compromise would allow you to claim marriage is a special institution between a man and a woman. It might remove the issue from television shows and the front page of newspapers as they would move on to the next hot-button issue.[/QUOTE]Maybe so. We humans like a little drama, wherever we can get it. There will be no end to hot-button issues. Or maybe there would, if the courts didn't keep overstepping their authority and legislating from the bench.

R.D. Silverman,

Please take the following as a fun little exercise I decided to perform. It is NOT meant in a mean-spirited way.

I thought it would be interesting to see which logical fallacies your post commits. I took my list from: [url]http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/[/url] So, here we go:

1) Ad hominem: You reject OSC because he is a "mormon kook."
2) Appeal to authority: You quote George Carlin on matters of religiousity.
3) Appeal to emotion: Strong language like "shoving" beliefs.
4) Appeal to ridicule: Your thoughts on the Bible.
5) Straw Man: You group my view with the fundamentalist Bible believers.
6) Begging the question: You imply that the position of not supporting gay marriage is not "fair treatment."
7) The Princess Bride Fallacy: Only slightly less well known is this. Never go against a Sicilian, when death is on the line! Hahaha...erp. *thunk*

I really don't want to stick my head in the hornet's nest, but I don't see textual support for this statement regarding the Constitution:
[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux][...] It mentions God.[...][/QUOTE]
Care to point out where?

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux]R.D. Silverman,

Please take the following as a fun little exercise I decided to perform. It is NOT meant in a mean-spirited way.

I thought it would be interesting to see which logical fallacies your post commits. I took my list from: [url]http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/[/url] So, here we go:

1) Ad hominem: You reject OSC because he is a "mormon kook."

Not I. Go read rec.arts.sf.written for a while. I would say that this
statement is the consensus opinion.


2) Appeal to authority: You quote George Carlin on matters of religiousity.


I never said he was an authority. I merely quoted a statement he made.
As far as I am concerned all religion is total horseshit and there is no
such thing as an authority on the subject.


3) Appeal to emotion: Strong language like "shoving" beliefs.

This is exactly what people are doing.


4) Appeal to ridicule: Your thoughts on the Bible.

This is not a logical fallacy. The bible deserves NOTHING BUT ridicule.
As do people who take it literally.

5) Straw Man: You group my view with the fundamentalist Bible believers.

I never said any such thing.
6) Begging the question: You imply that the position of not supporting gay marriage is not "fair treatment."

It is clear that it is not fair treatment. It singles out a minority and
forbids them from having equal rights.

[/QUOTE]

Finally: It is a logical fallacy to expect anyone to prove that gay marriage
will NOT cause harm. One can NEVER prove a negative. Claiming that
it WILL cause harm is a positive statement and it is the responsibility of
those making the claim to prove THEIR case.

xxxxx.

Actually, this last statement is not fair. I have no wish to insult xxxxxs.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman]Finally: It is a logical fallacy to expect anyone to prove that gay marriage will NOT cause harm. One can NEVER prove a negative. Claiming that it WILL cause harm is a positive statement and it is the responsibility of those making the claim to prove THEIR case.[/quote]So, to use a number-theoretic analogy, if I say "the 20th Fermat number is NOT prime", you say this is unprovable? Seriously, if one uses the not-dissimilar example of single-parent households, there are any number of metrics by which one can argue whether or not children growing up in such households are at a disadvantage with respect to those growing up in both-parent households: economic, time-spent-with-one's-kids, whether children raised in SPHs show a greater incidence of emotional problems growing up, etc.

[quote]
Moron.

Actually, this last statement is not fair. I have no wish to insult morons.[/QUOTE]
Was that really necessary? Why must you always resort to throwing vitriol? This is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree - is "respectfully disagree" not something you are capable of?

sdbardwick,

I stand corrected. He is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Sorry.

Fascinating topic. Some very interesting views being expressed, and I'm glad to see that those I intellectually respect the most overlap with my own points of view the most.

I voted 'maybe', as sometimes I'd rather not bite the bullet. Each case should be judged on its individual merits.

It's a shame Bob brought up the "you can never prove a negative" fallacy, and didn't take the effort to say what he meant, instead using an overused and sometimes inappropriate cliche.

Almost always what it means is something like:
If the only method of proof at disposal is that of finding examples, then one may not assert nonexistance unless one can perform an exhaustive test and still find no examples; if one can't perform an exhaustive test, one may not validly make such a claim.

OK, the cliche's shorter, but always muddies the waters when mathematicians are around, as they will always volunteer an interpretation where it's fallacious. Perhaps mathematicians should simply learn what the cliche represents, rather than what the words spell out.

I'm also glad to see that Bob knows that things along the lines of "you're an idiot and you're wrong" are not an /ad hominem/. That's simply two separate statements of opinion, delivered in an insulting fashion. "You're an idiot, therefore you're wrong" is the /ad hominem/, most commonly appearing implicitly in rhetorical statements such as "what would you know?".

Of course, you can't beat "you're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak", in times of heated debate!

Phil

[QUOTE=fatphil]Of course, you can't beat "you're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak", in times of heated debate![/QUOTE]I'm more of a "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries" kind of guy myself...

I know it's been a while since anyone posted here, but I figured I might point out that R.D. Silverman accidentally included in his quotation of me the following "It is clear that it is not fair treatment. It singles out a minority and
forbids them from having equal rights." which I'm guessing is what he meant to say to me.

I would argue that marriage is not a right guaranteed to us. (In fact, if you can't find someone to agree to marry you...) Rather, it is a privelege given by the government to promote a specific outcome (i.e. more children). The question then is whether or not defining marriage as a between a man and a woman is "singling out a minority" and unfairly denying them equal treatment. While I agree that defining marriage this way does exclude other partnerships from receiving the same benefits, I believe that there is a rational basis behind this different treatment. The rational basis being, of course, one type of partnership can and OFTEN DOES lead to children (which is a benefit to society), whereas the other partnership does not and CANNOT lead to children.

Now, if the rationale really is that the government provides marriage to promote child-bearing, then it is reasonable and rational to deny the benefits to those unions which cannot bring about children. In other words, if someone chooses to have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, they are choosing a relationship fundamentally different than someone who chooses a relationship with someone of the same sex.

So, while we are free to choose either type of relationship, the government is under no obligation to PROMOTE both types of relationships.

Finally, I never said anything about PROVING anything. I would merely like some good EVIDENCE before jumping on the "gay marriages will not affect society in the negative" bandwagon. I think anyone familiar with this topic will admit that there is little to no evidence (on either side) which isn't born of bias.