Marriage and other LGBTQ Rights

[ewmayer]

The discussion about marriage and its relationship to procreation has been done at length in the thread already - instead of rehashing and YAFW (yet another flame war) I suggest to folks interested in that to read roughly the first 200 posts of the thread. If after that you feel you have something genuinely novel to add...

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The discussion about marriage and its relationship to procreation has been done at length in the thread already - instead of rehashing and YAFW (yet another flame war) I suggest to folks interested in that to read roughly the first 200 posts of the thread. If after that you feel you have something genuinely novel to add...

rAmen! Ditto for the Factor-Depth Debacle.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The discussion about marriage and its relationship to procreation has been done at length in the thread already - instead of rehashing and YAFW (yet another flame war) I suggest to folks interested in that to read roughly the first 200 posts of the thread. If after that you feel you have something genuinely novel to add...

I'm willing to have my argumentative post, above, replaced by a link back to where most of those points were previously made.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The discussion about marriage and its relationship to procreation has been done at length in the thread already - instead of rehashing and YAFW (yet another flame war) I suggest to folks interested in that to read roughly the first 200 posts of the thread. If after that you feel you have something genuinely novel to add...

It is true that it has already been discussed at length in this thread, but I still have difficulty with your suggestion. My gut feeling is that those who really have something to learn about the subject are not, in the main, going to go back and read old posts to enlighten themselves. That's a time consuming exercise and quite an unnatural one if someone has preset ideas which they don't anticipate changing. Or which they are scared to change. I don't, generally, read old threads on subjects in which I have little interest even though they would teach me a lot if I studied what people had written back then. I don't think I'm particularly unusual in that.

I think the main function of a discussion area like the soap box is to let people be encouraged to, and encourage others to, confront preconceived ideas by discussing them in a live environment.

This thread was at its height about five years ago. Since then a lot of attitudes have changed on the issue of same sex marriage. Also many members of the forum have come and gone. What was discussed back then is not necessarily the whole story now.

I share your concern that it should not degenerate into a flame war, but I think everyone who is taking part now, and in fact almost every active member of mersenneforum.org, tends to debate the arguments rather than attack individuals. And most can take a little heat. Those who can't don't take part in the soap box anyway.

In particular, right now I would love to read any answer jasong cares to post to chappy's recent post, and ditto Fusion_power to cheesehead, and I admire their courage in debating the issue in a largely hostile-to-them environment.

[Fusion_power]

Any unmarried person who undergoes either of those sterilization procedures (such as me, for example) thus forfeits the right to marry, right? The doctor who performed mine should have had a legal obligation to report me to the authorities, right?

Your argument is a strawman, postulating a set of circumstances and suggesting they counter my statement. Whether you are or would have been a good parent is something only you can answer. Whether or not you have the right to be married is your business, not mine. I am acquainted with several childless couples. Only one such couple is childless by choice. I think they might be aliens from a different world sent here to monitor the humans.

Cheesehead, I'm 54 years old. I have 4 children and one very nasty ex wife. I know what it means to feel like a failure as a parent. I have a good relationship with all of my children. Very few fathers could have managed that given the circumstances.

Why not ask yourself what needs a mother and a father fulfill in a family? It would be nice to see you and Laurv, Brian-E, Chalsall, and Ewmayer have a go at this.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Why not ask yourself what needs a mother and a father fulfill in a family?

I, personally, believe that what children need is a safe and supportive environment within which to grow and learn. This, IMO, does not require a man and a woman to be fulfilled.

As an example, I had a employee in Canada who was a lesbian. She and her partner adopted, and IMO raised their son in a manner which was as good if not better than most "traditional" families. Edit: Oh, and to speak to another common "straw-man", he grew up to be "straight".

[chappy]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Your argument is a strawman, postulating a set of circumstances and suggesting they counter my statement.

Why not ask yourself what needs a mother and a father fulfill in a family? It would be nice to see you and Laurv, Brian-E, Chalsall, and Ewmayer have a go at this.

not a strawman, I think you mean false analogy. Though, even if true, you've only attacked one of his argument by counterexamples.

The real question is whether or not any one group has a right to determine what constitutes a marriage. I'm pretty sure that you'll lose that one, but I look forward to the discussion.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

It would be nice to see you and Laurv, Brian-E, Chalsall, and Ewmayer have a go at this.

I am close to your age but I was not so productive. I am not homosexual, but as well I am not religious. I have a nice family, which I love, my wife is religious. We respect each other's view on religion, and I assume other people are religious in spite of the fact I am not. Following the same logic, I assume some people are not heterosexual (here in Thailand I can see a lot of them). There is no reason why I should not respect them, as long as they are "ok" as humans, as colleagues at work, etc. I hate thieves and violent people and I would break their neck without any resentment if I can get my hands on them in a real situation, without asking them if they are white, black, christians, buddhists, atheists, gays or straight guys. Between me and my wife is not everything only about sex, you know, since many years... there are other things that matter, beside of growing our children together, and I imagine that between gay people it is the same, it is not only about sex. People can stay together if they share common things, common thoughts, whatever, no matter their color, religion, sex orientation, blah blah. The fact that I can't understand them has nothing to do with me respecting them, as long as they "do their part" for the society. Our force, as humanity, is the fact that we are different. If we would be all the same, the first thing (disease, virus, alien, sorrow, whatever) that would kill one, would kill all. We survive because we are different. Pretending to other people to be same as you is not only "short sight", in my opinion, but just plain idiocy.

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by chappy

The real question is whether or not any one group has a right to determine what constitutes a marriage. I'm pretty sure that you'll lose that one, but I look forward to the discussion.

If by "marriage", you mean, "has a legal marriage license", then I'd say it's the one that issues the marriage license that gets to define what constitutes a marriage: the government.

What others call a marriage can be different. E.g. a church should have the right to not perform a gay marriage if it is against their beliefs. I also believe that right should extend to business owners: if a photographer doesn't want to work gay weddings, he should not be compelled to.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Why not ask yourself what needs a mother and a father fulfill in a family?

As Chalsall put it so well, a safe and supportive environment is what children need, provided by whichever people turn out to take on the role of parenting. And mutual respect and love keeps families together as LaurV rightly indicated. To those comments I would just like to add that adults need to ask themselves whether or not they think they would make good parents and should choose whether or not to be parents based on that decision. They should most certainly not act on any pressure from society to fit into specific parental roles which do not suit them, which would not be in any children's best interests.

[ewmayer]

Cue discussion of whether children benefit from having role models of both sexes...