I don't know where you get this idea from.

Cwocwoc tried to have this exact same discussion in OOT a while back and got demolished. Sad to see he's still completely ignorant on the subject.

And mat, i've had my dick sucked by a gay man, can I post here?

The same thing happened in regular Politics last year. He always delivers in gay marriage threads.

Was it successful?

Is it not ok?


You're making two arguments, aren't you? You're arguing that some gay parents would want to encourage their kids to be gay, and you're arguing that they would turn them gay. If some do encourage it, so what? If it turns them, so what?

That said, my god you're an idiot.

I disagree. The world is ridiculously overpopulated and homosexuality makes perfect sense as it doesn't produce offspring.

As a heterosexual, I tend to find homosexual culture unappealing, but what appeals to me is irrelevant.

Don't undersell yourself, what appeals to you should be law. /cwoc

This topic still has the very distinct honor of being the only political debate where I have literally never heard a good argument from one side. Literally not one. Ever.

Cliffs: lolbigots

Im wasnt arguing anything really, I was just raising some questions and expressing my curiosity in regards to how children raised by gay couples will turn out

For the record, Im all for gay marriage and support gay couples raising children

I just hope you dont have any

That makes two of us!

For what it's worth, I think many SSM opponents regard this essay as the best defense of their view.

It is interesting, but it's so annoying to read as it just sounds like all the same arguments using bigger words and more complex sentence structures.

For instance (with some editing and emphasis by me):

This just feels wrong. I can't think of much of a response besides "no, just no." The bolded is unjustified. It all seems made up.

And then:
So in the first quote, they say that penis-into-vagina sex is the only way to unite two bodies as it undergoes the biological process of reproduction. Now they say that even when that process is impossible, penis-into-vagina sex still counts because it looks the same. And not just that. They say that marriage is about raising kids, and even if you don't have kids the marriage is really about having sex that looks like it could produce kids.

This reads like pseudo-intellectual trash to me. The only reason a smart person would go through the trouble of writing this up would be if they don't approve of homosexuality but can't be so blunt about it.

But of course I'm biased. Somebody back me for my own sake, please.

If you insist!

rimshot.gif

Shouldn't it be cumshot.gif or rimjob.gif?

It will be difficult to understand that article unless you place it within its proper context as an essay in natural law ethics. Natural law theories generally claim that humans and social relations have some essential nature (usually based on a teleological understanding of the world) that is in some sense "imprinted" on them. Thus, you have the authors seeking to describe something they call "real marriage" (i.e. the essential nature of marriage, what makes marriage what it is) rather than legal marriage or some socially-constructed idea of marriage. And as a relationship with an essential nature, it would be impossible for something that doesn't have that nature to actually be a marriage--whatever people called it or the law said about it.

Figuring out what that essential nature is relies on practical reasoning--a combination of common-sense and a sociological/psychological understanding of the nature of humans and society. Generally speaking, this means understanding these things by figuring out what their purpose is, and then extrapolating from that purpose to the kind of things that best help it achieve that purpose.

Thus, for marriage, they think the purpose must be procreation and raising a family as that is what is most unique to marriage. They then extrapolate that the essential nature of marriage must be about what leads to successful procreation and raising of a family. And, since homosexuals obviously are unable to procreate together as a couple, they'll think that homosexual relationships are missing an essential part of the nature of the marriage relationship.

I'll point out here that a la cwocwoc, it is entirely possible to hold this view of marriage while also thinking that homosexual relationships have their own unique purpose--maybe love or companionship or even raising a family--but that this purpose is just different from the purpose of marriage and so has a different essential nature. It seems possible to me at least that someone could hold this view without being anti-homosexual (not saying that many are actually successful in doing so).

There is still more to be argued here: the authors would still have to show why society should be concerned to preserve the uniqueness of the marriage relationship, but that could be done in more ordinary ways.

I think the biggest reason this argument is so difficult for many of us to get on an intuitive level--to the point where it often seems like those opposed to SSM don't even have bad arguments on their side--is because modern science has mostly rejected talk of physical objects having an essential teleological nature. Without that as a background, claims about what is or isn't "marriage" or moral claims based on an "essential human nature," will appear arbitrary and made-up. Hence, the appeal of natural law arguments, although ostensibly secular, is mostly limited to religious people who still ground claims about essential nature, not in science directly but in claims about god's purposes for humanity.