Elton john wants....

[AEON]

oh, so being gay is god telling me to be celibate?

i could go off on a rant here as to how life in the closet is physically, emotionally, and spiritually destructive and the source of nearly all self-destructive behavior and the primary cause of new cases of HIV infection, but i suppose it's more important to make the homophobic heteros feel more comfortable.

but, seriously, what am i supposed to do?

how am i supposed to live my life?

how am i supposed to be a multi-dimensional human being?

There are no easy answers here - I admit.

 

[Irvine511]

It would be more accurate to say that as a Christian I am arguing that homosexuals can't get married because marriage is defined in the Bible as between a man and a woman. And because I do not think the Bible endorses gay marriage - it would necessarily follow that homosexual sex is a sin - since it is sex outside of marriage (adultery).

so if any law or social regulation isn't supported by a biblical quote, you think it should be illegal?

it should only be legal if it's in the Bible?

(why such problems with Modernity? something that many Christians share with the fundamentalists Muslims they pretend to be appaled by, but one suspects that they have more in common than they might think as they certainly share a fear of Modernity)

 

[Irvine511]

There are no easy answers here - I admit.

so ... admit that maybe you, and the Bible (or at least your understading of the Bible), has gotten this one totally wrong?

 

[BorderGirl]

I cannot expect everyone to understand what it is like to be gay. But I can never really understand what it is like to be black either. It doesn't mean that I support segregation until science conclusively tells me what it is like to be black.

At the very least, remember that you're dealing with real people here, not politics. Not a Bible verse. Not a psychiatric condition. By ignoring them, they do not go away. If you dehumanize your subject, you're going to end up saying a whole load of offensive and condescending things, even with the best and most innocent of intentions.

The best advice I can give you is to put yourself in the shoes of "the Other." Empathy is sorely lacking in today's world.

I'm not sure that equating race with homosexuality is fair, but it's great politics. You won't like this, but:

"Americans have shown that they will accept social evils on the grounds that those perpetrating the evils are "hurting only themselves." They will even allow their own self-interest to be harmed in order to protect the goods of fairness and equality. We have seen the success of the "I’m personally opposed, but—" strategy in our society.

A key part of getting Americans to partition their own convictions is the victimization dynamic. We don’t want to be victimizers, and we don’t want to be seen as victimizers. Our instincts are on the side of the downtrodden, and we cannot allow ourselves to be portrayed as oppressors. We cannot tolerate that as part of our self-image or our public image, and to avoid it we will partition our personal convictions.

We are now in a time when opponents of gay marriage are being depicted as prejudiced. This tendency will increase. Soon efforts will be made to portray opponents of the gay agenda as the contemporary equivalent of Klansmen and chauvinist pigs. Once that image of pro-family advocates can be sold to a sizeable enough chunk of the American public, the culture war over homosexuality will be over.

It will be a dark time for the Church as well. The Church’s influence in American society is considerably less than it was fifty years ago. It stood with the civil rights movement, retaining and perhaps even enhancing its influence.

Nobody wants to join or remain a member of "the Church of the Klansmen," and if advocates of homosexual marriage can sell the American public on the idea that faithful Christians are the modern equivalent of KKK bigots, then the Church will be in for hard times.

Homosexual marriage is impossible.

Over and over, pro-family debaters fail to make this point. They allow the question to be discussed of whether society should redefine marriage to include homosexual unions.

Society can’t enable men to marry men or women to marry women any more than we can enable men to turn into ducks or women to turn into geese. Denying people these abilities is not a matter of fairness or equal access. It is not a matter of discrimination or bigotry.

This can be seen by considering the nature of marriage.

It is obvious to all that sex is about reproduction. That’s what it’s for in animals, and that’s what it’s for in us. We may find it enjoyable, but from a biological perspective, that is motivation to get us to engage in it and thus reproduce our species.

The institution of marriage has been devalued in our culture, creating a wave of single-parent families, unwed mothers, economic hardships, abortions, divorces, juvenile delinquency, and misery for many. Devaluing marriage further by detaching the term from the reality of marriage and applying it to non-productive homosexual unions would only further these trends.

Putting matters in these terms brings the discussion back from abstract, sentimental considerations and reminds us of why we treat marriage differently in the first place."

 

[yolland]

If you're going to cut and paste then cite your sources.

 

[Irvine511]

This can be seen by considering the nature of marriage.

It is obvious to all that sex is about reproduction. That’s what it’s for in animals, and that’s what it’s for in us. We may find it enjoyable, but from a biological perspective, that is motivation to get us to engage in it and thus reproduce our species.

okay ... so, let's actually think about this, just for a moment, and use the brains that god gave us.

this means that post-menopausal women cannot get married no more than they can turn into ducks. that infertile men and women cannot get married no more than they can turn into ducks. that men and women who choose not to have children (but, egads!, perhaps still have sex) are not in legitimate marriages.

so, when we think about it, and we actually understand what we're really saying, it's nothing more than bigotry.

so i'll call it that: your (uncited) post was a defense of bigotry, pure and simple.

and it's really, really sad when people reduce human sexuality to simply makin' babies.

as if sex has only one purpose.

what a positively 11th century view.

 

[Irvine511]

and i went to the actual website you pulled from, and it's filled with such breathtaking lies that it makes me embarassed to have been confirmed in a Catholic Church.

or embarassed for anyone who laps up garbage such as this:

[q]The lifespan of homosexuals is shorter than that of heterosexuals (and it was so even before the advent of AIDS). This lifestyle results in more diseases, more psychological problems, more suicides, and more general misery than in heterosexuals. Increasing social acceptance of homosexuality has not changed this; it is intrinsic to the behavior. Further, since homosexual unions are notoriously unstable, the cost that society already bears through divorce would increase as the courts are flooded with cases of homosexual divorce.

The problems of homosexuals don’t just affect themselves. They affect others, including adopted children of homosexuals and members of the community at large. Homosexuality is a net cost to society. Like other self-destructive lifestyles, such as alcoholism or drug addition, homosexuality places a greater burden on the community, and it does so without returning tangible benefit to society in the form of new members.
[/q]

 

[BVS]

Seriously BorderGirl...

 

[BVS]

It would be more accurate to say that as a Christian I am arguing that homosexuals can't get married because marriage is defined in the Bible as between a man and a woman. And because I do not think the Bible endorses gay marriage - it would necessarily follow that homosexual sex is a sin - since it is sex outside of marriage (adultery).

Ok, let's stick to this point. Let's go back several pages to a question I asked you;

"What do you mean by self-defining?

Do any of the defintions of marriage in the Bible say anything about consent, age, or race? No but I'm sure God has his standards on those. Why is it so hard to imagine that man and woman was used because that was the concept they would understand at that time? If your only reason for defining marriage by man and woman because that's the way it was stated, then you believe a man can only divorce a woman, for that's the only way IT was stated."

 

[BorderGirl]

If you're going to cut and paste then cite your sources.

Catholic.com is where this came from.
And also this:

"Marriage is a conduit through which God's grace flows to the couple and their children.1 The Catholic Church understands marriage between a baptized man and woman to be a sacrament, a visible sign of the grace that God gives them to help them live their lives here and now so as to be able to join him in eternity.2 Marriage is social as well as religious, but its religious aspects are very important. The Bible repeatedly compares the relationship between man and wife to that between God and Israel (cf. Hos. 9:1) or between Christ and his Church (cf. Eph. 5:21-32).

Marriage is a public institution. Consequently, proposals that could harm the institution of marriage must be subjected to the same sort of objective analysis that we give any public policy question. Marriage is not just a private matter of emotion between two people.

 

[BVS]

Marriage is a public institution. Consequently, proposals that could harm the institution of marriage must be subjected to the same sort of objective analysis that we give any public policy question. Marriage is not just a private matter of emotion between two people.

What about all those heterosexuals who have already harmed the institution of marriage? Should they be banned? Or just burned at the stake?

 

[BorderGirl]

okay ... so, let's actually think about this, just for a moment, and use the brains that god gave us.

this means that post-menopausal women cannot get married no more than they can turn into ducks. that infertile men and women cannot get married no more than they can turn into ducks. that men and women who choose not to have children (but, egads!, perhaps still have sex) are not in legitimate marriages.

so, when we think about it, and we actually understand what we're really saying, it's nothing more than bigotry.

so i'll call it that: your (uncited) post was a defense of bigotry, pure and simple.

and it's really, really sad when people reduce human sexuality to simply makin' babies.

as if sex has only one purpose.

what a positively 11th century view.

Yes, let's do use our brains instead of our politics puuuleease.

Sex is not bad, sinful, or unenjoyable.

The idea is that sex is reserved for the union of a man and a woman because it is "life-giving". Their union produces life---biological children.

This act is and remains a procreative or reproductive kind of act even if the spouses, because of non-behavioral factors over which they have no control, for example, the temporary or permanent sterility of one of the spouses, are not able to generate human life in a freely chosen marital act.

Chastity is promoted for unmarried persons, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

This "openess to life" is biologically non-existent in same sex acts.

That's the only point I'm makin' here.

 

[INDY500]

yes, it's always refreshing to read about one's self. i wonder if there's a white person out there who can sum up how society should feel about and treat African-Americans.

and as for this comment:

[q]Yes, most gay men control themselves around boys; but the disproportionate sexual abuse of boys by homosexual priests suggests that some proportion of gays will not be able to control this desire.
[/q]

you. i mean, just YOU.
how dare you equate PEDOPHILIA with HOMOSEXUALITY. a pedophile cannot be said to have a sexual orientation comparable to hetero or homosexuality. most men who are attracted to young boys are attracted to them because THEY AREN'T MASCULINE! THEY HAVE FEMININE CHARACTERISTICS! THEY ARE NOT LIKEWISE ATTRACTED TO SEXUALLY MATURE ADULT MALES WHO HAVE BODY HAIR, MUSCLES, AND FULLY DEVELOPED GENITALIA.

[q]Therefore, heterosexuals who draw their line of acceptance at homosexual sex are not necessarily any more bigoted than gays who draw their line at consensual incest.[/q]

again: you. YOU.

how dare you sit there and compare incest with homosexuality. please name for me one person who is harmed by consensual homosexual sex? and now let's talk about all the children who have been irreversably scarred by incest.

you are absolutely, 100% BIGOTED if you're going to draw out some of the most offensive comparisons possible in order to justify your own bigotry.

Yes, I'll just go drown myself in the sea then.

Hateful Lemming (exits stage right)

 

[Irvine511]

Yes, let's do use our brains instead of our politics puuuleease.

Sex is not bad, sinful, or unenjoyable.

The idea is that sex is reserved for the union of a man and a woman because it is "life-giving". Their union produces life---biological children.

This act is and remains a procreative or reproductive kind of act even if the spouses, because of non-behavioral factors over which they have no control, for example, the temporary or permanent sterility of one of the spouses, are not able to generate human life in a freely chosen marital act.

Chastity is promoted for unmarried persons, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

This "openess to life" is biologically non-existent in same sex acts.

That's the only point I'm makin' here.

and the "openness to life" is biologically non-existent in postmenopausal women, the infertile, and pretty much everyone who uses birth control.

please tell me why you're willing to give a pass to infertile straights but willing to deny basic civil rights to gays.

let's think about this.

 

[Irvine511]

Yes, I'll just go drown myself in the sea then.

Hateful Lemming (exits stage right)

lemmings are just as worthy of god's love as incest participants and pedophiles.

how does that feel?



what's really, really frustrating me is the lengths that i go to in order to humanize and flesh out both what it is like to be a homosexual as well as to be one half of a very loving gay couple. i'd like to think that my posts would do much for those who don't know many gay people, who would like to use religion or Denis Prager as a crutch to justify their prejudices.

but when i get a column that's all the more dehumanizing becuase it says that, gee, i actually am worthy of love, , and it's filled with the same old stereotypes that have been used to denigrate gay people for decades, forgive me for calling you out on it.

i'm in now way asking you to agree with me. i'm just expecting more from you, INDY, than the whole, "homosexuality is the same thing as incest and i'm not a bigot if i think that gay people are more likely to molest boys."

i wonder if you posted the same column, only if it were about Jews, and wondered about horns and chicanery and pushiness and controlling money and drinking the blood of Christian children, i wonder how that might fly.

same blueprint, different group.

 

[Irvine511]

and i am still curious to know how many gay people AEON and INDY happen to know, and know well.

 

[Irvine511]

Marriage is a public institution. Consequently, proposals that could harm the institution of marriage must be subjected to the same sort of objective analysis that we give any public policy question. Marriage is not just a private matter of emotion between two people.

indeed. there are numerous financial benefits, not to mention societal respect, that flow to married couples from the government.

please, show me the "harm" that would be done if i married my current boyfriend. demonstrate that for me. i want flow charts. statistics. cited sources.

do you view fertile couples who choose not to have children as unworthy of the title of "married" couple?

because unless you do, you're going to have to find another argument.

 

[yolland]

I think it's time to give this thread an extended holiday break. It's really just going in circles at this point and, worse, it's dominating the forum to the point of risking reducing some participants to their stance on this particular topic so far as some others are concerned. Ultimately these issues aren't going to be resolved here; they're well worth discussing, but in context it's not worth 24 pages of wound-salting stalemate.

And if we could avoid transplanting this discussion to other threads via sarcastic allusions and snowballing responses to them, that'd be just ducky too.

Is a temporary truce in the interests of civility too much to ask for?