Same-Sex Marriage General Discussion Thread

[BoMac]

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[MrPryck2U]

Take me for example, I have a lot of attractive female co-workers in my office and the fact that I don't sleep with anyone of them is because I choose not to, nor am I inclined to - BUT if I wanted to I would......because that's my choice.

This poor guy's quote has been savaged (and rightly so) to death, but let's have fun with the second half of his enlightening post. Studboy thinks that naturally all of his female co-workers would fuck him if he wanted to. But, he chooses not to. How gracious of him.

 

[Irvine511]

AchtungBono is a female, i think.

i'm just wondering if she's saying she's bisexual, since she seems to think it would be very bit as natural for her to have sex with a woman as with a man.

 

[MrPryck2U]

AchtungBono is a female, i think.

i'm just wondering if she's saying she's bisexual, since she seems to think it would be very bit as natural for her to have sex with a woman as with a man.

Oh shit. My bad.

Then I guess we'll call her studgirl and change everything from he to she.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

NY Times

The board of the N.A.A.C.P. voted to endorse same-sex marriage on Saturday, putting the weight of the country’s most prominent civil rights group behind a cause that has long divided some quarters of the black community.

A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video.

The largely symbolic move, made at the group’s meeting in Miami, puts the N.A.A.C.P. in line with President Obama, who endorsed gay marriage a little over a week ago. Given the timing, it is likely to be viewed as both a statement of principle as well as support for the president’s position in the middle of a closely contested presidential campaign.

All but two of the organization’s board members, who include many religious leaders, backed a resolution supporting same-sex marriage, according to people told of the decision.

Borrowing a term used by gay rights advocates, the resolution stated, “We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

In a statement, Roslyn M. Brock, chairwoman of the 64-member board, said, “We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”

A spokesman for the group declined to discuss a breakdown of how the board members voted.

Julian Bond, a civil rights activist and former chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., said that Mr. Obama’s recent support for same-sex marriage was “a tipping point” for many board members. He said the vote debunked the myth that the black community is uncomfortable with same-sex marriage.

“This proves that conventional wisdom is not true,” Mr. Bond said.

The practical implications of the N.A.A.C.P.’s decision are unclear. Several of its leaders have already expressed support for same-sex marriage, and local branches have repeatedly opposed measures to ban such unions, most recently in North Carolina, where voters just passed a referendum against marriages and civil unions for gay people.

The strongest opposition to same-sex marriage within the black community has come from church leaders, whose opinions may not be swayed by the N.A.A.C.P. In its resolution, the board appeared to be sensitive to those objections, reaffirming its support for religious freedom.

The N.A.A.C.P. has been grappling with the issue for several years. Among religious figures on the board, the issue was especially fraught with meaning.

Maxim Thorne, a former high-ranking official with the organization, said that “for certain people, it was a very long evolution and a very long process of reconciling their faith with this, and coming to a very civil rights understanding of marriage equality versus a theological understanding of marriage.”

The group’s endorsement could potentially bolster support for Mr. Obama with a key constituency: black Democratic voters who remain skeptical of same-sex marriage.

Black and white Americans are divided on same-sex marriage in similar numbers, according to the results of four aggregated polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News over the past year.

Yet there is greater opposition among black Democrats than white Democrats. Sixty-one percent of white Democrats supported legalizing marriage for same-sex couples, compared with 36 percent of black Democrats, while 35 percent of black Democrats opposed any legal recognition, compared with 18 percent of white Democrats.

 

[Galeongirl]

It's small steps, but eventually the big leap will be made.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Good for the NAACP . Smart move.

 

[martha]

So INDY's still dodging the tough questions. Or did I miss his reply somewhere?

 

[BEAL]

Has there ever been a valid reason against SSM? Nothing seems to stand up.

1. Against my belief. God states marriage is between man and a woman.
-- That's fine, but we have religious freedom in this country. So while it's fine for someone's belief to say that, what if the Man/Man don't believe in God? Why should another belief be held over those who don't share it? Christians wouldn't want Sharia Law (though the difference isn't that much from Biblical Law) imposed on them?

2. The children excuse, best situation is Mother and a Father
-- Again, the flaw is that marriage is only to reproduce. What if the same sex couple want nothing to do with children? Can they still get married? I'm hetero and I want nothing to do with children, can I not get married (again )???

3. It'll lead to Polygamy
-- As far as I know, there isn't a movement to enter into marriage with multiple partners. And IMO, I'm not sure I really see anything "wrong" with it, as it's people's choice. Which is where one of the issues comes up, can we be certain that everyone has consented into this relationship? Also, how do states split up inheritance and property between multiple partners? I would imagine in Iowa (a no fault state) if you have a man and four wives, and the man dies, his belongings are split evening across the other four. But what if it's just three, or five, or one of the wives dies? So you cannot possibly compare SSM to this. The rights of a divorce or death would be no different than it is for a straight couple.

I'm not even going to get into the animal crap that some like to spew. And it's not going to bring upon the end of the world. There have been millions, if not billions of gay relationships in the history of mankind, and yet we're still here...and aside from political/economical issues, we've progressed as a species. Quality of life has gotten better for the majority of us, and you wouldn't think that'd be the case with the gays running around for 250 thousand years (or whatever it is that we've been around).

So unless I'm missing something, it really comes down to people just not wanting gay marriage because they think it's wrong only because it wasn't something they are used to. Or they've grown up in a community/belief system that frowns upon it, so rather than use critical thinking for themselves, they rely on what others have said.

I think the domino's are falling, and while there's going to be some very loud ressistance in the short term, it's only a matter of time. And generations will look back thinking WTF was the big deal?

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

NY Times

May 18, 2012
Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure’
By BENEDICT CAREY

PRINCETON, N.J. — The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.

He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark. His desk seemed impossibly far away; Dr. Spitzer, who turns 80 next week, suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has trouble walking, sitting, even holding his head upright.

The word he sometimes uses to describe these limitations — pathetic — is the same one that for decades he wielded like an ax to strike down dumb ideas, empty theorizing and junk studies.

Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.

What to say? The issue of gay marriage was rocking national politics yet again. The California State Legislature was debating a bill to ban the therapy outright as being dangerous. A magazine writer who had been through the therapy as a teenager recently visited his house, to explain how miserably disorienting the experience was.

And he would later learn that a World Health Organization report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”

Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.

“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

Disturber of the Peace

The idea to study reparative therapy at all was pure Spitzer, say those who know him, an effort to stick a finger in the eye of an orthodoxy that he himself had helped establish.

In the late 1990s as today, the psychiatric establishment considered the therapy to be a nonstarter. Few therapists thought of homosexuality as a disorder.

It was not always so. Up into the 1970s, the field’s diagnostic manual classified homosexuality as an illness, calling it a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Many therapists offered treatment, including Freudian analysts who dominated the field at the time.

Advocates for gay people objected furiously, and in 1970, one year after the landmark Stonewall protests to stop police raids at a New York bar, a team of gay rights protesters heckled a meeting of behavioral therapists in New York to discuss the topic. The meeting broke up, but not before a young Columbia University professor sat down with the protesters to hear their case.

“I’ve always been drawn to controversy, and what I was hearing made sense,” said Dr. Spitzer, in an interview at his Princeton home last week. “And I began to think, well, if it is a mental disorder, then what makes it one?”

He compared homosexuality with other conditions defined as disorders, like depression and alcohol dependence, and saw immediately that the latter caused marked distress or impairment, while homosexuality often did not.

He also saw an opportunity to do something about it. Dr. Spitzer was then a junior member of on an American Psychiatric Association committee helping to rewrite the field’s diagnostic manual, and he promptly organized a symposium to discuss the place of homosexuality.

That kicked off a series of bitter debates, pitting Dr. Spitzer against a pair of influential senior psychiatrists who would not budge. In the end, the psychiatric association in 1973 sided with Dr. Spitzer, deciding to drop homosexuality from its manual and replace it with his alternative, “sexual orientation disturbance,” to identify people whose sexual orientation, gay or straight, caused them distress.

The arcane language notwithstanding, homosexuality was no longer a “disorder.” Dr. Spitzer achieved a civil rights breakthrough in record time.

“I wouldn’t say that Robert Spitzer became a household name among the broader gay movement, but the declassification of homosexuality was widely celebrated as a victory,” said Ronald Bayer of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia. “ ‘Sick No More’ was a headline in some gay newspapers.”

Partly as a result, Dr. Spitzer took charge of the task of updating the diagnostic manual. Together with a colleague, Dr. Janet Williams, now his wife, he set to work. To an extent that is still not widely appreciated, his thinking about this one issue — homosexuality — drove a broader reconsideration of what mental illness is, of where to draw the line between normal and not.

The new manual, a 567-page doorstop released in 1980, became an unlikely best seller, here and abroad. It instantly set the standard for future psychiatry manuals, and elevated its principal architect, then nearing 50, to the pinnacle of his field.

He was the keeper of the book, part headmaster, part ambassador, and part ornery cleric, growling over the phone at scientists, journalists, or policy makers he thought were out of order. He took to the role as if born to it, colleagues say, helping to bring order to a historically chaotic corner of science.

But power was its own kind of confinement. Dr. Spitzer could still disturb the peace, all right, but no longer from the flanks, as a rebel. Now he was the establishment. And in the late 1990s, friends say, he remained restless as ever, eager to challenge common assumptions.

That’s when he ran into another group of protesters, at the psychiatric association’s annual meeting in 1999: self-described ex-gays. Like the homosexual protesters in 1973, they too were outraged that psychiatry was denying their experience — and any therapy that might help.

Reparative Therapy

Reparative therapy, sometimes called “sexual reorientation” or “conversion” therapy, is rooted in Freud’s idea that people are born bisexual and can move along a continuum from one end to the other. Some therapists never let go of the theory, and one of Dr. Spitzer’s main rivals in the 1973 debate, Dr. Charles W. Socarides, founded an organization called the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or Narth, in Southern California, to promote it.

By 1998, Narth had formed alliances with socially conservative advocacy groups and together they began an aggressive campaign, taking out full-page ads in major newspaper trumpeting success stories.

“People with a shared worldview basically came together and created their own set of experts to offer alternative policy views,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist in New York and co-editor of “Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture.”

To Dr. Spitzer, the scientific question was at least worth asking: What was the effect of the therapy, if any? Previous studies had been biased and inconclusive. “People at the time did say to me, ‘Bob, you’re messing with your career, don’t do it,’ ” Dr. Spitzer said. “But I just didn’t feel vulnerable.”

He recruited 200 men and women, from the centers that were performing the therapy, including Exodus International, based in Florida, and Narth. He interviewed each in depth over the phone, asking about their sexual urges, feelings and behaviors before and after having the therapy, rating the answers on a scale.

He then compared the scores on this questionnaire, before and after therapy. “The majority of participants gave reports of change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year,” his paper concluded.

The study — presented at a psychiatry meeting in 2001, before publication — immediately created a sensation, and ex-gay groups seized on it as solid evidence for their case. This was Dr. Spitzer, after all, the man who single-handedly removed homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders. No one could accuse him of bias.

But gay leaders accused him of betrayal, and they had their reasons.

The study had serious problems. It was based on what people remembered feeling years before — an often fuzzy record. It included some ex-gay advocates, who were politically active. And it did not test any particular therapy; only half of the participants engaged with a therapist at all, while the others worked with pastoral counselors, or in independent Bible study.

Several colleagues tried to stop the study in its tracks, and urged him not to publish it, Dr. Spitzer said.

Yet, heavily invested after all the work, he turned to a friend and former collaborator, Dr. Kenneth J. Zucker, psychologist in chief at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, another influential journal.

“I knew Bob and the quality of his work, and I agreed to publish it,” Dr. Zucker said in an interview last week. The paper did not go through the usual peer-review process, in which unnamed experts critique a manuscript before publication. “But I told him I would do it only if I also published commentaries” of response from other scientists to accompany the study, Dr. Zucker said.

Those commentaries, with a few exceptions, were merciless. One cited the Nuremberg Code of ethics to denounce the study as not only flawed but morally wrong. “We fear the repercussions of this study, including an increase in suffering, prejudice, and discrimination,” concluded a group of 15 researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where Dr. Spitzer was affiliated.

Dr. Spitzer in no way implied in the study that being gay was a choice, or that it was possible for anyone who wanted to change to do so in therapy. But that didn’t stop socially conservative groups from citing the paper in support of just those points, according to Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a nonprofit group that fights antigay bias.

On one occasion, a politician in Finland held up the study in Parliament to argue against civil unions, according to Dr. Drescher.

“It needs to be said that when this study was misused for political purposes to say that gays should be cured — as it was, many times — Bob responded immediately, to correct misperceptions,” said Dr. Drescher, who is gay.

But Dr. Spitzer could not control how his study was interpreted by everyone, and he could not erase the biggest scientific flaw of them all, roundly attacked in many of the commentaries: Simply asking people whether they have changed is no evidence at all of real change. People lie, to themselves and others. They continually change their stories, to suit their needs and moods.

By almost any measure, in short, the study failed the test of scientific rigor that Dr. Spitzer himself was so instrumental in enforcing for so many years.

“As I read these commentaries, I knew this was a problem, a big problem, and one I couldn’t answer,” Dr. Spitzer said. “How do you know someone has really changed?”

Letting Go

It took 11 years for him to admit it publicly.

At first he clung to the idea that the study was exploratory, an attempt to prompt scientists to think twice about dismissing the therapy outright. Then he took refuge in the position that the study was focused less on the effectiveness of the therapy and more on how people engaging in it described changes in sexual orientation.

“Not a very interesting question,” he said. “But for a long time I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to face the bigger problem, about measuring change.”

After retiring in 2003, he remained active on many fronts, but the reparative study remained a staple of the culture wars and a personal regret that wouldn’t leave him be. The Parkinson’s symptoms have worsened in the past year, exhausting him mentally as well as physically, making it still harder to fight back pangs of remorse.

And one day in March, Dr. Spitzer entertained a visitor. Gabriel Arana, a journalist at the magazine The American Prospect, interviewed Dr. Spitzer about the reparative therapy study. This was not just any interview; Mr. Arana went through reparative therapy himself as a teenager, and his therapist had recruited the young man for Dr. Spitzer’s study (Mr. Arana did not participate).

“I asked him about all his critics, and he just came out and said, ‘I think they’re largely correct,’ ” said Mr. Arana, who wrote about his own experience last month. Mr. Arana said that reparative therapy ultimately delayed his self-acceptance as a gay man and induced thoughts of suicide. “But at the time I was recruited for the Spitzer study, I was referred as a success story. I would have said I was making progress.”

That did it. The study that seemed at the time a mere footnote to a large life was growing into a chapter. And it needed a proper ending — a strong correction, directly from its author, not a journalist or colleague.

A draft of the letter has already leaked online and has been reported.

“You know, it’s the only regret I have; the only professional one,” Dr. Spitzer said of the study, near the end of a long interview. “And I think, in the history of psychiatry, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a scientist write a letter saying that the data were all there but were totally misinterpreted. Who admitted that and who apologized to his readers.”

He looked away and back again, his big eyes blurring with emotion. “That’s something, don’t you think?”

 

[Pearl]

While I think its good Dr. Spitzer was willing to admit he was wrong, a part of me feels its not enough. He has to make amends to the gay community rather than just saying "I'm sorry". There's a lot of deep wounds that exist as a result of his study.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Of course being gay is a choice - no one is forcing you to love someone of your own sex, you do it because you want to - that's what a free choice is.

Take me for example, I have a lot of attractive female co-workers in my office and the fact that I don't sleep with anyone of them is because I choose not to, nor am I inclined to - BUT if I wanted to I would......because that's my choice.

I see your point.

I chose not to sleep with Kate Upton all the time.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

and no sooner did the naacp release their endorsement and now some african-american ministers and such have come out and condemned it.

but hey, if they want to make themselves look hypocritical...

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Has there ever been a valid reason against SSM? Nothing seems to stand up.

Nope. As you've stated, every single "argument" has been logically shot down.

I think the domino's are falling, and while there's going to be some very loud ressistance in the short term, it's only a matter of time. And generations will look back thinking WTF was the big deal?

I agree. We're on the right path.

So INDY's still dodging the tough questions. Or did I miss his reply somewhere?

Nope, still waiting on his responses.

 

[BVS]

I saw this today on Facebook and it made me think of some posters in here:

 

[JamietheEdgefan]

"It is an abomination", huh? What really saddens me is that someone would actually get a tattoo of that. Devoting time and money to prominently display a message on your body, that will be there for the rest of your life... and they make it a message of hating a particular people?

Hell, even if i was against homosexuality, i'd think it sad to get a tattoo devoting your arm to that hate. I hate people who jump queues, but if i knew someone who got a tattoo saying "i hate line cutters" on their arm, i'd think they were obsessive and sad.

It's sad to see such devotion to hate.

 

[Galeongirl]

I saw this today on Facebook and it made me think of some posters in here:

Wow, speaking of hypocrites...

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

"It is an abomination", huh? What really saddens me is that someone would actually get a tattoo of that. Devoting time and money to prominently display a message on your body, that will be there for the rest of your life... and they make it a message of hating a particular people?

Hell, even if i was against homosexuality, i'd think it sad to get a tattoo devoting your arm to that hate. I hate people who jump queues, but if i knew someone who got a tattoo saying "i hate line cutters" on their arm, i'd think they were obsessive and sad.

It's sad to see such devotion to hate.

exactly. there's lots of things and people that really grind my gears, and i have nothing against tattoos, but i like to focus on things that i like and have personal meaning to me. i wouldn't get a tattoo of someone changing lanes without a turn signal with a big x through it.

 

[Jive Turkey]

It's pathetic that some people's homophobia consumes so much of their lives

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

it makes you wonder if their hatred isn't really just a form of overcompensation. "i'm not gay! in fact, i'm so not gay, that i hate gays! them fags should burn in hell" etc.

 

[Jive Turkey]

There must be some connection. I think headache posted a link to an article about that very thing

 

[deep]

I saw this today on Facebook and it made me think of some posters in here:

it might be more effective if he put it on the small of his back

 

[Galeongirl]

it makes you wonder if their hatred isn't really just a form of overcompensation. "i'm not gay! in fact, i'm so not gay, that i hate gays! them fags should burn in hell" etc.

Yea, for some reason I think it's not much hatred, it's more a fear. People always fear the unknown. If they're all just scared that they might be gay, and their families won't accept them if they are. So they do the complete opposite, start hating all that is gay and hope that they'll eventually believe it themselves..

 

[Jive Turkey]

It's also fairly telling that all they seem to focus on are the wieners and bums and scissoring and such

 

[corianderstem]

It's also fairly telling that all they seem to focus on are the wieners and bums and scissoring and such

Ooh, what a good opportunity to post this!

GOP Senate contender Marshall says being gay 'cuts your life by about 20 years' | Richmond Times-Dispatch

He apparently said that sodomy is not a civil right earlier this week.

But ..... but .... a lot of straights like the butt sex too! What about THEIR precious rights???

 

[BoMac]

Christ, what an asshole.

 

[corianderstem]

Ha, the original intro to my post was "In Today's Christ, What An Asshole News" but then I saw JT's post and went with the segueway business.

 

[BVS]

He apparently said that sodomy is not a civil right earlier this week.

But I'm guessing ignorance and assholism are? That's very fortunate for him.

 

[corianderstem]

Gay sex is wrong because it's icky!

 

[BVS]

Gay sex is wrong because it's icky!

But only when it's men... Girl on girl doesn't count, in fact it makes up 40% of their porn collection.