So I would say that the issue of parenthood is precisely part of the issue, because marriage is directly related to the issue of children. Certainly there are exceptions to every rule, but laws aren't really created for the exceptions.
this simply does not work. there are people who remain unmarried and have children, and there are people who get married who choose not to have children, who cannot have children, or who had children but are on a second (or third) marriage. are you going to deny two people who meet late in life the happiness of a marriage after their spouses have died?
what's happening, nathan, is that you're taking a sweeping generalization about the human experience and using that to justify a position that washes over any nuances of the human experience itself.
If what you've said about your perspective as a gay man is true in other threads, then sexuality is directly rooted to ones' identity -- at the very least a core fundamental defining element, if not THE defining element. Either sexual identity is important, or it isn't -- but to dismiss it actually undermines your own past arguments about the intrinsic importance of recognizing sexuality as a part of identity. It's very difficult to argue both sides of the coin on this one. Either it matters more, or it doesn't matter at all, but it's hard to say that ones' sexuality is about as important as whether one is left-handed or not.
what on earth are you talking about here? i didn't dismiss sexuality. i said it was no *more* important than other qualities one brings into a relationship. you're the one who's valuing heterosexual intercourse more than any other quality in a marriage and (again, in your view, necessarily) in parenting as well.
of course sexual identity "matters" in the way that race matters, that nationality matters, that religion matters, that all of our experiences "matter." but what you are saying is that there's a magical alchemy to male/female parenting that is so exclusive and necessary to the successful rearing of children that it becomes necessary to codify that as the *only* acceptable way to raise children. in fact, there are many, many ways to be a successful family, and many non-traditional families -- say grandmother-mother or mother-aunt or grandparents and father -- work very well and possibly better than if the uninterested, abusive, dysfunctional parent had stuck around. it's quite terrifying to think that there's only one way to do things, and that there's only one way to be a successful family.
when i talk about being left handed, or about having red hair, what i mean is that being gay is of course an abnormality,
a naturally occurring and unchosen abnormality that harms no one.
So gender/sexuality is merely a construct? Is yours?
let me pause to take those words you've put in my mouth out.
gender and sexuality are partially constructed, partially biological, but the prejudice that surrounds them is entirely a construct.
am i naturally homosexual? absolutely. is my identity as a gay man a construct? yes. there's a difference, as i'm sure you know, between sex and gender. one is blunt biology, the other is performance. i think biology informs an authentic performance, and much of the social construct is learned so unconsciously that it is performed without much thought.
so, the sideshow alongside marriage continues.
but you have yet to put forth a single argument as to why an intentionally childless male/female couple can be married and why a lesbian couple with children cannot.
I thought I posted it in the Palin thread (it even quotes a post from that one).
