Gay marriage

[moomoose]

its not "proven" that the nuclear family is better, either. 

i have to go to the ravens game, so in the meantime just watch this episode of penn and teller, may contain nudity and definitely contains language: http://www.megavideo.com/?v=ZW20CWRN

[Uppercut]

Marriage is a private, religious connection between a man and a woman; it just so happens that it also is a staple in American society.  Marriage should stay a religious affair.

And in America the first amendment defines a strict seperation of church and state. When the government recognizes marriage they're not recognizing a religious affair, they're recognizing what some would call a civil union.

Furthermore marriage both predates Christianity and is not traditionally one man, one woman.  In the Torah God permits polygamy. Many pre-Christian pagans also practiced polygamy.

[MooMooMoo]

Well, Jesus had two dads and he turned out okay, didn't he? Being homophobic is about as rational as saying that all russians are criminals.

[SeddyRocky]

Note: Change one vote from undecided to legal. I was on a laptop and misclicked bigtime fail.

On topic: On don't think it should be illegal. If individuals, denominations or whole religions do not want to marry same-sexed couples, that's fine, but don't prevent the ones that do.

But as said before in this topic: best thing would be to just remove the "marriage" between marriage and law, so that everything becomes civil unions, and it's up to each religious congregation/etc to decide if they conduct religious ceremonies/marriages, but they should have more/less legal effect than a regular civil union.

[theloconate]

Note: Change one vote from undecided to legal. I was on a laptop and misclicked bigtime fail.

I'm kinda a n00b. how do i do that

[xdude]

Note: Change one vote from undecided to legal. I was on a laptop and misclicked bigtime fail.

I'm kinda a n00b. how do i do that

You can't. But you can (and should) allow people to change their votes.

[theloconate]

Note: Change one vote from undecided to legal. I was on a laptop and misclicked bigtime fail.

I'm kinda a n00b. how do i do that

You can't. But you can (and should) allow people to change their votes.

alright but when i go under edit poll there is no option that allows me to change whether or not people are allowed to change their vote

[QuantumT]

I'm going to pull some quotes from a 2008 article by Michael Coren entitled, "Michael Coren on Canada's biggest mistake: Gay marriage."  He makes a lot of interesting points in the article.  A few people have responded to this question saying that government has no place in judging what constitutes marriage.  Coren said, "The state, though, should have a duty to judge and to do so based on its own interests. The most significant of which is its continued existence, meaning that we have to produce children. As procreation is the likely, if not essential, result of marriage between a man and a woman, it is in the interests of the state to encourage marriage.

If this is the case, then we should annul marriages once the women hits menopause. I mean, what's the point right? They can't have babies anymore can they?

Of course lesbian couples can have an obliging friend assist them in having a baby, and gay men can adopt or have an obliging friend have one for them, but this is hardly the norm and hardly going to guarantee the longevity of a stable society. Just as significant, it smashes the fundamental concept of a child being produced through an act of love. The donation of bodily fluid by an anonymous person, or that obliging friend again, is an act not of love but of lust, indifference, profit or a mere, well, helping hand.

I would argue that couples who have to go through this process are actually more likely to love each other, and to have thought through the decision. It's not something that will happen on accident. With the regular process however, it could just as easily be an act of lust as one of love.

For the first time not only in Canadian but in world history we are purposefully creating and legitimizing families where there will be either no male or no female role model and parent. Anyone who speaks of uncles, aunts, communities and villages raising children has no real understanding of family life. Single-parent families exist and are sometimes excellent and, obviously, not every mother/father family is a success. But to consciously create unbalanced families where children can never enjoy the profound difference between man and woman, mother and father, is dangerous social engineering."

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that a child raised by a heterosexual couple is any better off than one raised by a same sex couple.

I agree with Dragoon1140.  Marriage is between a man and a woman.

It seems like it's basically only because you've defined it that way.

But as said before in this topic: best thing would be to just remove the "marriage" between marriage and law, so that everything becomes civil unions, and it's up to each religious congregation/etc to decide if they conduct religious ceremonies/marriages, but they should have more/less legal effect than a regular civil union.

Hurray! I have support!

[Numnut]

First of all if your saying that gay marriage somehow stops a working society because they can't reproduce then you need to re-think your position. Would you say that people who are infertile shouldn't be allowed to marry too?

Also, who gives a crap whether or not the baby is create  through love or other processes. How does that matter? And for that matter why does it matter whether or not there is is an adult male or female in their lives as they are raised (and there probably would be such as aunts uncles and stuff, and yes i do understand family life). By that logic we would also have to take away kids from single parents. Not to mention that having a male and female role in your life doesn't affect how you do in life at all.
-"Studies have found children do not require both a male and female parent," testified Michael Lamb, the head of Cambridge's Department of Social and Developmental Psychology. His testimony was given before U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
It is not dangerous and I challenge you to find me a statistic that demonstrates such.

I will refute your opinion at the end with the others.  However, if you actually want to carry on a discussion, try not to insult others' inputs.  You have asked for everybody's position.  You then told Dragoon that his "ideal...is irrelevant" without evidence.  You then say, "who gives a crap" when I post an article counter to your opinion.  If you don't want to hear it, don't ask the question.

its not "proven" that the nuclear family is better, either. 

Proof can be found when searched for.  Read the linked document.

I'm going to pull some quotes from a 2008 article by Michael Coren entitled, "Michael Coren on Canada's biggest mistake: Gay marriage."  He makes a lot of interesting points in the article.  A few people have responded to this question saying that government has no place in judging what constitutes marriage.  Coren said, "The state, though, should have a duty to judge and to do so based on its own interests. The most significant of which is its continued existence, meaning that we have to produce children. As procreation is the likely, if not essential, result of marriage between a man and a woman, it is in the interests of the state to encourage marriage.

If this is the case, then we should annul marriages once the women hits menopause. I mean, what's the point right? They can't have babies anymore can they?

No - read the article that I link to at the bottom.  I would equate that with a divorce, and I don't think that is healthy for anybody involved. I understand that in some cases divorces improve situations, but I think the majority occur because couples are too lazy and self-involved to work through their difficulties.

Of course lesbian couples can have an obliging friend assist them in having a baby, and gay men can adopt or have an obliging friend have one for them, but this is hardly the norm and hardly going to guarantee the longevity of a stable society. Just as significant, it smashes the fundamental concept of a child being produced through an act of love. The donation of bodily fluid by an anonymous person, or that obliging friend again, is an act not of love but of lust, indifference, profit or a mere, well, helping hand.

I would argue that couples who have to go through this process are actually more likely to love each other, and to have thought through the decision. It's not something that will happen on accident. With the regular process however, it could just as easily be an act of lust as one of love.

For the first time not only in Canadian but in world history we are purposefully creating and legitimizing families where there will be either no male or no female role model and parent. Anyone who speaks of uncles, aunts, communities and villages raising children has no real understanding of family life. Single-parent families exist and are sometimes excellent and, obviously, not every mother/father family is a success. But to consciously create unbalanced families where children can never enjoy the profound difference between man and woman, mother and father, is dangerous social engineering."

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that a child raised by a heterosexual couple is any better off than one raised by a same sex couple.

On the contrary, there is.  Again, read the linked article.

I agree with Dragoon1140.  Marriage is between a man and a woman.

It seems like it's basically only because you've defined it that way.

As has society since the beginning of history. 

If you want an interesting read on the benefits of children being raised by their two biological parents who are married to each other, then read the following: http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications_states/files/0086.pdf

It includes a small section on same-sex couples as well.
(Modified to fix quotes.  I forgot to preview before posting)

[Numnut]

Well, Jesus had two dads and he turned out okay, didn't he? Being homophobic is about as rational as saying that all russians are criminals.

If you want to bring religion into it, we can, but I don't think that is the purpose of this discussion.  I can express my religious views and why what you said is completely inappropriate and off-topic, but I don't think it is needed.

However, your second sentence does require a response.  This discussion is not about homophobia.  It is a discussion about whether people think that a homosexual union is equivalent to a heterosexual marriage.  Just because I do not think they are equal does not mean that I am homophobic.  To quote another part of Cohen's article, "What makes the national mistake of legalizing same-sex marriage unique in Canadian history is that to even discuss the issue is considered by many, particularly our elites, to be at the very least in extraordinarily bad taste. Although this is a valid and vital debate about social policy, anyone critiquing the status quo is likely to be marginalized as hateful, extreme or simply mad. Social conservatives aren’t just wrong, they’re evil."

[theloconate]

First of all if your saying that gay marriage somehow stops a working society because they can't reproduce then you need to re-think your position. Would you say that people who are infertile shouldn't be allowed to marry too?

Also, who gives a crap whether or not the baby is create  through love or other processes. How does that matter? And for that matter why does it matter whether or not there is is an adult male or female in their lives as they are raised (and there probably would be such as aunts uncles and stuff, and yes i do understand family life). By that logic we would also have to take away kids from single parents. Not to mention that having a male and female role in your life doesn't affect how you do in life at all.
-"Studies have found children do not require both a male and female parent," testified Michael Lamb, the head of Cambridge's Department of Social and Developmental Psychology. His testimony was given before U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
It is not dangerous and I challenge you to find me a statistic that demonstrates such.

I will refute your opinion at the end with the others.  However, if you actually want to carry on a discussion, try not to insult others' inputs.  You have asked for everybody's position.  You then told Dragoon that his "ideal...is irrelevant" without evidence.  You then say, "who gives a crap" when I post an article counter to your opinion.  If you don't want to hear it, don't ask the question.

It's true that your ideal is irrelevant without evidence. Because that's just what you believe without evidence

I agree with Dragoon1140.  Marriage is between a man and a woman.

It seems like it's basically only because you've defined it that way.

As has society since the beginning of history.

which is unimportant

If you want an interesting read on the benefits of children being raised by their two biological parents who are married to each other, then read the following: http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications_states/files/0086.pdf

It includes a small section on same-sex couples as well.

Did you check the sources of the article? Because they make the following claims
"Although the research on these families has limitations, the findings are consistent: children raised by same-sex parents are no more likely to exhibit poor outcomes than children raised by divorced heterosexual parents"
however instead of putting a source down for this they say this instead
"There is little information available about differences relating to socio-economic status, race, or other variables in
same-sex couple families. Many of these studies have methodological limitations that apply to recruitment methods
and small samples sizes. In addition, many samples of same-sex couple families have been largely of white, middleclass,
well-educated families. Little research has been done on children born to or adopted and raised by lesbian or
gay parents."
wow so that's just an assertion without evidence. Continuing

"Since many children raised by gay or lesbian parents have
undergone the divorce of their parents, researchers have considered the most appropriate
comparison group to be children of heterosexual divorced parents"
What's strange is that they seem to be claiming that divorced lesbian or gay couples do just as well as divorced straight parents, not that a homosexual couple does just as well as a divorced heterosexual parent (of course it is a rather unclear sentence).
They provide the following source (after Googling it and finding it of course):
http://people.virginia.edu/~cjp/articles/p00.pdf
The above article makes the same statement on the top of page 1056 when it says "For instance, studies have found no difference between lesbian and heterosexual mothers on self-concept, happiness, overall adjustment, or psychiatric status" It says a similar thing on page 1056 for gay and heterosexual men (the reason why im not quoting it is because its a picture file and not a text file and the quote is way to long to type up)

The original article you linked to then makes the following claim "Children of gay or lesbian
parents do not look different from their counterparts raised in heterosexual divorced families
regarding school performance, behavior problems, emotional problems, early pregnancy, or
difficulties finding employment."
The source for this claim seems to be the below link: the link they provide is just a bibliography of this guy and his works it just gives you a list of his works, the closest one to the name they provide in the article leads to this when googled
https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&doctype=cite&docid=9+Va.+J.+Soc.+Pol'y+%26+L.+291&key=8cde465b07f883d384d5a159ace3a2d9
Unfortunately for me you need to pay for this article which i am not willing to do. But i wouldn't want to disappoint you so I found this
http://www.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_Nontraditional_Families_Demography.pdf
To sum it up. Kids raised by gay parents do just as well as those raised by straight parents

Ps: I didn't need to do any of the above stuff because even if children raised by gay parents did worse in general then heterosexual couples that still wouldn't mean that they shouldn't be allowed to get married.

[QuantumT]

theloconate ninja'd me on the rest of your post, so I'll just discuss this part.

No - read the article that I link to at the bottom.  I would equate that with a divorce, and I don't think that is healthy for anybody involved. I understand that in some cases divorces improve situations, but I think the majority occur because couples are too lazy and self-involved to work through their difficulties.

Ok then. But your logic still disallows old people from getting married. It also disallows people that are otherwise sterile (ie from cancer or other medical conditions) from getting married. Methinks that old people and cancer survivors would tend to not like that.