My argument is that marriage is PRIMARILY for the purpose of providing a structure for having and raising kids. It has traditionally also been a mechanism for economic survival from the times when men were men and women were in the kitchen. You remember, the good old days, when families actually stayed together and had a common purpose, ie economic survival?
You are confusing a legal definition with a comment on societal purpose. Isn't it most definitely the welfare liberals such as yourself that decided that welfare would be predicated on broken families without fathers and thereby incentivized removing fathers from households and propagated the dissolution of the black families that previously were no more likely to be broken than any other? Some claim the entire disadvantage of blacks in the United States, with well above average levels of crime, drug use, violence and poor education achievement stems entirely from liberal welfarism and the government paid disincentivization of having fathers in black child rearing households? What a legacy!
When you decide to broaden the purpose and the definition of marriage to appease those who want to dress up and play family for other reasons, especially if solely to legitimize unusual sexual practices, well, that is social engineering and we have seen how wonderfully that turns out.
I am not stopping you from co-habitating with your homosexual lover, Jonks. You and your gay friends can live great lives if you keep your sex play in the bedroom where it belongs. When you start prosletyzing that your lifestyle choices have MORE legitimacy than the norm, and isn't that a more perfect expression of welfare liberalism than any other, you infringe on the desires of most people to just be left alone.
In actuality, how many gay couples stay together year after year? Of those that achieve a long term relationship, how many want to adopt because they just cannot live life without a child participating in their home life or they have this overwhelming need to be volunteer parents and not just plant trees? (I am NOT including in these comments those who have borne a child and have the responsibility to be a good parent by doing so, in marriage or not.) How many of that number are going to actually be good parents? The number is truly miniscule, and does the society indulge them and at what cost, recognizable now or not?
When the romance fades, many marriages that I well know stay together because of the responsibility of raising kids. Maybe you think homosexual marriages would keep those couples together?
Practically speaking, you don't even need a re-definition of marriage to secure those oh-so-valuable company sponsored, and partially paid insurance policies. Why burden businesses more? Don't you have health insurance "reform" coming where everyone is forced to buy it, including the unemployed, or pay fines or even go to prison? I don't think there is going to be any exclusion premitted, not even if you are infested with syphillis, were dropped on your head as a child or wherever you personally secured your particular mental disability.
Societal disruption and cultural breakdown can come from any excess, you have to read history to fully understand my points. Maybe start with "The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization" by Bryan Ward-Perkins. Or "Der Fall Roms. Die Auflosung des Romischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt" by Alexander Demandt to point you in the direction of some other authors.
http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Rome-End-.../dp/0192807285
As to personalizing this debate as you are so wont to do - I respect your gayness, I do not advocate for you to go straight or adopt the ways of the straight world. I hope you two live happy and societally contributive lives. Be queer and be proud! And watch out for that tree in your back yard. I heard it was making a move on your lover.
My friends agree with me, as you have not ever bought them a single beer.
I know this is very, very difficult for you to understand, but I'm not gay. I know, you can't rationalize that. How can someone who is straight, who already has all the protections afforded to him under the law possibly be agitating for those same benefits to apply to a minority group currently bereft of those rights when he is himself not a member of that minority? It boggles your little mind doesn't it. I'd call you anacrhonistic, but you probably are typical for your age demographic, that is, opposed to same-sex marriage. (18-29 year olds in ALABAMA are more in favor of gay marriage than 65+ people in Massachusettes!) Your position is likely the result of your upbringing and social mores instilled in you over your life. You can't accept the possibility of this particular change to the family structure so you adopt the thorougly debunked viewpoints which exist merely to rationalize your discomfort at the thought of boys kissing. Frankly, I am not a fan of watching men kiss either, but unlike you I don't allow my base reaction to rule my reason.
Now, you state the "primary" purpose of marriage is family structure and raising kids. Say I concede the point. That purpose is still not an argument for the preclusion of those persons who either cannot or do not wish to raise children within their marriage. Marriage also used to be about gifting women to reward a vassal's loyalty but we seem to have evolved past that. You seem to also be arguing that the good old days when women stayed with their abusive husbands for economic survival was somehow a point for traditional marriage?
Your next insult lays bare your prejudice. Of course it must be that gay couples in committed relationships who want to be married are simply "playing dressup" to "legitimize unusual sexual practices." It couldn't possibly be that they love each other, and don't want to have their relationship placed on some lower platform in the eyes of the society or the law. It couldn't possibly be they want the protections and benefits inherent in marriage with regards to hospital visitation, transfer of property and estates, or the other 1,000 or so rights distributed throughout the law in every area without the need for separate paperwork addressing each and every one of those benefits. And it couldn't possibly be that they want the children they raise, through adoption or otherwise, to be able to know that their parents are married and seen as legitimate.
You revert back in time yet again with your referral to "lifestyle choices." I know you may have heard this a time or two, and perhpas you don't believe it, but being gay is not a choice. The science is in on this. But let's play devil's advocate. I submit it's essentially irrelevant even if it were a choice, as it is by either choice or genetics a sufficiently immutable aspect of one's life, and most certainly in every respect less amorphous than one's religion, which is entirely, wholly, and completely within an individual's choice. Yet that choice is accorded unparalleled protection under the law. How you can rationalize protecting a person's love for an invisible man and not for a very real man is perplexing.
The percentage of gay couples who decide to stay together for short term or long, or have children or not, is similarly not an argument to prevent those couples who do wish to get married from doing so. Bizarrely, by preventing them from getting married you have it both ways. You can castigate them for being promiscuous while also denying them an incentive for staying together.
You argue that an unhappy couple staying together for the children is an admirable quality. You believe that's a healthy environment to raise children, or at the very least, a more healthy environment than a committed loving gay couple raising a child? Children thrive in a loving environment, and they would be better off with two loving parents than two actors, regardless of their gender. Nah, you're probably right and the American Academy of Pediatrics is a bunch of quacks.
You claim we don't need a societal redefinition of marriage to grant equal benefits, but time after time we see that's not the case. From the couple who were denied hospital visitation in another state even though they had a marriage certificate with them, to the denial of benefits at the federal level, to the frequent declaration of undue influence in trust and estate law to unmarried same-sex couples, we absolutely require one of two things. Either we go through the law, state and federal, and address each clause where "spouse" is referenced and add an additional clause for "domestic partner" or "civil union" or whatever, granting across the board equal rights for gay couples (this should only take a few decades I figure) or we can grant marriage rights. Unfortunately for you, the former would not be legally tenable in any event as there would be no justification for the segregation as the Iowa Supreme Court made clear.
Your fervent plea to prevent sociatal disruption and cultural breakdown was echoed in centuries past by those opposing women's rights and minority rights. Phear Change, you chant. If you truly cared to create a more stable society, you would be endorsing gay marriage, gay families, and gay adoption and child raising, as these institutions would only contribute to more loving homes.
I do rest more easily knowing that time is only running out on you. It makes reading your prattle almost like reading a chapter from a history book about the bad old days when people were prejudice against the gays for no reason.
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/11/05/support-for-same-sex-marriage-by-age-and-state/ Tick tock, you're going to lose, and probably go to your grave thinking that society is about to collapse. Hopefully we'll get this thing done in your lifetime and you can make it to a party before you go.
Finally, I have absolutely no doubt that your friends agree with you. I was just pointing out that you don't have any gay friends and your adherence to a bigotted past is the reason why. And if you think you do, please, suggest to them that you equate their relationships on the same level as tree-fuckers to gauge their reaction.
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