You have
really got to stop getting analogy advice from asjssl.
They believe that because they want it really, really badly, They don't care if gay marriage will harm anyone. Couldn't care less.
If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon. That's an absurd saying to mean that just because you call something a thing, doesn't make it that particular thing. If two people get married, that doesn't make it a marriage. A union between a man and a woman is a marriage, a union between two people of the same sex is not. Two entirely different things cannot be considered the same thing.
If two people are married, it is a marriage.
Civil laws are the structuring principles of human life in society. As such, they play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behavior. They externally shape the life of society, but also profoundly modify everyone’s perception and evaluation of forms of behavior. They determine behavior that is acceptable and unacceptable. Homosexuality is not normal, by any criteria you choose to apply. It will never be normal until it is the norm, the most prolific state of being in society. The only way that will happen is when there are more homosexuals than there are heterosexuals.
So you're saying that only what is 'normal' is acceptable?
What does marriage for homosexuals do? It validates and promotes the abnormal as being normal. Homosexual activist, leader and writer Paul Varnell wrote in the Chicago Free Press: "The gay movement, whether we acknowledge it or not, is not a civil rights movement, not even a sexual liberation movement, but a moral revolution aimed at changing people's view of homosexuality." And that's exactly what homosexuals want, and they want it really, really badly. What they want is fantasy, not reality.
Some people's views need to be changed.
By legalizing same-sex marriage, the State becomes an official and active promoter of homosexuality. Homosexuals know this. The State calls on public officials to officiate at the new civil ceremony, orders public schools to teach its acceptability to children, and punishes any state employee who expresses disapproval.
"Official and active promoter"? There's a pretty wide gulf between allowing and actively promoting. Schools teach tolerance of differences, and parents can override it with their own views, just as they always have. And kids can grow up and make up their own minds, just as we have. Punishing state employees would depend on the context - might be justified, might not.
One of the main reasons why the State bestows numerous benefits on marriage is that by its very nature and design, marriage provides the normal conditions for a stable, affectionate, nurturing and moral atmosphere that is beneficial to the upbringing of children. Even for people who cannot have children, including older people, marriage still creates the normal conditions for stability in society, as the unions are natural even if children are not a part if it. This aids in perpetuating the nation and strengthening society, an evident interest of the State.
And society will continue to benefit from hetero marriages. [And 50% of those marriages will last.]
But same-sex marriage does not provide such conditions. Its primary purpose is the benefit to society, but rather the personal gratification of two individuals whose union is sterile, and unnatural, by nature. It should not be entitled to, therefore, the protection the State extends to true marriage.
It can serve a much needed benefit to society: adoption and/or foster care. Win/win.
Marriage has been universally acknowledged throughout history as a legal contract between a man and a woman in which there is emotional and sexual fidelity, along with childrearing, stability, familial survival, etc. But same-sex marriage changes all this. Since marriage is also a moral issue (not exclusively religious morals, but rather society's morals at large irrespective of any particular religion), redefining marriage is redefining the morals of society. Marriage is an extremely wide-spread practice within any society (not just here in the US) and has many legal and moral issues attached to it. So, when marriage is redefined, the society is dramatically affected. Legalizing gay marriage means changing the laws of the land, laws which are contrary to the morals of society.
We have no way of knowing how many people who vow to remain faithful till death do they part actually keep those vows, do we? Emotional and sexual fidelity is a tough row to hoe, for a whole lot of hetero people, and always has been. At any rate, half of them won't keep the legal commitment, regardless of the promises about fidelity, which says marriage is already in trouble. Maybe we should be trying to find out why, and deal with that.
Perhaps, gay marriage could actually have the effect of reinforcing what marriage is all about: two people making a commitment to each other, to 'forsake all others', because they
want to, and not because it's what their parents, friends, and society expect of them at a certain age.
Too many get married for the wrong reasons <raising hand: my first marriage was primarily to get out of my parents' house>, maybe seeing couples do it solely for love will be a positive development.
Make no mistake, this isn't about the "rights" of the minority, regardless of how it's being promoted, it's about the morals of the minority. So then, you have to ask, is it morally right to force all of society to adopt the morals of a minority? If you answer "Yes," or worse, with a
"Yes, IF..." and come up with some spurious justification, then you enter dangerous territory.
You don't have to adopt anyone else's morals. Prostitution is legal in Nevada, does that mean society accepts it as normal and moral?
No one is forced to accept morals - we each decide what we want to believe is moral, and that is not always what is legal. And vice versa.
There is no argument that can be successfully made to show that promoting abnormalcy in society is not harmful to society, much less that it promotes society. "Consequences be dаmned" is extremely short-sighted, if not reckless. As history shows, the consequences could be gravely significant. At the very least, and I mean the very least, it will create parallel societies. Like we need another one of those. And we can already see evidence of it where same-sex couples are not at all integrated into society at large, but have instead formed their own little pockets of interaction within society. Parallel societies never promote the furtherance of each other. Indeed, they are each weakened. We have also seen evidence of it where activist judges, like the openly gay Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in California, stripped people of their core civil right to vote when with the stroke of a pen he invalidated the polls on Proposition 8 defining marriage as being "only between one man and one woman." In a twist of irony we have the morals of the minority stripping away the guaranteed rights of the majority. Yeah, I can see how that will greatly benefit society.
But hey, they want it really, really badly, so they should have it. Right?
