Austin Improv

i had hoped that my childhood home would make me proud, but alas, new york can be added to the list of states too afraid to rule in favor of same-sex unions. because marriage is about raising children.

the ny times' version of the story.

deroosisonfire wrote:because marriage is about raising children.

and eating them

New York, New York
I won't go back

deroosisonfire wrote:i had hoped that my childhood home would make me proud, but alas, new york can be added to the list of states too afraid to rule in favor of same-sex unions. because marriage is about raising children.

the ny times' version of the story.

I still can *not* understand this argument or this debate. Was the country asleep for the last 15 years when gay couples started adopting children?!?

If marriage is about raising children and making families...
...and gay couples have been able to adopt children for decades
...WHAT'S THE FUCKING ARGUMENT AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE

I don't even feel that passionately about gay marriage (other than in a "what the fuck's wrong with this country?" kind of way), but the lack of logic baffles me.

kbadr wrote: I don't even feel that passionately about gay marriage (other than in a "what the fuck's wrong with this country?" kind of way), but the lack of logic baffles me.

Hear hear, my man. The argument I hear from the conservative people I know and from various forums stays lock-steppingly* close to the slippery slope argument, "If we let the gays marry each other? What next? Marrying the family pet?" which incidentally is pandemic to a lot of the conservative voices out there. Which of course makes me wonder what kind of lascivious secret pet-rape desires are kicking around in the subconscious of conservatives.. amongst other things.
My favorite equation of choice, everytime I hear this is the one from the Daily Show:

(Heterosexual couple) > (Single parent) > (Homosexual Couple) = (Some guy screwing a box turtle)

I might need Andrea Young to check my math on that.

-eric

* "lock-steppingly" is a word I just now created. Trademark pending.

because marriage is about raising children.
Anyone citing this logic should immediately be asked whether they support banning the heterosexual marriage of people who are infertile, can't have children, or just simply don't plan to have any children. Or if marriage contracts should be dissolved for all legal reasons (like tax benefits) once the children are grown and declared independent.


The argument I hear from the conservative people I know and from various forums stays lock-steppingly* close to the slippery slope argument, "If we let the gays marry each other? What next? Marrying the family pet?" which incidentally is pandemic to a lot of the conservative voices out there.
I am a fan of slippery-slopes, because they do exist. But I don't think the logic holds in this case. The logical ruleset for me is simple and clear: consenting adults should be allowed to do what they want so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of another. Therefore, I'd even allow multiple partner marriages, but anyone braying on and on about marrying children or animals or whatever else is using a slippery slope argument that is logically fallacious on its face because children and animals are not consenting adults. They are not on the same slope. Polygamy is, all those other extreme cases are not.


As I am in a George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman" quoting mood today, I'll do so on these forums yet again:
The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.
Don Juan, Act III

I think they can have their slippery slope argument.
And if someone wants to marry their box turtle, they need to prove that the box turtle is consenting. Good luck with that.

Actually, the whole "what about straight couples that won't or can't have children" argument is the strongest one.

How do these cases make it to court? Can I take legal action against a couple I know doesn't want kids, just to make a point?

It's ridiculous isn't it? Between that news and the sweet Jewish family in Indian Hills who were basically pogrommed out of town by neofacistchristianists (because the school board was trying to put Jesus back in school and they filed a suit), I'm ready to rumble.
The NFC's have an extremely limited view of what marriage is, so of course gay marriage "threatens" their reality. I mean, it doesn't really threaten anything, but to them their little heads are going to explode at the thought.
You can't marry the family pet because it can't sign marraige license for goodness sake!
And I should know.
Seems like its also about hating people who are capable of living outside "established cultural norms". Like polyamorous folks. Let's hate on them too. And women who vote and take birthcontrol pills. And anyone who likes sushi.
Ugh.

Bob and I will be filing for our marriage license next month. I have a top surgeon that says a full-term pregnancy will kill me, and Bob had a freaky incident during SXSW '04 that has rendered him with an extremely low sperm count.

I dare ANY of these "marriage is about raising children" religious buttinski psychos to come down to the courthouse on August 7 and try to stop us from getting our license.

DOUBLE DOG DARE YA!

Of course, the 'protection of family" argument is just a shallow disguise for raging bigotry. These folks still consider homosexuality ungodly sinful, but it's not pc to say that, and that won't hold up in a court of law. For now at least. It's really no different than the miscegenation laws that existed up to the mid-20th century.

Personally I believe marriage should be a strictly religious rite, like baptism, confirmation, etc. Every couple can mark their commitment in their own way, before the god or family or friends or just their damn selves of their choosing. Individuals should be able to apply all those pretty legal perqs to whoever they want, be it spouse, child-co-raiser, roommate, whatever.

Everybody wrote:A lot of LIBERAL-sounding stuff

Ok, but seriously guys, aren't we really just cutting them a bunch of slack already?

There was a great piece in either Harper's or the Atlantic some years back in which the author made a brilliant point, namely, that the real problem with marriage is that nobody agrees anymore on what it is, so whenever any aspect of it comes up for grabs, the stakes are high. No-fault divorce was just as controversial when it first appeared, as were (probably) marrying for love or marrying outside your religion.

But to say that the anti-gay activists aren't logical is sort of missing the point. In my experience, people don't choose their politics logically. They choose them emotionally, and then they assemble the logical arguments that seem to make sense when repeated to a sympathetic audience. Logically, it doesn't make any sense to be pro-choice and anti-death penalty, but it makes some sort of emotional sense to the millions of people who hold those views simultaneously.

And please understand that I'm not remotely suggesting that deciding these things emotionally is somehow inferior to deciding them logically. I don't believe that for a second. I just think we should admit that's what we're doing and that, while there may or may not be an ultimate morality, we don't seem to have very reliable access to it.

I can't get too righteous about homophobes. I oppose their policies and I happen to think they're wrong, but to suggest that people who have been raised that way their whole lives can just snap their fingers and decide that they're not threatened by gay people doesn't make any sense to me. People can change, but to a certain extent we're prisoners of our own preconceptions. If tomorrow liberal scientific orthodoxy said that sex between adults and children was okay, you might or might not accept the argument, but I bet you'd go to your grave still creeped out by pedophiles. We would like to believe that's a natural reaction, but I'm pretty sure it's cultural. And this is still a hugely homophobic culture.

To borrow a page from their playbook: hate the sin, not the sinner.

The last line of my previous post applies to sincere people who fear and misunderstand homosexuality, not politicians who manipulate that fear and misunderstanding for electoral gain.

Stephen Colbert had a great piece the other night, where he showed a clip of some ass from Fox News discussing the fact that a woman in India had married a snake, and claiming that this sort of freak occurence is a justification for the outlaw of gay marriage, this is how it sounded.

CLIP OF FOX NEWS GUY: I want to point out to all the supporters of gay marriage that a woman in India married a snake today, and this is exactly what is wrong with someting like gay marriage, that it leads to this sort of thing. So if you support gay marriage, please explain to me how this isn't relevant.

cut back to Colbert.

COLBERT: You see, this guy is exactly right. IF a woman in India marries a snake, gay people in America should have to justify that.

It was brilliant.

Fox news has been disappointing me a whole lot lately.

But can we all give some props to Keith Olbermann. Today on Countdown, he talked about how Anne Coulter (the devil) plagarized whole sections of her newest book. He called Anne Coulter an "amoral fearmonger" and then showed a picture of her with an eye-patch photoshopped in labelled Shameless. It was a wonderful moment in news. Thank you MSNBC.