[quote]Standard Donkey wrote:
Homosexuals would probably raise some pretty screwed up kids…
you see, we are trying to contain the problem.[/quote]
That is a denigrating stereotype that has been throughly disproven by every major medical and mental health organization.
The research shows that children raised by gay parents are equally healthy as children raised by straight parents. In fact, they do better on certain measures like tolerance and compassion.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
zephead4747 wrote:
not to mention the infertile couple is perfect for adopting children. People who will adopt children without raising that childs chance of having sex with a parent three fold.
So gay people can’t adopt and will most definitely abuse their kids.
Got it.[/quote]
Not really, but why would we allow people to adopt who are in a subculture known for extraordinary amounts of fucking up children, bringing children into the gay subculture, and all sorts of other shit, I can find some pretty scary statistics if you’d like
Children not being placed in a home that increases their chances of being abused>homosexuals right to adopt children.
If this wasn’t the case I would be very supportive of gays adopting children, good homes for children should never be taken for granted. However one childhood rape that could easily be avoided>adoption rights. There are gay people who would make pretty decent parents. But I would rather see less rapes, etc than more.
[quote]zephead4747 wrote:
Not really, but why would we allow people to adopt who are in a subculture known for extraordinary amounts of fucking up children, bringing children into the gay subculture, and all sorts of other shit, I can find some pretty scary statistics if you’d like[/quote]
Please do. I need a good laugh.
[quote]forlife wrote:
Then don’t whine about gay marriage being a threat to straight marriage, since you know very well it has no effect on the number of children not raised by their biological parents.[/quote]
But it does, Forlife, as has been demonstrated over and over. That you have no decent rebuttal doesn’t mean it hasn’t been made.
If we enact gay marriage, we set up an institution “just as good” as real marriage, and as such, we encourage folks who wind up having children to do something other than get married and raise the kid, thus doing nothing to shrink the pool of children who won’t be raised by their real parents.
That’s bad, and it runs completely counter to the goals of traditional marriage. Gay marriage does not affect the current pool of children not being raised by their parents, but it most certainly stands in the way of shrinking that pool in the future, and even enlarging it (see the silliness of surrogacy).
Enough of the childishness. There are a number of policy options to explore the problem - say, for example, getting rid of no-fault divorce laws, etc. - but that is a separate debate. We know for sure that gay marriage would encourage parents to do something other than get married and raise the kid themselves.
That this has to repeated as many times as it has is asinine. You came into PWI in a fit of hubris bellowing out your academic credentials - only to demonstrate that you may be the most limited “PhD” I’ve ever met.
Nope, I am not now opposing gay marriage for that reason instead of it being a threat to traditional marriage - I am arguing it in addition to all the arguments that gay marriages is a threat to traditional marriage.
Tell me, Forlife, what is it with this inability to stop making up arguments and arguing against what you like?
Gay marriage is many, many things we don’t want - and my arguments aren’t “either/or’s”, they are “all of the above”.
And, to reconfirm - gay marriage does not offer the primary benefit of marriage, as in, as has been stated too many times, gay marriage does not serve as a means to the same end traditional marriage does.
And, to reconfirm, gay marriage threatens traditional marriage because it sets up marriage to be an “institution” defined only by the extent of an individual’s desire to be attached to another individual, making the entire point of marriage - privileging one relationship above all others - a nullity.
No, we’ve established the opposite, even as you have admitted - you have already said you have no problem with any consenting adults arrangement being honored as “marriage”. The “downside” is obvious to any reasonable person paying attention - and naturally, that excludes you.
[quote]The logical follow up is this:
Does gay marriage provide other benefits to the couple, their children, and society which would be worth promoting?[/quote]
Nope - and I see you remain attached to your mindless script. It isn’t working here - we have seen the opposite argued a thousand times over: traditional marriage needs to be strengthened, not undermined, and undermining it is not good for the children and the society that marriage serves.
You continue your naked (and flawed) appeal to authority, but ask yourself one important question: if data came in suggesting that gay households, relationships, etc. were harmful, would these “organizations” change their mind based on information? Of course not.
[quote]It doesn’t take a genius to do the math:
Gay marriage has no negatives, and it provides a number of positives, so it should be supported.[/quote]
It has plenty of negatives, and they have been covered. You act like a child, plugging your ears with your fingers and closing your eyes.
You haven’t adequately addressed the concerns raised - reach back a ways, when you were shown correlative data that suggested that gay marriage might harm traditional marriage. We couldn’t even have the discussion as to whether it did or didn’t because your instantaneous reaction was to try and shriek your way past the information that hurt your Crusade by claiming - embarrassingly - “correlations are meaningless.”
You often puff your chest out claiming “science” is the only way to objectivitely measure “truths” - but when presented with some objective information that maybe, just mabe could hurt your cause, you cast aside the “science” into the same trash bin you tossed your common sense.
Recall, it took you what seemed to be a hundred posts of coming under withering criticism before you conceded a lame “after looking at what you posted on ‘correlations’, I have come to the conclusion that maybe they suggest causation.”
Awful. You are as bad a “scientist” as you are a debater.
Second verse, same as the first - Forlife can’t quite tread water against the arguments against him, so he immediately challenges his opponent’s motives: I can’t possibly be arguing in rational good faith, I must be a victim of “religion” or a prejudicial “ick” factor stemming from a lack of Enlightenment.
It couldn’t be that I actually believe that gay marriage could actually harm society with its unintended consequences. Impossible, of course, in Forlife’s sad, narrow little world.
Do yourself an enormous favor. Get out into the world. Expose yourself to ideas. Stike up conversations with people who think differently.
Now, more than ever, we get a good explanation as to your pathos - you can’t venture outside of an echo chamber of your worldview for fear someone might just expose your limitations. You demonstrate it nearly every post - and your inability to argue in good faith and remain rational when your ideas come under a attack has made these exchanges a waste of time.
Oh, and just to pile on - for a man who whines about opponents’ “dodging” him (whehn they don’t, ironically), we still get treated to your convenient editing and ignoring of questions presented to you, such as:
I’ve mentioned this no less than three times, and every time, you predictably edit out a response to it. For a man so arrogantly convinced his opponents are “dodging” him, why keep avoiding the conundrum of your marriage to a woman?
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
You’re a perfect example of someone who can dish it out but does not take it very well. [/quote]
Precisely. Forlife wants to be respected and wants his views respected, but he isn’t interested in respecting others or their views.
Forlife thinks it’s wrong to denigrate himself personally or homosexuality generally, but he is more than happy denigrating anyone who disagrees with him a “bigot”, a self-loathing “closet homosexual”, or otherwise sinister in their motives.
Forlife says that his opponents should argue dispassionatley with logic and objectivity, but for himself, he resorts to sentimentalism, emotions, name-calling, deliberate misdirection and mischaracterization, and a butchering of “logic” that would make a freshman in high school blush.
Also, in the weirdest twist of all, Forlife (in other threads) insists there is no such thing as a fixed morality, but then insists that he is being denied “rights”.
Forlife is a messy, childish contradiction - and you are absolutely correct: he can give, but he cannot take.
[quote]zephead4747 wrote:
If this wasn’t the case I would be very supportive of gays adopting children, good homes for children should never be taken for granted.[/quote]
Do you really mean that or are you just being politically correct?
Would you be willing to accept the consensual conclusions of every major medical and mental health organization, who have studied thousands of children raised by gay vs. straight parents?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
If we enact gay marriage, we set up an institution “just as good” as real marriage, and as such, we encourage folks who wind up having children to do something other than get married and raise the kid…[/quote]
Ridiculous, and you don’t have a shred of evidence for this claim.
Do you seriously expect people to believe that straight couples with children are going to CHOOSE NOT TO GET MARRIED BECAUSE GAYS ARE ALLOWED TO MARRY? What planet are you living on?
Surrogacy doesn’t increase the number of children that otherwise would be raised by their biological parents, because those children WOULDN’T EXIST OTHERWISE. It’s not as if these children would have been raised by their biological parents if gay marriage were disallowed.
Get it yet?
You haven’t made a single cogent argument to support the contention that gay marriage threatens straight marriage, by reducing the number of children that otherwise would be raised by their biological parents.
You can duck and run all you want, but I will keep calling you on this until you either come up with a logical response or acknowledge that you are putting up a smokescreen.
I love how you cite correlations between gay marriage and the downfall of modern society, while not only ignoring contrary statistics, but also arrogantly dismissing the consensual conclusions of every major medical and mental health organization.
You are the consummate cherry picker.
Are you now claiming that your religious beliefs don’t condemn homosexuality, or that you aren’t repulsed by the idea of two people of the same gender getting it on?
I didn’t think so. Of course, those motivations are completely irrelevant to your position, and you are acting in good faith when you dismiss the conclusions of every major medical and mental organization in the world. Right.
[quote]Why you married your ex-wofe and had kids with her - either you reached a level of intimacy that “hardcore” homosexuals can’t do, thus refuting your own theory, or you based an entire marriage on nothing more than sexual hedonism, which you should hang your head in shame over.
[/quote]
I’ve responded to this numerous times, only to have my character attacked.
I married my wife because my religion, which I deeply believed to be true, told me to do so. I told her I was gay before we married, because I felt she had the right to know. We decided to get married anyway, because we thought that was what God wanted us to do. We also had children, because we believed that was what God wanted us to do.
Yes, gay men can sometimes have sex with women, just like straight men can sometimes have sex with men. Shocking, I know. That doesn’t mean you are romantically attracted to the person. Romance and emotional intimacy are different from sex.
During our 9 years of marriage, I never once cheated on my wife. I honored my commitment to her. Our decision to divorce was mutual. If anything, she felt stronger about divorcing than I did, when it became clear that God wasn’t going to change my sexual orientation despite the promises of our church leaders.
I wonder if you would have had the integrity to tell your wife about being gay before proposing to her. I wonder if you would have honored your commitment to your wife the entire time you were married, despite being gay. How many straight men can’t even keep their marriage commitments?
You are welcome to think whatever you want about my character. I value the opinions of my ex-wife, my children, my family, and my friends. All of them believe me to be a person of integrity.
[quote]forlife wrote:
Ridiculous, and you don’t have a shred of evidence for this claim.
Do you seriously expect people to believe that straight couples with children are going to CHOOSE NOT TO GET MARRIED BECAUSE GAYS ARE ALLOWED TO MARRY? What planet are you living on?[/quote]
This has become too foolish to even bother - of course if we set up alternatives to raise kids in other than a privileged union of biological parents will there be incentives for parents who have children and are considering not getting married to go the route of the alternative.
We already see it - we see parents choosing to walk away from getting married and raising a child when they find a couple wanting to adopt the child. This isn’t news - it happens every day in the modern world. Parents who aren’t terribly interested in getting married even start “shopping” for potential adoptive parents long before the child is even born.
Setting up gay marriage would increase the pool of “family arrangements” that would want to adopt, thus creating even more options other than getting married and raising the kid.
And were you honest - and we all know you aren’t - you have no problem with this. In your utopia, of course this would occur, you would want this to occur because your ultimate dream is to have a homosexual “marriage” be a mirror of a real marriage. You only resist the fact because you are afraid to concede I am right based on the direction of my argument.
Grow up. Your defiance on these issues has become ridiculous to the point of comical.
[quote]Surrogacy doesn’t increase the number of children that otherwise would be raised by their biological parents, because those children WOULDN’T EXIST OTHERWISE. It’s not as if these children would have been raised by their biological parents if gay marriage were disallowed.
Get it yet?[/quote]
You continue to ignore the point - gay marriage would incentivize more of it, which we don’t want. This would be true of any policy that related to surrogacy, it doesn’t have to be anything related to homosexuality - perfect example? You can’t bring a surrogate host onto your insurance policy - why? We don’t encourage having children that way, and there is a reason.
We don’t want to encourage surrogacy or give our blessing to it - why? More of it would occur. Gay marriage would encourage more of it - wrong answer.
This has been repeated over and over, but like a sniveling child who gets mad when his parents give him an answer he doesn’t like, he pretends he never heard it the first time.
Horseshit - I have practically written a treatise on every issue you keep raising, and you have done little except argue from the heels of your feet on defense.
Horseshit again - fundamentally, explaining in vast detail over and over can’t definitionally be “duck and running”. That you continue to try and mischaracterize my approach merely because you aren’t up to keeping pace is a function of your sad, narcissistic little life, not any “dodging” of the questions on my part.
I have given nothing but logical responses, explained and over-explained till it has become no fun.
Notice how you deliberately edit out my entire criticism of your “science” chicanery and your rank hypocrisy. It gets old, but not terribly surprising - I get it, you got humiliated on the issue and are avoiding it.
I never ignored any contrary statistics - I said over and over that the debate needed to include all data, but that was never a problem - our problem was that we could never even get that far because any data presented to you that hurt your Cause was rejected out of hand because “correlations are meaningless!!”. You have it exactly backwards - I wasn’t the one rejecting all data, good and bad.
I don’t dismiss the conclusions outright - I question their conclusions based on one overriding concern: did they even ask the right question? And further, would they acknowledge data that hurt the answer they liked?
Irrelevant, but this isn’t your first mistake in logic. You have no idea what my religious beliefs are - no clue. Further, you have no idea what I am “repulsed” by in sexual matters.
And you don’t care, because you are just trying to change the subject and impugn my motives. Unable to deal directly with the merits - as usual - you want to paint me as something you don’t like in hopes of somehow obscuring the merits of what I have to say with the stain of “irrationality” or “bigotry” or somesuch.
C’mon, Forlife - amateur hour is over. Such childish moves carry no currency with me, and you have just embarrassed yourself. Surely on the way to your “PhD!” someone told you what an ad hominem was?
Incidentally, one of best friends is gay - and he thoroughly despises the idea of “gay” marriage, as he thinks gays shouldn’t try to be something they are not by trying to measure up to a straight relationship.
Setting aside the merits of his belief, you going to impugn his motives, too? Is his “religion” compelling him to be a “bigot” on the basis he disagrees with you? Does it matter that he has been out of the closet far longer than you, and has forgotten more than you will ever learn on the issue that only recently became a fundamentalist Crusade for you?
I wonder if he is against gay marriage because he thinks gay sex is “icky”? After all, that is the only way, right?
I am tired of refuting you, Forlife - there is no sport in it anymore.
They are irrelevant, and you have had this explained to you over and over.
I can lead you to knowledge, Forlife, but I can’t make you think.
[quote]I’ve responded to this numerous times, only to have my character attacked.
I married my wife because my religion, which I deeply believed to be true, told me to do so. I told her I was gay before we married, because I felt she had the right to know. We decided to get married anyway, because we thought that was what God wanted us to do. We also had children, because we believed that was what God wanted us to do.
Yes, gay men can sometimes have sex with women, just like straight men can sometimes have sex with men. Shocking, I know. That doesn’t mean you are romantically attracted to the person. Romance and emotional intimacy are different from sex.
During our 9 years of marriage, I never once cheated on my wife. I honored my commitment to her. Our decision to divorce was mutual. If anything, she felt stronger about divorcing than I did, when it became clear that God wasn’t going to change my sexual orientation despite the promises of our church leaders.
I wonder if you would have had the integrity to tell your wife about being gay before proposing to her. I wonder if you would have honored your commitment to your wife the entire time you were married, despite being gay. How many straight men can’t even keep their marriage commitments?
You are welcome to think whatever you want about my character. I value the opinions of my ex-wife, my children, my family, and my friends. All of them believe me to be a person of integrity. [/quote]
I couldn’t care less about the psychodrama behind your former marriage - I only care that your personal experience refutes the very arguments you have been making.
Oh, and just for kicks, I thoroughly enjoyed the attempts to salvage your self-esteem with questioning whether I would have the “integrity” to do what you did with your wife - what a hero you must have been!
Weirdly, you know nothing about me - and yet, you can hardly resist trying to measure the worth of your actions against me by suggesting I would have folded where you triumphed. I have learned one shameful fact about you Forlife - behind your preening arrogance lies a manic desire to fill some void of self-worth you have: with the hubris comes a weakness.
My dimestore psychology aside, I am not interested in your character. I measure character by honesty, integrity and a willingess to show respect. You haven’t excelled in any area with regard to our conversations. You have shown yourself petty, narrow-minded, and just plain silly.
You mentioned in another thread that you used to be a fundemantalist - incorrect. You didn’t used to - you are just a different kind now.
WOW, that hurts and it is not even about me.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
I have learned one shameful fact about you Forlife - behind your preening arrogance lies a manic desire to fill some void of self-worth you have: with the hubris comes a weakness.[/quote]
You found me out 
And to wrap up this thread, the ‘christian’ case for gay marriage is a big fail.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
This has become too foolish to even bother - of course if we set up alternatives to raise kids in other than a privileged union of biological parents will there be incentives for parents who have children and are considering not getting married to go the route of the alternative.[/quote]
Your logic is so convoluted it is laughable. You are arguing that gays getting married would encourage straight people NOT to get married? How the hell does allowing gays to marry encourage heteros not to get married?
If anything, you are reinforcing the value of marriage by providing a model of children being raised by married gay parents. The current state, in which children are raised by unmarried gay parents, sets a bad precedent by your logic, since it offers heteros an excuse to raise children without getting married.
Way to go, you have just painted yourself into a corner.
Irrelevant, since gay couples will want to adopt children irrespective of whether or not they are married. Don’t you think married gay parents would provide a more stable home environment than unmarried gay parents?
Who are you to say that it is better for a child not to be born at all, than for a child to be raised by only one biological parent?
Your mule-headed stubborness, twisting of facts, and moralistic arguments make your views of homosexuality very clear, regardless of whether or not you admit to having a religious and personal aversion to homosexuality. You are a closet fundamentalist parading in a laboratory coat, without the logic, education, or scientific facts to give your costume any credibility.
What a hypocrite…you are the king of ad hominems. Don’t dish it if you can’t take it.
Because god knows if I have a straight friend that doesn’t want to get married, all heteros should be banned from marriage due to my friend’s personal desires.
And what do you mean by “trying to measure up to a straight relationship”? As in, actually loving and committing your life to another person?
Except that my personal experience validates the points I have been making. You only say that because in your mind, gays only care about sex rather than romantic love and long term relationships. By your logic, I would have just stayed married to my wife since the sex in my marriage was so good.
i still get amazed how much hate and better-than-thou attitude american christians spew out.
all humans are different, some are gay. whats the big deal? cant they be christians? i say mind your own business, live your life as a good christian.
at least i thought that being a christian meant being kind and open, caring. you dont want to go to hell for being a whiny hater would you?