[quote]forlife wrote:
Supreme Court rulings in California have historically been a touchstone for similar rulings in other parts of the country. [/quote]
Hilarious.
No, it doesn’t - it underscores the desire of the judiciary to supplant its policy preferences over that of a democratically elected legislature.
Will you be so deferential to the ruling of a court when the United States Supreme Court says there is no Equal Protection right to gay marriage? You seem dependent on a court’s pronouncement - will you be just as compliant that they are right when they tell you you have no right?
And here is why we all know the depth of your intellectual dishonesty.
I’ve practically written a book on my stance, and have provided answers at every turn. That doesn’t mean I am right - it merely means that I have done the opposite of “run away” from the debate. Ask any reader who has spent any time on this thread.
Despite the depth and detail and thoughtfulness of my many, many posts here, like a child, you hang around asking for a repeat of every argument made here, and when someone - like me - runs out of patience when the debate becomes uninteresting - as it has - you amateurishly declare “you are running away when the going gets tough!!!”.
Not surprising, but stupid.
See, again with the juvenile stupidity. Do you really think I have “turned tail” when I have done nothing but string together hundreds of posts in response to the gay marriage advocacy here?
We continue to see your problem laid bare - you simply can’t believe that reasonable people can disagree on a contentious issue. It is a sign of immaturity - and I have given you the benefit too many times when you haven’t deserved it.
Instead of keeping a debate on the level of the merits, we get your amateurish preening about, declaring “I win! I win!”. Do you read your own posts? Aren’t you embarrassed for yourself?
And, put it to a vote - who here still reading this thread thinks that I, Thunderbolt23, have ‘turned tail’ and avoided the argument?
That is, if anyone is still reading this thread.
Ridiculous. More of the same childish posturing. I’ll answer these because I am a sporting man, but then I am done:
You get the argument wrong, as usual. Marriage doesn’t necessarily encourage straight couples to have more children than they otherwise would, it orders the raising of children straight couples are going to have anyway. Straight couples are going to produce children with or without a strong institution of marriage - that isn’t the issue: the issue is how to order the raising of those children.
And, as such, since those kids are going to be born regardless, it is paramount we have in place an institution that orders their care the appropriate way. The kids are coming - marriage just steers child raising into the right way.
And, of course, no one suggested we don’t “take care of children that exist without parents” - we need to, but not in a way that fundamentally ruins the purpose of ordering child raising for the others more broadly.
And, to note - as marriage dissolves, there would be more “parentless children” to take care of, even as we think we have helped the original “parentless children”, so, no, I am not into the two steps forward, two steps back approach.
Again, the stakes are too high - we want kids to be raised by their biological parents. There is no policy suggestion out there that would be worth endangering the incentives that makes that happen. Not one.
There won’t be “more kids”, dipshit - it is not about encouraging “more kids”, it is about encouraging the proper care of the kids that are coming regardless.
Again, you miss the argument. I never said gay marriage would encourage straight couples not to produce children. I said gay marriage encourages coupling of someone other than the biological parents.
Hilariously, your claim of my argument being a “red herring” is based on a straw man of your own making - the position that marriage without children makes it less likely that married straight couples would have children is not my position, never has been, and is a complete fiction on your part. Oops.
I said that gay marriage would encourage coupling of someone other than the biological parents, and that is the opposite of marriage incentivizes.
I’ll draw a picture, since you can’t keep your eye on the ball: a gay couple decide that kids would be awesome, so one of the partners engages in some transaction with another person who is not a party to the marriage, the other biological parent to have a kid (as a gay coupling produces no children).
As such, we have a situation where the biological parents responsible for the birth of the child are not going to be the couple that raise the child - which is the exact opposite aim of what marriage is trying to accomplish.
Marriage encourages the coupling of biological parents. Gay marriage undermines this, because it encourages no such coupling. It’s dirt simple.
And so, here is the end. Your buffoonery and childish antics have taken an interesting thread and turned into unintentional comedy. You’re a narrow fundamentalist and the mirror image of that which you say you despise.
I hope for your cause’s sake - the cause of gay marriage - that someone steps forward with a better voice than you, because your contributions are an embarrassment.
ha