(no subject)

[prog]

One reason I support those fighting for legalized gay marriages is that all the arguments made by the other side are dumb. Consistently dumb, and too easy to beat down. The only reason I can see that you'd go with any of them is if you find gay people, or the concept of them getting married, repugnant. And that's fine, free to be, but that doesn't mean you should go codify that into law, man...

Here's a choice quote from a state rep that's been in a few boston.com articles:

"Mother Nature left her blueprint behind and she left it in DNA, a man and a woman," said Rep. Marie Parente, D-Milford. "I didn't create that combination, Mother Nature did."

I will leave the non-sequitur within that statement alone, and instead take what I think she's trying to say: "Nature intends that men and women combine their genetic information to produce children." OK, fair enough; I can accept this statement as true. But the whole statement becomes a non-sequitur in context of a debate on gay marriage. I mean: last night I watched some cartoons. While performing this action, I failed to exchange my DNA with any fertile female members of my species. It wasn't even on my mind! Therefore this act was unnatural and perverse!! Bleah.

I can see some counterpoints one could make to this, and I think they're also paper-thin. I have too much work to do to amuse myself tearing through them. (I will do so on request, but.) I guess I just wanted to vent a little.

Interesting point: One of my orkers is gay and single and has been jokey about "I can get married now, @whee," but I have since learned that another person I know, through a gaming group, really is hoping to marry her parter come May, to put a solidly legal roof over their family, as they are having a baby soon. This made me suddenly see the debate in an entirely new light.

Comments

[ex-colorwhe.livejournal.com]

I can't BELIEVE you watched cartoons without procreating. You disgust me.

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

Actually, homosexuality is natural in the natural world too:
Central Park Zoo's gay penguins ignite debate...

Now... this is not the first example of homosexuality in the animal kingdom - just the only recent one that average people observed and recognized before anyone thought about breaking the pair up. Anthropological studies and animal behavior studies, both in controlled and natural settings, have revealed many examples of homosexuality - to the extent that it the observed behavior actually served a beneficial purpose in the social group.

My thought is that many people are still prejudice - nothing more. But, conservatives can't serve those prejudices in any legal manner unless they change the highest document in the US that protects our civil rights.

Problem is - if they get to do that, where will it stop?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

The one that alllmost makes sense is "marriage is a religious institution, and the government shouldn't be interfering with a religion's definition of marriage". The problem is that marriage is also a legal construct, and therefore is subject to the state constitution, which forbids laws that discriminate based on sexual preference. It all seems to boil down to a semantic distinction that people are just stubbornly not getting.

Here's my solution: create a new legal construct, "civil union", that applies to any two (or more?) adults who want it to, declare that all (current) marriages are also civil unions, and then replace all other references to marriage in the law with references to civil union. Okay, maybe it's simple-minded to try to refactor the law like this, but dammit, Jim, I'm a programmer not a lawyer!

[jadelennox]

I'm glad they quoted crazy lady, because we watched her on our way to gaming, and man, was she crazy. She went into mitochondria at one point, too. And, in a classic example of "can someone so poorly trained in rhetoric actually be an elected official?!?" she said:

The previous speaker has asked us not to vote for discrimination. I prefer to call it "preservation".

Uh, hon? Do you realise what you just said?

[popecrunch.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I think one of the main reasons there is so much political controversy about gay mairrage is that a gay mairrage represents (from a strictly political/economic view) tax breaks (mairrage tax benefits) without the biological capability of the union (disregarding outside, ah, influences) creating more taxpayers.

Food for thought. Well, more like a snack for thought.