Michelle Bachmann: Gays free to marry anyone of opposite gender

[fireheart17]

Reparative therapy AKA ex-gay treatment isn't just a farce; it's an abomination. It should be condemned as psychological torture. Short answer: it works - sort of. Long answer: it can, if done agressively enough, make a person aversive to any of their natural, born sexual instinct. It cannot, however, make a person straight. The poster children for this stuff get married, and go through the motions (Step one: insert peg into hole. Step two: hump up and down. Step three: babies!!) but their heart isn't in it; the only reason they even try is because they've been convinced that they're doing the right thing. It'll never FEEL right, but everyone keeps telling them it is, so... Essentially, it involves associating homosexual arousal with negative reactions: electric shocks, chemically-induced vomiting, etc. It's sick, twisted shit, and I'm pretty sure some if not many of those performing these jobs have some sort of dominant control, torture and/or humiliation fetishes. This shit should be outlawed, plain and simple.

So basically the Ludovoico technique?

ETA: from what I remember of Year 12 psychology (yes psychology is/was a subject in high school at my age-and still is, for year 11 and 12 students), the method you're referring to is classical conditioning, where a behaviour is paired with a stimulus (think Pavlov's dog for example: man rings bell, dog automatically salivates even if there's no food being offered). The thing is though, you HAVE to repeat it over and over, otherwise over time, the stimulus reponse will diminish. So for example, someone might go through ex-gay therapy and then go and get married blah blah blah. If that person however, moves somewhere where ex-gay therapy is unavailable/made illegal etc. then the response will diminish.

[Difdi]

Couldn't one argue that we give straight people special rights by only allowing them and not gay people to marry people they love?

A very good argument. The one I like best is that the Constitution forbids the government to elevate one religion over another. Marriage is a religious thing, and the fact the government recognizes one form of it but not another elevates the religions that practice that one form over the ones that do not.

[Andara Bledin]

Exactly.

Marriage, as a contractual arrangement legally recognized by the courts should be able to be entered into by any two consenting and legal individuals with no other restrictions.

^-.-^

[BeenThereDoneThat]

I could at least laugh at Sarah Palin (still do!). Michele Bachmann is just annoying, ignorant and self-serving. I don't see her becoming President, fortunately.