is the gay rights movement selfish?

[AdminAssistant]

But there's no guarantee of that with heterosexual couples.

My parents are married (still, by some miracle) but my father had a very minor role in my early life. He was working all the time to support us, so that Mom could stay at home and raise us. He was a farmer, which meant from March to November he was working pretty much from "can see to can't see" - dawn to dusk. During the winter, especially during the 80's, he had to work at factories or wherever he could to get extra money.

I didn't start spending a lot of time with Dad until he had to sell out in 2000. Now we have a pretty close relationship, but I didn't have a strong paternal figure for most of my life. No grandfathers, no other strong male figures. I had Mom, my sister, aunts, and the various older ladies that would babysit my sister and me. Yes, I had uncles (and, in particular, one male cousin who lived with us for a while) - but I was never very close to them.

So, no strong paternal figure. I turned out fine. Really. You can't say "we can't let gay people have kids or get married, because - think of the children!!" Excuse my French, but that's a load of crap.

[smileyeagle1021]

Shards, one thing I will call you on is the well rounded bit. I guess you could kind of say I had two mommies... my mother and my grandmother... and I'm not one to judge about my well roundedness, but at least my assistant manager says that I am the most mature 22 year old only child she has ever had as an employee... I think that says a lot and kind of blows a hole in the theory that people don't turn out well when they don't have a male and female parent (granted some could argue if my father hadn't died when I was young I might be straight, but then again, I might not, so I don't think that's really an issue)

[anriana]

And another point - what about denominations that already allow gay marriages? Should we ban Episcopalians from having religious services for people of the same gender?

[Evandril]

When you look at who is currently allowed marriage, and who still would be under those rules...I still can't take it seriously. Look at all the nice public 'weddings' that lasted days to weeks, who would have still be allowed under those rules...To me, with the way our society currently operates and thinks, I see no reason to deny marriage to anyone.

Even if your original assumption is true, that the basis of marriage was to provide more people for the congragation, time has moved on. The original useage of many words/actions/rituals has changed *drasticly* over the years, and trying to stop time is never very effective. (As a slight example, saying someone was a man of prejudice used to be a GOOD thing)

[anriana]

Again, my opinions are formed based on my own life experiences, and my experiences with the definition of marriage, and with interactions with various churches are where I pull these beliefs from, not any specific gospel.

You didn't state the origins of marriage as your opinion or formed from your life experiences.

However, the fact is that, although it has degenerated away from such in recent decades, Marriage was originally a pact with the church that you would stay together with a certain person and create offspring for the benefit of the community and the church involved.

I am interested in the proof behind this fact. What church was marriage originally a pact with? How did this tradition, created by one specific culture, spread throughout the world to the wide variety of cultures throughout the world that practice it?

[Flyndaran]

Marriage has mostly been a way of declaring ownership of women and to legitimitise any offspring as belonging to the husband.
With d.n.a. analysis we have seen how often that little marriage pact is useless with regards to assumption of paternity.

All that's really left is religious and cultural symbolism used to publically declare mutual ownership. And of course the legal contract that can't be modified for personal preferences without hard to enforce pre-nuptual contracts.

[Slytovhand]

Bah Humbug!!!

I'll just quickly grab this line from Wiki...

The way in which a marriage is conducted has changed over time, as has the institution itself. Although the institution of marriage pre-dates reliable recorded history, many cultures have legends or religious beliefs concerning the origins of marriage.[11]

with appropriate emphasis.

More accurately -

The union of a man and a woman, recognised by authority or ceremony, is as old as civilization itself and marriage of some kind is found in virtually every society....Early marriage was borne of ancient societies' need to secure a safe environment in which to breed, handle the granting of property rights, and protect bloodlines.

Sure, we're lucky in that we now live in a society where marriage can be done freely for 'love' (for any given value of 'love') rather than the need to breed, but that doesn't mean that 25000 years ago, there wasn't some form of 'courtship' which ended in the couple being permanently attached to each other - as far as the tribe was concerned. Naturally, no laws mean no form of 'civil union', but that doesn't mean that the tribe didn't have some form of acknowledgement that 'he's mine/she's mine - don't touch' in place.

[Lady_Foxfire]

The question i took the OP to be asking was if pushing for gay rights somehow infringed on anti-gay peoples rights to their beliefs or religion. And the answer is, simply, no. Gay rights laws will not forbid people from hating gays or preaching that homosexuality is a sin, anymore than the civil rights movement prevented racists from speaking their minds. Telling somebody that they're not allowed to make laws based on their personal beliefs is very different from telling them that they can't hold those beliefs at all.

[The Shadow]

Do away with the civil institution of marriage all together, have marriage be a strictly religious ceremony, then have civil unions open to all citizens who are legal age of consent.

As long as you attached no more significance or meaning to one over the other, then maybe such a compromise could work. But I don't think that will sit well with a lot of people anyway and they would start to complain

Besides, I don't think that would really make any difference. It would only be a matter of time before people started referring to civil unions as marriage anyway. The two terms would be used interchangeably so often, with marriage probably being the more common term since it's the one most familiar that any technical difference in definition would be meaningless.

As a side note, I have to say that I really have a hard time understanding why some people get so worked up about this issue. For other 'hot button' issues like affirmative action, abortion I can understand; these things have the potential to effect the lives of many people beyond those who benefit from them. But not same sex marriage. Nothing about same sex marriage or civil unions or whatever you want to call them makes a heterosexual marriage any less significant. Whenever I've encountered someone against SSM (which isn't very often) I always ask them "how does this issue effect you in ANY way whatsoever?" none of them ever advance any sound argument against it. They just say "it's against tradition" "the bible says it's wrong" or "it just doesn't feel right" etc. None of them seem to be able to come up with a good reason for not recognizing SSM.