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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (71388)	8/3/2003 5:46:20 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Additionally, it is apparent that the plumbing is made for heterosexual coupling, just as surely as that we are meant to walk on our legs or speak with our mouths. I don't think there's any question that homosexual coupling is sub-optimal. I would go so far to say that that can be objectively determined. (Chris, chill, let's not go there.) Some may insist that that's not so but I doubt many can really believe it but rather make the point as a defense. I think that question of whether homosexual coupling is equal to heterosexual coupling is a red herring. Whether one is better than the other is irrelevant to whether both practices should be accepted. But it is also my view that regarding homosexuality as deviant is more than an unreasoning prejudice Your insistence on the word, deviant, is significant, IMO. Deviant, particularly when stated with vigor, connotes sicko. Roget lists several concepts for the word including insanity, abnormality, and immorality. The list also includes the concepts of different and non-conformist. I conclude that you have in mind the former subset because you could substitute the words non-standard or non-traditional or unusual or even queer, or something else that suggests oddity rather than disgust if you wanted, but you don't. And because I know you feel disgust because you said so. Couldn't you see your way clear to shade it a bit from the sicko camp into the oddity camp? You said you responded to your son by reinforcing his disgust but cautioning him to be civil and tolerant. You could, instead, have told him that, well, some people are just wired differently, and added your cautions, but you chose not to play down the disgust aspect. I don't doubt that deviant is the word that best fits your view. But forcing society to recognize the marriage is an assault upon both normality and any kind of standards....... Pretty clear and pretty strong. Immoral, disgusting, and deserving of disapprobation. To treat it as an unreasoning impulse is wrong. I don't think your position is unreasoning. I can follow your logic. I just think it's a case of your choosing to see what you believe. You start with the premise of justifiable disgust and your logic runs from there. If you were to start with the premise of oddity, logic would take you elsewhere. I think the fact that civil union is becoming an acceptable concept is an enormous concession......... Perhaps it's not a concession, which suggests magnanimity in the face of disgust. Perhaps it's just that a lot of people have gotten beyond "deviant" and are starting to look at it as merely different and essentially harmless. Things are hanging by a thread as it is, do we really want people legitimizing their promiscuity or pedophilia by referring to the innateness of their desire, on the analogy of homosexuals pleading that they cannot help themselves? I was particularly struck by this statement yesterday. Jumping from a discussion of homosexuality to that kind of statement without so much as passing go and collecting $200, well, let me just say that I didn't think EV was posting on this thread. Surely the sequencing of those thoughts was just a fluke... Marriage is not a right. No, marriage is not a right. I wouldn't begin to argue for the right to marry. But fairness in treatment by the government in such matters as taxes and benefits is. I will continue to argue for that.