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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (150079)	12/16/2008 5:08:42 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Respond to of 173976

"But I don't consider myself particularly religious. For example, I'm not presently a member of a church." What exactly is your objection to gay marriage? I haven't based my arguments against legal recognition of same sex marriage on religion per se. I've made several arguments against it. A) I've said its a wedge issue that has been and will be used to attack religious people and institutions and compel them to do things that violate their values and religious liberties and punish them if they resist. My claim is based on 1) the fact its already happened in multiple states and 2) the declared intention of same sex marriage advocates here on SI (including you and others) that it should be so used. Accordingly, it's appropriate to view the same sex marriage movement as a means to use the power of the state to impose liberal values on society and punish anyone or any institution that resists. B) I've argued that marriage is and should continue to be given special legal recognition by society because its an institution best suited to produce and raise children. Social statistics show a two-parent male-female family is the best for kids and therefore for society. Common sense would tell most folks that too. Same sex unions will not naturally produce children and the number of such unions that will ever raise children is going to be very small. So the need to recognize such unions as marriages is not needed. Furthermore, there's a question in my mind if a gay union is really as good for raising children as a traditional male-female union. c) I think we should resist making radical changes in important institutions like marriage for trivial reasons. I do consider the arguments for same sex marriage trivial. First, gays are a small minority and the number of gays who will ever want to marry are a small minority within that minority. Second, the benefits that gays say they want from marriage can be obtained in other legal ways without changing the definition of marriage. Lastly, I will say I have no objection at all to gays forming unions similar to marriage. I don't object to them calling themselves and considering themselves married. If they have commitment ceremonies in a church that accepts those thats fine too. The issue for me is a matter of legal recognition and what follows from that, particularly in regard to state-enforced remaking of society and compulsion of others to recognize same sex marriages as morally valid. --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Humanity is tainted with sin" Where do you get your idea of what is a sin and what is not if not from your religion? I get that from religion as well as from observation of the human condition, myself and what I see of others, both now living and historical figures. I believe a recognition of right and wrong, a conscience, and therefore knowledge of sin, is built into human nature. --------------------------------------------------------------------- "I think they should be looked on as collective wisdom, learned by many over many generations." The collective wisdom of whom, religious people? I was referring to long held traditional things, of which the traditional definition of marriage is one. Its the collective wisdom of our forebears, some of whom were fervently religious, some of whom were more nominally religious, and a very very few of whom were completely non-religious. Its just a fact that most of our forebears were at least nominally religious. Its still true today. Over 90% of people are believers in God, even though not all are devoutly so. -------------------------------------------------------------------- "The problem with your observation is that in modern SF, they aren't rejected." That's absurd. SF isn't a bubble. I don't think its absurd. I think gay people are pretty well in control, part of the establishment, in SF. Are you saying that kids in SF don't know about what happens in California and don't have a clue as to what people say in, say, Iowa or Alabama? What does that have to do with whether gays are rejected in SF or not? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What's interesting is that the only person I've heard urge people to kill themselves is your friend and political ally" I don't know what Cliff says to you but I suspect he is telling YOU an ADULT who is voluntarily posting on this board to take a hike off a short pier. To equate that kind of talk with so poisoning the culture that children wish to kill themselves is MONSTROUS. Its not just me. Cliff has violently and psychotically demanded that lots of people who he hates kill themselves. He has directed many of those to me and to many other folks. He regularly commands conservatives to commit mass suicide. I suppose it would be worse if he were making such death wishes to children, but its pretty sick as well. And I will add that for you to claim that I or anyone else here want children to kill themselves is a pretty monstrous claim itself. I don't and no other conservative here does, I'm quite sure. ---------------------------------------------------------------- "I consider traditional religion to be a good and worthy institution" So you condone stoning and lynching and polygamy and the other things done in the name of religion? ,/i> No, because those things aren't a part of traditional religion in todays America. The idea you can delve through history and pick out the worst things any religious folks have done and call that standard and normative is bogus. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "What do you consider to be the non-nasty bits of religion (mine or others)?" What about not killing others or stealing from them. That would be a start. Good. Two of the 10 Commandments there. So like you said, its a start.