nekosasori said:
What about all the other marriages that are approved by other religions? Buddhist, Shinto, Muslim and of course Jewish... even within Christianity, Orthodox vs. Catholic vs. Mormon etc. - they're all just religious ceremonies that are, reasonably enough, optional for the couple to choose or not. I don't see any need to separate out definitions, since even a Wiccan handfasting ceremony is just that - a spiritually motivated ritual that symbolizes a union. The "normal" marriage is to do with rights. See below.
My point is that if the Church doesn't allow it, it's in their control. I'm not religious and I don't support the Church and think it's full of hypocracy but at the end of the day, it's up to them. It's their religious texts which damns homosexuality, and hell if they're gonna change it.
Well, perhaps you're not reading about the issues because you've made up your mind, but it's not actually about a ring. It's about inheritance, receiving your partner's pension after he or she dies, being an emergency contact in case of accident, receiving health insurance and other coverage via a partner's employers... a HECK of a lot of monetary and legal issues arise from being unable to get married.
Two things here. Firstly I don't really oppose gay marriage on it's own, and secondly, what about a will?
Lots of gay couples have children that are biologically related to one of the parents. And now we have the technology to splice DNA from two eggs and combine them - in which case lesbians can be biologically related - both of them - to the child.
Yes and this I find completely disgusting and a violation of the child's human rights. Ideas like that come from one thing only - political correctness, the bane of a free thinking man. The people in control of the jurisdiction of such technology are blinded by buzzwords like 'rights' and 'equality', and they fail to see the blatant and unavoidable fact that it is not natural.
And it's not politically correct to TEACH society to exercise tolerance, to not treat people who are different with a default and reasonable level of respect and understanding?
There is a huge difference between treating gay people with tolerance and respect, and letting them raise children. It's a whole different kettle of fish.
The human rights of the child are worth more than the twisted concept of 'tolerance' that is preached these days about this issue.
I think that male/female gender identity roles are far more flexible and arbitrary than you think. If you're criticizing gay parents for only having one kind of genitalia,
No, it's not just about their genitalia, and I never implied it was limited to it. It's about the complex and deep relationships between the child and the parents that go unnoticed throughout it's years but show themselves later in life. Having a masculine father figure, and feminine mother figure. Having a "mum and dad". Having an image of a 'female' to compar others to, subconciously. Having a relationship model to base your own learning and experience on. Lots of inherent things that are not only missing in a same-sex parenthood, but innapropriate things that replace them.
what about "conventional" parents who both have the same roles at work and at home, who have very similar personalities,
There is no such thing as a proper male/female couple who act like two same sex parents. It's technically impossible. Even if the father is a little bit camp, or the mother is a bit butch (pardon the expression) it just doesn't come close to how twisted the impressions are from the same sex parents. If the parents both work all day and leave the child to a carer? It's proven that that disturbs the development of children and causes them emotional problems later on in life to a varying degree. I never said they were good. In 20 years time when the stories come out (no pun intended) of children raised by gay parents and the things they had to endure and suffer as a consequence, maybe the govts. will realise what a mistake political correctness was, in this case.
or have gender roles confused (e.g. playing opposite roles to the "norm"?) I think any stable couple has the right blend of similar and different personality traits, skills, and they have learned to bond well through communication, compromise, even trial and error - the genders of those partners is totally irrelevant to how happy and stable a home is.
How would you know this, considering there are very few (if any) adolescent/adult people who have grown up with gay parents? On the contrary, there's plenty of scientific study on children and their stages of development which directly ties in to the gender/behaviour of their parents to suggest that varying from the norm can produce adverse effects on the child's eventual psyche.
Things like communication, skills etc, these are the methods of parenting that are obvious, that people can directly influence. What I'm talking about is stages of subconcious development that isn't seen or heard, just the product of it is. Things like seeing your parents kiss. Things like observing the shape of your mother's hips/breasts. Things like this have subconcious effects that you can't control or understand until a later date.
In short - gay parenthood is
intefering with nature to the detriment of the child's development.
I totally agree that not just love matters; but this 'bashing' of kids happens no matter how homogenous the population sample is - even if ALL the parents in a given class of kids is at the same socioeconomic level and hetero, then the kids will make fun of someone for being fat, or slow, or a different culture, or being too tall, etc. Having gay parents alone does NOT mean that a child is absolutely going to be bullied MORE than some other kid who has a lisp or is of a different race, or is poorer than the others.
I disagree. Teasing/bullying over looks/wealth is an age old happening and though it's bad, at least the kids know they're not alone. Geeks and that type of kid at least have geeky friends (I know - I was one). But having gay parents? A kid teased about that will feel more or less totally alone. It's embarassmnt on a whole new level. The kid will have to put up with thinking about how he isn't normal, how he wished to have normal parents, and at some point he's gonna realise his parents have gay sex, which his fellow students at school will no doubt relish in telling him about.
I say that by using that as the main excuse for not supporting gay rights as parents, you're perpetrating the very discrimination that you claim to NOT condone.
Gay parenting as a discrimination against human rights in itself. If what I've said means I discriminate against it, then so be it. But I have the child's best interests at heart in this argument, rather than mindless gay-bashing (I hope you can see that).
It all starts with every single one of us CHOOSING to say it's okay (or not) to let this go on, and you're saying that things can't improve, so let's keep our backwards view.
No, the view of gay parenting being ok is backwards. We've come so far in education and discovery about the human body and mind, and then we go back on this because of 'PC', which results in things like that.
I don't see how gay parenting be seen as an improvement? If you're talking about marriage here, ignore that statement.
In that case, I don't see why slavery still isn't in effect, and women shouldn't be able to vote today. Fact is, things CAN and DO change, and I for one think that legalization of homosexual partnerships is long overdue.
I agree. It shouldn't be illegal. Gay people can't help being how they are, and should be allowed the same rights about relationships as straight people. But not parenting.
nekosasori said:
Are you saying that a male parent is automatically inferior to any woman?
No, but two of the same sex are. There is a balance. We have evolved this way and look how it's got us. Evolution has done a far better job than us at parenthood and the system is fine (and important) as it is.
I totally disagree. And having two gay parents doesn't even mean that a child is automatically removed from any female presence.
True, but they are removed from the
mother figure, of which no carer/relation can replace.
There can be grandmothers, aunts, maybe even women living full-time in the house where the child grows up.
It's still not the same. IF the carer/aunt is as close as the mother figure should be, then it would be different. But then, is it really a gay marriage scenario for the child?
Just because the parents are gay does NOT mean the child is completely isolated from the rest of society! Babysitters could be women (and most likely would be), schoolteachers... there will be plenty of role models that ANY child from ANY family accesses as they grow up.
again, let me stress the importance of a single, close mother figure.
Agreed - I'm just saying that I don't believe it's a fair assumption to make to equate being raised by a gay couple with having negative experiences. As mentioned before, abusive, dysfunctional hetero couples exist aplenty - children are, in my opinion, FAR better off with a stable, loving, homosexual couple.
That may be the case, but it's not a valid justification to allow it. Would you say, having drunken parents is better than physically abusive ones? Probably, but does that mean it should be allowed? Nobody said those types of parents were good either.
I don't think it's reasonable to discriminate on any human being's right to attempt to be a parent because of their sexual orientation. This is approaching the mentality of limiting every human's right to reproduce, and so far, that seems to be a basic human right. The right to freedom, and to vote are also pretty fundamental (even though it's not as basic). That's why I used it as a comparison.
What about the child's right to be born into a natural family? It's a violation of human rights to knowingly birth a child into a gay family and inflict the psychological and social issues onto it before it's even born. The unborn child has done nothing to deserve it.
Okay, in which case we should take away gay children who grow up under the care of Christian fundamentalist parents. Or kids with no interest in academia, away from very academically-minded parents. Or introverted kids from extraverted parents.
In a perfect world, yes, we should. But it would be impossible and impractical to coordinate. How would you judge whether or not parents were too introverted to raise a slightly extroverted child? How long would it take you to notice the child being an extrovert? 5 years? 15 years? How are you gonna tear a 15 yr old kid away from his family just because they don't match up perfectly? Not feasible.
However, you can protect the rights of children being raised by gay couples, because it's easy to disallow before the child is even conceived - because it's based on the parent's actions and not the child's.
I'm disagreeing with the premise that men and women are "opposites" of any kind. Men and women are NOT, in my opinion, very different at all. Many people ACT like gender roles when they think they're being watched, but when they're alone, they react the same (to visual stimuli). There've been studies, and I majored in cognitive and behavioural science - I know what I'm talking about.
They're not total opposites. But I'm sorry, in this world, gender roles play a huge part in society and people's development. Yeah, in a closed room, people might act very similiar. But this is the real world, and males and females in it are very different, and the social implications of sexuality are wide ranging. You can't apply closed-room theory to a scenario we have to consider in real life.
I do think that children should be cared for by competent parents - I'm just not using any discriminatory criteria like race, religion, OR sexual orientation to make a blanket statement on whether a person would NOT be competent JUST based on those criteria. Just being able to impregnate someone or get pregnant oneself also, in my opinion, does NOT automatically mean that a person is a competent parent either, for that matter - but that's a whole other debate.
But don't you see that we aren't questioning the competence of the parents? It's nothing to do with that, its about the rights of the child and the effect of merely having gay parents, however competent they are at caring etc.
Religion is another interesting debate (although again, an open and shut case for me). Religious people indoctrinate their children, which should be illegal. Forcing a child to believe in nonexistent entities, possibly pray to them, wear stupid clothes etc. it's practically the definition of 'backwards'. We ain't in the Dark Ages now :bravo:
by the way, I don't mean to offend you. It's nothing personal. I just tend to argue rather brashly over topics like this. Maybe one day I'll be a politician
heh
