@okie,
okie wrote:oe, the primary objection I have with legitimizing a behavior as a civil right, a behavior that is viewed as wrong by a good many people, this opens the door to the government making sure that organizations and businesses sanction this behavior.
Generally, I tend to agree that government sanctioned unions - whatever you want to call them - don't constitute a civil right. I don't think that anybody has a "right to get married" comparable to a right to freedom of speech or of the press, a right to peaceably to assemble or to exercise a religion without government interference.
Therefore, I don't think that anybody's civil rights would be violated if the government got out of the business of marriage altogether. That said, I accept that the government might see it as desirable to regulate an agreement that potentially has a direct influence on a child's welfare - including things like a child’s health and development, legal representation of a child, child custody or guardianship, etc.
However, when the government chooses to regulate this situation at all and chooses to provide a service, then I don't think it should be allowed to discriminate based on sexuality. The government could reasonably reject to provide a service if doing so would violate the rights of one party of the agreement (as in forced marriage or underage marriage) or the rights of a third person. I just don't think that extending this service to same sex couples would violate anybody's rights.
okie wrote:Churches for example, will they be required to approve of the behavior? Will they be prohibited from teaching that homosexual acts are wrong? Will schools be required to teach this behavior as normal, with our tax dollars, to our children, against our will? These and many more questions are pertinent.
I don't really think these questions are pertinent. Calling the service currently provided by the government "marriage" already contradicts the teachings of many denominations.
If I'm Catholic, I would say that marriage is defined as the lifelong, exclusive and faithful union between a man and a woman. The expressed purpose of marriage is procreation, and the church can refuse to marry anyone unwilling or unable to have children. Marriage only ends when one partner dies. There can be no divorce.
Does the way the government regulates marriage therefore violate my beliefs? Does it force me to accept that people are living in sin, because they get married even though they don't intend to procreate or are to old to do so? Does it force me to accept that people are violating my concept of marriage by getting divorced and married again (which, for me, would mean that they are still married to their first partner and now have chosen a life of permanent sin by living with and having a sexual relationship with a person that I don't believe they are married to before God)? Does it mean that churches are now prohibited from teaching that divorce is wrong? Does it mean that schools are now forced to teach behaviour like divorce or remarriage as normal, against my expressed will?
I think part of the answer is that churches have no obligation at all to adapt their teaching to the way the government handles an entirely secular agreement between two people. I think churches have every right to reject the definition of marriage used by the government and instead declare for example that divorce is impossible, or to refuse to marry two people who don't intend to have children.
Another part is that schools have no business of teaching moral dogma of a specific church or religion or denomination. Schools can teach about heterosexuality or homosexuality or divorce or remarriage, but I don't think they should be allowed to teach that a certain behaviour is "normal" or "abnormal".
okie wrote:Also, we don't know if its nature or nurture, or a combination of both, but we do know that behavior is a choice, that much we know. I am opposed to discrimination against anyone as a person, but I am opposed to forcing people to sanction every behavior as if it is equivalent to a civil right.
I don't think I disagree with anything you've said there.
okie wrote:Thats what the whole gay marriage thing is about, it is about more than just the marriage issue, it is about much more.
That's not the impression I have. I think that people object because the government chooses to provide a service (that has or should have nothing to do with any kind of religious belief), but then arbitrarily discriminates against some people based on their sexuality and refuses to provide the same service to them. I think it's only there that civil rights are involved at all: when the government discriminates against someone based on gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
What else do you think the "gay marriage thing" is about?
okie wrote:Back to the indians, the two spirit reference was interesting, but that isn't talking about the behavior, so if you can cite for me a tribe that allowed homosexual activity going on in the tepees or dwellings on a regular basis, please cite for me the evidence.
I think a discussion about the acceptance and practise of bisexuality or homosexuality in pre-Columbian cultures would be interesting, but not really essential to the discussion. What I think is interesting to note is that indigenous cultures don't seem to have had a concept of distinguishing just between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Rather, gender was seen as something a person would choose in puberty, as an inclination towards one or the other gender (or both).
okie wrote:You talk about the impact of religion on laws, that is exactly correct. In fact, we would have no laws whatsoever if we did not have a moral code deriving from a religious tradition. To deny this is just silly, but many liberals do just that. All you have to do is read the old Testament law, and you will recognize many of the principles embodied in our laws.
Religious belief has certainly been an influence on the laws societies have given themselves throughout history. Partly because the idea of God dictating and enforcing the law gave those laws more authority and weight than just having some people agree on a framework of regulations that everybody would have to abide by henceforth.
We frown upon that concept today and tend to look down on countries and societies that practise a kind of law based on the authority of God rather than on the consent of the governed, but it's certainly part of the tradition of Western countries, too.
The question is just whether we want to use any kind of religious belief as a basis of making laws today. On the topic of marriage, you would get entirely different answers merely by looking at the concept as it exists in various Christian denominations. Mormons, Catholics and Congregationalists, for example, have rather different and contradicting definitions of what constitutes marriage. Should the government, if it wants to represent every citizen, therefore pick the concept as defined by one denomination and ignore all the others?
okie wrote:And would you please knock off the "phobia" references. That term is utterly ridiculous, although it has made it into common usage. Nevertheless, it is a total and absolute misnomer, not proper usage of the term.
I don't think I've even used the term to refer to a contemporary opposition of gay marriage. No idea what you're objecting to.
I'm sure you're not claiming that homophobia just doesn't exist at all.
You can certainly argue that the moral teachings of "normal" and "abnormal" behaviour - no matter what those teachings might be - don't necessarily instil genuine phobias in a person. If you object to that usage of the term, I'm perfectly fine with referring to those cultural values as a puritan or Victorian world-view.
