Gay marriage : who cares?

[Charlemagne_II]

John

*His arguments for moral relativity reek of a self serving political agenda devoid of any logic and of any reasoned morality. *

Amen!

 

[SwizzleStick]

This is not a civil rights issue:

jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby_gay_marriage.php3

God bless,
Ed

This article makes very good points, Ed, so I am going to post an excerpt from it just in case some didn’t click on your link and read it.

"…The marriage radicals, on the other hand, seek to restore nothing. They have not been deprived of the law’s equal protection, nor of the right to marry — only of the right to insist that a single-sex union is a “marriage.” They cloak their demands in the language of civil rights because it sounds so much better than the truth: They don’t want to accept or reject marriage on the same terms that it is available to everyone else. They want it on entirely new terms. They want it to be given a meaning it has never before had, and they prefer that it be done undemocratically — by judicial fiat, for example, or by mayors flouting the law. Whatever else that may be, it isn’t civil rights.

But dare to speak against it, and you are no better than Bull Connor.

Last month, as Massachusetts lawmakers prepared to debate a constitutional amendment on the meaning of marriage, the state’s leading black clergy came out strongly in support of the age-old definition: the union of a man and a woman. They were promptly tarred as enemies of civil rights. “Martin Luther King,” one left-wing legislator barked, “is rolling over in his grave at a statement like this.”

But if anything has King spinning in his grave, it is the indecency of exploiting his name for a cause he never supported. The civil rights movement for which he lived and died was grounded in a fundamental truth: All of us are created equal. The same-sex marriage movement, by contrast, is grounded in the denial of a fundamental truth: The Creator who made us equal made us male and female. That duality has always and everywhere been the starting point for marriage. The newly fashionable claim that marriage can ignore that duality is akin to the claim, back when lunch counters were segregated, that America was a land of liberty and justice for all. "…

Excerpted from:
Same-sex marriage vs. civil rights
jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby_gay_marriage.php3

 

[Crimsonflyboy]

It won’t concern me because my kid is Catholic. He has the best foundation and a clear moral compass.

Further, you cannot force people not to sin. They have a choice given to them by God.

In the words of St. Therese - Do not set yourself up as Judge - that is God’s right alone. Your only mission is to be an angel of peace.

We can’t force people not to sin as we can lead a horse to water but cannot make him drink. However we must not be complicite in their sin either. The government has a moral duty not to legalize sinful behavior. We are all bound to the law of God as individuals, but also as a society. Governments are bound to the law of God just as are individuals. Read Quas Primas by Pope Pius XI on the Feast of Christ the King.

 

[edwest2]

I would say Lawrence v. Texas establishes the ‘civil right’ of committing adultery, insofar as SCOTUS ruled that private sexual behavior of any kind is none of the states business. That doesn’t mean I like or endorse adultery, but you nonetheless have the right to do so without fear of arrest or imprisonment.

Gays are not at risk for arrest or imprisonment yet they still want to redefine what marriage is. The Church has been 100% against adultery and fornication over the last 40 years, but whenever mom or dad or society in general asked, Why are you doing this? All we got was: “Leave us alone! Mind your own business!” And then the media jumped in with endless fornication movies, and then TV, and today, “What’s the Big Deal? It’s just sex.”

Catholics, and the public at large, are waking up to the fact that one in five people are walking around with an STD today. Sex education has failed. Alternative lifestyles have failed. Anarchist living has failed. A return to stability is required.

God bless,
Ed

 

[SwizzleStick]

Just in case nobody has bothered to look or to link to this, Catholic Answers has a Special Report on gay “marriage” which you can find here:

catholic.com/library/gay_marriage.asp

It takes a few minutes to read, but it is time well spent and worth the read. Thank you for sharing the link.

 

[Leela]

This article makes very good points, Ed, so I am going to post an excerpt from it just in case some didn’t click on your link and read it.

Yeah, I read it when Ed posted it before a while back, I missed any “very good points” and still don’t see any in your highlights. Is there an argument living in that article somewhere about why the rights of homosexuals to marry is not a civil rights issue? I mean, no one is saying that it is an issue of race, we just think there is a parallel here and with every other case of historical denial of rights to specific groups on dubious grounds. We note that when people say that homosexual marriage “just ain’t natural,” that that is exactly what was said in the past about women working outside the home and about interracial marriage and lots of other things. (Natural law has got to be the worst tool that anyone has ever come up with for moral discernment given that it was even once used to say how natural it is for some to be slaves and others to be masters.)

 

[CradleCath]

Cradlecath, kenofken’s answer is distinctly disengenuous. Slavery was an aberation in American and English affairs. A Virginia Act of 1662 declared that *“all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother,” *thus establishing the rule in all the slaveholding areas of British America. Slavery was never the norm before this. Slavery was institutionalised through positive law, which came from local and parochial standards and conventions and vested interests. It was not universal. No such positivist law existed in England either. Slavery was eventually abolished because of Natural Law arguments which overcame the positivist law, which was proved to be immoral according to those Natural Law arguments. A prime example is an argument America’s own Thomas Jefferson used in a 1770 case (Howell v Netherland) -
A little later, in England, was the noted Somerset case of 1772. In that case, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, in the Court of King’s Bench, held that slavery was indeed in violation of the law of nature, and that it took positive man-made law to impose slavery upon society and upon individuals. Lord Mansfield found no such positive law existing in England in 1772. His decision ultimately resulted in recognition of freedom for some 15,000 former slaves living in England and Wales. Mansfield said -
So slavery was found, according to Natural Law theory, to be so odious that nothing could support it other than man made, positive law. In other words, the conventions of slavery were not universal, were disordered and could only be supported when mankind introduced laws which went against the very nature of man himself. It can be said with confidence that slavery in the Americas was an aberation, because most colonies had charters which stated that no laws enacted in the colonies could be at odds with English law. The aberation was promulgated by positive law which does not have reason, or morality, as its base, but which panders to expedience and vested interests.

Today, we see the homosexual lobby and individuals like kenofken seeking to have positive laws enacted which would overturn the standard of morality which is the Natural Law. Homosexual behaviour is clearly not universal, is disordered and against the very normative nature of humanity, yet those with a vested interest and their own conventions are trying to usurp the very reasoning which overturned slavery. They are using the same arguments and tactics as the pro-slavers. Indeed, kenofken in an earlier post described the natural Law as “bunk”. Thus, kenofken is being disengenuous and totally contradictory when he uses slavery as an analogy to argue for the introduction of homosexual marriage.

Thank you so much for this information, A lot of which is news to me. I was not surprised when the gay lobby started trying to ride in on the back of slavery & the civil rights movement. Still it really makes me angry that they would compare themselves to people who were bought & sold like cattle, people who weren’t allowed to eat with whites or use the same restrooms.

Thier self-pity gets a little old sometimes.

Thank you for explaning the meaning of positive laws vs. Natural Law theory.

 

[davidv]

Yeah, I read it when Ed posted it before a while back, I missed any “very good points” and still don’t see any in your highlights. Is there an argument living in that article somewhere about why the rights of homosexuals to marry is not a civil rights issue? I mean, no one is saying that it is an issue of race, we just think there is a parallel here and with every other case of historical denial of rights to specific groups on dubious grounds. We note that when people say that homosexual marriage “just ain’t natural,” that that is exactly what was said in the past about women working outside the home and about interracial marriage and lots of other things. (Natural law has got to be the worst tool that anyone has ever come up with for moral discernment given that it was even once used to say how natural it is for some to be slaves and others to be masters.)

Marriage is not a civil right. Marriage is a vocation one is called to, or not, by God. This vocation is to be a sign of God’s presence among us, by uniting husband and wife in mutual love, and by sharing in God’s creative power in participating in the conception and birth of new human life.

 

[Leela]

Marriage is not a civil right. Marriage is a vocation one is called to, or not, by God. This vocation is to be a sign of God’s presence among us, by uniting husband and wife in mutual love, and by sharing in God’s creative power in participating in the conception and birth of new human life.

By that reasoning I supsose that you deny marriage rights to atheists as well?

Is my marriage invalid since my spouse and I do not not believe in God?

 

[davidv]

By that reasoning I supsose that you deny marriage rights to atheists as well?

Really? How so?

Is my marriage invalid since my spouse and I do not not believe in God?

No, why do you ask?

Validity is not really the objection. Its much more basic than that. But it appears that many cannot, or won’t, be bothered with understanding the basics.

 

[Leela]

Obviously they could be mechanical about it. I’m not comparing modern practices to ancient. I’m talking about the elemental principles which exist for particular purposes. So yes, it’s pretty important to include pleasure as an element of reproduction.

I don’t understand your answer. Why is it “pretty important to include pleasure as an element of reproduction?” What does this have to do with “comparing modern practices to ancient”?

 

[LittleSoldier]

Gays are not at risk for arrest or imprisonment yet they still want to redefine what marriage is. The Church has been 100% against adultery and fornication over the last 40 years, but whenever mom or dad or society in general asked, Why are you doing this? All we got was: “Leave us alone! Mind your own business!” And then the media jumped in with endless fornication movies, and then TV, and today, “What’s the Big Deal? It’s just sex.”

Catholics, and the public at large, are waking up to the fact that one in five people are walking around with an STD today. Sex education has failed. Alternative lifestyles have failed. Anarchist living has failed. A return to stability is required.

God bless,
Ed

Waaaaay over-simplified. As usual.

 

[Leela]

Really? How so?

No, why do you ask?

Validity is not really the objection. Its much more basic than that. But it appears that many cannot, or won’t, be bothered with understanding the basics.

To me, the basics of this issue that you are missing is the distinction between the Catholic view of marriage and the secular understanding of marriage in civil law. No one is trying to say that Catholic’s are wrong about what marriage ought to mean to them in a religious context. You can have whatever religious views on marriage that you want to have. but in return, no religious view of marriage can be imposed on society at large through the government. In this way you are protected from having the religious views of Baptists and Mormons and Muslims imposed upon you.

You get to eat pork, dance, and drink wine even though some religions forbid them to their members because there is no nonreligious reason to forbid you to do that. Likewise, there is no secular reason to discriminate against homosexuals in marriage, so it will be allowed by law. You are welcome to believe that such marriages as not valid as Catholic marriages, but they are valid as legal marriages. You are also welcome to try to convince other people to be Catholic. But you don’t get to impose your moral restrictions on others without being able to provide secular reasons for doing so. “God doesn’t like it” and “it is immoral and unnatural” are simply insufficient reasons and completely irrelevent to the law. (Saying it is immoral because it is unnatural is just to say it is immoral because it is immoral. It isn’t a reason since the natural law is just another name for the moral law.)

 

[Seeker2010]

That’s quite a stretch and cannot be reconciled with the fact that SCOTUS never struck down state statues that allow suing for divorce on the grounds of adultery.

But have they upheld it? To my knowledge, they have not take an on point case, though I’m certainly no expert.

However, I’m fairly certain even the most conservative reading of Lawrence would conclude that any CRIMINAL statutes against adultery are, on their face, unconstitutional, therefore you can conclude from that adultery has been held as a civil right.

As for adultery as it applies to divorce, that is a civil matter, and most states are no fault these days anyway.

 

[Seeker2010]

Catholics, and the public at large, are waking up to the fact that one in five people are walking around with an STD today.

That statement is only true because HSV is so common. One reason it’s so common is that the majority of people who have it do not have symptoms and do not know that they have it. Doctors won’t screen for it, even on an STD panel, unless specifically requested, because it is considered nothing more than a nuisance and has no serious health implications.

I myself have HSV-1 (oral herpes) and have since I was a child. I think I got it from my grandmother. It’s no big deal, once every two or three years I get a cold sore, I treat it, and it goes away. Meh.

That said, STD rates have been falling for 20-30 years now. Not because I said so, you can check the stats yourself at the CDC website.

So it seems to me that while our openness vis-a-vis our sexuality has been increasing, simultaneously the negative consequences you associate with that openness have been falling, so not only is there not a causal link, the opposite of what you suggest is in fact happening.

 

[edwest2]

Thanks for mentioning the CDC:

cdc.gov/std/stats08/trends.htm

If anything has been falling over the last 20-30 years is the willingness of a lot of people in the West to have babies, not counting those aborted. If you look at the age group most likely to get STDs, there are fewer of those around compared to the Baby Boom generation.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Seeker2010]

Really? How so?

I believe Leela’s point is that you declared several posts up that marriage was a vocation that one is called to, or not, by God.

Clearly, as she does not believe in God, that statement has implications about her marriage. I’m on shaky ground, too, because though I believe in (a) God, I don’t believe in your version, so I don’t know if my marriage is in trouble or not.

 

[SwizzleStick]

Yeah, I read it when Ed posted it before a while back, I missed any “very good points” and still don’t see any in your highlights. Is there an argument living in that article somewhere about why the rights of homosexuals to marry is not a civil rights issue? I mean, no one is saying that it is an issue of race, we just think there is a parallel here and with every other case of historical denial of rights to specific groups on dubious grounds. We note that when people say that homosexual marriage “just ain’t natural,” that that is exactly what was said in the past about women working outside the home and about interracial marriage and lots of other things. (Natural law has got to be the worst tool that anyone has ever come up with for moral discernment given that it was even once used to say how natural it is for some to be slaves and others to be masters.)

Well, maybe you’ll find good points from the excerpts below from a column by Thomas Sowell. But, I doubt it.

"Thomas Sowell
Gay “marriage”

"…The “equal protection of the laws” provided by the Constitution of the United States applies to people, not actions. Laws exist precisely in order to discriminate between different kinds of actions.

When the law permits automobiles to drive on highways but forbids bicycles from doing the same, that is not discrimination against people. A cyclist who gets off his bicycle and gets into a car can drive on the highway just like anyone else.

In a free society, vast numbers of things are neither forbidden nor facilitated. They are considered to be none of the law’s business.

Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that the law had no business interfering with relations between consenting adults. Now they want the law to put a seal of approval on their behavior. But no one is entitled to anyone else’s approval.

Why is marriage considered to be any of the law’s business in the first place? Because the state asserts an interest in the outcomes of certain unions, separate from and independent of the interests of the parties themselves.

In the absence of the institution of marriage, the individuals could arrange their relationship whatever way they wanted to, making it temporary or permanent, and sharing their worldly belongings in whatever way they chose.

Marriage means that the government steps in, limiting or even prescribing various aspects of their relations with each other – and still more their relationship with whatever children may result from their union.

In other words, marriage imposes legal restrictions, taking away rights that individuals might otherwise have. Yet “gay marriage” advocates depict marriage as an expansion of rights to which they are entitled.

They argue against a “ban on gay marriage” but marriage has for centuries meant a union of a man and a woman. There is no gay marriage to ban.

Analogies with bans against interracial marriage are bogus. Race is not part of the definition of marriage. A ban on interracial marriage is a ban on the same actions otherwise permitted because of the race of the particular people involved. It is a discrimination against people, not actions.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the life of the law has not been logic but experience. Vast numbers of laws have accumulated and evolved over the centuries, based on experience with male-female unions.

There is no reason why all those laws should be transferred willy-nilly to a different union, one with no inherent tendency to produce children nor the inherent asymmetries of relationships between people of different sexes. "…

Entire column: townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2006/08/15/gay_marriage

 

[SwizzleStick]

"The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage

The debate over whether the state ought to recognize gay marriages has thus far focused on the issue as one of civil rights. Such a treatment is erroneous because state recognition of marriage is not a universal right. States regulate marriage in many ways besides denying men the right to marry men, and women the right to marry women. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one’s spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other venereal diseases. Homosexuals, therefore, are not the only people to be denied the right to marry the person of their choosing.
…

…The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis can it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction than love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos. "…

Entire column: tech.mit.edu/V124/N5/kolasinski.5c.html

 

[Seeker2010]

Thanks for mentioning the CDC:

cdc.gov/std/stats08/trends.htm

No problem. Here, let me make this easy for you.

http://nykevin.smugmug.com/Other/Random/Syph-Rates/1024696988_kCpKo-M.jpg

This is a chart that I just created using data from the site you linked showing historical syphilis infection rates in the US. As you can see, we are currently sitting at the lowest level that we have data for. This goes back to 1941, whether or not data exists before then I know not. But your ‘good old days’ of the 40’s and 50’s, where everyone was chaste and nobody got diseases because they weren’t immoral like today’s ‘hyper-sexualized society’ is a farce. THESE are the good old days, when it comes to STD transmission. Not to mention that back in the day, many diseases that today are curable with a couple of pills would kill you.

Yes, you can point to chlamydia and say it’s on the increase, and that’s factually accurate, but we just started tracking it in 1984, so my guess is it’s not that the disease itself is increasing, but that our tracking and treating of it is catching up with reality. The fact that it causes only minor symptoms and is completely curable by a dose of antibiotics tells me that it’s no big deal.

I don’t feel like doing the work to make another chart, but I can tell you that the stats for gonorrhea are similar, and 2008 the rate per 100,000 people was 111.6, the lowest ever recorded. Compare that to rates near 300 in the 40’s and near 500 in the 70’s and you’ll see your ‘good old days’ argument gets obliterated.