Gay marriage : who cares?

[kenofken]

MONDAY, Oct. 4 (HealthDay News) – Americans are engaging in a wide range of sexual activities, including oral sex, anal sex, and partnered masturbation in addition to vaginal sex, according to the largest and latest survey of sexual behavior and sexual health in the United States…

businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/643856.html

That giant shattering sound you hear is the sound of “natural law” being broken every minute of every day all over the United States by heterosexual couples. Millions of them are doing so with the state’s blessing of marriage. Will no one in the natural law/Prop 8 step up and work to outlaw these “perverse” unions from being passed off as marriage?

I won’t bet any money on it, but the crickets I’m hearing in response to this challenge are rather soothing at night:thumbsup:

 

[kenofken]

Friends -

There is no such thing as “same-sex marriage” and the government should not equate attempted same-sex “unions” with actual marriage.

The reason that underlies this is obvious - so obvious it is not often stated:

The male sex organ is not sexually compatible with another male sex organ.

The female sex organ is not sexually compatible with another female sex organ.

The male sex organ is specifically designed to enter the female sex organ in the marriage act, in “sexual intercourse”, which means intercourse “between the sexes” (male - female).

The female sex organ is specifically designed to receive the male sex organ in the marriage act.

Homosexual contact is not sexual intercourse; this is clear from biology.

One may invent ways to make one’s sex organ fit into other orifices, or to receive other objects, or be stimulated by other means than actual sexual intercourse, but that does not make it valid or true to the biological design.

One may find a way to have sexual contact and satisfaction with animals, or inanimate objects, or oneself, but this does not provide grounds for “marriage.”

Marriage by definition excludes all sorts of things: marriage to more than one person, marriage to one’s parent, or sibling, or grandparent, or to a child, or to one’s pet, or to a tree, or to a dead person - likewise, included in the definition of marriage is the exclusion to two people of the same sex.

It is not hate or unloving or closed-minded to point out the inherent illogical nature of trying to say that same-sex unions are the same as marriage between one man and one woman.

Why do sex organs exist?

Primarily they exist to reproduce, to bring children into the world. Secondarily, they exist to fuse a bond between a male and a female, and to create a family bond which forms the loving atmosphere for the raising of the children and also for the general betterment of the individuals.

Same-sex unions do not and cannot produce children; all children come about through heterosexual unions. A woman cannot be a father and a man cannot be a mother.

To try to twist around these obvious facts by insisting that same-sex unions should be considered the equivalent to male/female marriage demonstrates that one is not interested in logic and reason and simply wants to push forward with one’s own agenda.

This is not Catholic teaching alone, nor is it only Christian or even religious thinking -common sense and the natural law lead to the same conclusions.

—todd
catholicsojourner.blogspot.com

“Natural Law” is absurd because it operates from a fantasyland version of what really happens in nature. If we really conformed to what nature “intends,” we would have virtually none of what passes for human virtue. Nature does not help the old and infirm and malformed young to survive. It allows them, encourages them to die to maximize genetic advantage. Beings who follow “natural law” do not use written language or higher mathematics. They don’t read and write in their own genetic code. They don’t perform high end materials science and send probes to other worlds. They don’t extend the life expectancy of their own kind threefold in a few centuries time.

Nor is sexual behavior nearly as black and white as it is in the June and Ward Cleaver fantasy that natural law enthusiasts harbor. Anyone who has studied animals, especially primates, knows that sex is VERY frequently employed for means other than reproduction, and among all combinations of genders. It is used to mediate disputes, to bargain for food and protection, to form alliances. Sometimes for no apparent reason at all other than enjoyment.

The form of “nature” which is so liberally cited against homosexuality exists nowhere in the real world on this planet.

 

[Elizabeth502]

MONDAY, Oct. 4 (HealthDay News) – Americans are engaging in a wide range of sexual activities, including oral sex, anal sex, and partnered masturbation in addition to vaginal sex, according to the largest and latest survey of sexual behavior and sexual health in the United States…

businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/643856.html

That giant shattering sound you hear is the sound of “natural law” being broken every minute of every day all over the United States by heterosexual couples. Millions of them are doing so with the state’s blessing of marriage. Will no one in the natural law/Prop 8 step up and work to outlaw these “perverse” unions from being passed off as marriage?

I won’t bet any money on it, but the crickets I’m hearing in response to this challenge are rather soothing at night:thumbsup:

#1: Must have been a slow business week for the magazine. This is “news?” (Not.)

#2: Today’s Headline: Americans are engaging in a wide range of dishonest activities, including tax cheating, underground industries, black market trafficking, lying to their employers, lying to voters.

(This is just as true as the diversity of sexual activity, the diversity of experimental lifestyles, etc. But wait: The Numbers make it acceptable!)

And none of this has absolutely anything to do with the title Marriage.

 

[CradleCath]

I don’t think we have to be very concerned about offending biology.

No one minds when we use our ingenuity to offend biology by curing diseases for example. Wether homosexual sex is biologically natural or unnatural is no more to the point than whether rape or monogamy is biologically natural or unatural.

What we DO have to be concerned about is offending our Creator. This is not a “Catholic thing”. When we speak of Natural Law, we are not referencing any specific religion. It does not matter whether one is a Hindu, a Catholic or a member of no religion at all. We only need to believe in a CREATOR to realize that homosexual acts are aberrant behaviors. (Of course, atheists have no moral compass…so discussion with them on this subject is almost impossible). However, if you believe in a Creator, the Great White Father, Jahweh or whatever… it matters not at all which religion or cultural heritage you are from! Natural Law & Moral Truth transcends all boundaries we seek to erect.

The reference you make to curing diseases, just called to mind the fact that ALL of our faculties are designed by a Supreme Being (whom I call God) to be used for GOOD. It’s when our minds/our senses/our sexual organs are used for unnatural purposes that we follow men like Adolph Hitler & see people who cannot have a satisfying sexual relationship within their marriage without viewing porn.

Marriage is something that human beings continue to define just as we continue to define what is meant by humanity.

 

[kenofken]

#1: Must have been a slow business week for the magazine. This is “news?” (Not.)

#2: Today’s Headline: Americans are engaging in a wide range of dishonest activities, including tax cheating, underground industries, black market trafficking, lying to their employers, lying to voters.

(This is just as true as the diversity of sexual activity, the diversity of experimental lifestyles, etc. But wait: The Numbers make it acceptable!)

And none of this has absolutely anything to do with the title Marriage.

It should, given that the claim against gay marriage rests very heavily, almost entirely, on the presumption that it should be denied on the basis of “disordered” and “un-natural” sexual behaivior. These behaiviors, which you assert are contrary to natural law, are not at all unique to homosexual men and women, yet you propose punitive legal measures that would fall only on this one tiny class of offenders. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from a moral or policy standpoint.

 

[Seeker2010]

However, if you believe in a Creator, the Great White Father, Jahweh or whatever… it matters not at all which religion or cultural heritage you are from! Natural Law & Moral Truth transcends all boundaries we seek to erect.

You are incorrect.

For I believe in (a) God, just that his nature is very different from the one your religion describes. That said, I think your babbling about how ‘Natural Law’ ‘naturally’ proves homosexuality is evil is codswallop.

It’s when our minds/our senses/our sexual organs are used for unnatural purposes that we follow men like Adolph Hitler & see people who cannot have a satisfying sexual relationship within their marriage without viewing porn.

Now you’re really off the reservation. Using your genitals in a way not approved by the church is the moral equivalent of willingly following Adolph Hitler?!? I take personal offense at that, for while I most certainly do not follow your church’s ridiculously restrictive regulations on sex, I certainly would NEVER voluntarily follow a man of such evil.

if one looks to the Creator’s intentions for the use of the sexual organs in marriage, one would not even begin to intimate that sex between two men will bring out the GOOD in marriage.

Seems to me our genitals are good for more than just reproduction. For I’ve used them thousands of times, had a good time almost every time, and have yet (to my knowledge) created a child.

As a side note, how come the discussion is always about male on male sex? Don’t ya’ll realize that girls have sex with girls, too? Is it that you find that alluring? Cause I sure do.

Look at it this way, Hon…entering an exit, mututal masturbation, etc., etc. just doesn’t make babies.

Sure don’t. But it can be much fun.

BTW. Your comparison of sterile couples who would LOVE to have children, but can’t…with a disordered homosexual relationship is getting old…it’s very insensitive to continue to bring it up.

In other words, you’ve got a valid, logical point, but I can’t really refute it, so please don’t bring it up again.

I would have to dispute your claim that LOTS of people choose not to have children & sterilize themselves. (see above about marriages that the Church calls invalid.}

One is not a stat, it’s a anecdote, but my wife has one son (who is not mine) and wen’t just last weekend to have a new procedure done to block her fallopian tubes, as we desire no additional children. We have sex for sport, not for making babies, and we like it that way.

 

[Seeker2010]

Today’s Headline: Americans are engaging in a wide range of dishonest activities, including tax cheating, underground industries, black market trafficking, lying to their employers, lying to voters.

Are you suggesting those activities are the moral equivalents of married heterosexuals participating in sex acts other than vaginal intercourse?

 

[Elizabeth502]

Are you suggesting those activities are the moral equivalents of married heterosexuals participating in sex acts other than vaginal intercourse?

No. I’m suggesting that these produce less harm than the deliberate denial of opposite gender parents for powerless children, by those on selfish power trips, perverting the English language and established social institutions in order to place all morality on an artificially equal plane.

 

[John21652]

“Natural Law” is absurd because it operates from a fantasyland version of what really happens in nature. If we really conformed to what nature “intends,” we would have virtually none of what passes for human virtue. Nature does not help the old and infirm and malformed young to survive. It allows them, encourages them to die to maximize genetic advantage. Beings who follow “natural law” do not use written language or higher mathematics. They don’t read and write in their own genetic code. They don’t perform high end materials science and send probes to other worlds. They don’t extend the life expectancy of their own kind threefold in a few centuries time.

Nor is sexual behavior nearly as black and white as it is in the June and Ward Cleaver fantasy that natural law enthusiasts harbor. Anyone who has studied animals, especially primates, knows that sex is VERY frequently employed for means other than reproduction, and among all combinations of genders. It is used to mediate disputes, to bargain for food and protection, to form alliances. Sometimes for no apparent reason at all other than enjoyment.

The form of “nature” which is so liberally cited against homosexuality exists nowhere in the real world on this planet.

Honestly, if this post wasn’t so funny, it’d be tragic!

Here we see moral relativism in its extreme form, for kenofken is using the behaviour of apes as a guide to what human sexuality is!! Amongst apes, he tells us, sex is used as a bargaining chip and to form alliances. I have to ask, is the homosexual agends actually to conquor the world aping the apes!! And all this time I thought humanity was on a higher plane than the monkeys.

However, all jokes aside, it is a typical tactic of the moral relativists to use this form of argument and they fail to see that once again they are comparing apples with oranges. In doing so, they are denying the fact that there is any such thing as ‘human nature’. kenofken is making that assumption very obvious in this post. Apes are apes according to their natures and humans are humans according to their natures also. Even Darwin would concede that fact!! Human nature is an observable thing and it is observed by people who practice science!! It is also something the rest of us learn about as we go through life. The rejection of a discernible human nature is arbitrary and a priori.

One of America’s most famous psychologists, a man of science, Leonard Carmichael, a Harvard PhD graduate and a Natural Law follower who could read and write quite brilliantly, despite konefken’s strange assertion to the contrary, wrote the following -

because man has an unchanging and an age-old, genetically determined anatomical, physiological, and psychological make-up, there is reason to believe that at least some of the “values” that he recognized as good or bad have been discovered or have emerged as human individuals have lived together for thousands of years in many societies. Is there any reason to suggest that these values, once identified and tested, may not be thought of as essentially fixed and unchanging?

The philosophy that goes the furtherest toward denying a human nature is utilitarianism. One of its main proponents,Professor Peter Singer, now head of ethics at Princeton, has written extensively on this philosophy and one of the traps his thinking has lead him into is equating human and animal natures. Not only does he philosophically allow for homosexual activity, but his logic now allows for sex between humans and animals. Provided the animals aren’t hurt, of course!! Singer’s denial of Natural Law and a distinctive human nature has lead him to an extreme position which is bringing him much derision. kenofken has pointed out for us the utilitarian aspects of sex amongst the apes. Wow!

As for the last part of his post, kenofken is denying the advances made in science and mathematics made by those humans freely exercising their true and distinctive human natures. Rather a strange attitude, particularly when one consider that the health and safety of those who practice their disordered homosexual activity is so reliant upon the scientific and medical discoveries made by these same people whom kenofken derides and denies.

 

[Abu]

Leela
We human beings are responsible for who we are and what we make of ousselves in part through the social institutions we create such as marriage. If marriage is about a particular use of sex organs, then many marriages between men and women who are sterile or just never choose to have sexual relations would be invalidated….homosexuals can and do bear and raise children. Natural law is religious thinking. From my perspective, to say that something violates natural law means nothing more than that your religion forbids it.
Kenofken
“Natural Law” is absurd because it operates from a fantasyland version of what really happens in nature.

Having bombed on slavery Kenoflen is now unable to see what even the pagans saw: that the natural moral law is implanted in human beings by God.

There is ample evidence of the fact of the natural moral law, and the fact that pagans, Ancient Egyptians, Roman philosopher Cicero (died 43 B.C.), Roman jurists, Sodom and Gomorrah, attest to it, and to the fact that it must be followed or the consequences must be paid, plus the simple steps that show the immorality of sodomy, the disorder of the homosexual, and the success of reparative therapy programs that enable many so afflicted to lead a normal life.

Roman philosopher Cicero (died 43 B.C.) wrote in De Republica, 3.22:
“True law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is of universal application, unchanging, everlasting. We cannot be freed from it by Senate or people. This law is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens, but is eternal and immutable, valid for all nations and for all times. God is the Author of it, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient to it is abandoning his true self and denying his own nature.”

So the “religious thinking” errors of Leela and the “fantasyland errors” of Kenofken show the depths of absurdity, to the extent that Leela supports the unnatural and destructive rearing of children by homosexuals! She can’t even understand that the balanced formation of children is part of what real marriage is about.

Such fantasies are all part of the problem so a homosexual can’t say why it is they are attracted to their own gender and not the opposite. It just is.
“….it is like another world, where different values, politics and aspirations operate. There, ideas of normal life, with its ordinary pleasures and trials, are shunned in favour of the cult of sex. There where there is no chance of sex fulfilling it’s natural purpose of propagating the human race, it becomes an end in itself.” [Ben Manser, *My Life Is My Own, London Sunday Telegraph. Quoted in The Truth About Homosexuality, Fr John A Harvey O.S.F.S., Ignatius, 1996, p 154]. Such evidence of homomania is characteristic of those actively pursuing the disorder.

 

[John21652]

Is there a particular law of logic that you think gay marriage violates?

Oh, too funny! I can’t pass this one up.

Read this Article, then look at this picture. (Caution - may offend!)

Natural law is religious thinking. From my perspective, to say that something violates natural law means nothing more than that your religion forbids it. It is to project your worldview upon the state of nature and then say that nature demands that we all conform to your worldview.

Oh so wrong. Cradlecath has pointed this out to you. However, you don’t sem to be able to comprehend the fact that Natural Law is an objectively observable and rationally discernible set of tangible laws, which are universal. It is adopted by the Catholic Church because, firstly, it is observable and verifiable and second, because the Church beleives that the first order of these observable Natural Laws is their coming into existence by an intelligent designer called ‘God’. However, if you still are not convinced, then perhaps go and study the works of the Stoics. Last I looked, there was no Catholic Church in existence back then.

Nature does not demand that you conform to any world view at all. Human rationality arrives at a Natural Law morality which clearly shows that the disordering of human behaviour has consequences. Sometimes dire comsequences.

I don’t see human beings as having any duty to conform to what is natural. No description of the way the world is now can tell us how the world ought to be in the future. Our duty is to transcend our past and our biological natures and to make ourselves into something better than ever were before.

Why are there distinctions between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ do you think? Unnatural is, by definition, illogical. Human beings have to be, well, human beings. They must, by their very natures, act as natural human beings or else they can’t function. Natural means by nature, or according to nature. Defy it at your own risk. As for ‘transcending our biological natures’, what do you have in mind? Replacing our body parts with robotics maybe? I for one like my own skin thank you very much. It helps keep me in touch with the natural world, you know, as in ‘sensory perception’. In terms of this thread, do mean one man shoving his penis up another man’s rectum and calling it love? Sheesh, now that is unnatural.

 

[kenofken]

Honestly, if this post wasn’t so funny, it’d be tragic!

Here we see moral relativism in its extreme form, for kenofken is using the behaviour of apes as a guide to what human sexuality is!! Amongst apes, he tells us, sex is used as a bargaining chip and to form alliances. I have to ask, is the homosexual agends actually to conquor the world aping the apes!! And all this time I thought humanity was on a higher plane than the monkeys.

However, all jokes aside, it is a typical tactic of the moral relativists to use this form of argument and they fail to see that once again they are comparing apples with oranges. In doing so, they are denying the fact that there is any such thing as ‘human nature’. kenofken is making that assumption very obvious in this post. Apes are apes according to their natures and humans are humans according to their natures also. Even Darwin would concede that fact!! Human nature is an observable thing and it is observed by people who practice science!! It is also something the rest of us learn about as we go through life. The rejection of a discernible human nature is arbitrary and a priori.

One of America’s most famous psychologists, a man of science, Leonard Carmichael, a Harvard PhD graduate and a Natural Law follower who could read and write quite brilliantly, despite konefken’s strange assertion to the contrary, wrote the following -

The philosophy that goes the furtherest toward denying a human nature is utilitarianism. One of its main proponents,Professor Peter Singer, now head of ethics at Princeton, has written extensively on this philosophy and one of the traps his thinking has lead him into is equating human and animal natures. Not only does he philosophically allow for homosexual activity, but his logic now allows for sex between humans and animals. Provided the animals aren’t hurt, of course!! Singer’s denial of Natural Law and a distinctive human nature has lead him to an extreme position which is bringing him much derision. kenofken has pointed out for us the utilitarian aspects of sex amongst the apes. Wow!

As for the last part of his post, kenofken is denying the advances made in science and mathematics made by those humans freely exercising their true and distinctive human natures. Rather a strange attitude, particularly when one consider that the health and safety of those who practice their disordered homosexual activity is so reliant upon the scientific and medical discoveries made by these same people whom kenofken derides and denies.

The fact that Carmichael asserts that human beings have some fixed, unchanging “make-up” indicates he should not be taken too seriously as a scientist. It denies the reality of evolution and the evidence of anthropology and molecular biology. It sounds a lot to me like the old creationist canard about each species being a fixed “kind” which was handmade and set down in final form, in six days! The fact that we happened to come up with some traits that are qualitatively different from other animals (tool use, language), does not prove that we are “on another plane” of existence or somehow exempt from our animal natures.

The last part of his assertion is nothing more sophisticated than cultural chauvanism. Having stated that man is a fixed and unchanging “kind,” he basically says that all humans must be hardwired, deep down, to be Judeo-Christians (and maybe by extension, all aspire to be Western and Anglo-Saxon).

For better or worse, this country was founded in large part on utilitarian philosophy. It is also employed by the anti-gay marriage crowd when convenient. They propose to selectively enforce natural law via civil law in some cases but not others, based on no better reason than political expedience.

 

[Abu]

Thanks, John21652 for revealing the error of Utilitarianism in Peter Singer of Princeton: the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its utility in providing happiness or pleasure as summed among all sentient beings. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome.
Jeremy Bentham and John Mill were hedonists; i.e., they analyzed happiness as a balance of pleasure over pain and believed that these feelings alone are of intrinsic value and disvalue.
Today utilitarians often describe benefits and harms in terms of the satisfaction of personal preferences.

Singer supports bestiality as long as it doesn’t harm the animal! But the late great Fr Stephen Torraco of EWTN saw this development very clearly, as the acceptance of abortion was used to justify contraception which allows “the moral justification of homosexual activity, genital activity with anyone or anything, in vitro fertilization, and cloning.” This is the natural result of denying the natural moral law which even the pagans could identify.

“…homosexuality is a disturbance, comparable to – although not identical with – a physical illness. Strictly speaking there is no “cancerous person,” “paralytic person,” “pedophile person,” or “transsexual person.” There is, rather, a “person with cancer,” or a “person with a homosexual problem.” In contrast, it is correct to speak of the “heterosexual person,” because every human person is, as a man or a woman, designed for the sexual encounter with the opposite sex – irrespective of the existence of a disturbance.”
*Dubious Psychology *by Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, a clinical psychologist with more than 30 years of practice in therapy with homosexuals. Catholic World Report, November 1997].

 

[CradleCath]

MONDAY, Oct. 4 (HealthDay News) – Americans are engaging in a wide range of sexual activities, including oral sex, anal sex, and partnered masturbation in addition to vaginal sex, according to the largest and latest survey of sexual behavior and sexual health in the United States…

This reminds me of my teenage years, when I used to say, "But, DAADDD, everyone is going…or…everyone wears tight skirts, etc., etc. It never worked. He always told me that he was awfully glad that he “wasn’t everyone’s father”.

That giant shattering sound you hear is the sound of “natural law” being broken every minute of every day all over the United States by heterosexual couples. Millions of them are doing so with the state’s blessing of marriage. Will no one in the natural law/Prop 8 step up and work to outlaw these “perverse” unions from being passed off as marriage?
I won’t bet any money on it, but the crickets I’m hearing in response to this challenge are rather soothing at night.

 

[Seeker2010]

The fact that Natural Law is being “broken” means what? That it doesn’t exist, that it doesn’t matter?

Exactly right. Thanks for playing.

Out.

 

[kenofken]

This reminds me of my teenage years, when I used to say, "But, DAADDD, everyone is going…or…everyone wears tight skirts, etc., etc. It never worked. He always told me that he was awfully glad that he “wasn’t everyone’s father”.

 

[Abu]

The natural moral law cannot be breached without bad consequences.

lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/sep/10091503.html
**Wednesday September 15, 2010
Perkins: ‘We must Love People Enough’ to Combat Homosexuality
By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 15, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com)** - Conservatives’ principled opposition to same-sex “marriage” is based, not on “homophobia” or any animus against homosexual persons, but on a genuine love for homosexual individuals that propels leaders to teach the truth about homosexuality and the damage it causes, said Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins last week.

“Conservatives, especially Christian conservatives, realize we must love people enough to be willing to speak the truth – and the truth is that we cannot redefine marriage without opening the door to all manner of moral and social evil,” Perkins said in an address to the Faith and Freedom Conference in the nation’s capital Friday.

Perkins continued: “I do not oppose homosexual marriage because I think it would threaten my marriage. I oppose it because it threatens the institution of marriage and, as a result, our nation itself.” While men and women are “biologically, psychologically, and emotionally” complementary, he said, statistics confirm that the homosexual relationship is far from the family-friendly model homosexual lobbyists often paint it to be.

“Data show that the great majority of married homosexuals have multiple sexual partners. One recent study of homosexual couples found that each member of such couples averages eight additional sexual partners per year. Do I really need to say that this is not a good environment for children?” Perkins asked.

The leader also noted other studies that suggest “children raised in homosexual homes are much more likely to be exposed to violence than those raised by a mom and a dad.”

For example, a 1994 study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence examining conflict and violence in lesbian relationships found that 90% of the lesbians surveyed had been recipients of one or more acts of verbal aggression from their intimate partners during the year prior to the study, with 31% reporting one or more incidents of physical abuse. A 2001 survey in the Journal of the Family Research Institute found that gay men were 25 times more likely than married men to be domestically attacked.

 

[Leela]

What we DO have to be concerned about is offending our Creator. This is not a “Catholic thing”.

I don’t think that is even the Catholic view. Catholics don’t subscribe to teh divine command theory of ethics, do they? I thought Plato demolished that view long ago with the Euthyphro Dilemma,

Morality is not a matter of trying not to make God angry. Morality is about our concerns for human well-being.

When we speak of Natural Law, we are not referencing any specific religion. It does not matter whether one is a Hindu, a Catholic or a member of no religion at all. We only need to believe in a CREATOR to realize that homosexual acts are aberrant behaviors.

Really? Some homosexuals believe that their Creator created them as homosexuals and so would not create something that is immoral.

(Of course, atheists have no moral compass…so discussion with them on this subject is almost impossible).

Atheists like pretty much every culture in history have figured out that if they shouldn’t do to others what they wouldn’t want done to them.

No, we’re not defining Marriage here, we’re defining the sexual act that most often works for the GOOD in marriage. If one really looks toward the Natural Law & the Moral Truth, if one looks to the Creator’s intentions for the use of the sexual organs in marriage, one would not even begin to intimate that sex between two men will bring out the GOOD in marriage.

I don’t believe that you or George Bush or anyone else knows God’s intentions.

In the Catholic Church a marriage where the people choose not to have sexual relations, not to consumate their marriage IS invalid. If the priest knows before the ceremony that this is their intent, he won’t marry them. Catholic marriage, also called matrimony, is a "covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.

The question is not whether or not the Catholic church ought to marry gays. The question is whether they ought to be able to legally marry outside the church. I assume that you don’t think that everything that the Catholic Church prohibits or calls a sin ought to be made illegal. Should the government require that couples pledge to have chilfdren in order to marry?

 

[Seeker2010]

Do I really need to say that this is not a good environment for children?" Perkins asked.

That article is codswallop to end all codswallop.

Gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage, and as a result, our entire country? Do tell how? It’s certainly true that if we awoke tomorrow to find that every man, woman, and child in the country had turned gay that we’d have a problem, for future child bearing rates would dive off a cliff. But unless you’re prepared to argue that allowing gay marriage will cause homosexuality itself to SPREAD, that’s irrelevant.

People are already what they are. Gay, bi, or straight. Allowing those who are gay to wed will not change that. If you’re arguing that couples who are consensually non-monogamous should not be allowed to marry based on that condition, you’re also arguing against millions of existing heterosexual marriages, as there are millions of folks who do not practice physical monogamy. I know because I am one of them.

As for whether or not that’s ‘a good environment for kids’, why do you assume that kids are even aware of it?

 

[Leela]

…If you are arguing against gay marriage from natural law, which most of you appear to be, you should be as eager to enact laws that defend the institution from hetero violations of that law as well as homosexual ones. The fact that no one here seems willing to do so and in fact ridicules the very notion tells me that you’re not arguing from a position of sincerity.

Why should anyone else believe in the moral code you cite for an argument when you yourself only show selective concern for it?

kenofken, I don’t know why we have had so much trouble getting this point across. People keep responding as though we arguing that homosexual marriage is moral. We are not. We are accepting for the sake of argument that it is immoral. It violates natural law or whatever. Now the question remains, should homosexual marriage be illegal?

Certainly just because Catholics consider something immoral does not mean that Catholics are required to fight to make it illegal. Right, Catholics?

It is immoral to be selfish, but no one thinks selfishness ought to be made a punishable crime. It is immoral to be disrepectful to one’s parents. It even violates one of the Big Ten to do so. But no one argues that disrespecting one’s parents ought to be made illegal. Catholics believe that use of condoms violate natural law, but no one argues that the production, sale, and use of condoms ought to be made illegal. Couples who have no intention of having children ought not be married in the Church, but no one argues that the *government *ought not recognize marriages of such couples. It is argued that homosexual marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage itself, but it can not be more of a threat to the Catholic notion of marriage than is no-fault divorce. Yet, though the Vatican calls all Catholics to oppose gay marriage, it does not seem to be calling for all Catholics to fight to make divorce illegal.

Clearly, certain issues of morality need to be enacted into law and some do not. These other issues that are *not *thought to be a matter of civil law by Catholics makes us wonder why the morality of gay marriage is thought to be an important legal concern for Catholics. If the issue is not bigotry toward homosexuals and is rather a concern for a theat against the Catholic understanding of marriage, then why is there no call to make adultry a criminal offense, to make artifical methods of birth control such as condoms and voluntary sterilization procedures such as vasectomies illegal, to make divorce illegal? The number of homosexual marriages will pale in comparison to the number of insidences of heterosexual marital infidelity, heterosexual divorce, and heterosexual use of artificial birth control methods. If the concern is really the integrity of the institution of marriage as understood in the Catholic conception of marriage, then these other issues ought to be at least as important to Catholics and we ought to expect Catholics to be as vocal as making laws against such things as they are about making homosexual marriage illegal.

What kenofken and I are wonderring is not why you think gay marriage is immoral. What we wonder is what possible reason you could have for wanting to make gay marriage illegal if you don’t want to make laws about these other moral concerns related to mariage?