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Nacho45
Guest
This is a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t support what you attempt to make it support. God is a lot of things. You don’t get to select the parts you like and ignore the rest, especially when it truly does not back your proposal.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
So with one stroke you easily dismiss any argument that contains “shoulds” and “oughts”? I think those arguments deserve a more considered response than that.
This is not logical. The fact that there exist defective and dysfunctional married couples does not disprove the generalization that the ideal home is a mother and a father. Even if you were to cite some statistics that show the percentage of abused children in gay homes is no worse than in straight homes (which you didn’t bother to do), that still would not address the question of what is best for the child. All it would address is what is not the worst for the child. There is nothing wrong with trying to provide the best for the children, even if in so doing, many of them do not get it. But there is something wrong with systematically settling for a lower standard, and that is what normalization of gay child-raising would do.
You can’t dismiss this ideal so easily. It is actually the central point. No one said it was a Utopia. And as for the word “imaginary”, every ideal is imaginary in the sense that it is imagined before it can be strived for. That fact that ideals are not perfectly achieved does not mean we should stop having ideals.
Which brothers and sisters? The gay couples who insist on raising children? Or do you refer to the children themselves?
No one here is claiming personal divine authority. They refer to the divine authority that rests in the Church. And what has their life experiences got to do with it? And why do you think these postings are made blithely?
What “it” are you talking about now? Raising children? Or getting married? Neither of these are totally private acts, so to the extent that they involve the whole community, the whole community has the right to weigh in.
I would not call rules for adopting children “niggling interference”. And when gays ask for public recognition of their special relationship in a manner that mimics marriage, they are going outside of their private lives. That is why the public at large has a right to grant or not to grant this recognition.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
My apologies to vsedriver. The above response was intended for Sochi, but there seems to have been a foul up with the quote nesting. I didn’t realize that until after the editing period had expired,
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DrTaffy
Guest
Why? You didn’t document your original claim that “in no previous civilization has there been a serious or successful effort to institute marriage for homosexuals.”
I’ll answer that one for you, on the likelihood that you are just going to ignore that question: you did not document your assertion because you cannot. Equally, I will document mine because I can, easily.
And yet I am not the the one with any need to document my claim, as I am not building any argument on the assertion that previous civilisations did have same sex marriages. You, who are unable to support your assertion, are trying to build an argument on that apparently baseless assertion.
So, for the USA, a couple of citations:
Alfred L. Kroeber, The Arapaho, 18 Bull. Am. Museum Nat. Hist. 1, 19 (1902)
George Devereux, Institutionalized Homosexuality of the Mohave Indians, 9 Hum.
Biology 498 (1937)
Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian
Culture (1986)
Well, not really. I chose Native (North) American same sex marriages as they are both recent, well documented and obviously relevant to those readers such as yourself who are based in the USA.
For south America:
Pedro de Magdlhaes’ The Histories of Brazil (1576)
For Africa:
Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society 48-49 (1987).
For Siberia:
David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (p. 58) (1988)
Lots more cases and citations in that last one (Greenberg). In short, any serious attempt at researching this will show numerous cases of civilisations which recognised same sex marriage. Yet this claim keeps on popping up here, even from those who have already been shown evidence to the contrary.
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JimG
Guest
Well, “whenever” is kind of indeterminate. In fact, the idea of homosexuality as a specific ‘orientation’ is a rather new social construct, less than 150 years old. Prior societies recognized a variety of sexual acts, not sexual ‘orientations.’ My point was that anatomy and biology determines function, and anatomy is not a matter of religion. Why do you think there are men and women? Societies from the dawn of civilization have usually given legal recognition to marital relationships precisely because the larger society had an interest in the generation and education of future generations of children and citizens. The larger society had no particular interest in non-conjugal relationships.
If one wishes to equate the non-conjugal with the conjugal, the institution of marriage will inevitably suffer decline. It is already in decline.
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Joie_de_Vivre
Guest
Heterosexuals debased marriage to the point where it became about love instead of property and reproduction
That’s because when people didn’t marry for love sexual orientation is irrelevant.
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djames99
Guest
I’m asking because what she learned in these early years would lend to explain in part why she feels fallible human reasoning can trump principles which were handed down through the ages by our Lord through the only Church sanctioned. It would indicate the extent of the damage that has been done. An upbringing in the Catholic faith is that inoculation or barrier against future ill errors.
It is a rare case the Catholic raised child, now adult, becomes firmly indoctrinated into other beliefs. There is always a residue of the pure knowledge and spirit remaining to indicate to the conscience, which forms an opposition to the idea that is attempting to take root,
So we have then individuals that present, either themselves or through caring others, the symptoms of various stages of isolation from the true faith. Some of these find themselves at the door of the true Church with a symptom, whereas it’s the whole that needs a new life. Weighed down with false teaching and in need of disinformation therapy, she will always have a precarious hold on the new lesson learned until she allows the Holy Spirit to inspire her to start anew and make up for those lost years.
But she has you to back on. With prayer and cautious small portions of a new life in the Church, there is still hope and time to wipe the slate and start over.
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JimG
Guest
Well, I don’t believe that love is a new invention. But anatomy is always relevant.
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Joie_de_Vivre
Guest
Love isn’t a new thing, marrying for love is a newish thing.
Heterosexuals made marriage about love then divorced children from it. Since children are no longer a core part of marriage the ability to produce them is no longer necessary for marriage or whatever the hell you want to call the debased institution that exists now.
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JimG
Guest
That pretty much sums it up. However, I disagree that love was lacking in marriage before its current debasement. A decision to love was compatible with and necessary to, the marriage vows of permanence, fidelity, and openness to life.
It is certainly true that deciding to divorce children from marriage was the beginning of the end. It turned children from subjects into objects, and eviscerated the core value of conjugal union. That’s why I say that it was dissent from Humanae Vitae that doomed marriage and ensured gay marriage.
In our current age of sentimentality, everything is about feelings—a dangerous way to order one’s life.
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tominrichmondva
Guest
I chuckle when I hear the homosexualists argue for “equality” or demand the “right” to marry.
It’s crystal clear that what they want is for society to sanction their perversion. The vast majority of homosexual men are not monogamous and could not care less about commitment or love to a single partner for life.
Why should some unknown percentage of the maybe 2-4% of the population that practices this particular perversion be allowed to destroy the definition and meaning of marriage that has perdured for at least 6,000 years in the West?
The answer is: they shouldn’t. they should be told to go back to quietly practicing their unnatural perversion in private, and stop trying to compel the rest of normal society to accept and sanction their bizarre sexual actions.
For the record, homosexuals already possess the right to marry. So do first cousins, brothers, sisters, parents and children. But for a variety of good reasons first cousins can’t marry each other, brothers and sisters cannot marry each other, parents and their children cannot marry.
There is no injustice in any of it. No tiny group of practitioners of a particular sexual vice should be allowed to destroy a fundamental social institution.
It’s crystal clear that what they want is for society to sanction their perversion. The vast majority of homosexual men are not monogamous and could not care less about commitment or love to a single partner for life.
Why should some unknown percentage of the maybe 2-4% of the population that practices this particular perversion be allowed to destroy the definition and meaning of marriage that has perdured for at least 6,000 years in the West?
The answer is: they shouldn’t. they should be told to go back to quietly practicing their unnatural perversion in private, and stop trying to compel the rest of normal society to accept and sanction their bizarre sexual actions.
For the record, homosexuals already possess the right to marry. So do first cousins, brothers, sisters, parents and children. But for a variety of good reasons first cousins can’t marry each other, brothers and sisters cannot marry each other, parents and their children cannot marry.
There is no injustice in any of it. No tiny group of practitioners of a particular sexual vice should be allowed to destroy a fundamental social institution.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
I am also against gay marriage, as you can tell from my other posts. But I think your arguments against gay marriage are particularly bad.
This argument is similar in approach to Sochi’s argument in post #64 where he pointed out that there are married couples who abuse their children. If we want to criticize Sochi for using an argument based on behaviors of a few, then we can’t turn around and do the same thing when it benefits the side we are for. One could also counter your argument by pointing out the large number of heterosexual people that are also not faithful to their marriage. This approach of yours is on very shaky ground.
I want to stop you right there because the percentage of the population that is doing something is of absolutely no consequence in deciding if the thing they are doing is wrong. Don’t forget that there was a time when the Christian community in ancient Rome was only 2-4% of the population. A Roman of that day could have said, “Why should some 2-4% of the population of Rome be allowed to…”
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Prodigal_Son
Guest
The unnatural perversions gay people practice are also practiced by most heterosexuals in today’s society – oral sex, anal sex, and masturbation.
Gay people are not the enemy, nor are they foisting their values upon “us”. The culture at large is the enemy. The powers and principalities of this world are the enemy.
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Joie_de_Vivre
Guest
I’m not saying love was completely absent in marriage, I’m saying they didn’t marry for love, they married for practical reasons such as property and begetting children.
Also, define “love”.
Divorcing children from marriage was an inevitable consequence of having the primary reason for marrying be love. The contraceptive mentality predates the birth of Pope Paul VI let alone Humanae Vitae.
For the record I blame Rousseau for gay marriage, Luther for the inevitable relegalization of infanticide in the West and I blame the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII for the rise of the welfare state in the Anglophone world.
Those people all got the balling rolling for those issues.
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KyrieEleison17
Guest
That just sounds like scepticism to me. Notice that you didn’t follow through with the logical conclusion: Therefore we should be weary of those who speak of what we should or ought do. It is ultimately self-contradictory.
Two problems.
First, the real marriage is not itself the cause of ‘abuse’ or ‘living with drugs and alcohol’ or ‘psychological terror’. The real marriage does not require this necessarily. In fact, the argument is that a real marriage will actually work to mitigate this insofar as that marriage is real and authentic (terrorizing your own flesh and blood being presumably harder than terrorizing a total stranger). Exactly so children brought up in real marriages by their biological parents consistently outperform their counterparts from other situations.
Second, the so-called “gay home” is itself a form of ‘psychological terror’ by exposing children and young people to degradations, perversions and abuses of the human body and human sexuality. In a so-called “gay marriage” - when children are admitted into the home - they are necessarily exposed to sexual error, deviancy and abuse. This is not the case in the home of a real marriage.
More scepticism. Insisting on a fair trial and the presumption of innocence of the accused may have been dismissed at one time as Utopian dreaming against the Machiavellian logic of a time; however, basic human rights - so long as they are real and legitimate ones - have an objective grounding in reason and nature and are not impossibilities. Difficult? Perhaps. But not impossible.
The universal human norm is for children to be born to their parents and raised by them in a more or less stable condition or environment until they are matured and in their turn start their own marriages, homes and families. This is hardly Utopian dreaming and it is by no means impossible.
Demanding that same-sex partnerships be made into a marriage is, in fact, an unobtainable ideal because it is an impossibility. Children being born to their biological parents is the natural norm and being raised by them in the context of a marriage is also a realistic and achievable norm as history proves.
Rank hypocrisy. By advocating for SSM and gay adoption you are prescribing for children how they will be brought up, missing necessarily at least one of their biological parents and being raised by at least one person who is a stranger. The science and evidence on this count demonstrates that this is not what is ideal for children: being raised by their biological parents is.
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JimG
Guest
Perhaps this is one reason for the increasing acceptance of gay marriage.
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KyrieEleison17
Guest
And pornography is the propaganda that encourages deviant, unnatural, unhealthy and unwholesome expressions of human sexuality.
Pornography is a vicious war firstly being waged against women. It degrades women and is a form of legalized violence against them and prostitution. Countries not yet sacked by the propaganda of selfishness and hedonism would do well to stifle access to pornography in their countries and attach the appropriate moral stigma against it. This would help serve as a bulwark against the population imbibing absurd beliefs about human sexuality and help them to come to their senses that we must be reasonable even about sexuality, rather than converting sexuality into some theme park of bizarre and eccentric novelties and amusements.
Another helpful measure would be to point to the fact that anal sex is especially damaging, unnatural and unhealthy activity and to stigmatize engaging in it as a matter of personal health. This at least would encourage citizens to think rationally and realistically about human sexuality and sexual practices and activity.
Many more perfectly defensible measures could be thought of that would help to restore health and sanity to considerations about human sexuality.
… In the West, we might do well to reverse the tide by beginning to insist that if you are not categorically opposed to the production and dissemination of pornography than you are not an authentic feminist or advocate for women’s rights, equality and dignity; that being pro-pornography is anti-women.
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Kitcat1968
Guest
Something tells me you never spent much time with a family that has same sex parents. I’ve known many children from this type of family, and the only observation I could make was that they were extremely well-adjusted, thoughtful kids/adults. I won’t necessarily disagree with you that having both a mother figure and a father figure ever-present is “ideal”, but I would disagree that it is the only acceptable family. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, you appear to believe that children would be better left in the foster system than with two parents of the same gender. I find that completely and utterly misinformed and incorrect.
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