Well, on the positive side, it was calm, polite and well presented.
On the negative side (i.e. stop reading if you are not a fan of constructive criticism!) it recycled pretty much every cliche of the gay marriage debate without adding anything.
For example:
The “equality equation”:
can you show me
one gay marriage advocate who denies that same sex couples are made up of two people of the same sex?
Of
course not, so the argument that
anyone is denying that there is
any difference
at all between same sex and opposite sex couples is
at best disingenuous. Equality in law does not mean that they are
identical.
The point is that same sex couples have so much in
common with opposite sex couples who can marry that the differences do not justify the discrimination. They love each other, move in together, look after eachother in sickness and old age, buy houses together, raise children together, one dies before the other and they have to worry about death duties and so on.
In other words, all the laws about married couples apply just as well to same sex as to opposite sex couples. The only substantive difference is that same sex couples cannot
conceive a child together
without external assistance.
So what? The same is true of many opposite sex couples, and noone denies them the right to marry. Nor is marriage either necessary or even
helpful in the process of conception. Indeed, in a population where some people are sterile, marriage will
reduce the rate of conception as some fertile people marry infertile ones. And a gay couple who
do concieve (with external assistance) will
a priori have done more for society than a heterosexual couple who do not. So why only allow the latter to marry? It is
raising children, not conceiving them, which is benefitted by marriage.
The love equation:
Here you deliberately confuse
agape with
eros.
Should two ‘just friends’ be able to marry? Well, newsflash, but
they can - as long as they
happen to be of different sexes. Where is the reason in that?
Again, two people of the same sex who are
in love (
eros) and choose to bear and raise children have more in common with a heterosexual couple who are
in love (
eros) and choose to bear and raise children than do a heterosexual couple who are just friends and do not intend to bear or raise children. Yet the latter are allowed to marry, and the first are not.
Likewise, you claim that a child needs a mum and a dad to be raised properly, ignoring the consensus of the scientific establishment on this point - you quote what you claim to be statistics from Obama supporting this. Now, honestly, are you claiming that Obama’s statistics showed that a child raised by two mums is 20x more likely to go to prison, or were you quoting statistics showing that a child raised by a
single mum is 20x more likely to go to prison and disingenuously pretending that this applied to a couple of lesbian parents?
