Secular argument against gay marriage

[inocente]

Your point here has nothing to do with the argument. You were arguing that marriage was only recently recognized by any state with legal sanctions in order to claim that, since it was only recently invented by the state, the state has an assumed right to alter the conditions surrounding it.

My counterpoint was to show that marriage as a relationship was recognized by governing bodies throughout human history because, as a biological and social reality the state was impacted by how and why biologically fecund couples entered the relationship. The “state” has always acknowledged that the institution of marriage impacted the interests of the state and therefore controlled marriage as a social reality in order to make it conducive to the interests of the state. Whether women were treated as property or slaves is neither here nor there as far as the point being made.

Never has any human government made a whiff of a motion to legitimize homosexual relationships because these have always been recognized as being moribund or detrimental in terms of state interests. It is only twisted liberal politics that has created positive state “interests” in the matter.

Your slippery logic is back at work attempting to denigrate a point by associating it with perceived negative qualities such as slavery or chattel ownership.

I said " I don’t think there is a traditional concept of civil marriage".

You tried to prove me wrong with an example from history, but on inspection your example was of a marriage in which the wife was the property of the husband, which is a very different concept of marriage. Thus your example worked in my favor - there doesn’t seem to be a traditional concept of civil marriage.

That’s not slippery logic, that’s just rational argument.

Your logic is not only fuzzy, but downright slippery. We ought to coin a new term for your brand of argumentation. Let’s call it EEL logic. I have never seen anyone use EEL logic so masterfully; your slippery and evasive points are so difficult to pin down in terms of actual substance that you have even fooled yourself into thinking you are stating something meaningful.

If you’re not very good at rational argument, you won’t improve by making personal attacks.

More and more countries are legalizing gay marriage, and I’m just using the arguments which convince more and more people that it’s the right thing to do.

 

[inocente]

That’s not love, that’s moralizing, that’s holier than thou. Why should an atheist lesbian pay any attention to what you’re saying? You are both citizens, both equal in the eyes of the law so how come you get to be better than her, how come you get to decide and she has to submit to you?
markeverett49;10690708:

This is backwards. The moral injunction against homosexual acts does NOT-----and no one ever thought it did----ask that the person who hears it submit to the person who says it.

Being equal in the eyes of the law does not entail that everyone’s moral judgments are of equal value. (Since they vary, they can’t be.)

But you do provide an opening for a good point to be made by bullies on your side: the proper response to claims of “hate” and “bigotry” by proponents of same-sex marriage (-hurled at anyone who disagrees) is, “Says you, and frankly, I have better sources for moral truth.”

Your last sentence makes my point for me - you seem to think you are better than her due to your “better sources for moral truth”. Are those sources secret then, only available to you and not to her?

I hope you’re not thinking you have God on your side, that’s not a good argument and anyway, thankfully it’s not secular.

 

[inocente]

The word matrimony comes from maternal. Marriage is all about the kids and family.

It’s interesting to see your interlockers envelop themselves within the premise of this thread. We are all formed in a Christian society, and we fail to recognize that all morality is based on fundamentally Judeo-Christian ethics. Think of the 10 commandments.

FOR EXAMPLE: Go to a prison and try to explain to a thief why stealing is wrong. The discussion will be useless unless you begin with forgiveness and salvation (i.e. devine revelation or/and providence). note: Kant’s categorical imperative lacks motivation and therefore lacks creedence at the individual level.

We have the same difficulty in explaining why homosexuality is a sin.

When you know Jesus, you will be formed more into the body of Christ and you will understand. Jesus is Lord.

What is the Gospel? It’s not about the right answers, it’s about asking the right questions.

REMEMBER: Avoid the father of lies.

Bible-based arguments fail unless you’re proposing compliance with what is actually commanded: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads (Lev 20:13).

I think this thread has proved there are no great secular arguments against gay marriage, as all the opponents keep having to go back to religious arguments.

 

[markeverett49]

You’re evading bro. The lesbian atheist doesn’t share your morals, she doesn’t agree she is doing anything depraved, she doesn’t agree she has anything to hate. So why do you think you can tell her what to do? We live in a democracy, you and she are equal, so how come you get to be the dictator, how come you get to dominate her, why should she or anyone else submit to you?

The lesbian atheist is like the writer who doesn’t know how to tell a story and so keeps starting and abandoning ****** ideas and publishing nothing.

Your argument seems to be that because people hold different moral values, NO moral view may can inform the law because that would amount to “dictatorship” over those with different views. But all laws presume that Something Is Wrong (-why pass a law against texting while driving unless you think there’s something wrong with it?; further, why OPPOSE such a law unless you think there is something wrong with it?). On your view, nothing is or can be really wrong. There are just different views about what is wrong.

Thus it is not really wrong to base a law on religious belief. O sure, secularists will claim this is unfair and wrong, but hey, that’s just THEIR view and they have no more right to “dictate” law than religious people. (<<<<This is seldom noticed but secularists tend to assume that BECAUSE they are secular, when they impose their will, through law, on believers that this is a good thing although they insist that if believers imposed their will, through law, on secularists that this would be a horrorshow. This is what most kids recognize as trying to have it both ways; many adults still try to play this rigged game, but clear-eyed people won’t fall for the con.)

 

[markeverett49]

I think this thread has proved there are no great secular arguments against gay marriage, as all the opponents keep having to go back to religious arguments.

No, what this this thread has proved is that you ignore all secular arguments (or fallaciously dismiss them as No True Scotsman) and then go back to saying there are only religious arguments and that those cannot be any good.

Question: why CAN’T a religious argument be a good one? Yes, some people are not believers but that is their problem, not the problem with a religious argument. I understand the notion that a secularist may not ACCEPT a religious argument but this does not mean anything is wrong with the argument.

But back to the main point: you have never addressed this secular argument, which I have posted at least three times now:

youtube.com/watch?v=8cQCi4ehXkg

 

[Acrossthedesert]

Bible-based arguments fail unless you’re proposing compliance with what is actually commanded: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads (Lev 20:13).

I think this thread has proved there are no great secular arguments against gay marriage, as all the opponents keep having to go back to religious arguments.

Mr Inocent, the bible is a collection of scripture. It is not a legal book, though the scripture contains the law. Scripture is not a history book, though scripture has historical elements, Scripture is not a science book, though scripture has reason and logic.

You sound like an atheist rather than a Baptist. ** Jesus is a person**. You seem to know HIS story (the bible), but not know Him. Tu sabes de Jesus pero no LE conceces. Jesus is a person, pray more and maybe you will “concocer” Jesus Christ.

P.S. this thread proves nothing more than that “We wish to see Jesus”. Do you have a secular argument for the existence of love? God is love

My dear brother in Christ,** the truth is a person, Jesus Christ.** How can you have any logical discussion without the truth? The premise of this thread is where lies the problem.

 

[tonyrey]

Nope, no change to civil marriage is being asked for, none whatsoever, it is just being extended to some new folk.

“no change”! The absurdity of that remark is self-evident!

Your repeated argument for male and female parents is utopian, it’s unconvincing in the real world where we’re all aware of manysingle-parent families.

Your logic is defective. Single-parent families do not exist by choice. Their existence is due to the breakdown of their marriage. You are encouraging the establishment of homosexual “families” which deprive children of a father or mother deliberately - for which there is no possible excuse.

In any event the argument may not even apply. For instance, for many years in Spain (and for all I know currently in the UK) the law has allowed single people to adopt. Thus before gay marriage a gay couple would adopt in one of their names, but if that person died the other had no parental rights. Thus gay marriage didn’t open a door to adoption, it just provided for those rights by allowing adoption in joint-names.

The existence of a law does not imply that it is for the benefit of the children.

The simple fact that until recently the vast majority of atheists and agnostics have not advocated the destruction of the traditional family unit in order to accommodate homosexuals is powerful evidence that marriage has been regarded as a rational institution based on* a normal ***

human relationship which corresponds to the paternal and maternal instincts and promotes the physical, psychological and social development of children.Not one of your best arguments, as we can see by making a simple substitution. The simple fact that for many a long year many people saw nothing wrong in discriminating against those with a different color skin is NOT powerful evidence that the status quo was based on normal human relationships.

Your substitution is invalid because discrimination on the ground of colour** is **discrimination. The preservation of traditional marriage is based on the rational understanding of their biological, psychological and social roles as the father and mother who are united to their children and to each other as a unique and irreplaceable community. Any deviation from that norm is unjustified.

Taken to its logically absurd conclusion your argument implies that everyone should have equal rights in every respect regardless of the effect on society - and on children in particular. Polyamorists, polygamists, bisexuals and perverts should all be allowed to wreak havoc and accelerate the vortex of misery in permissive societies. When marriage to be a sacred institution and caters for politically expedient policies it ceases to have any moral significance whatsoever. The effect of extending marriage to every form of sexual taste and inclination is to distort it into a meaningless human institution geared to adult interests regardless of the harm it does to children. Perhaps if you were a child faced with that prospect you might modify your views - although I doubt it because you have completely ignored the following facts:

To extend heterosexual marriage to a homosexual relationship is a radical change no matter what euphemism you care to use. You are glossing over the fundamental physical and psychological differences between the two sexes, ignoring the importance of the complementarity of the male and female personalities in raising a family and seeking to destroy the basis of normal family life in a misguided attempt to compensate homosexuals for the injustice they have endured in the past and demonstrate that they have exactly the same rights as heterosexuals in every respect. Do you really think that the imitation of a heterosexual custom which is becoming increasingly rare is going to have a profound influence on the status of homosexuals in society?

What is your primary reason for advocating gay marriage?

 

[Acrossthedesert]

Bible-based arguments fail unless you’re proposing compliance with what is actually commanded: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads (Lev 20:13).

I think this thread has proved there are no great secular arguments against gay marriage, as all the opponents keep having to go back to religious arguments.

Mr Inocent, the bible is a collection of scripture. It is not a legal book, though the scripture contains the law. Scripture is not a history book, though scripture has historical elements, Scripture is not a science book, though scripture has reason and logic.

You sound like an atheist rather than a Baptist. Jesus is a person. You seem to know HIS story (the bible), but not know Him. Tu sabes de Jesus pero no LE conoces. Jesus is a person, pray more and maybe you will “conocer” Jesus Christ.

P.S. this thread proves nothing more than that “We wish to see Jesus”. Do you have a secular argument for the existence of love? God is love

My dear brother in Christ, the truth is a person, Jesus Christ. How can you have any logical discussion without the truth? The premise of this thread is where lies the problem.

Conoces Jesus.
(spelling correction)

 

[josh987654321]

You’re evading bro.

I wasn’t talking in respect to the law, I was talking in respect to the Immoral sexual acts of homosexuality. Why can you not see that?

The lesbian atheist doesn’t share your morals, she doesn’t agree she is doing anything depraved, she doesn’t agree she has anything to hate.

True.

So why do you think you can tell her what to do? We live in a democracy, you and she are equal, so how come you get to be the dictator, how come you get to dominate her, why should she or anyone else submit to you?

This is where you are mistaken. I am not telling people what they can and can’t do. I am saying that a homosexual union is not a marriage. I am not trying to make such a union illegal. I am trying to preserve the institution of marriage, because marriage is important.

How come you get to be the dictator? how come you get to dominate us? why should me or anyone else submit to you and your genderless view of marriage? I happen to know that men and women are designed for one another. That only a man and a woman are compatible in such ways. I can’t help it if others are too foolish to see the basic differences between men and women and thier sexual compatibility with one another.

You are the one trying to change marriage to make it genderless. I am merely saying that gender does matter when it comes to such a union. Why does gender no longer matter when it comes to a physical relationship?

The rest of your post makes the same assumption - that if you say something is wrong then everyone else must magically agree with you.

Only men and women are sexually compatible. Two men or two women do not have this compatibility because of the basic anatomy of a man and a woman. They are therefore not a marriage when united in such ways.

I don’t expect you to magically agree with me. I expect you to wake up and see that only a man and a woman are compatible sexually. It is in our physical make up. The obvious differences between men and women. Why do you not understand? How much more black and white can I make this for you?

How could you morally promote sexual relations between two men or two women? This is what you are doing with same sex marriage. It is Immoral.

Even then your argument is discriminatory - you don’t care what “grave depravities” married heterosexuals get up to, yet you assume the worst about homosexuals. Even then it’s irrational - unmarried people can get up to just as many “grave depravities” as married people.

Yes. But giving heterosexual unions marriage does not approve of any “grave depravities.” By giving homosexual unions marriage. It absolutly approves of such “grave depravities.”

No doubt your argument sounds great in your head but it needs work when written down, currently it’s real easy for your opponents to drive several coaches and horses through it.

My argument is very clear and very logical. You are blinded by the term “equality.” All behaviours are not equal. I thought it would be very clear for everyone that when it comes to physical sexual relations that only a man and a woman are compatible in such ways directed towards procreation. So why do you want to view two men or two women with the same physically compatibility? this whole equality for everything is madness.

Please open your eyes Inocente.

Equality between people. Yes.
Equality between behaviours. No.

It’s that simple.

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[tonyrey]

Do you really think that the imitation of a heterosexual custom which is becoming increasingly rare is going to have a profound influence on the status of homosexuals in society?

I should add that a legal homosexual relationship will always be considered different from a legal heterosexual relationship no matter whether you call it “marriage” or anything else. To attach so much importance to a name for two fundamentally diverse unions is clearly illogical - especially when the custom has already been devalued by many people in our society.

 

[josh987654321]

“no change”! The absurdity of that remark is self-evident!
Your logic is defective. Single-parent families do not exist by choice. Their existence is due to the breakdown of their marriage. You are encouraging the establishment of homosexual “families” which deprive children of a father or mother deliberately - for which there is no possible excuse.

The existence of a law does not imply that it is for the benefit of the children.
Your substitution is invalid because discrimination on the ground of colour** is **discrimination. The preservation of traditional marriage is based on the rational understanding of their biological, psychological and social roles as the father and mother who are united to their children and to each other as a unique and irreplaceable community. Any deviation from that norm is unjustified.

Taken to its logically absurd conclusion your argument implies that everyone should have equal rights in every respect regardless of the effect on society - and on children in particular. Polyamorists, polygamists, bisexuals and perverts should all be allowed to wreak havoc and accelerate the vortex of misery in permissive societies. When marriage to be a sacred institution and caters for politically expedient policies it ceases to have any moral significance whatsoever. The effect of extending marriage to every form of sexual taste and inclination is to distort it into a meaningless human institution geared to adult interests regardless of the harm it does to children. Perhaps if you were a child faced with that prospect you might modify your views - although I doubt it because you have completely ignored the following facts:

To extend heterosexual marriage to a homosexual relationship is a radical change no matter what euphemism you care to use. You are glossing over the fundamental physical and psychological differences between the two sexes, ignoring the importance of the complementarity of the male and female personalities in raising a family and seeking to destroy the basis of normal family life in a misguided attempt to compensate homosexuals for the injustice they have endured in the past and demonstrate that they have exactly the same rights as heterosexuals in every respect. Do you really think that the imitation of a heterosexual custom which is becoming increasingly rare is going to have a profound influence on the status of homosexuals in society?

What is your primary reason for advocating gay marriage?

I should add that a legal homosexual relationship will always be considered different from a legal heterosexual relationship no matter whether you call it “marriage” or anything else. To attach so much importance to a name for two fundamentally diverse unions is clearly illogical - especially when the custom has already been devalued by many people in our society.

:clapping:

Great post Tonyrey!

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[Acrossthedesert]

Equality between people. Yes.
Equality between behaviours. No.

It’s that simple.

Thank you for reading
Josh

Josh you have hit upon a major source of contention.
How are we equal?

1. Origin: Christians "We are all equal in dignity."
2. Reformulation: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” -Thomas Jefferson in light of philosopher John Locke concerning “natural rights”.
3. **Corruption: “all men are equal” **-Karl Marx with the removal of God.

This third corrupted version of equality is what still lingers in the West. We removed God once in history which resulted in the death of millions, Let’s go back to the sources and reaffirm the equal dignity of man and their natural rights.

Under this rubric, homosexuals have no standing in claiming they have a natural right to a marriage license. If they wish to claim they are endowed by the Creator with this unalienable right then this thread is not the place for the argument. Again this reinforces my original contention that this thread is based on a false assumption; Namely that you can have a logical argument without the truth. The truth is a person, Jesus Christ.

 

[CandideWest]

In general (anthropologically speaking) you could use Kant’s categorical imperative.

Categorical Imperative:
If you want to test if an action is moral, try adopting the action as a universal rule. If the universal rule does not undermine itself than most likely the action is moral.

For example, say stealing was universally adopted. If everyone steals than nobody would even think of a right to ownership, and therefore the action (stealing) would not truly exist. Stealing depends on most people believing in ownership and a few stealing what the others have accumulated (owned).

Say that gay marriage was universally adopted. If everyone had a gay marriage then no children would be had and the human race would cease to exist. The universality of gay marriage undermines the idea of gay marriage and therefore, gay marriage is not moral.

I’m afraid the categorical imperative argument you gave simply doesn’t work in practice. To see why lets try it out with a different subject. Lets take “being a school teacher” as an example.

We make it a categorical imperative so that everyone everywhere must be school teachers. On the first day children would get some very odd lessons, with teachers outnumbering students enormously, then society would collapse and everyone would die of illness, (due to there being no doctors to man the hospital, dehydration (due to the failure of the now unmanned water system) and starvation (due to nobody growing any food).

So if everyone became a school teacher the human race would cease to exist, therefore becoming a school teacher is not moral.

The fact is that many things which we consider to be a moral behaviour (such as teaching the next generation) fail the categorical imperative test. Thus it is a useless test.

 

[Peter_Plato]

That maketh no sense whatsoever. You get arrested for driving without a license, it’s against the law. You don’t get arrested for having sex without a marriage license, it’s not against the law.

It would save both of us a lot of time if you validated your own arguments before posting.

It remains that no one needs to get married to have sex.

It is only against the law because the law, rightly, recognizes that the safety of citizens would be jeopardized by allowing anyone to drive. It is not the mere fact that it is against the law that makes it wrong. It is the fact that the safety of others hangs in the balance.

The law does not have the final say. Otherwise, things simply become right when a law is passed to sanction them. That is nonsense because then we could not question whether laws themselves are right or not.

The point is that it is possible to drive without a license, just as it is possible to have sex and make babies without a marriage license. So what? The question still remains whether either of them are right or not irrespective of what the law holds. The law itself just might be wrong on the matter if it allows and does not sanction individuals misusing a capacity to the endangerment of others.

Clearly, that millions of unborn individuals are put to death each year by others with the blessing of government laws demonstrates that the law does not protect all equally but favors those with power and voting privileges. In modern western states tyranny by the elite oligarchy (possessors of money. power and status) is the norm, whether you recognize it or not.

These governments are moving towards buttressing their power against anyone who doubts or questions their right to rule as oligarchical elites. Free speech will soon become a thing of the past as we inexorably move towards the consolidation of power in the hands of the wealthy under the guise of security and protection. Be careful which rights you argue in favour of, especially when the rights of some are ignored or trampled upon under a veneer of “liberty.”

Christ did not come to aid and abet the worldly elite. Someday, even you might discover that. To date you seem to have completely either lost sight of or have ignored the depth of the Gospel message.

Regarding SSM, the law has become blind to the rights of children, favouring instead the right of those with loud voices demanding the right to pleasure themselves without censure. Having the blessing of corrupt government laws does not make right what is intrinsically not.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I’m afraid the categorical imperative argument you gave simply doesn’t work in practice. To see why lets try it out with a different subject. Lets take “being a school teacher” as an example.

We make it a categorical imperative so that everyone everywhere must be school teachers. On the first day children would get some very odd lessons, with teachers outnumbering students enormously, then society would collapse and everyone would die of illness, (due to there being no doctors to man the hospital, dehydration (due to the failure of the now unmanned water system) and starvation (due to nobody growing any food).

So if everyone became a school teacher the human race would cease to exist, therefore becoming a school teacher is not moral.

The fact is that many things which we consider to be a moral behaviour (such as teaching the next generation) fail the categorical imperative test. Thus it is a useless test.

Clearly you do not understand what the categorical imperative implies.

Kant’s “test” does not apply in the case of “being a school teacher” because no one would assert being a school teacher is morally obligatory for everyone. Clearly, as you show by using the universalizability paradigm, being a school teacher is not imperative on everyone. It is not morally obligatory for everyone to become a school teacher is, in fact demonstrated by Kant’s “test.” He would agree with you.

The fact that it is not obligatory does not imply that one should not do it, but merely that it is not an obligation for everyone. The test does demonstrate that, actually.

 

[CandideWest]

Clearly you do not understand what the categorical imperative implies.

I deliberately made the same argument and structured it in the same way as Acrossthedesert did. All I’ve really done is shown that the argument she/he presented produces ludicrous results. Thus it is not useful.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I deliberately made the same argument and structured it in the same way as Acrossthedesert did. All I’ve really done is shown that the argument she/he presented produces ludicrous results. Thus it is not useful.

Read my last, and edited, post.

You have twisted his argument.

 

[tonyrey]

:clapping:

Great post Tonyrey!

Thank you for reading
Josh

Thanks, Josh. Your posts are impressive!

 

[CandideWest]

Clearly you do not understand what the categorical imperative implies.

Kant’s “test” does not apply in the case of “being a school teacher” because no one would assert being a school teacher is morally obligatory for everyone. Clearly, as you show by using the universalizability paradigm, being a school teacher is not imperative on everyone. It is not morally obligatory for everyone to become a school teacher is, in fact demonstrated by Kant’s “test.” He would agree with you.

The fact that it is not obligatory does not imply that one should not do it, but merely that it is not an obligation for everyone. The test does demonstrate that, actually.

Sure, and of course exactly the same thing applies to the argument Acrossthedesert gave as well.

 

[Acrossthedesert]

Sure, and of course exactly the same thing applies to the argument Acrossthedesert gave as well.

Do you see the analogy, CandideWest. The lie is this gay marriage idea. Matrimony comes from the word maternal. Marriage is all about kids and family. To adopt marriage as gay is to adopt a marriage without children. Of course this may be the case due to natural circumstances, but to separate the aspects of union and proCreation is to undermine to whole meaning of marriage. As a Catholic we know this"undermining" includes other (sinful) actions such as anal sex, oral sex, birth control, etc. (yes, we have been gayifying our unions for decades)

Humanae Vitae

If you believe in a Creator God, the truth is there to discovered. If you believe in self creation like Niche, you believe life is there to be defined.

As I said earlier, can we can have a logical argument without the truth? The truth is a person, Jesus Christ.