Secular argument against gay marriage

[stewstew03]

??? What you have written here is a complete non-sequitur.

The point is that IF we as a society tried to treat being black as a disorder then this would encourage discrimination.

By the same measure, IF we as a society tried to treat being homosexual as a disorder then this would encourage discrimination.

So the point that Monkey tried to make that getting rid of discrimination entails treating homosexuality as a disorder is clearly incorrect.

It’s also worth noting that it is inappropriate to treat homosexuality as a disorder without evidence that it is one. Evidence which to date does not exist and I suspect never will.

By the same measure, IF we as a society tried to treat zoophilia as a disorder then this would encourage discrimination.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Now come on, you just made that up. According to you every paleface living in southern USA, along with me in Spain, are living where nature didn’t intend. I guess that also means everyone dark skinned from India and Africa living in the UK and Germany are also “disordered” or whatever the expression is.

Dude, you seem to be extemporizing your entire argument on the hoof!

Portofino was lending support to your argument, but you may have missed his point. Think implications rather than arching your back and hissing.

 

[tonyrey]

One way to respond the the infertile couple objection is by clarifying that the argument against same-sex marriage was never made on the basis of fertility in-itself, but rather on the basis of the* type of union* necessary for fertility to be productive.

Also, we must bear in mind the following:

1. Long-term infertility, particularly among couples of child-bearing age, is not a tangible, directly detectable condition. It is measured in terms of a couple’s (not an individual’s) failure to conceive after a certain period of frequent sexual intercourse during which conception was attempted or not prevented. That is also why it is possible to make, and there is made, the distinction between primary infertility (the couple has never achieved pregnancy) and secondary infertility (the couple has achieved pregnancy at least once in the past).** The accepted definition of infertility applies only among those couples who have had sexual intercourse.** To the extent that we are referring tot he standard definition of infertility, the infertility objection made by same-sex marriage supporters is not even relevant to male-female couples – in which at least the female is of child-bearing age – who have not previously had sexual intercourse, and intend to marry.
2. It is important to understand that infertility in a couple does not therefore mean both persons, as individuals, are infertile. It means together they have been unsuccessful at conceiving.
3. Infertility indicates a reproductive disorder; therefore it would not be correct to describe a heterosexual couple in which one or bother persons are infertile, as being *fundamentally *unable to conceive, but only incidentally so. Fundamentals deal with principles, and in principle, a male and female, which they are, can conceive. Just as, in principle, humans beings have five senses, persons who have congenital analgesia, or are blind, or deaf, etc, notwithstanding.
4. Infertility in general is treatable, and on a case-by-case basis at least potentially so.
5. I emphasize again, the argument against same-sex marriage has nothing to do with the fertility of same-sex couple, but rather, the very nature of their union. The two men or two women in a same-sex couple could be the most fertile persons in the world, and still, they would be fundamentally incapable of conceiving, because theirs is not the type of union in which fertility operates within a sexual act towards a procreative outcome. In fact, theirs is the type of sexual union in which fertility is frustrated.

Irrefutable! The human race would rapidly disappear if everyone decided to be gays. After all it seems to be a matter of choice in progressive circles…

 

[tonyrey]

I am not finding this to be the case, in the United States. Whether you think same sex unions do not deserve or merit the same rights and privileges as opposite sex couples is another matter, but it appears to be false that civil unions and marriages have absolutely equivalent rights and privileges in the United States, where the same sex marriage debate is playing itself out the most publicly.

lesbianlife.about.com/cs/wedding/a/unionvmarriage.htm

Then the law should be rectified! A bad law is not a good reason to claim same sex marriage is necessary and deprive marriage of its status as the unique status and value of traditional marriage as the fundamental unit of society in which the father and mother are the normal basis of family life.

Let’s put it this way – same sex couples are not looking to deprive opposite sex couples of any rights or benefits regarding marriage, nor are they saying, “if you want to get married, find a same sex partner, or none at all.” They want to live and let live, not tell you how to live.

They want to live like a heterosexual couple even though they are homosexual? They may not be are not looking to deprive opposite sex couples of any rights or benefits regarding marriage but they are undermining its unique status and value of traditional marriage as the fundamental unit of society in which the father and mother are the normal basis of family life. If they get their way in every country it will cease to have any significance whatsoever judging by the number of people who don’t bother to get married anyway. What is the point of marriage if it is just a legal matter? Does the law have any significance apart from the fact that it is the will of the majority - who are often misguided?

 

[tonyrey]

Exactly so. Opposite sex couples are sexually complementary: they can engage in marital sex. Same sex couples never can. Case closed.

If I were a gay I would be proud to be different and not seek to disguise my identity by imitating a heterosexual custom!

 

[inocente]

Portofino was lending support to your argument, but you may have missed his point. Think implications rather than arching your back and hissing.

Sorry Portofino, I was rushing and mistook the author.

Now Peter, are backs clearly ordered towards arching and mouths to hissing, or am I not allowed to ask?

 

[inocente]

If I were a gay I would be proud to be different and not seek to disguise my identity by imitating a heterosexual custom!

Yikes when did heterosexuals become an ethnic group?

You don’t think breaking down walls might not be better than building new ones?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Sorry Portofino, I was rushing and mistook the author.

Now Peter, are backs clearly ordered towards arching and mouths to hissing, or am I not allowed to ask?

Some are, some aren’t. Why do you feel the need to ask? Is there not a Spanish civil law somewhere that concerns itself with that from which you can form your determination?

Certainly you cannot think that biology is definitive in that regard.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Yikes when did heterosexuals become an ethnic group?

You don’t think breaking down walls might not be better than building new ones?

That, surely, depends on the function of the walls.

People in Holland might not want you breaking down the walls that keep the cold, salty water out of their living rooms.

Do you always take such a narrow view on every issue? All walls are meant to be broken down, then? Just 'cause…

 

[inocente]

Some are, some aren’t. Why do you feel the need to ask? Is there not a Spanish civil law somewhere that concerns itself with that from which you can form your determination?

Certainly you cannot think that biology is definitive in that regard.

You said earlier that gender and sexual behavior are clearly ordered towards an end or purpose, and I wandered if backs and mouths, and the arching and hissing thereof, are also clearly ordered, but I see from your answer that some are, some aren’t.

From which I deduce that the rulebook for deciding what anatomy is clearly ordered towards is arcane and abstruse.

 

[inocente]

That, surely, depends on the function of the walls.

People in Holland might not want you breaking down the walls that keep the cold, salty water out of their living rooms.

Do you always take such a narrow view on every issue? All walls are meant to be broken down, then? Just 'cause…

By breaking down walls I meant integration, the opposite of apartheid, the avoidance of ghettos, Psalm 133.

 

[CopticChristian]

You said earlier that gender and sexual behavior are clearly ordered towards an end or purpose, and I wandered if backs and mouths, and the arching and hissing thereof, are also clearly ordered, but I see from your answer that some are, some aren’t.

From which I deduce that the rulebook for deciding what anatomy is clearly ordered towards is arcane and abstruse.

From which I deduce that the rulebook for deciding what anatomy is clearly ordered towards is arcane and abstruse.

You would not do well in Medical School or the practice of medicine. Every part has a purpose.

The mouth to the anus is the Digestive system. Ain’t nothing but, will never be, cannot be accepted as anything but what it is.

The Reproductive System is just that. The Endocrine System, the Respiratory System, etc…

Organ Transplants are parts replacement for a specific reason. If you want to believe that the beliefs are arcane, abstruse and make no sense…

If someday you need a heart transpalnt…tell them that you believe a penis or a Colon, would be acceptable and let us know how you do.

Parts is parts.

It is old school, arcane to you, abstruse to you, but

da facts are da facts…

 

[Portofino]

You would not do well in Medical School or the practice of medicine. Every part has a purpose.

The mouth to the anus is the Digestive system. Ain’t nothing but, will never be, cannot be accepted as anything but what it is.

The Reproductive System is just that. The Endocrine System, the Respiratory System, etc…

Organ Transplants are parts replacement for a specific reason. If you want to believe that the beliefs are arcane, abstruse and make no sense…

If someday you need a heart transpalnt…tell them that you believe a penis or a Colon, would be acceptable and let us know how you do.

Parts is parts.

It is old school, arcane to you, abstruse to you, but

da facts are da facts…

I see where you’re going with this argument, and it makes sense on the face of it.

Example – the digestive system is ordered towards ingesting through the mouth, expelling through the anus or urethra. There are cases when expelling through the mouth (vomiting) occurs, but this is only an ordered part of the body’s functioning when there is some form of sickness, that the body is trying to protect against.

Of course, there are other examples – if one is sea sick, or simply disgusted by what one is witnessing, one can vomit involuntarily.

So you would probably argue that it is disordered to cause oneself to vomit, as an act of will (unless you know you’ve ingested some toxin). This wasn’t what the digestive system was ordered to do.

Presumably, even spitting out one’s food would be “not what the digestive system was ordered to do”, although I’ve heard cases of individuals who would like to enjoy the taste of a “naughty desert” and want to have the best of both words – chewing up a chocolate cookie, then spitting it out. Others, “bulimics”, would chew it up, swallow it, and then purge themselves of it.

Food is also a good analogy because the body “eats to live, not lives to eat.” We find pleasure in food as a way of compelling us to ingest it, you could say (just as sexual arousal exists to compel us to reproduce).

There is so much “stretching of the boundaries”, though, when it comes to the human relationship to food. That is, there tends to be what one could call a “morbid” focus on maximizing taste, whereby the taste of the food becomes something of an end in itself.

Two examples of really pushing the envelope, regarding ordered eating, would be the ingestion of alcohol (let’s say vodka, not wine, because wine could have a “health justification”) and the ingestion of sugar-laden deserts.

Smoking cigarettes would be an even more extreme example, because a cigarette not only has no nutritional value, but one is compromising one’s respiratory system. Your respiratory system was ordered to breathe in air, not smoke.

Chewing gum is another example, which I believe was brought up already. Some people like to chew hay, just to have something to do. Some children like to suck their thumbs, even though their thumbs don’t belong in their mouth

Speaking of the sense of touch – which brings us closer to sexuality – a massage is a largely gratuitous act. One can, indeed, get a massage simply because it “feels good.”

A kiss is neither ordered towards reproduction, nor towards eating (despite its involving the lips). It is a display of affection, not necessarily ordered towards reproduction (though it can be).

There seems to be a gap that I still think cannot be bridged through reason alone, and that is the gap between what is “outsmarting nature”, and what is immoral. I just don’t know why it should be compelling, to say that non-reproductive sex is morally wrong. It could be compared, in its way, with non-nutrious eating – the ingestion of empty calories, for example.

One could always make health arguments – as one certainly can, vis-a-vis smoking not only being disordered vis-a-vis the respiratory system, but harmful to one’s health. I still don’t see “unhealthy” to be necessarily synonymous with “immoral”, however.

Even there, though, it cannot always be maintained that same sex contact is harmful to one’s health. A kiss certainly isn’t; nor a caress; nor, not to mince words, anything that is done with one’s mouth or tongue.

Anal sex has a harmful component, though the extent of its harm is in the eye of the beholder. Chili peppers are pretty hard on the mouth, and can make one’s stool burn. One is punishing one’s body, in a way, when one is eating extra spicy. You are getting your body used to it only in the sense that you desensitize yourself to it.

Anal sex, I’m sure, can have serious health consequences, if it’s…let’s say…practiced in a certain manner. Then again, alcohol – if ingested in a certain way – could lead to liver failure, or to death through alcohol poisoning. The alcohol itself has no nutritional value I’m aware of, and most individual’s bodies rebels against that first drink, and even that first cup of coffee, just as it does against that first cigarette. The body says, as it were, “I don’t want this; I don’t need this.” And yet many of us partake in it, nonetheless, just for the pleasure of it. The pleasure of it becomes an end in itself, detaching food’s pleasurable function from its nutritive function.

Again, all of this can be potentially unhealthy; I just don’t see how, in and of itself, it is necessarily immoral.

 

[tonyrey]

Yikes when did heterosexuals become an ethnic group?

You don’t think breaking down walls might not be better than building new ones?

In this case the walls are invented to reach a preconceived conclusion. It still implies that one is not be proud to be different and wishes to disguise one’s identity by imitating a heterosexual custom. There is no valid reason for pretending all sexual relationships are identical and are the **natural **basis of family life…

 

[tonyrey]

…The pleasure of it becomes an end in itself, detaching food’s pleasurable function from its nutritive function.

That gives the game away!

Again, all of this can be potentially unhealthy; I just don’t see how, in and of itself, it is necessarily immoral.

It is undoubtedly immoral if it exposes children to the risk of serious illness.

 

[CopticChristian]

I see where you’re going with this argument, and it makes sense on the face of it.

There are cases when expelling through the mouth (vomiting) occurs, but this is only an ordered part of the body’s functioning when there is some form of sickness, that the body is trying to protect against.

Of course, there are other examples – if one is sea sick, or simply disgusted by what one is witnessing, one can vomit involuntarily.

So you would probably argue that it is disordered to cause oneself to vomit, as an act of will (unless you know you’ve ingested some toxin). This wasn’t what the digestive system was ordered to do.

Presumably, even spitting out one’s food would be “not what the digestive system was ordered to do”, although I’ve heard cases of individuals who would like to enjoy the taste of a “naughty desert” and want to have the best of both words – chewing up a chocolate cookie, then spitting it out. Others, “bulimics”, would chew it up, swallow it, and then purge themselves of it.

Food is also a good analogy because the body “eats to live, not lives to eat.” We find pleasure in food as a way of compelling us to ingest it, you could say (just as sexual arousal exists to compel us to reproduce).

There is so much “stretching of the boundaries”, though, when it comes to the human relationship to food. That is, there tends to be what one could call a “morbid” focus on maximizing taste, whereby the taste of the food becomes something of an end in itself.

Two examples of really pushing the envelope, regarding ordered eating, would be the ingestion of alcohol (let’s say vodka, not wine, because wine could have a “health justification”) and the ingestion of sugar-laden deserts.

Smoking cigarettes would be an even more extreme example, because a cigarette not only has no nutritional value, but one is compromising one’s respiratory system. Your respiratory system was ordered to breathe in air, not smoke.

Chewing gum is another example, which I believe was brought up already. Some people like to chew hay, just to have something to do. Some children like to suck their thumbs, even though their thumbs don’t belong in their mouth

Speaking of the sense of touch – which brings us closer to sexuality – a massage is a largely gratuitous act. One can, indeed, get a massage simply because it “feels good.”

A kiss is neither ordered towards reproduction, nor towards eating (despite its involving the lips). It is a display of affection, not necessarily ordered towards reproduction (though it can be).

There seems to be a gap that I still think cannot be bridged through reason alone, and that is the gap between what is “outsmarting nature”, and what is immoral. I just don’t know why it should be compelling, to say that non-reproductive sex is morally wrong. It could be compared, in its way, with non-nutrious eating – the ingestion of empty calories, for example.

One could always make health arguments – as one certainly can, vis-a-vis smoking not only being disordered vis-a-vis the respiratory system, but harmful to one’s health. I still don’t see “unhealthy” to be necessarily synonymous with “immoral”, however.

Even there, though, it cannot always be maintained that same sex contact is harmful to one’s health. A kiss certainly isn’t; nor a caress; nor, not to mince words, anything that is done with one’s mouth or tongue.

Anal sex has a harmful component, though the extent of its harm is in the eye of the beholder. Chili peppers are pretty hard on the mouth, and can make one’s stool burn. One is punishing one’s body, in a way, when one is eating extra spicy. You are getting your body used to it only in the sense that you desensitize yourself to it.

Anal sex, I’m sure, can have serious health consequences, if it’s…let’s say…practiced in a certain manner. Then again, alcohol – if ingested in a certain way – could lead to liver failure, or to death through alcohol poisoning. The alcohol itself has no nutritional value I’m aware of, and most individual’s bodies rebels against that first drink, and even that first cup of coffee, just as it does against that first cigarette. The body says, as it were, “I don’t want this; I don’t need this.” And yet many of us partake in it, nonetheless, just for the pleasure of it. The pleasure of it becomes an end in itself, detaching food’s pleasurable function from its nutritive function.

Again, all of this can be potentially unhealthy; I just don’t see how, in and of itself, it is necessarily immoral.

Example – the digestive system is ordered towards ingesting through the mouth, expelling through the anus or urethra.

Digestive System=mouth to anus

Genitourinary system=Kidney to Urethra and all components thereof.

Food is also a good analogy because the body “eats to live, not lives to eat.” We find pleasure in food as a way of compelling us to ingest it, you could say (just as sexual arousal exists to compel us to reproduce).

You have stumbled on to something that is not well known. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, author of “Eat to Live” believes that we are unfortunately “food addicted” …we have the ability to taste sweet so as to cause us to enjoy and eat fruits that have phytonutrients that are Cancer and disease relieving substances that have been propagated into all manner of sweet eating.

 

[tonyrey]

… Again, all of this can be potentially unhealthy; I just don’t see how, in and of itself, it is necessarily immoral.

That conclusion justifies any perversion!

 

[inocente]

You would not do well in Medical School or the practice of medicine. Every part has a purpose.

The mouth to the anus is the Digestive system. Ain’t nothing but, will never be, cannot be accepted as anything but what it is.

So according to you, as the mouth is part of the digestive system it is disordered to use it for speaking, whistling, kissing, blowing bubbles, etc.

The Reproductive System is just that. The Endocrine System, the Respiratory System, etc…

Which if true would mean it’s disordered to pee since that’s not the purpose of the reproductive system.

It’s kind of basic Anatomy 101 that these systems only exist as teaching aids. There’s nothing in evolution that thought “oh I’ll make an endocrine system today”.

*Organ Transplants are parts replacement for a specific reason. If you want to believe that the beliefs are arcane, abstruse and make no sense…

If someday you need a heart transpalnt…tell them that you believe a penis or a Colon, would be acceptable and let us know how you do.

Parts is parts.

It is old school, arcane to you, abstruse to you, but

da facts are da facts…*

Your attempt at sarcasm is a bit embarrassing given you seem to find it difficult to tell the difference between human beings and teaching aids, between people and machines.

You might also reflect that basing your notion of what is ordered and disordered (i.e. your morals) on systems invented by scientists will get you accused by certain folk of materialism, scientism and relativism.

 

[inocente]

In this case the walls are invented to reach a preconceived conclusion. It still implies that one is not be proud to be different and wishes to disguise one’s identity by imitating a heterosexual custom. There is no valid reason for pretending all sexual relationships are identical and are the **natural **basis of family life…

As you’re the one who invented the wall between heterosexuals and homosexuals, it’s good of you to admit you invented it to reach a preconceived conclusion.

Slaves should be proud to be different and shouldn’t disguise their identity by imitating a free man’s custom.

Incidentally the first use of the word “heterosexual” wasn’t until 1892, so when between then and now did this heterosexual country club come into being?

 

[Ben_Quincy]

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