Why not gay marriage?

[exnihilo]

I have greater outrage at mathematical errors than moral errors.

I truly hope not. I would consider that evil. I also dont see how that could possible square with some other statements you have made. You said humans have intrinsic worth. I agree. Math equations do not.

I see things in the exact opposite way. If there’s no apparent good reason against trying something, I say we should try it.

Splendid. But I dont consider you a moral authority in the same way you do not consider that Catholic Church an authority. By the way, you made that claim and I asked for a explanation or defense of it. That answer is the heart of any discussion about morality. If you cant explain to me what makes a moral authority then your statements on morality are just your opinion which according to your other statements are frankly irrelevant.

Maybe this is reckless, but I think it’s the best way to find out for sure if something is going to work or not. If there’s a good reason for not doing something, I’ll be against it. But if there’s no apparent good reason for or against doing something, I err on the side of trying it.

What does ‘work’ mean in regards to gay marriage? How would you measure success? I imagine success will be measured like all popular moral outrages. If the world does not end it was a success!

I agree. There are mortal and venial mathematical sins, just as there are mortal and venial moral sins.

No there are not. You are borrowing the concept of morality and introducing it to mathematics. Math work is right or wrong. An error is more severe or less severe depending on how it impacts men. But the severity is strictly a moral issue not a math issue. And the degree of error in the math has no bearing on the moral aspect. In fact one would have to have no knowledge of math to judge it so long as one’s judgement about the correctness of the math was accurate.

Treating error as truth is one of the worst things someone can do, in my mind. To try to force a wrong proof to work, or to cheat the data to make it fit your own ideas; this feels as bad to me as intentional murder.

Again I’m a bit disturbed that a math error would be equivalent to murder. Now if the math work was wrong for the purpose of killing innocent human beings then this would be murder and therefore wrong. Purpose is the heart of morality. One’s errors in math are a moral issue in so far as what the purpose is for the error. If it is for evil it is seriously wrong. If it is the result of negligence it is wrong in that inadequate care was taken. But the math work itself has no moral component.

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

Splendid. But I dont consider you a moral authority in the same way you do not consider that Catholic Church an authority.

I don’t believe that there are moral authorities. Only moral experts. I’m not either.

By the way, you made that claim and I asked for a explanation or defense of it.

My defense: we should try new things because we learn. And we need to learn in order to grow. We try new things to find ways to act and live that work better than the way we are doing things now. Social conventions with no empirical justification are the first things that should be played with. Maybe we will find out there is no good reason for them. But, just in case there is, we should play carefully and not too much all at once.

What does ‘work’ mean in regards to gay marriage? How would you measure success?

Success in this case would be more healthy homes available for children who don’t have any. Also, though this is secondary, it would be nice if people who want children can have them.

---

Don’t worry too much about the math talk. It’s probably just the way I feel about things, and as you’ve pointed out, that’s not all that relevant to our discussion.

I suppose the take-home from this (which we can discuss more in the other thread) is that I believe that truth (especially mathematical truth) is of intrinsic worth, and so equations are indeed of intrinsic value. Of course, as with anything else of intrinsic value, one person shouldn’t be sacrificed for another, and one truth shouldn’t be sacrificed for another. People shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of truth, and truth shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of people.

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

Rule 1: Let society evolve without government intervention.
Rule 2: If you don’t like Rule 1, see Rule 1.

Great! So some societies will have gay marriage, and some won’t. San Fransisco wants it, so they can have it. The Government shouldn’t interfere with them, or with you.

 

[Nate13]

I don’t believe that there are moral authorities. Only moral experts. I’m not either.

Believing in a moral authority comes with the prospect of being a Christian. If you believe in a God that above all loves us and wishes us to know his will, it makes a lot of sense that he would give us a moral authority. Even if you don’t believe in a moral authority that is infallible though that does not mean infallible teachings do not exist. It just means you have no infallible way of knowing those teachings for sure. The fact that they exist though should be enough to inspire you to continue to search them out with the help of human reason though, even if you never succeed in coming to realize its entirety. The Truth is always worth knowing.

My defense: we should try new things because we learn. And we need to learn in order to grow. We try new things to find ways to act and live that work better than the way we are doing things now. Social conventions with no empirical justification are the first things that should be played with. Maybe we will find out there is no good reason for them. But, just in case there is, we should play carefully and not too much all at once.

Lol social conventions? Do you also consider the fact that women are the ones that birth children to be a “social convention”? That analogy describes how obvious I think it is that children should be raised by a man and a woman in marriage. Most people can agree that nature is ordered. Attempting to reorder nature when you do not understand how it works, and why it works in the first place always results in casualties. History has already provided us all the evidence we need of this Truth.

Success in this case would be more healthy homes available for children who don’t have any. Also, though this is secondary, it would be nice if people who want children can have them.

Why not focus on preventing all those children from not having homes in the first place? I would consider that a success. The way it should work is that children should be adopted first and foremost by extended family members. There should be very few cases where its necessary to go outside the family to find a home for a child.

 

[MrSylvester]

Samuel Monosov, we have our own reasons why gay marriage should not be accepted by any religion or society. This isn’t like a Jew feeding a ‘gentile’ a ham sandwhich or an atheist not sinning if he works on Sundays, this is much more serious.

First of all, and this will sound strange but get all the ‘statistics’ which say that children raised in homosexual relationships are not more likely to explore homosexuality and have bad morals. Got them? Good. Throw them in the fire because they are all lies. I’m not one who uses statistics even if they further my cause but when I use them, I only use ones which took a very long time, are serious, impartial and not made up by pro-something organizations.

That is why I refer you to this study: narth.com/docs/does.html which actually did its homework, studied 20 years of homosexual studies and concluded what it says. It says that though children are not more likely to be abused in homosexual ‘marriages’, girls turn out to be less chaste, boys raised by lesbians become more ‘gentle’ or effeminate, as if sons of heterosexual parents can’t be brought up to be affectionate towards their friends and as if heterosexual boys are all rough jocks who can’t take a joke. It says: In terms of aggression and play, sons of lesbians behave in less traditionally masculine ways. They are likely to be more nurturing and affectionate than their counterparts in heterosexual families.

Seeing this evidence (and common sense), we will tell you why exactly we oppose homosexual marriage:

1. The children. Its not that they are more likely to be sexually abused but not only will these children be brought up to look at homosexuality as good, they will be brought up to appreciate free sex as good, will disregard traditional marriage as inferior or at most look at it with contempt, etc… not meaning to offend people who are gay but chaste but most of these ‘couples’ aren’t exactly devout people or religious and they don’t exactly hold traditional family values as they are children of the sexual revolution of the '60’s, which leads to the next reason…

2. Society. When gay marriage is allowed, society falls. Setting aside the entirely pointless argument that free sex ruins the economy and setting aside contraception, the free expression of sex isn’t looked upon with contempt in todays world and as such, teen pregnancies are common, sexual promiscuity is common, divorce is common and sadly, love is not common. Instead of marriage being seen as the sacred union between husband and wife, it has been demoted to a contract which one can cancel whenever he feels like it; babies aren’t seen as babies anymore, just an inconvenient bastard who is a stumbling block for the woman; instead of the raising of children being looked upon as the means to the future, they are regarded as a tool, a decoration for homosexuals to raise just so they would not be discriminated against; and instead of the most intense and special love being dedicated towards husband and wife between each other in marriage, it is falsely attributed to being present in all forms of marriage.

The Church holds that you can love with the deepest love a friend even if he is of the same sex. There are males who have female friends and love them with such love that they try everything to make them happy and yet, they don’t want to marry them or have sex with them or be in a girlfriend/boyfriend relationship. Are they expected to be married? If this was the case in all loving relationships, we’d be able to marry our parents and cousins and sisters, which leads me to the next reason we oppose homosexual marriage:

3. Homosexuality (and sexual perversion of all types) opens the gate for more vice to enter. Everyone heard of the story of the pregnant man, Thomas Beatie. If you haven’t google it. Yet Thomas is not a man: he is a woman who simply removed her breasts, took hormones to grow a beard and didn’t even have surgery to turn her genitals into male ones. Not to sound crude at all but well, you get the idea. Do you know how homosexuals reacted? Positively. I only heard one gay person say that he is disgusted at such an occurrence. When will we hear a protest of natters calling for the legalization of male pregnancy? Specifically, when will bisexuals come out and say they are discriminated against and call for the acceptance of polyamory or polygamy?

And nobody can deny that the sexual revolution of the '60’s opened the door to a lot of vice: not only did sexual promiscuity become more common, but abortion was legalized, the family wasn’t deemed as sacred anymore, then came along test tube babies, etc… these are all points I touched upon so I won’t continue upon them. But when marriage between man and woman is deemed sacred, the family prospers and so do good values. These values don’t just consist of condemning homosexuality and abortion, they also consist of love being held as sacred and good. And this leads me to my next problem with homosexual marriage:

4. Most homosexuals don’t marry. This sounds very offensive I know but few of them actually do. Reports vary from 1% to 5% and at most, to 16% as this report shows: marriagedebate.com/pdf/imapp.demandforssm.pdf See here also although to be fair, this study only interviewed some 7,000 gay individuals: patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2011/12/two-lesbians-raised-a-baby-and-this-is-what-they-got.html If gay people, the ones who are go in all these idiotic parades and what not are so committed to marriage, why do they do all the things they do? Why be promiscuous? Why dress in effeminate clothes and paint your face?

And these are the reasons we oppose gay marriage. Not because of sexual abuse, not because of intimate partner violence, but to keep the sacredness of marriage and for the children.

 

[John21652]

Great! So some societies will have gay marriage, and some won’t. San Fransisco wants it, so they can have it. The Government shouldn’t interfere with them, or with you.

So, when a place like San Francisco wants something, you’ll grant it to them. After all, so you say, the government shouldn’t interfere with what they want.

Will you agree then that they should be able to, if that is what they wanted, to erect a border around the city and charge outsiders a fee to come pay a visit?

Or would you be arbitrarily discriminatory and tell them they can’t have what they want?

 

[exnihilo]

I don’t believe that there are moral authorities. Only moral experts. I’m not either.

I’m dont think that makes sense. The definition of expert is:

a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist; authority.

You’ll have to explain what you mean by expert since that is generally considered an authority. I, even as a Protestant, would consider the Catholic Church an expert in morality since they’ve been at it for 2,000 years.

My defense: we should try new things because we learn. And we need to learn in order to grow. We try new things to find ways to act and live that work better than the way we are doing things now. Social conventions with no empirical justification are the first things that should be played with. Maybe we will find out there is no good reason for them. But, just in case there is, we should play carefully and not too much all at once.

What does no empirical justification mean? I would say ‘gay marriage’ has plenty of empirical justification against it in that it can not produce children which is the purpose of marriage.

Success in this case would be more healthy homes available for children who don’t have any. Also, though this is secondary, it would be nice if people who want children can have them.

What is healthy? My definition (and the definition of most people including scientists and psychologists until very recently) would exclude homosexual homes because they are unnatural. Relationships which by their nature can not produce children should not raise children. The homosexual is proclaiming that their nature precludes the ability to have children. If they truly embraced this nature they would not be able to have children. This is different from a person who has an imperfection, such as sterility. That person’s nature is such that they could produce children apart from the imperfection.

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

I think we risk getting a bit far afield. I don’t want to get too esoteric or philosophical, because I’m no good at it. So we’ll stick with the concrete.

Healthy families are families that are generally physically and emotionally healthy, where the parent or parents has a good relationship with the children who have good relationships with each other. It is one where the children are given opportunity to succeed both at their respective choice at work and also at future relationships.

Often there’s a physical and legal connection with these ideas, although these sorts of connections can be very complicated and intertwined. It is difficult to figure out what causes what, and sciences like sociology that try to figure out these things are in their infancy.

Gay relationships are unhealthy only if they impede the rest of it. It appears that there are both unhealthy and healthy gay relationships. Can gay relationships, gay couples, provide a healthy environment for children? I don’t know, but we will find out!

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

So, when a place like San Francisco wants something, you’ll grant it to them. After all, so you say, the government shouldn’t interfere with what they want.

Will you agree then that they should be able to, if that is what they wanted, to erect a border around the city and charge outsiders a fee to come pay a visit?

Or would you be arbitrarily discriminatory and tell them they can’t have what they want?

Oh, I don’t agree with your rules. I was just pointing out the consequences of your rules.

These are good questions you should ask yourself.

 

[John21652]

Oh, I don’t agree with your rules. I was just pointing out the consequences of your rules.

These are good questions you should ask yourself.

I am asking them of you.

The reason I am asking them of you is that your disagreement with “your rules” is also creating a contradiction in your stance towards gay adoption.

Can you tell me why you don’t agree with the rules?

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

I am asking them of you.

The questions are not relevant to me, because I don’t accept your rules.

Can you tell me why you don’t agree with the rules?

I don’t think the government should stay out of everything.

Also, it is important to note that I am not the government.

 

[exnihilo]

Healthy families are families that are generally physically and emotionally healthy, where the parent or parents has a good relationship with the children who have good relationships with each other. It is one where the children are given opportunity to succeed both at their respective choice at work and also at future relationships.

While that sounds like a nice definition it is not so simple. What is generally physically healthy? That means not sickly? I do not doubt that most gay raised kids may be generally physically healthy. It might also be the case that most kids raised by parents who physically abuse them are not sickly. Do we use that to dismiss the physical abuse? Of course not because abuse is wrong just as homosexuality is.

Being generally emotionally healthy is very subjective. Not long ago homosexuality was considered a psychological problem. Now it is not. What changed between then and now? Only opinions.

The opportunity to succeed is very vague. In fact what opportunity means is distorted by many in modern society. I recently saw a video of an Episcopalian priestess defending the Obama administrations requirement that religious organizations provide immoral reproductive services. She claimed that by an employer not providing employees insurance coverage they were denying the treatment itself. This is such a perverted idea of opportunity, and a popular one, that there is no way modern America could properly judge opportunity.

Often there’s a physical and legal connection with these ideas, although these sorts of connections can be very complicated and intertwined. It is difficult to figure out what causes what, and sciences like sociology that try to figure out these things are in their infancy.

Science can not speak to emotional health. That is something that required judgments about behavior which has a moral component. While you say there are no moral authorities I say there are. But science is certainly not one and could never be.

Gay relationships are unhealthy only if they impede the rest of it. It appears that there are both unhealthy and healthy gay relationships. Can gay relationships, gay couples, provide a healthy environment for children? I don’t know, but we will find out!

You are asserting that gay relationships are not inherently wrong by these statements. I take a different stance along with most of history. It should be added that modern civilization observed the rampant homosexuality of the past and made its judgements not lacking in knowledge of the reality of homosexuality being approved. If gay relationships are wrong then they should not be a relationship that raises children. Incestial relationships are wrong by their very nature. We dont say they should be OK if the children turn out well, yet.

 

[Elizabeth502]

The questions are not relevant to me, because I don’t accept your rules.

Correct. The typical secularist position: Society’s rules should only be created or enforced when “I” accept them. Which is really covert anarchy and a nation of collective, individualist cells who bear no responsibility to each other in any absolute or permanent sense, other than their whims & desires of the moment, coupled with the fads of the moment.

I don’t think the government should stay out of everything.

Right. The government should only enforce policies which in effect prohibit a child from having the option of two separate genders for parents.

And all for the arbitrary pleasure of those who want a separate set of rules (or exceptions to rules) just for them. After all, they’re the privileged class which gets to dictate to the rest of society (including to innocent children without a voice) the priorities of an entire society.

 

[michelleds]

Only a person completely ignorant of history, sociology, and psychology could advocate the line of thinking of Samuel, to-wit: will it cause harm? don’t know, let’s try.

it’ll be fun!
it’ll be exciting!
it has nothing to do with me and my life so let’s see what happens!

he is advocating a mass experiment with children, who cannot, by definition, consent to being guinea pigs. He is advocating a mass experiment with children, the effects of which could be irreversible (outside of Divine Intervention).

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

exnihilo,

Your questions, while very interesting, are mostly philosophy questions. (The basic method: Ask “what does X mean?” “It means X1, X2, X3” “What does X1 X2 X3 mean?” "They mean “X11, X12, X13, X21, etc…” "What do “X11, X12… etc. mean?” and so forth.

An enjoyable game for some. But I’m going to stop answering your questions at this point.

When I have more free time (and maybe the time to talk some more classes in Philosophy or time to read, etc.) I’ll devote more energy to figuring that out, and answering it.

Until then, it’s just going to stay very basic, in this thread and in the other threads.

But please, let me know what you think about these questions. It’ll be helpful for my education. Maybe I can use your information to develop deeper and more esoteric responses.

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

Correct…

I’m very confused. I do not understand what you or John are talking about. As far as I can tell, John made up some rules for me, asked why I accept them, I said I don’t accept them, and then you say:

“That’s a typical liberal response!”

Oh… maybe it is. But I’m not really all that liberal, and I don’t see how my response has anything to do with my politics… and, well, I’m just very confused.

 

[Nate13]

I’m very confused. I do not understand what you or John are talking about. As far as I can tell, John made up some rules for me, asked why I accept them, I said I don’t accept them, and then you say:

“That’s a typical liberal response!”

Oh… maybe it is. But I’m not really all that liberal, and I don’t see how my response has anything to do with my politics… and, well, I’m just very confused.

lol it started with your sarcastic post in response to sedonamn’s post here:

Rule 1: Let society evolve without government intervention.
Rule 2: If you don’t like Rule 1, see Rule 1.

John took you as being serious and based his responses on that. You in turn thought he had made up the rules thus the confusion since you were both arguing about rules neither of agreed on.

I’m still confused as to whether you have an rules or broad reaching philosophy you latch onto, or if you just have a lot of jumbled up rules that you think are good ideas. Do you have any cognitive all encompassing philosophy or do you just kind of shoot as you see it lol? You have spouted off a couple mantra’s but I have not seen anything all encompassing.

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

exnihilo,

I think you and I and most people can say what a healthy relationship and healthy environment for children looks like, and while there may be some small differences, the basic picture will be the same.

The reason homosexuality was declared as a psychological illness was that it was perceived to carry with it many trappings that would exclude someone in such a lifestyle from a healthy relationship or from making for a healthy environment.

Anything deeper than that, well, I am very impressed that people take the time and think about and write about these things, but I don’t have the time and intelligence to delve too deeply.

 

[Samuel_Monosov]

lol it started with your sarcastic post in response to sedonamn’s post here: … post… John took you as being serious and based his responses on that. You in turn thought he had made up the rules thus the confusion since you were both arguing about rules neither of agreed on.

Oh, ha ha! It was a misunderstanding. My fault. I apologize.

I’m still confused as to whether you have an rules or broad reaching philosophy you latch onto, or if you just have a lot of jumbled up rules that you think are good ideas. Do you have any cognitive all encompassing philosophy or do you just kind of shoot as you see it lol? You have spouted off a couple mantra’s but I have not seen anything all encompassing.

For some of the most basic questions, yes, I have a broad reaching philosophy. I do have an underlying metaphysics. I’m pretty-much a Spinozist (although I do diverge from him in some places). And I have a naturalist interpretation of Spinoza, so that makes me a naturalist. I do believe certain abstract things have objective existence apart from the observable universe, such as mathematical and moral constructs, God (if he exists), and possibly other similar sorts of beings or things.

My ethics is very-much Kantian Deontological, if by those strange words you mean that I only have one basic moral rule to be applied to all situations: that people should be treated as ends in themselves and not merely as means to an end.

But when you get to politics or theories about human nature, or philosophy of science, and this sort of thing, I am very eclectic, and I just choose what works. There’s no coherent system, and mostly that’s because, when I am exposed to coherent systems, I either don’t understand them or I don’t think that they are very accurate to reality and/or to my objectives.

There you go. Interesting question.

 

[Nate13]

For some of the most basic questions, yes, I have a broad reaching philosophy. I do have an underlying metaphysics. I’m pretty-much a Spinozist (although I do diverge from him in some places). And I have a naturalist interpretation of Spinoza, so that makes me a naturalist. I do believe certain abstract things have objective existence apart from the observable universe, such as mathematical and moral constructs, God (if he exists), and possibly other similar sorts of beings or things.

My ethics is very-much Kantian Deontological, if by those strange words you mean that I only have one basic moral rule to be applied to all situations: that people should be treated as ends in themselves and not merely as means to an end.

But when you get to politics or theories about human nature, or philosophy of science, and this sort of thing, I am very eclectic, and I just choose what works. There’s no coherent system, and mostly that’s because, when I am exposed to coherent systems, I either don’t understand them or I don’t think that they are very accurate to reality and/or to my objectives.

There you go. Interesting question.

lol we are never going to reach an accord then because Catholic beliefs are based on a belief in the philosophy of natural law and you apparently don’t give much credence to the idea of human nature. I encourage you to take a look into natural law from more authoritative teaching sources. It may help you understand the Catholic position on things a lot better even if you don’t understand it. Natural law in and of itself though is lacking without a belief in a higher authority that has put natural law in place. The Catechism puts it this way:

The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin . . . But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted.5

You may have already seen this from another thread, but here is a summary of what the Church has to say on natural law.

scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c3a1.htm