Lol. Nuff zed

Don't we also have to question why the concept was defined in such a way, and by whom? Gays have probably been around as long as straight people, so why were they excluded when marriage was defined? Did it happen that way because of religions hold on the world and society, or are there other reasons to consider?

Why are they not? I love my partner beyond words, and we both support each other in many ways. She's the best friend I've ever had, outside of my brother. But obviously I've no desire to marry my brother (incest, a game all the family can play ). So that means only procreation isn't part of the equation. Is that such a bad thing? There's a lot of procreation going on outside of marriage. If we're logical about it, the purpose of sex is purely for procreation, something a gay couple can't do, but people have made it so that sex is now more about pleasuring the senses, not procreation. Which removes sex from its intended purpose and makes it a hedonistic pursuit for the majority. Which means the majority has created a double standard.

Agreed, and as I've said before, I don't agree with things being demanded. But how can a minority become the majority when the minority is outnumbered. I don't want to become the majority. I would, however, like for my voice to be heard, and if what I'm saying makes sense to the majority, for it to be acted upon.

I have my opinion too. I guess all I can say is for us both to strap in and see what the future brings.

I consider myself to be pretty altruistic by nature. But it's not a part of me that I cherish quite the same these days. I've found time after time that while it's a highly commendable trait to have, there are far too many who are willing to abuse it by taking it for granted. I am still altruistic to this day, but it's not something I show to others until I feel I truly trust them. Which is a shame really, and a sad comment on society. The only other option is for me to act in such a way that I lose the right to call myself human. I tried it for a while; it sucked!

Ah, the gods and clods theory. I'd like to disagree, but I don't know of an alternative way for society to function that I can suggest. I don't feel that it's the best way for things to be though. Surely, even the most dimwitted of people must have sufficient intelligence to see at times that their life has no real meaning, beyond making the lives of the thankless masses better.

You're preaching to the choir on that one, lol.

You're right though, and it's something I learned when I looked into Buddhism. I think Buddhists consider it to be one of the noble truths. I consider it to be a simple fact and something that should be blindingly obvious, but alas, it isn't.

Of course. That would twist it out of context and make it a feeble justification or shield for you to hide behind. It's just the way of things; life. A mystery of the universe perhaps.

Anything done to excess is bad for you, that includes exercise. But yes, we should strive for the middle ground. Are you sure you're not a Buddhist, Jorge, 'cause they also believe that we should travel the middle path, instead of opting for too much of one or the other. Oh, and a totally pointless fact for you. Apparently, eating nothing but rabbit (no vegetables or anything else) will kill you. It has something to do with rabbit absorbing all the bodies vitamins/minerals, or requiring all the bodies vitamins/minerals to break it down. Anyway, now you're head has got that totally useless information just like mine, mwuahahahahaha.

Hey Jorge, check this out! LINK

In fact, screw it, everyone check that out! Responses please!

My objection is to religion being thrown into the mix. I think that most religious persons are good people but religion and I just do not see eye to eye and I don't want people attempting to convert me to their way of thinking.

Gay marriage is not a religious issue, you may not approve but then you probably don't agree with the abortion laws either. Marriage is defined by civil law not religious ideology. The constitution guarantees equal protection under the law ergo marriage between two consenting adults should be legal regardless of what you may think. Your bestiality comment is bogus as the beast is not a consenting party. I would agree with you, that somewhere, sometime there will be some idiot that wants to marry his sheep, but....

Give unto Caesar.....

... or in this sexually liberated day and age, just have a sordid affair and go home to the missus when he's done down the paddock.

You are being asked to take the definition of CIVIL marriage to mean between 2 persons who form a union for mutual support and love--OR NOT!  Since you, yourself, do not want to engage in that sort of marriage, what the state calls this relationship has not bearing on your personal life whatsoever!  The "Church" will never be required by the state to perform a ceremony it does not agree with, (unless that particular church wants to be the recipient of certain government payments--as the dean of the seminary that my ex-husband attended put it, "with shekels come shackles.")  Why do you care what the state calls a union between 2 people who aren't you?

Presently there are churches that call a physically-abusive bind between 2 people of the opposite sex who had the misfortune of a sexual relationship that resulted in a child, then had a ceremony, a "Holy Matrimony."  There are churches that call a relationship between a guy and multiple wives (plural marriage), "Holy Matrimony."  There is a certain "faith" that calls a relationship whereby a man buys a child from her parents and has a ceremony, "Holy Matrimony."  And these same "faiths" want to question a loving cohabitational relationship between 2 persons of the same sex who want to enjoy the same legal civil status as those others, an "abomination?!" Really?!!

You say "call it something else...but do NOT distort the true meaning of marriage" -- who are you to dictate what the true meaning of marriage is? It's just a WORD that you're having problems with?  Seriously?  You would quarrel with the definition (a CIVIL definition at that?) to the point where you would hurt people's feelings, make them feel bad about themselves, make them get defensive, because you disagree with their interpretation of a word you want to claim authority over?

THIS is my beef with the Abrahamic faiths of the world--you claim to have a monopoly on "good," but in your zeal to make sure it doesn't get watered down, you don't care how many people get hurt...we're all just collateral damage, and that's "God's will."  I don't need an ancient book, or a elite group of uppity old men and their traditions to KNOW that being kind to the people around me (my "neighbor") is "good" and "right" -- because they're part of my community, I see them every day and their contentment or lack of contentment AFFECTS ME.  When everyone is content, things run smoothly, and that's good!  So if the house next to me is occupied by 2 women, whether I call that a "same sex marriage" or "2 female roommates" is of no consequence to me, as long as I smile and wave rather than scowl, and if the State decides to call that "marriage" so that if one of them gets sick and needs to be hospitalized in the ICU, the other can visit and the 2 are comforted by that visit, it's harmful for me to deny them that right.

Marriage is an institution....

...and you don't want to live in an institution.....

Nimbin,

Strange that they would resort to prejudicial stereotyping in their quest for equality don’t you think?

Strange that they are so keen to confer exemplary rights to some groups of people but arbitrarily deny you yours without due justification?

Do they know the meaning of the word hypocrisy?

You need to get rid of these friends. They are so devoid of personality and individuality, so desperate to be liked that they have swallowed the current prevailing neo-liberal semi-religious propaganda bunkum without even stopping to chew it for even a moment.

Haven't seen a civil one yet.

How true.... I'll be writing to Terry shortly. 

That's a very good question, a difficult and complex one to answer. However, not getting religion into it, and besides the obvious biological reasons for propagation of the species, marriage exists essentially because the institution has a very definite purpose which has served its function well throughout the ages.

Marriage enabled and supported the concept of a family: without it, what would stop men from creating several families and then caring for none, leaving women and children unprotected? Also, marriage and the exclusive sexual access it implies is a way to ensure paternity of the children that union generates.

Marriage probably originated in a time were women heavily depended on men to survive: it's a binding contract enforced by society where, in its basic form, the woman promises to give the man sex, offspring and sexual exclusivity, and the man, in return, promises to take care of, and protect, the woman and their offspring.

Anyway, seen from the reproductive point of view, marriage between people of the same sex serves no purpose because they cannot generate offspring.

The ancient Greeks, for instance, commonly had same sex relationships, usually between adult men and adolescent boys (over 12), the boy always taking the passive role. This, however, never resulted in marriage, nor, I believe, would such a thing ever cross their minds. In fact, there was a social stigma for adult to adult same sex relationships, the stigma, however, being reserved for whomever took the passive/feminine role.

But marriage goes far beyond the purpose of offspring, as it does not end when the two partners can no longer procreate: it is also an institution in which the two partners promise to take care of each other until the end of their lives.

From this last point of view, marriage between people of the same sex does make some sense, but only if you chose to ignore for a while that homosexuality is a deviation from the true objective of matting, which is propagation of the species.

However, you cannot dissociate the other purposes from marriage and still call it a marriage.

Gay people have barely acquired the right to marry each other in some countries and they are already demanding the right to adopt children due to their inability to procreate. Isn't this odd in and by itself, even before considering what such behavior might do to the very fabric of our society? Are those in same sex relationships considering those potential effects and consequences even for a second? No, they only care about satisfying their own needs and wants. So where will it stop?

Men and women are different, each with different strengths and weaknesses, and therefore complement each other. This is not sexism, it's a fact. It starts with the fact that women can get pregnant and men can't. Even the brains are wired differently (the corpus callossum is thicker in women, which allows their right and left hemispheres to communicate better, for instance). Men are not superior to women, but neither are women superior to men - they are just different and complementary.

To succeed, men and women have to work as a team, each with a very specific role. When you start blurring or deliberately ignoring these differences, you end up with two people trying to play the same role, and that never works. Confusion and belligerence ensues - instead of being allies, men and women become 'enemies'.

Children learn to categorize themselves by gender very early on in life. A part of this is learning how to display and perform gendered identities as masculine or feminine, and this implies that masculine and feminine roles should be well defined within the family. It is bad enough that this is no longer clear cut in traditional families - how can then those roles be well defined in a gay relationship if both partners are of the same sex?! They can't, and they aren't.

Are we really willing to sacrifice a whole generation to find out what happens when we no longer have separate and well defined masculine and feminine roles? And, assuming the results are not so good, will we be willing - or even able - to backtrack then?

You said it yourself, you love your brother but you have no desire to marry him. So, marriage is not a requirement to demonstrate love. Why then demand something from society which, by definition, is reserved for people of opposite sexes? Why not be satisfied with the fact that society already tolerates same sex unions?

As for sex being used for purposes other than procreation, this has, in fact, always been the case. However, there were also social controls and restrictions in place to counteract this and balance things out - controls which mostly don't exist anymore.

Is this good? From a selfish point of view, it's great! Never has it been this easy to get free sex! But what price are we paying for this? Lets see:

Sex obeys the rules of supply and demand. When sex is scarce, men are more willing to go the extra mile in order to get it. Here is the basic argument by social psychologist Roy Baumeister: men like sex more than women and so, in the market for sex, they represent the 'demand'. Women like sex less than men, so in this market they are the 'supply'. In short, men have to compensate women in order to entice them into having sex.

In this market the women collude with each other by agreeing to reduce the supply of sex which has the effect of driving up the price. On a market for sex where women are colluding to keep prices high there is always an incentive for one woman to deviate: she can always offer sex at a lower price and capture a large share of the market. However, this would also result in the other women calling her a slut and in her being ostracized (the social control).

Men had their own set social controls, although very different from those applied to women: it was very common for men to have sex or even a mistress outside the marriage. Even if the wife found out about it, she would generally tolerate this and pretend not to know. Why? Because the alternative - divorce - was unthinkable at the time. BUT wow to the man who abandoned his family in order to live with his mistress - such a man would be despised by all! Wow to the man who did not provide for his family!

This is how that cliche of the love triangle where the mistress is eternally waiting for the man to leave his wife and marry her instead came about. Men promised they would but never actually did because they were bound to their families. As Elizabeth Abbott wrote, 'Mistressdom, in fact, has everything to do with marriage. It's an institution parallel and complementary to marriage, and it evolved to accommodate the sexual double standard that tolerates adultery in husbands but condemns it in wives'.

And so there was a balance, and things were kept in check. Not that I condone what is at the base of this balance (the double standard), but, in the end, men got what they wanted and so did women.

Then women became financially independent from men and this changed everything. Because women no longer needed men’s resources, they began to increase their supply of sex on the market. Little by little, sex became cheap. So cheap, in fact, that men no longer have the need to commit or stick to a relationship in order to get sex.

The irony of this is that by giving sex away, women also lost the leverage they had on men, i.e.; the 'power' they once had. And now they complain that men put off commitment and keep things casual for as long as possible.

Anyway, in part because of this new found financial independence, divorce became common and socially accepted, almost the norm (in America 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri).

Most people will defend divorce on the basis that nobody should be stuck in an unhappy marriage. True, but this is in part based on the big *lie* that most marriages of old were unhappy (not true!), and, furthermore, the long term side effect (remember in my previous post where I mentioned you have immediate consequences - which might be good - and then long term consequences - which might be bad?) is that now almost nobody is willing to go the extra mile to maintain a marriage, and just quit at the first sign of real trouble. Remember the 'for better and for worse' vow? With divorce being so easy and so common... when the going gets tough, the tough get going. This makes a mockery of marriage, which is a *contract* between two people for life. If there is no price to pay for breaking a contract, then it's obvious that the contract is pretty much useless. It's no longer a contract but a vague promise.

So what do we have now? Single parents trying to juggle their careers and their children, leaving little time for the latter. Worse, people used to live in small communities where the whole community (or at least the immediate family which normally lived in the same household) shared the burden of educating and taking care of the children, and this is no longer true. The education of small children is a full time job and we are now neglecting them because, with both parents working, we simply don't have enough available time.

As a result, our children feel lost and abandoned, and then we have unthinkable things such as the Columbine High School massacre, children as young as 12 murdering and robbing people, or joining gangs so they have a sense of 'belonging' and 'protection', etc...

Furthermore, women these days are as promiscuous, if not more promiscuous, than men ever were: infidelity is *everywhere* and is essentially considered 'to be expected' - if not even considered to be 'normal' - even though it's effects remain as devastating as they always were. I can't help but remember what one woman I knew once said to me when she was justifying herself for having been unfaithful to her boyfriend: 'hey, if men do it, why shouldn't we?!'.

Since when is it ok to correct one wrong with another wrong? Unfortunately this 'an eye for an eye' mentality seems to be prevalent in feminism these days.

The implicit trust that was once in the institution of marriage is gone, and nothing is 'forever' anymore. Most people go into new relationships with both eyes wide open, already expecting it to fail, simply because nearly everybody has already been bitten before. The Apple tree is rotten to the core. Very few people are able to walk into a new relationship without carrying with them severe emotional baggage and distrust caused by previous failed relationships - and that is half way to make the new relationship fail as well.

People are more alone now than ever before.

Anyway, apparently good things (women's independence, the freedom from sexual repression, the economic boom that occurred because suddenly both parents were producing, etc...) ended up giving fruit to some really bad things, either because we took those good things too far or because we were unable - or didn't care - to come up with alternate mechanisms to restore the balance.

For instance, by reaching key places of power and then making sure only those who agree with them are able to do the same. All in a very hidden but legal way, of course.

Goes without saying. But what is happening now is that things that do not make sense to the majority are also being acted upon, with those who resist them being called bigots, close minded, etc...

Being altruistic is a good thing, so be true to yourself and don't let others destroy it. But learn to defend yourself too (i.e.; do not throw your pearls at swine, they will not know how to appreciate them). If someone takes advantage of your altruism, it's not your fault - the person who took advantage is in the wrong, not you.

Ahah. Didn't know that one about the rabbit. Btw, you do know that my name is 'Jorge Coelho', and that 'Coelho' means rabbit in Portuguese, no? lol

Anyway, I noticed other replies since I started writing this, but I'll tackle them in another post.

I don't think anybody here is doing that.

Personally I am only stating my opinion, and I'm trying hard to leave religion out of it. I only mentioned the bible because the 10 commandments (ok, 8 of them) are really a 'common sense' manual to living in a peaceful society.

You're right, I don't agree with the liberalization of abortion either, but that has nothing to do with religion, but respect for life and what I think the inevitable abuse of that liberalization will do to it in the long run. Likewise for Euthanasia.

I'm not the one bringing religion into this, you are.

But you're assuming that what I am saying is that same sex unions should not have the same protection under the law as opposite sex unions, and that is simply not true. Furthermore, at least here in Portugal, opposite sex couples don't even need to get married to get offered some protection under the law after living together under the same ceiling for a few years (don't know the name of that in English, sorry. Here those are called 'uniões de facto').

Why not do the same for same sex relationships?

All I'm saying is that at least we should keep the two 'institutions' separate, and not mix the two. It might seem irrelevant at first, but IMO it is very important that we keep the distinction.

I already stated it was just an example. Since 'non consenting' is the key you are all grasping at to invalidate my example, what do you think about the criminalization of incest then (between a sister and her brother, for instance)? At least in the UK people have been jailed for it, even though we are talking about two consenting adults here.

lol Trust me, the way things are going, there will be. And that is my whole point.

Portuguese, didn't know that Jorge, thought you were American. Not only are our views different but we bring much different life experiences to the table when discussing them. Makes the mix a little more interesting.

and we come full circle to the OP: if you were gay you might feel very different about that.

I agree, Nimbin. We founded this country on the belief that we were all created equal. Yes, minorities and homosexuals do suffer at the hands of uneducated, close-minded people. Why should I suffer recriminations for that? I personally had no hand in any kind of oppression or derogatory treatment of anyone. I've never owned another person, I've never slurred anyone for their sexual or religious belief. What color someone is, what someone chooses to do in their bedroom,  what God someone prays to, what clothes someone wears, or even the music they decide to listen to, has nothing to do with how I treat them, yet I'm treated by these same people like an enemy, for being born white, male and Irish. It's not what I am that makes me proud, it's WHO I am, and I think if everyone worried more about themselves, as opposed to others, the world would be a much nicer place~

Some of the best skinners/people involved in skinning aren't American.

Skinning is global ....

And we can thank the Internet for that! Best invention since sliced bread. 

I'll never forget the first time I got on IRC, all those years ago. It took me a while to actually believe I was talking (well, typing) in real time to a bunch of people in the other side of the world.