Canada shelves Gay marriage legislation.

[Ben Kenobi]

Then by your own statements non-christians do not value marriage, and gays cannot be christian in good standing (since they cannot fulfill their obligations to the church).

No. I'm only talking about Christians, and what role marriage plays in how they exercise religious freedom, at least in that particular post.

Some non-christians do value marriage. I would be a fool not to talk about the Moslems, Sikhs, Hindus, etc.

[monkspider]

My girlfriend and I hope to have a gay marriage if legislation is passed in time. Gay people have such a great sense of style, they could really spruce things up. I know my fiance wants to have a lot flowers and stuff, I bet if we could get some gay gays, they could really go to town.

I'm not sure what Ben's problem with the whole thing is.

[Ben Kenobi]

The issue is legalizing gay marriage. You're saying legalizing gay marriage will both drop the birth date as well as making less heterosexual couples marry.

Obviously I'm not being clear enough.

1. Marriage provides more security than common law.

2. Secure relationships are more likely to produce children.

3. Gay marriage has a detrimental effect on the marriage to common law relationship ratio.

Therefore, gay marriage will reduce the birthrate.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Obviously I'm not being clear enough.

1. Marriage is more likely than common law relationships to produce children.

2. Lowering the rate of marriage vs. common law will reduce the birthrate.

3. Gay marriage has a detrimental effect on the marriage to common law relationship ratio.

Therefore, gay marriage will reduce the birthrate.

3 does not follow from 2 unless you can connect how gays marrying eachother affects heterosexuals marrying eachother or entering common law relationships.

Obviously I have not been clear enough, what with my bold typeface on certain words and about half a dozen posts crying out against the immense stupidity behind claiming how gays marrying eachother will affects heterosexuals marrying eachother.

[Ramo]

I'm unsure of the allusion. The argument goes back to the old constitution of Canada that describes the role of parliament as a caretaker of marriage. That description seems to rule out the capacity of parliament to redefine marriage.

Vicky Windsor = Queen Victoria. Why should her government have been able to define marriage for 21st century Canadians, but not the current parliament?

Marriage, for Christians is an important part of exercising their religion. To limit their ability to marry limits their ability to be a Christian. If marriage has nothing to do with religious practice, why does the Catholic church have such strict rules about believers marrying unbelievers?

Rastafarians can't legally smoke weed, Wahabbists can't beat their wives, and perhaps the most apt example, Mormons can't marry multiple people. Civil laws can trump forms of religious expression.

Equality is not the issue.

Yes it is. You said that a prohibition against interracial marriage is not ok, but a prohibition against gay marriage is. You have to justify that because you haven't yet.

BTW, what do you think of prohibitions against inter-religious marriage?

I'll make the case again. One can inherit a predisposition to homosexuality, but the predisposition does not determine behavior. To argue that one has no control over sexual urges would excuse every rapist.

The point again is that the state is discriminating against gay sexual unions. You said that's ok since homosexuality isn't biological; but it is.

If you want to worry about semantics, race is more a social than biological construct.

Over the entire sample. These are exceptions and should not prove the case for the norm. Society can reasonably expect children to come from a marriage, but cannot reasonably expect children to come from gay marriage.

You totally ignored the point again (and I've asked you about this before). Please answer the question:

Gay couples are perfectly capable of adopting. Straight couples are perfectly capable of not having kids. Why not seperate this benefit from whether or not one is straight, and tie it to whether or not one has kids (biological or adopted)?

Furthermore, the number of kids straight people get can vary. So why should the benefit be constant?

And you also have to note I make the qualifier, 'within the union.' The obvious exception is adoption, but the problem is that it is not like gay people cannot have children, they are fertile, but have chosen not to exercise these capacities. .

So what are you saying? That gay people who raise kids that straight married people throw out shouldn't get marriage benefits?

[Theben]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Obviously I'm not being clear enough.

1. Marriage provides more security than common law.

2. ...

3. ...

Profit.

[DRoseDARs]

Gays aren't having many children outside of marriage to begin with, so their affect on birthrates is nil. Marriage tends to increase the likelyhood of children, per your arguement Ben, so more gays may start having children inside wedlock...or they may not. Where's the negative affect on birthrates?

[Ben Kenobi]

2 unless you can connect how gays marrying each other affects heterosexuals marrying each other or entering common law relationships.

Spreading the benefits. Difference between marriage and common law becomes much more blurred after gay marriage than before. There becomes much less incentive to take the jump.

[Theben]

The only way your argument has any grounds in reality, BK, is if by extending benefits to gay marriages the state will be unable to fulfill previous benefits given to hetero couples. If that does indeed occur, I think marriage benefits would be the least of your nation's concern.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


No. I'm only talking about Christians, and what role marriage plays in how they exercise religious freedom, at least in that particular post.

Some non-christians do value marriage. I would be a fool not to talk about the Moslems, Sikhs, Hindus, etc.

I just want to know why your Church, and others like it, get to enforce their views on marriage on other Christian Churches, and people who want to get married in them.

Face it Ben, your days of puritanism are numbered. If Parliament doesn't get this done on equality for gays under federal human rights statutes, then someone is gonna get it done under freedom of religion provisions before the Supreme Court.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ramo:

Why should her government have been able to define marriage for 21st century Canadians, but not the current parliament?

Did the Constitution define marriage, or did they simply recognise a common definition of marriage that was already existing in law for quite some time. It is not as if Vicky Windsor came down from on high in 1867 and declared the definition, as the courts of Canada are doing so right now.

Rastafarians can't legally smoke weed, Wahabbists can't beat their wives, and perhaps the most apt example, Mormons can't marry multiple people. Civil laws can trump forms of religious expression.

That's an argument for getting rid of marriage altogether. No dice in supporting gay marriage.

The point again is that the state is discriminating against gay sexual unions. You said that's ok since homosexuality isn't biological; but it is.

Why is homosexuality biological? I gave my argument, you need to defend yours, rather than just saying that it is.

If you want to worry about semantics, race is more a social than biological construct.

Irrelevent. You want to do away with race under those provisions, go right ahead. It does not affect the issue of homosexuality.

Gay couples are perfectly capable of adopting. Straight couples are perfectly capable of not having kids. Why not seperate this benefit from whether or not one is straight, and tie it to whether or not one has kids (biological or adopted)?

Furthermore, the number of kids straight people get can vary. So why should the benefit be constant?

I answered these already. Please address my answer. Over the entire sample.... On average, whichever you prefer. You cannot gage the norm by the extremes.

So what are you saying? That gay people who raise kids that straight married people throw out shouldn't get marriage benefits?

How many straight married couples put their children up for adoption? It is just as bad to overemphasize procreation and childrearing over love, as it is to emphasize love over childrearing and procreation. Both aspects should be part of marriage, one not seperated from the other.

[Ben Kenobi]

I just want to know why your Church, and others like it, get to enforce their views on marriage on other Christian Churches, and people who want to get married in them.

I agree. Rather than letting a small segment of society decide, be they judges or priests, let everyone have their say.

Let's get parliament to hold a real vote on this issue.

[Theben]

Where is it written that hetero marriages are de facto more stable than homo long-term relationships?

And why does it feel like I'm covering old ground for the nth time?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Why is homosexuality biological? I gave my argument, you need to defend yours, rather than just saying that it is.

http://www.narth.com/docs/bioresearch.html

In 1991, newspapers primarily on both coasts trumpeted the discovery of a brain difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Although the research finding itself was reported fairly accurately, the accounts universally concluded that the discovery had social-policy implications. Commentators triumphantly claimed that the discovery would halt any remaining uncertainty that homosexuality was either a choice, or a consequence of factors in upbringing. Therefore, they claimed, to continue to support anything less than full acceptance of homosexual behavior would be proof positive of prejudicial hatred.

What precipitated this outpouring? In August of 1991, a San Francisco neuroanatomist, Simon LeVay, published an article in the respected journal Science. It reported his finding that a localized cluster (a "nucleus") of cells in the brains of "homosexual" men was twice as large by volume on autopsy as in "heterosexual" men.{2} "Homosexual" and "heterosexual" are in quotations here because in this particular study the definitions of each were extremely imprecise, nor was there any way of verifying sexual orientation, as the subjects were dead.

But this was not the first such discovery. One year before a group reported in Brain Research that they had found a similar difference in both volume and number of cells in a different brain nucleus.{3} The media did not report this first study because Brain Research, unlike Science, is read only by neuroscientists. And in contrast to journalists, the neuroscientists themselves genuinely understood the research and its limitations, and saw no reason to make grand pronouncements.

More recently, yet another difference in another part of the brain was reported, also in a prestigious publication, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. This study claimed that a difference between male homosexuals and heterosexuals was found in the anterior commissure, a structure that divides the left and right halves of the brain. The authors found that the anterior commissure was larger in women and homosexual men than in heterosexual men.

[Ramo]

You still have not answered this single, fundamental question:

Why not seperate the benefit from whether or not one is straight, and tie it to whether or not one has kids (biological or adopted), and the number of them?

It's a simple question. It seems to me far more fair than making assumptions about everything. And it's not like it's impractical, this is part of the US tax code.