Gay Marriage

[quzah]

Originally posted by darclauz
okay...before anyone BLASTS me for stereotyping

Can I blast you for being an idiot then?

Originally posted by darclauz
i'm only writing from what i know. of my MANY gay friends, i have only met one couple who was interested in being a couple -- that is, only the two of them. they have been together 30 years, and are as married as any hetero couple i know.

Which makes "them" different from hetros how? Because some hetros like to settle down?

Originally posted by darclauz
that being said, every other gay man-man couple i've known were interested in short term. inevitably, one or both were sleeping with other people. that's NOT the case in most hetero couples i've met, although, again, some....

Uh huh. You've never heard the term 'one night stand' in relation to hetrosexuals I suppose right? No? All hetrosexuals are purely interested in getting married and raising lots of screaming brats, right?

Because somehow hetrosexuals have moral superiority and have their priorities straight. Pun not intended.

Originally posted by darclauz
okay. so marriage is all about benefits. and it seems to me, that in any infidelity issue, you run all kinds of risks....lawyers for divorces. suits tying up courtrooms. medical benefit expenses...from stds or related issues.

so in the cases *I've* seen......... i would think that these particular gay men would treat marriage lightly..and cause legal hassles.

I'd venture a guess that numerous people get married because it's the ... what's the word ... "moral" way to fuck. Because otherwise it's wrong to as stated to them by their tome of religious enlightenment.

Oh come on, you know it happens. Where else would the concept of no sex before marriage originate?

And as it's been stated already in this thread, marriages fail all the time. People cheat on eachother married or not. It's hardly a gay problem.

I suppose you think HIV is a "gay disease" also? I suppose I shouldn't have mentioned that, it'll only dilute the thread further.

Quzah.

[Undertoad]

To look at it another way, you can't complain about gay behavior going against social norms as a reason to deny them the very constructs that define and reinforce those norms.

(where's my goobledygook xlator)

Ain't nothin' like stopping ya from fucking around when ya got both names on a 30-year mortgage.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally posted by Whit
      I'm going to have to disagree with doing anything really nasty, Rho. I think that like, well, all bigotry, this is based on ignorance. Shredding the idiots doesn't solve the problem. Frankly, the school needs to be educated. Educating without the use of physical harm is preferable as it tends to stick in the mind better.

C'mon Whit. One, just one little handgrenade. Pleeeezee!?!??

[Whit]

      Well, okay Bruce, one. But make sure all targets are of the same race and gender as you so that no one assumes that you're a bad person.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally posted by Undertoad
To look at it another way, you can't complain about gay behavior going against social norms as a reason to deny them the very constructs that define and reinforce those norms.

Oh I get it. They won't be so offensive to normal people if you let them mimic normal people.

[juju]

But being gay is normal... there are a whole lot of people that are gay.

[Undertoad]

How does one know what's "normal" behavior. It's because the culture tells us, educates us how to talk and dress and stuff. If does that partly by having big ol' rites of passage and schools and official events and laws and stuff.

The culture frowns on heteros who sleep around. To inform them of what the culture defines as "normal", it developed a whole set of rituals, language, laws, etc. that tell people what to do.

The culture has not dealt with homosexuality because it is more rare. There are few cultural thingies to tell gays how to behave. There is no marriage to encourage them to create long-term relationships. No rings to symbolize such a relationship, no historical connection, not even soap operas on TV to show how relationships might operate and what the positive and negative repercussions might be.

Some parts of gay culture have created their own set of cultural thingies, and some parts have adopted the hetero cultural thingies. A gay couple I know has been together for 15 years. At one of their anniversaries, they had an official ceremony at a swanky downtown place and had a celebration in front of all their friends to acknowledge their relationship. This is the equivalent of a wedding and they wear rings on the ring finger of their right hands Their relationship is stronger than almost every hetero relationship I have ever seen.

The only way it is NOT stronger is that it is not officially accepted. So, would gay marriage weaken hetero marriage? I say no, I say it would strengthen it and give it MORE meaning if people who can't possibly procreate can get married. If marriage is only for creating kids it will eventually weaken and die. That is my opinion and I'm stickin' to it.

[vsp]

Originally posted by Undertoad
The culture has not dealt with homosexuality because it is more rare. There are few cultural thingies to tell gays how to behave. There is no marriage to encourage them to create long-term relationships. No rings to symbolize such a relationship, no historical connection, not even soap operas on TV to show how relationships might operate and what the positive and negative repercussions might be.

And that neatly paraphrases my response to the "gay men just want to sleep around" opinion someone presented earlier in this thread.

Of course gay men will flock towards short-term relationships... if they're not given the same sanctioned-long-term-relationship options as straights. For gays, marriage isn't currently an option, so why should they spend major time and effort pursuing something that they're not legally allowed to have?

Naturally, they can choose to pursue either short-term or long-term relationships outside of marriage... just like straights can. Regardless of orientation or gender, that's a conscious choice. But straights have that one additional option, which happens to be the one that's the current societal norm. (Ironically, if the 15-year gay couple Tony mentioned were hetero, they wouldn't HAVE to have been formally married to be considered married in most places, thanks to the wonders of common-law statutes.)

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by Undertoad

The culture frowns on heteros who sleep around.

I'm not sure this is true anymore, or at least, not sure if it's true for unmarried people.

[vsp]

It's less true than it used to be, but there are still some people who take exception to that. (And when I say "take exception to that," I mean write great honking essays about how "AMERICA'S LOSING THE CULTURE WAR" and how Murphy Brown caused 9/11 and crap like that.)

Unmarried heteros sleeping around is pretty much matter-of-fact these days to the average person... unless it's their daughter doing it, of course, and then someone has to die. Unmarried heteros _breeding_ and remaining unmarried also has less of a stigma than it used to, though the approval rate isn't as high on that one.

[warch]

... I say it would strengthen it and give it MORE meaning if people who can't possibly procreate can get married. If marriage is only for creating kids it will eventually weaken and die.

Thats just it, many gay people and can and do procreate. They desire that right as well. For the majority of people, marriage means family, which usually involves kids. The image of a stable and permanent a gay family lifestyle is very threatening. The real fear here is that homosexual couples will be formally welcomed to live among us, to reproduce and/or parent, where they will brainwash and abuse kids into their deviant sex...then the ranks will swell and there will be gay world domination?

[OnyxCougar]

Marriage should be between two consenting adults of legal age.

Anything else is discriminatory.

Whether that discrimination is culturally justifiable or not, doesn't change the fact that telling a group of people that because they are in love with a different gender, is undeniably discriminatory.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Seems to me marriage was a religious thing before it became a civil thing. There was a time when everyone was straight and got married if there was any mate available.
Oh, oh, I hear panties bunching and hackles snapping to attention. OK, what if Raul had flounced off the Mayflower on to Plymouth Rock and said "Marvy, what a scrumptous place for a tea room". Raul would have been a casualty, that's what. So everyone played straight, whether they liked it on not.
So anyway, the laws were created around the existing norm. As Radar will attest, the laws grew like topsy and all centered around marriage and family which reinforced said same. Queers were outlawed and outlaws.
Now we have to let them marry in order to integrate them into the community because of the way the legal sysytem was created.
My gut still tells me the children are another matter. Hey, I'm an old man, give me time, give me time.

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
Seems to me marriage was a religious thing before it became a civil thing.

I'm not so sure. I expect concerns about property (including the bride), inheritance, and clan alliances were around before any theologians started mumbling about holy matrimony.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You may be right Steve. I wasn't thinking organized churchs but the ceremonial type of formal marriage. You know, village feast, dancing and maybe a sacrifice or two. The next thing after the bonk with a club and drag to the cave period.