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Old 10-03-04, 06:04 PM   #1
Mazer
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Default I know I was opposed to the idea of a topical forum for Politics...

...But given the types of discussions that have taken place here I am glad they don't polute the general forum anymore. We're on the radar now, since the forum is visible to all the web crawlers and snoops on the net now, so I guess we'll see if it was such a good idea a while from now.

The real reason I'm starting this thread is to post an article concerning the gay marraige debate in the news, and specifically to answer the "What are your thoughts on gay marriages?" question (that thread probably belongs in this forum, Gaz, but that's up to you).

A long read, but it pretty much sums up everything I believe on the subject.
Quote:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html

Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization
Orson Scott Card

A little dialogue from Lewis Carroll:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has not yet declared that "day" shall now be construed to include that which was formerly known as "night," but it might as well.

By declaring that homosexual couples are denied their constitutional rights by being forbidden to "marry," it is treading on the same ground.

Do you want to know whose constitutional rights are being violated? Everybody's. Because no constitution in the United States has ever granted the courts the right to make vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society.

Regardless of their opinion of homosexual "marriage," every American who believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic process.

And we all know the course this thing will follow. Anyone who opposes this edict will be branded a bigot; any schoolchild who questions the legitimacy of homosexual marriage will be expelled for "hate speech." The fanatical Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a "homophobe" and therefore mentally ill.

Which is the modern Jacobin equivalent of crying, "Off with their heads!"

We will once again be performing a potentially devastating social experiment on ourselves without any attempt to predict the consequences and find out if the American people actually want them.

But anyone who has any understanding of how America -- or any civilization -- works, of the forces already at play, will realize that this new diktat of the courts will not have any of the intended effects, while the unintended effects are likely to be devastating.

Marriage Is Already Open to Everyone.

In the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.

So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage.

In order to claim that they are deprived, you have to change the meaning of "marriage" to include a relationship that it has never included before this generation, anywhere on earth.

Just because homosexual partners wish to be called "married" and wish to force everyone else around them to regard them as "married," does not mean that their Humpty-Dumpty-ish wish should be granted at the expense of the common language, democratic process, and the facts of human social organization.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.

Marrying Is Hard to Do.

Men and women, from childhood on, have very different biological and social imperatives. They are naturally disposed to different reproductive strategies; men are (on average) larger and stronger; the relative levels of various hormones, the difference in the rate of maturity, and many other factors make it far, far easier for women to get along with other women and men to get along with men.

Men, after all, know what men like far better than women do; women know how women think and feel far better than men do. But a man and a woman come together as strangers and their natural impulses remain at odds throughout their lives, requiring constant compromise, suppression of natural desires, and an unending effort to learn how to get through the intersexual swamp.

And yet, throughout the history of human society -- even in societies that tolerated relatively open homosexuality at some stages of life -- it was always expected that children would be born into and raised by families consisting of a father and mother.

And in those families where one or both parents were missing, usually because of death, either stepparents, adoptive parents, or society in general would step in to provide, not just nurturing, but also the appropriate role models.

It is a demonstrated tendency -- as well as the private experience of most people -- that when we become parents, we immediately find ourselves acting out most of the behaviors we observed in the parent of our own sex. We have to consciously make an effort to be different from them.

We also expect our spouse to behave, as a parent, in the way we have learned to expect from the experiences we had with our opposite-sex parent -- that's why so many men seem to marry women just like their mother, and so many women to marry men just like their father. It takes conscious effort to break away from this pattern.

So not only are two sexes required in order to conceive children, children also learn their sex-role expectations from the parents in their own family. This is precisely what large segments of the Left would like to see break down. And if it is found to have unpleasant results, they will, as always, insist that the cure is to break down the family even further.

The War On Marriage

Of course, in our current society we are two generations into the systematic destruction of the institution of marriage. In my childhood, it was rare to know someone whose parents were divorced; now, it seems almost as rare to find someone whose parents have never been divorced.

And a growing number of children grow up in partial families not because of divorce, but because there never was a marriage at all.

The damage caused to children by divorce and illegitimate birth is obvious and devastating. While apologists for the current system are quick to blame poverty resulting from "deadbeat dads" as the cause, the children themselves know this is ludicrous.

There are plenty of poor families with both parents present whose children grow up knowing they are loved and having good role models from both parents.

And there are plenty of kids whose divorced parents have scads of money -- but whose lives are deformed by the absence of one of their parents in their lives.

Most broken or wounded families are in that condition because of a missing father. There is substantial and growing evidence that our society's contempt for the role of the father in the family is responsible for a massive number of "lost" children.

Only when the father became powerless or absent in the lives of huge numbers of children did we start to realize some of the things people need a father for: laying the groundwork for a sense of moral judgment; praise that is believed so that it can instill genuine self-confidence.

People lacking in fundamental self-esteem don't need gold stars passed out to everyone in their class. Chances are, they need a father who will say -- and mean -- "I'm proud of you."

This is an oversimplification of a very complex system. There are marriages that desperately need to be dissolved for the safety of the children, for instance, and divorced parents who do a very good job of keeping both parents closely involved in the children's lives.

But you have to be in gross denial not to know that children would almost always rather have grown up with Dad and Mom in their proper places at home. Most kids would rather that, instead of divorcing, their parents would acquire the strength or maturity to stop doing the things that make the other parent want to leave.

Marriage Is Everybody's Business.

And it isn't just the damage that divorce and out-of-wedlock births do to the children in those broken families: Your divorce hurts my kids, too.

All American children grow up today in a society where they are keenly aware that marriages don't last. At the first sign of a quarrel even in a stable marriage that is in no danger, the children fear divorce. Is this how it begins? Will I now be like my friends at school, shunted from half-family to half-family?

This is not trivial damage. Kids thrive best in an environment that teaches them how to be adults. They need the confidence and role models that come from a stable home with father and mother in their proper places.

So long before the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided to play Humpty Dumpty, the American people had plunged into a terrible experiment on ourselves, guided only by the slogan of immaturity and barbarism: "If it feels good, do it!"

Civilization depends on people deliberately choosing not to do many things that feel good at the time, in order to accomplish more important, larger purposes. Having an affair; breaking up a marriage; oh, those can feel completely justified and the reasons very important at the time.

But society has a vital stake in child-rearing; and children have a vital stake in society.

Monogamous marriage is by far the most effective foundation for a civilization. It provides most males an opportunity to mate (polygamous systems always result in surplus males that have no reproductive stake in society); it provides most females an opportunity to have a mate who is exclusively devoted to her. Those who are successful in mating are the ones who will have the strongest loyalty to the social order; so the system that provides reproductive success to the largest number is the system that will be most likely to keep a civilization alive.

Monogamy depends on the vast majority of society both openly and privately obeying the rules. Since the natural reproductive strategy for males is to mate with every likely female at every opportunity, males who are not restrained by social pressure and expectations will soon devolve into a sort of Clintonesque chaos, where every man takes what he can get.

Civilization Is Rooted in Reproductive Security.

There is a very complex balance in maintaining a monogamous society, with plenty of lapses and exceptions and mechanisms to cope with the natural barbaric impulses of the male mating drive. There is always room to tolerate a small and covert number of exceptions to the rule.

But the rule must be largely observed, and must be seen to be observed even more than it actually is. If trust between the sexes breaks down, then males who are able will revert to the broadcast strategy of reproduction, while females will begin to compete for males who already have female mates. It is a reproductive free-for-all.

Civilization requires the suppression of natural impulses that would break down the social order. Civilization thrives only when most members can be persuaded to behave unnaturally, and when those who don't follow the rules are censured in a meaningful way.

Why would men submit to rules that deprive them of the chance to satisfy their natural desire to mate with every attractive female?

Why would women submit to rules that keep them from trying to mate with the strongest (richest, most physically imposing, etc.) male, just because he already has a wife?

Because civilization provides the best odds for their children to live to adulthood. So even though civilized individuals can't pursue the most obviously pleasurable and selfish (i.e., natural) strategies for reproduction, the fact is that they are far more likely to be successful at reproduction in a civilized society -- whether they personally like the rules or not.

Civilizations that enforce rules of marriage that give most males and most females a chance to have children that live to reproduce in their turn are the civilizations that last the longest. It's such an obvious principle that few civilizations have even attempted to flout it.

Even if the political system changes, as long as the marriage rules remain intact, the civilization can go on.

Balancing Family and Society

There's a lot of quid pro quo in civilization, though. Not all parents are good providers, for instance. So society, in one way or another, must provide for the children whose parents are either incapable or irresponsible.

Society must also step in to protect children from abusive adults; and the whole society must act in loco parentis, watching out for each other's children, trusting that someone else is also watching out for their own.

The degree of trust can be enormous. We send our children to school for an enormous portion of their childhood, trusting that the school will help civilize them while we parents devote more of our time to providing for them materially (or caring for younger children not yet in school).

At the same time, parents recognize that non-parents are not as trustworthy caretakers. The school provides some aspects of civilization, but not others. Schools expect the parents to civilize their children in certain ways in order to take part safely with other children; parents expect to be left alone with some aspects of child-rearing, such as religion.

In other words, there are countless ways that parents and society at large are constantly negotiating to find the best balance between the parents' natural desire to protect their children -- their entrants in the reproductive lottery -- and the civilization's need to bring the greatest number of children, not just to adulthood, but to parenthood as committed members of the society who will teach their children to also be good citizens.

America's Anti-Family Experiment

In this delicate balance, it is safe to say that beginning with a trickle in the 1950s, but becoming an overwhelming flood in the 1960s and 1970s, we took a pretty good system, and in order to solve problems that needed tweaking, we made massive, fundamental changes that have had devastating consequences.

Now huge numbers of Americans know that the schools are places where their children are indoctrinated in anti-family values. Trust is not just going -- for them it's gone.

Huge numbers of children are deprived of two-parent homes, because society has decided to give legal status and social acceptance to out-of-wedlock parenting and couples who break up their marriages with little regard for what is good for the children.

The result is a generation of children with no trust in marriage who are mating in, at best, merely "marriage-like" patterns, and bearing children with no sense of responsibility to society at large; while society is trying to take on an ever greater role in caring for the children who are suffering -- while doing an increasingly bad job of it.

Parents in a stable marriage are much better than schools at civilizing children. You have to be a fanatical ideologue not to recognize this as an obvious truth -- in other words, you have to dumb down or radically twist the definition of "civilizing children" in order to claim that parents are not, on the whole, better at it.

We are so far gone down this road that it would take a wrenching, almost revolutionary social change to reverse it. And with the forces of P.C. orthodoxy insisting that the solutions to the problems they have caused is ever-larger doses of the disease, it is certain that any such revolution would be hotly contested.

Now, in the midst of this tragic collapse of marriage, along comes the Massachusetts Supreme Court, attempting to redefine marriage in a way that is absurdly irrelevant to any purpose for which society needs marriage in the first place.

Humpty Has Struck Before.

We've already seen similar attempts at redefinition. The ideologues have demanded that we stop defining "families" as Dad, Mom, and the kids. Now any grouping of people might be called a "family."

But this doesn't turn them into families, or even make rational people believe they're families. It just makes it politically unacceptable to use the word family in any meaningful way.

The same thing will happen to the word marriage if the Massachusetts decision is allowed to stand, and is then enforced nationwide because of the "full faith and credit" clause in the Constitution.

Just because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract a "marriage" does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as a legitimate word for the real thing.

If you declare that there is no longer any legal difference between low tide and high tide, it might stop people from publishing tide charts, but it won't change the fact that sometimes the water is lower and sometimes it's higher.

Calling a homosexual contract "marriage" does not make it reproductively relevant and will not make it contribute in any meaningful way to the propagation of civilization.

In fact, it will do harm. Nowhere near as much harm as we have already done through divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. But it's another nail in the coffin. Maybe the last nail, precisely because it is the most obvious and outrageous attack on what is left of marriage in America.

Supporters of homosexual "marriage" dismiss warnings like mine as the predictable ranting of people who hate progress. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm.

You can't add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious research.

Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them. That's what tolerance looks like.

But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society -- to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction.

So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes.

The Propaganda Mill

What happens now if children grow up in a society that overtly teaches that homosexual partnering is not "just as good as" but actually is marriage?

Once this is regarded as settled law, anyone who tries to teach children to aspire to create a child-centered family with a father and a mother will be labeled as a bigot and accused of hate speech.

Can you doubt that the textbooks will be far behind? Any depictions of "families" in schoolbooks will have to include a certain proportion of homosexual "marriages" as positive role models.

Television programs will start to show homosexual "marriages" as wonderful and happy (even as they continue to show heterosexual marriages as oppressive and conflict-ridden).

The propaganda mill will pound our children with homosexual marriage as a role model. We know this will happen because we have seen the fanatical Left do it many times before.

So when our children go through the normal adolescent period of sexual confusion and perplexity, which is precisely the time when parents have the least influence over their children and most depend on the rest of society to help their children grow through the last steps before adulthood, what will happen?

Already any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move through this adolescent phase and never look back.

Already any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms -- effeminite boys and masculine girls -- are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into "accepting" what many of them never suspected they had -- a desire to permanently move into homosexual society.

In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.

Now, there is a myth that homosexuals are "born that way," and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.

In fact what evidence there is suggests that if there is a genetic component to homosexuality, an entire range of environmental influences are also involved. While there is no scientific research whatsoever that indicates that there is no such thing as a borderline child who could go either way.

Those who claim that there is "no danger" and that homosexuals are born, not made, are simply stating their faith.

The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."

They are unhappy, but they think it's because the rest of us "don't fully accept them."

Homosexual "marriage" won't accomplish what they hope. They will still be just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it.

They will make it harder for us to raise children with any confidence that they, in turn, will take their place in the reproductive cycle. They will use all the forces of our society to try to encourage our children that it is desirable to be like them.

Most kids won't be swayed, because the message of the hormones is clear for them. But for those parents who have kids who hover in confusion, their lives complicated by painful experiences, conflicting desires, and many fears, the P.C. elite will now demand that the full machinery of the state be employed to draw them away from the cycle of life.

Children from broken and wounded families, with missing parents, may be the ones most confused and most susceptible. Instead of society helping these children overcome the handicaps that come from a missing or dysfunctional father or mother, it may well be exacerbating the damage.

All the while, the P.C. elite will be shouting at dismayed parents that it is somehow evil and bigoted of them not to rejoice when their children commit themselves to a reproductive dead end.

But there is nothing irrational about parents grieving at the abduction-in-advance of their grandchildren.

Don't you see the absurd contradiction? A postulated but unproven genetic disposition toward homosexuality is supposed to be embraced and accepted by everyone as "perfectly natural" -- but the far stronger and almost universal genetic disposition toward having children and grandchildren is to be suppressed, kept to yourself, treated as a mental illness.

You're unhappy that your son wants to marry a boy? Then you're sick, dangerous, a homophobe, filled with hate. Control your natural desires or be branded as evil by every movie and TV show coming out of P.C. Hollywood!

Compassion and tolerance flow only one way in the "Wonderland" of the politically correct.

Loss of Trust

The proponents of this anti-family revolution are counting on most Americans to do what they have done through every stage of the monstrous social revolution that we are still suffering through -- nothing at all.

But that "nothing" is deceptive. In fact, the pro-family forces are already taking their most decisive action. It looks like "nothing" to the anti-family, politically correct elite, because it isn't using their ranting methodology.

The pro-family response consists of quietly withdrawing allegiance from the society that is attacking the family.

Would-be parents take part in civilization only when they trust society to enhance their chances of raising children who will, in turn, reproduce. Societies that create that trust survive; societies that lose it, disappear, one way or another.

But the most common way is for the people who have the most at stake -- parents and would-be parents -- to simply make the untrusted society disappear by ceasing to lift a finger to sustain it.

It is parents who have the greatest ability to transmit a culture from one generation to the next.

If parents stop transmitting the culture of the American elite to their children, and actively resist letting the schools and media do it in their place, then that culture will disappear.

If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists -- which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does -- then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.

We will teach our children to have no loyalty to the culture of the American elite, and will instead teach them to be loyal to a competing culture that upholds the family. Whether we home school our kids or not, we will withdraw them at an early age from any sense of belonging to contemporary American culture.

We're already far down that road. Already most parents regard schools -- an institution of the state that most directly touches our children -- as the enemy, even though we like and trust the individual teachers -- because we perceive, correctly, that schools are being legally obligated to brainwash our children to despise the values that keep civilization alive.

And if marriage itself ceases to exist as a legally distinct social union with protection from the government, then why in the world should we trust that government enough to let it have authority over our children?

They Think They Have the Power.

The politically correct elite think they have the power to make these changes, because they control the courts.

They don't have to consult the people, because the courts nowadays have usurped the power to make new law.

Democracy? What a joke. These people hate putting questions like this to a vote. Like any good totalitarians, they know what's best for the people, and they'll force it down our throats any way they can.

That's what the Democratic filibuster in the Senate to block Bush's judicial appointments is all about -- to keep the anti-family values of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in control of our government.

And when you add this insult onto the already deep injuries to marriage caused by the widespread acceptance of nonmonogamous behavior, will there be anything left at all?

Sure. In my church and many other churches, people still cling fiercely to civilized values and struggle to raise civilized children despite the barbarians who now rule us through the courts.

The barbarians think that if they grab hold of the trunk of the tree, they've caught the birds in the branches. But the birds can fly to another tree.

And I don't mean that civilized Americans will move. I mean that they'll simply stop regarding the authority of the government as having any legitimacy.

It is the most morally conservative portion of society that is most successful in raising children who believe in loyalty and oath-keeping and self-control and self-sacrifice.

And we're tired of being subject to barbarian rules and laws that fight against our civilized values. We're not interested in risking our children's lives to defend a nation that does not defend us.

Who do you think is volunteering for the military to defend America against our enemies? Those who believe in the teachings of politically correct college professors? Or those who believe in the traditional values that the politically correct elite has been so successful in destroying?

Let's take a poll of our volunteer military -- especially those who specialize in combat areas -- and see what civilization it is that they actually volunteered to defend.

Since the politically correct are loudly unwilling to fight or die for their version of America, and they are actively trying to destroy the version of America that traditional Americans are willing to fight or die to defend, just how long will "America" last, once they've driven out the traditional culture?

Oh, it will still be called America.

But out of the old American mantras of "democracy" and "freedom" and "home" and "family," of "motherhood" and "apple pie," only the pie will be left.

And even if few people care enough to defend the old family values against the screaming hate speech of the Left -- which is what they're counting on, of course -- the end will be the same. Because with marriage finally killed, America will no longer be able to raise up children with any trust in or loyalty to or willingness to sacrifice for that society.

So either civilized people will succeed in establishing a government that protects the family; or civilized people will withdraw their allegiance from the government that won't protect it; or the politically correct barbarians will have complete victory over the family -- and, lacking the strong family structure on which civilization depends, our civilization will collapse or fade away.

Remember how long Iraq's powerful military lasted against a determined enemy, when the Iraqi soldiers no longer had any loyalty to the Iraqi leadership. That wasn't an aberration. It's how great nations and empires fall.

Depriving us of any democratic voice in these sweeping changes may not lead to revolution or even resistance. But it will be just as deadly if it leads to despair. For in the crisis, few citizens will lift a finger to protect or sustain the elite that treated the things we valued -- our marriages, our children, and our right to self-government -- with such contempt.
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Old 11-03-04, 03:35 AM   #2
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Default Re: I know I was opposed to the idea of a topical forum for Politics...

Quote:
Originally posted by Mazer
...But given the types of discussions that have taken place here I am glad they don't polute the general forum anymore. We're on the radar now, since the forum is visible to all the web crawlers and snoops on the net now, so I guess we'll see if it was such a good idea a while from now.
Too true. The standard of arguments if fucking crap. Exactly as was predicted, the 'regulars' population of the board wasn't big enough to support divisions of topic. We've ended up with a handful of regular contributors laying into each other with no real discussion of substance - just a right-wing-left-wing slanging match.

Sure it always used to get personal when we had a single forum and the left/right divide had a strong effect, but the influence of other 'irregular' political contributors diluted the vitriol and predictability, opening up different avenues of thought. Like I said at the time - this was the site's best selling-point, it's uniqueness.

This is why I now make little effort with my posts - no doubt a bonus for many - and I started using other forums for a better quality of debate/read. Shame really, Napsterites sells itself short.

--TM
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Old 11-03-04, 07:44 PM   #3
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I know that you came for the P2P forum and you stayed for Underground, tambourine-man, and I'm glad for that. Being somewhat new your ideas and posts always sound fresh and thoughtful, while everything that everyone else says seems a little stale. I think if we keep things new it will invite more new members who will in turn keep things new, and the Underground regulars might participate too. It's a very positive cycle. The left/right, Dem/Rep back and forth is old; time to grow up now.
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Old 11-03-04, 08:15 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally posted by Mazer
I know that you came for the P2P forum and you stayed for Underground, tambourine-man, and I'm glad for that. Being somewhat new your ideas and posts always sound fresh and thoughtful, while everything that everyone else says seems a little stale. I think if we keep things new it will invite more new members who will in turn keep things new, and the Underground regulars might participate too. It's a very positive cycle. The left/right, Dem/Rep back and forth is old; time to grow up now.
well put, Mazer...

while i often disagree you, i always enjoy the thoughtfulness of your posts and i especially appreciate the civility of your tone. the Liberal/Conservative thing does get very old, indeed and it's a shame that anyone who attempts to establish some middle ground in a discussion is usually marginalized with one label or another. i'd like to think i avoid that with anyone other than the obvious usual suspects, but i'm probably guilty of it to some extent as well.

i always find it striking that the extremes on both sides dominate the discussion here, much as they do nationally and in the media....
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Old 11-03-04, 10:17 PM   #5
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Where are we? The reasonable fellows thread or the ban gay marriage thread? I find the two concepts opposed. Especially when one posts extreme and unfounded opinions insisting that same sex monogamy will lead to the downfall and ruin of life as we know it. “Our civilization will collapse or fade away.” and “America will no longer be able to raise up children with any trust in or loyalty.” That’s reasonable? Not to me it isn’t.

There are millions of couples living together throughout this country contributing to the general well being of our society. Many of them are of the same sex. This has been true from the earliest days of our history. You may not like it, you might even viscerally hate it (Some reasonable advice? Overcome it), but it’s not a license to spread unfounded and hysterical accusations and predictions, based on…what exactly, fear? Bigotry? Or does Mr. Scott Card posesses some actual empirical evidence to back up these amazing statements? Since monogamous gays are living among us peacefully and productively I posit it’s up to you to prove that by simply allowing them to marry some profound change will occur that ushers in the drastic events you’ve posted as Card’s proxy. In truth, I found his broadside to be one of the most unreasonable I’ve seen at this forum. Filled with dark rumor and portent, based on loathing and superstition, wrapped in a smary lie of balance and fairness. I know you didn’t write it Mazer, but please, don’t for a second tell me it’s reasonable. It is anything but. If I was gay I’d consider it nothing less than hate speech and a call to arms.

Insert Mormon or Jew or Catholic etc for homosexual and you may get some idea what it means.

Reasonable? You’re kidding right? Not on this planet, and not on this board.

- js.
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Old 11-03-04, 11:22 PM   #6
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In truth, I found his broadside to be one of the most unreasonable I’ve seen at this forum. Filled with dark rumor and portent, based on loathing and superstition, wrapped in a smary lie of balance and fairness. I know you didn’t write it Mazer, but please, don’t for a second tell me it’s reasonable. It is anything but. If I was gay I’d consider it nothing less than hate speech and a call to arms.
but you find it perfectly acceptable and reasonable when the hate-filled speeches "filled with dark rumor and portent, based on loathing and superstition, wrapped in a smary lie of balance and fairness" of krugman and rall are posted on this forum. didn't see you bleating about a call to arms then.

our country gets attacked..3,000 people are murdered by terrorists, and you think we should not have declared war. but reading about someone who has a differing opinion of homosexuality, that's a reason for a call to arms?

lol...and you called us righties dimwits and morons?

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That’s reasonable? Not to me it isn’t. Reasonable? You’re kidding right? Not on this planet, and not on this board.
didn't realize that you own this planet, and this board.
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Old 11-03-04, 11:46 PM   #7
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This is the 'Mazer decided to participate' thread. Aren't you just a little exicted?

I only said I agreed with Mr. Card on the subject, but I didn't say it was reasonable. He's a doomsayer to be sure, maybe that's something that comes with age and the onset of paranoia, I guess I'll find out in about twenty five years or so. However, by that time I hope to have a well rounded family to guard from the rest of the world, so perhaps I will reach that paranoid stage much sooner. So it isn't Card's opinion that I defend, it is myself and my family.

My own opinion is that such things as widespread divorce, teen pregnancy, and adultery are in fact bad things. I think those are givens. I'm not a historian, and I wasn't around when divorce was taboo, but I do believe that the changes in the institution of family that have taken place over the past few decades cannot be called progress.

Nobody disputes that gays play important roles in society, there's plenty of work for every American to do. If they want to pair up and live together that's fine, I don't really care, and it doesn't diminish their importance in public life. However, I don't see what gay marraige does to enhance their positions in society or the contributions they make. What can a married gay couple do that an unmarried gay couple can't do?

The idea of state sanctioned gay marraige isn't only what makes me mad, it's the fact that a federal court took it upon itself to decide what was best for civilization. The court is not meant to be a legislative body, what the Massachusetts Supreme Court did was unconstitutional, and the same could be said for the US Supreme Court as well. I didn't elect those judges, they don't represent me, and yet they think they have the authority to amend the law. It took a three quarter majority of all the states' legislatures to ratify the 13th amendment of the Constitution. The framers understood that when the time comes to cause social upheaval to right certain wrongs that are ingrained in our society, as slavery was at the time, that you better ask everyone. But this federal court decided to sidestep the Constitutional process and that doesn't sit well with me.

I'd be damned sure I know what I'm talking about before I label anything hate speech. Hate speech is a dirty and dispicable practice, lower than purgury and on almost par with treason, the accusation of which is not to be taken lightly. Meerly stating a dissenting opinion does not make me a hater. A call to arms? Hardly. Card's article didn't make me want to fight, if anything it disheartened me almost to the point of giving up and taking a vow of celibacy. If people take sexuality, both hetero and homo, this damn seriously then maybe it isn't worth it at all. I don't think this is an issue that Americans are willing to get into an other civil war over. So cool your jets. This discussion, as long as it continues as it has, isn't going to harm anyone.

Edit: amendment corrections

Last edited by Mazer : 19-03-04 at 01:17 AM.
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Old 12-03-04, 12:27 AM   #8
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Nobody disputes that gays play important roles in society, there's plenty of work for every American to do. If they want to pair up and live together that's fine, I don't really care, and it doesn't diminish their importance in public life.
I have always been of the opinion "just what is so special about being "Gay" that anyone should give a crap about what a "gay" person does in scociety?" It is my personal belief that what you do in life is irrelevant to your social standing as a homosexual, (insert religon of choice), political affiliation, skin color or job title.

I am also of the opinion that Marrage is an almost universally accepted union between a man and woman, not man and man, or woman to woman, and has become seated in most religious doctorins as such. Some might call this hate speach or call me Homophobic but I deny that. If the Homosexuals who want the "stuff the married people get by being married" then a Civil Union contract is already in available in most of the country already, if not all of the country. This will cover the legal issues, I think. If not, then this is what they should push for, I think. Why do some of them feel the need to shove their sexuallity in others faces? I do not go around trying to prove to the world how "straight" I am.

Now for the disclamer, I do have one "gay" friend, he and I have talked about such things in passing, which is how I formed some of my opinions. He says that his partner wants to have the title of married, but only so he can then say he was married, no other real reason that I could discerne. Ron does not want to marry.

You might note that I used quotes where I wrote gay, this is because Gay does not mean Homosexual, the word was hijacked to this defination.
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Old 12-03-04, 01:09 AM   #9
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Originally posted by Mazer
I know that you came for the P2P forum and you stayed for Underground, tambourine-man, and I'm glad for that. Being somewhat new your ideas and posts always sound fresh and thoughtful, while everything that everyone else says seems a little stale. I think if we keep things new it will invite more new members who will in turn keep things new, and the Underground regulars might participate too. It's a very positive cycle. The left/right, Dem/Rep back and forth is old; time to grow up now.
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originally posted by theknife
well put, Mazer...
while i often disagree you, i always enjoy the thoughtfulness of your posts and i especially appreciate the civility of your tone. the Liberal/Conservative thing does get very old, indeed and it's a shame that anyone who attempts to establish some middle ground in a discussion is usually marginalized with one label or another. i'd like to think i avoid that with anyone other than the obvious usual suspects, but i'm probably guilty of it to some extent as well...

Cheers - nice to know I'm not alone on this issue.
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Old 12-03-04, 01:09 AM   #10
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Shit Mazer, you complain about people hijacking thread topics and then you hand out parachutes and plastic explosives on Wear-A-Turban-Fly-For-Half-Price Day at the airport.

On the topic of topics, I am of the "information should be free" school of thought. I have little to say about the formation of the political forum one way or another, the best thing I can say is that it has focused certain interests and, I think, given some of us an opportunity to get to know each other better... This is no doubt good for some and bad for others.

But I do, predictably, have quite a lot to say about the article.


I'm sorry, but I really can't take anyone seriously who is claiming that homosexual marriages will "kill" heterosexual marriages. Mr. card cites the declining marriage rate and the inclining divorce rate as if this was a dynamic caused by the influence of people outside of the institution of marriage, and I find this absurd: men and women still have ample and uninhibited opportunity, incentive and encouragement to marry in our culture. If there is a zeitgeist of "easy divorce" who can possibly be to "blame" other than the abundance of examples of heterosexual couples who cannot live together and choose divorce?

Certainly there is an increasing disillusion in the institution of marriage, judging from the marriage and gay marriage threads here, and from the overwhelming prevalence of people I know personally who try hard to avoid it (lol). The vast majority of these people are, of course, heterosexuals--people "eligible" in every sense of the word for traditional marriages who have chosen not to pursue it, to avoid it and even mock it, and who take the example of the divorce rate under advisement that it can be and often is a fallible institution and can have legal pitfalls.

While so many heterosexuals are blase and even negative about traditional marriage, isn't it a bit over the top to cite a group of homosexuals who have an enthusiastic desire to engage in this kind of union as contributing to its demise?

I simply can't get my head around this. If Mr. Card feels that marriage is so threatened in our culture that the idea of it needs to be invigorated and "sold" to new generations, lest the human race perish without it, why does he see same sex couples who are fairly aching to do it as more of a negative influence than the millions of heterosexuals who simply feel it isn't the right thing for them? Look to "your own" Mr. Card, I say.

This is like blaming the decline in popularity of country music on fans of rap, or, more aptly, blaming the loss of business for a Mexican restaurant with a history of bad service on the Italian restaurant across town with attentive waiters.

Clearly Mr. Card is not a bigot, but he is a cunning linguist who typifies what's really at the heart of the problem in people accepting the concept of gay marriages: the very word itself is a symbol with dark ties to both the propagation of the species and diffused religious ideas.

Turns out though, the species propagates all too well whether human beings marry or not, and people form families as result of procreating, if they so choose, regardless of certification. They also very obviously do not if that's their choice.

What, if anything, other than heterosexual behavior could be contributing to this kind of heterosexual decision I can't imagine. Happily married gays? I hardly think so, especially in light of the fact that "happily married gays" is something, as a society, we scarcely even admit exists yet.

On the contrary, I feel it's the inferential relationship of marriage to religion which causes the institution to suffer most: I think it's indicative of a broader disillusion or ambivalence with religion in general and especially with those spooky words "in the sight of God" and "'Till death do us part," which simply do not have the same meaning to many people today as they did to our God-fearing grandparents. Young people today are liable to be simply more pragmatic than to believe in the implied charming magic spell, to label it a "charade" due to the prevalence of disintegrating marriages that occur quite in spite of this blessing, and disdain and the accompanying legal tribulations.

I don't care how long and involved your article is, if the suggestion is implicit that Mr. and Mrs. Jones are going to be more likely break up or never even get married in the first place because Mr. and Mr. Smith down the street are enjoying marital bliss, you're just blowing a gas of denial at the real problem.

Regard:

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Just because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract a "marriage" does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as a legitimate word for the real thing...

But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society -- to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction...

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage...

Once this is regarded as settled law, anyone who tries to teach children to aspire to create a child-centered family with a father and a mother will be labeled as a bigot and accused of hate speech...

Homosexual "marriage" won't accomplish what they hope. They will still be just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it...
Poppycock and balderdash. In fact quite frankly this borders on crazy in my opinion. Does Mr. Card actually believe that homosexuals have no cognizance whatsoever of the miracle of human reproduction and its logistics? We get it. I seriously do not believe there is a single living homosexual who would suggest that a family with a loving mother and father and children is anything but a beautiful and perfectly natural thing, that it is desirable and to be aspired to and that it should never be supressed in any conceivable way in any conceivable world. If anyone can show me a website or any given kind of documentary evidence of a gay with such an agenda, I shall personally go to great lengths to berate them unmercifully until I am blue.

But let's calm down and be realistic Mr. Card, trust in your species knowing anyone with contrary opinions would be too insignificant to have any influence on anyone anyway--an agenda of tearing apart the human family, besides having 3 million years plus of mammalian evolution opposing it, would be too patently ridiculous to be supportable.

Gay marriage is simply not a slippery slope into reproductive chaos and sexual anarchy. And if you feel that heterosexuality is on that slope, I'm afraid you're just going to have to use your own heterosexual engines to climb out.


Quote:
Television programs will start to show homosexual "marriages" as wonderful and happy (even as they continue to show heterosexual marriages as oppressive and conflict-ridden).
And this impressive prophecy if it were fulfilled would indicate... what?

First, if we believed our role models on television were indicative of real human statistics, wouldn't about 85% of us be either murderers on the run or cops giving chase?

Then, if we really conceded that people aspiring to be like television role models was so significant that we should preferentially craft these role models with more care, why in the world would you feel such a need to start with "happily married gays" when the airwaves are full of murderers, rapists, thieves, drug dealers, and a myriad of psychotics and neurotics engaged in antisocial behaviors too numerous to mention. In fact, why start with the "happily married gays" before cutting out all those "unhappily married heterosexuals" you're so concerned about being depicted, and morphing them into happily married couples.

If you want the media to be a homogenous sales campaign for happy heterosexual marriage, you've got way way way more problems than a depiction of a happily married gay couple my friend...

Good luck to you sir.

And the fact remains that at this point, as far as I can tell at least, being of somewhat limited television expertise, a popular television program that depicts a happily married gay couple is entirely mythical, isn't it? Again, I'd bet on Occam's razor that this is probably because as a society we don't admit of the existence of gay marriages... but maybe there are more complicated and obscure reasons... ...(can't think of any...)

I know we've got Will and Grace, which I've watched a few times, enough to know the two gay characters in it are neither married nor even in a relationship with each other and in fact, again with my limited knowledge, apparently never even go on dates or even have discernable actual sex lives at all. Then again, didn't the straight cast of Friends all grow up and get married or something? Didn't the straight cast of Sex in the City all find true love in the end? I watched the final episode, exactly half of the couples ended up married, and the other half just ended up happy couples.

In fact I think it's very curious this guy is troubled by a proliferation of "oppresive and conflict-ridden heterosexual marriages" on television because as I sit here I can't even think of one. I mean I think Frazier was divorced but on good terms with the ex and kid, and then you got your Roseannes and Raymonds and Tool Times and even the aptly named Married With Children, all of which maybe somewhat conflict-ridden for comic effect but all center on the depiction of couples with children who all stay together through thick and thin, not terribly different from Lucy and Ricky or Rob and Laura or Ward and June.

Maybe in this case Mr. Card is just focusing on what personally troubles him, as we all tend to do.

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Don't you see the absurd contradiction? A postulated but unproven genetic disposition toward homosexuality is supposed to be embraced and accepted by everyone as "perfectly natural" -- but the far stronger and almost universal genetic disposition toward having children and grandchildren is to be suppressed, kept to yourself, treated as a mental illness.
Dude, if it ever comes to that I would so be in your fucking protest rally, but I simply cannot choose another word for this but "delusional.". Sorry. All due respect. Never going to fucking happen.

I don't want to uneccessarily frighten this guy any more than he already is, but in the strange little world wherein this could ever happen he would have so many problems that worrying about gay people getting married would be even less significant than worrying about a nose hair two seconds before impact with a speeding Mack truck.

This can't be taken seriously.

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The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.
That's not a fact but a mere conjecture and an insult to all parties, not the least of which are the victims of abuse. Show me a single study that says the rates of abuse divided into heterosexual and homosexual categories is anything but purely relative and equitable, and then ask how many heterosexuals first entered into their world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and stagger at the numbers. A cursory glance at such studies shows that victims of homosexual abuse are not more likely to "turn out" one way or the other any more than victims of heterosexual abuse are. In fact, some show that the highest "conversion rate" is among women who are more likely to become lesbians "as a result of" heterosexual abuse, but these are somewhat controversial. The larger conclusion is that not one single straight line has ever been drawn than can plot predictable developmental sexuality types with types of abuse. It's a myth. Get over it.

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"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."
It's kind of ironic that he used this. Being a huge fan of Lewis Carroll, I have to say I interpreted this passage very differently from Mr. Card, but it also points up something I've realized about how gay politics should approach this issue. VWguy touches on it (very unhomophobically) and even pisser hit upon this in his crude and offensive way in his "Gay Farriage" thread: for the dialogue to continue I think perhaps the word marriage should simply be avoided in the language of gay petitions as much as possible.

The word "marriage" is the prized political and religious football of Mr Card's philosophical team. In the Humpty Dumpty vernacular, this word is their master; it can no longer mean what they say it means if it means something else as well.

As long as gays insist on using that word, they're going to think we're trying to take their balls. They don't realize we can have our own balls, and our own playing fields. (pun not intended, but effective.)

Instead of fighting for "marriage," gays should be fighting for simple "civil unions" that satisfy every one of the 1049 rights that marriage does, for the same basic filing cost and with the same requisite consents. Period. To walk into the county clerk's office and pay a small fee to legally bestow upon one other person in your life all those joint rights is enough. Then, if you belong to a church willing to "sanctify" this union in a religious sense and ceremony, no one can stop you. You can have rice and everything.

There's no need to alter the word of law concerning marriage. No need to alter the language which defines marriage as "between a man and a woman" one iota, as long as these civil unions can effectively "mimic" them between people of the same gender.

This would be a case of problem solved I'm certain, except that we do have an administration attempting to preclude it, and we do have a lot of people with this strange irrational concern Mr. Card so eloquently elucidates.

The Humpty-Dumpty moral is that a word can master many, or, in time, have many masters.
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Old 12-03-04, 02:06 AM   #11
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A well thought-out post Ramona_A_Stone. Well, most of it.

I found your lengthy post a tad tainted by the first paragraph.
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Old 12-03-04, 02:23 AM   #12
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Tainted by a joke? My we are getting sensitive around here.

Sorry.
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Old 12-03-04, 08:44 PM   #13
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Nah, the first paragraph isn't bad, it makes me smile every time I read it. I've asked for trouble by making a thread with two topics, so basically it isn't possible to hijack this thread because I've already sabotaged it. If I thought Ramona's scarcasm was offensive then I would have said so a long time ago. Knowing that it is a joke sets the right tone for the rest of the thoughtful post.

I think your right, marraige isn't being attacked from without. If anything it was social pressure that kept divorce rates low, and now that the pressure is gone and people are free to choose, more and more people are opting for it. It's a good sign that married couples have more freedom, but it's bad that they're using that freedom to break otherwise happy families appart. In the face of "easy divorce" I stand by the idea that nothing worth doing is easy.

I do think the institution of marraige is founded on the base desire of humans to reproduce, and religion and government have been thrown into the mix to complicate things. Card's essay suggests that in such an unnatural environment like human civilization, for children to survive childhood they must be taught how to succeed in society, and they learn by example mostly from their parents. For people who have no desire to have children marraige is a formality. For people who have children outside of marraige their offspring are less likely to become productive adults. Even in our artificial environment the laws of natural selection apply. In nature when an animal fails to bear offspring then its inferior genes are removed from the pool, but when a person fails to have children it's not just his genes that disappear but also his family history, his knowledge, his wisdom, and his cultural heritage that are lost. Many of those things may be passed on to other people, but children embrace those things, they cling to tradition and the pass it on. For many people having children is the closest they'll ever get to immortality.

So despite the fact that everyone has talents and strengths that they use to the benefit of civilization as a whole, if a person dies childless then civilization as a whole looses out. And ironically, if a parent doesn't raise his or her own child then the end result is the same. This is the basis for the idea that family is the best way to preserve culture, society, and ultimately civilization. It may sound a little far fetched, but it has obviously worked for thousands of years. I say, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

But if it is decided that we should tamper with the basic design of civilization will it lead to its downfall? That is very far fetched. Card said that rather than trying to change America back to the way it was, people will simply remove their alliegence to her. The same thing happened when the North tried to abolish slavery (I know I keep coming back to the Civil War but bear with me here) and the South decided that secession would be easier than trying to legalize slavery throughout the US. Bad idea then, bad idea now, only the present division doesn't neatly follow a geographic line. War will not happen because of gay marraige, but no good will come of dividing America into two separate cultures neither of which is truely American.

Government benefits aside, a lot of gays want to get married just so they can wear it as of badge of honor. The day you get married is regarded as the day you finally grow up, it's your official entry pass into society. People do expect certain perks for getting married, and rightly so because staying married isn't always easy and raising children is never easy. But of those 1049 benefits that marraige provides, most of them are focused on child dependants. Adoption is always a viable option for gay couples and in that case those marital benefits should be given, but without children a marraige isn't really a family, just a token of love. This the the critical question of the day and it deserves a lot of thought: do gays deserve marraige if they choose not to have children? Maybe yes, maybe no, I don't know for sure so don't put me on trial for posing this challenge.

Here's my personal anecdote. I know a gay guy who says enjoys his sex life, but in the future he hopes to settle down with a woman and raise a couple of boys; more than anything he want's to be a father. I asked him if that means he's a closet heterosexual, and he smiled and nodded. But since he's in his late 20's and his only experience with women came from a handful of bad relationships in high school, myself and others fear that he may miss the chance to be a father because he won't know how to be a good husband to his wife. I'm positive he'll eventually figure it out, but he will be an old man when he does, perhaps too old to be a good dad. Right now he's doing what he feels is natural and it's interfering with his long term goals.

I think this little story this has more to do with premarital sexuality than homosexuality, but it speaks to the widely held misunderstanding that love+sex=marraige. Many straight people think this way too, and it's wrong. I think that for my friend to have a successful marraige he needs to forget about sex completly, it's the only way he'll be able to love his wife. I know I'm revealing my own misconceptions here, but would a gay couple mary if they had never had sex with each other? I doubt it. For gays (as well as many straights), marraige is primarily about the sex, and love is secondary.

I don't know why but I keep thinking of the lyrics to U2's One. You say love is a temple, love the higher law. You ask me to enter but then you make me crawl.
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