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Opinions on Homosexuality

Are you for or against gay rights?

  • For Gay Rights

    Votes: 61 95.3%

  • Against Gay Rights

    Votes: 3 4.7%
  • Total voters
    64
Kal'Stang said:
Huh?
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Huh what? Do you know the difference?

Wrong. If a person yells fire in a crowded theater it can incite a panic and when people panic they shove and make people fall and stomp on those people with no regard to their safety. Thereby hurting them...all because some idiot yelled "FIRE!"
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You have no grasp of possibility, do you?
 
Fletch said:
My marrying two women harms no one, yet you advocate the state violate my fundamental right to marry who I choose. Why?
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Did you read the link I gave you?

Fletch said:
When you can show me how polygamy or incestuous marriages harm any single person outside of that marriage.
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Being as polygamy was already addressed I'm only going to address the bold part. It is a fact that incestuous marriages where the couple has sex and has a child because of having sex affects the health of that child.

Interbreeding:

Incest that results in offspring is a form of close inbreeding (reproduction between two individuals with a common ancestor). Inbreeding leads to a higher probability of congenital birth defects because it increases that proportion of zygotes that are homozygous, in particular for deleterious recessive alleles that produce such disorders.[72] Because most such alleles are rare in populations, it is unlikely that two unrelated marriage partners will both be heterozygous carriers. However, because close relatives share a large fraction of their alleles, the probability that any such rare deleterious allele present in the common ancestor will be inherited from both related parents is increased dramatically with respect to non-inbred couples. Contrary to common belief, inbreeding does not in itself alter allele frequencies, but rather increases the relative proportion of homozygotes to heterozygotes. However, because the increased proportion of deleterious homozygotes exposes the allele to natural selection, in the long run its frequency decreases more rapidly in inbred population. In the short term, incestuous reproduction is expected to produce increases in spontaneous abortions of zygotes, perinatal deaths, and postnatal offspring with birth defects.[73] HM Slatis showed a significant delay in time to first pregnancy in first-cousin marriages as compared with unrelated individuals in the same population. There may also be other deleterious effects besides those caused by recessive diseases. Thus, similar immune systems may be more vulnerable to infectious diseases (see Major Histocompatibility Complex and Sexual Selection).[74]

A 1994 study found a mean excess mortality with inbreeding among first cousins of 4.4%.[75] A study of 29 offspring resulting from brother-sister or father-daughter incest found that 20 had congenital abnormalities, including four directly attributable to autosomal recessive alleles.[76]
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Incest


Fletch said:
It was absurd rationale for allowing the state to violate a "fundamental right."
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You have yet to dispute anything credibly.
 
taxigirl said:
A lot of people say this and don't that homosexuals do not have the same rights that heterosexuals, and there are no "extra rights". There is no federal law against housing discrimination that protects homosexuals, several states and municipalities have their own laws, but for the most part if you are gay a landlod can say you may not rent or you can be refused a loan for housing etc...
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I'm opposed to housing discrimination laws that force property owners to rent their properties out to undesired tenants for any reason-- because a racial, sexual, or religious discrimination case is too easy to make when a landlord refuses to rent a property for other reasons.

taxigirl said:
There are also no protections in place in cases of medical care (unless it comes to federal dollars) for visitation, rights to make medical decisions. The parties involved must have power of attorney, healthcare proxies etc.. If these are not in place then homosexuals do not have the rights as heterosexuals.
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That's covered by marriage.

taxigirl said:
These are the rights that heterosexuals have. They are not "extra" rights.
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And what about the right to name someone as the beneficiary of your health insurance or your pension fund without marrying them? What about the right to adopt children without being married? Those are "extra rights", and they're being granted wrongfully because our society won't do the right thing and extend them the equal rights they should have.

earthworm said:
And you call yourself a "Progressive" ??
Well, at least you are honest...
And, when are we going to see a cancer sufferers rights parade ???
We need a more intelligent people.
I for one find the "moral order" to be offensive !
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I model myself, as a Progressive, after Theodore Roosevelt who while being a Progressive believed very much in the indecency laws of his era. I believe in the moral order above all other considerations. Certain civil rights enhance the moral order, such as equality in marriage, while others, like the right to pornography or rights to assembly and freedom of speech that are distorted so far as to protect lawless criminals like the Occupy Movement, are detrimental to the moral order.

katiegrrl0 said:
As was stated by Kali heterosexuals do those things also. Why do you express a double standard in your rant?
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Because this is a gay rights thread. When it's heterosexual vermin engaging in displays of public indecency, it's usually a First Amendment thread.
 
Henrin said:
Huh what? Do you know the difference?
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Could you rephrase it please? I don't get how "government attached to the state" is relevent to this discussion.

Henrin said:
You have no grasp of possibility, do you?
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:roll: If you want to take the saying literally then...

People have indeed falsely shouted "Fire!" in crowded public venues and caused panics on numerous occasions, such as at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall (London) in 1856, in Harlem in 1884,[1] and in the Italian Hall disaster of 1913, which left 73 dead.
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Wiki ~ Shouting fire in a crowded theater

They also have a SCOTUS case refering to it.
 
Jerry said:
When you use vague terms, you allow the reader to fill in the details.
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*Thread title is "Opinions on Homosexuality*
*"vague terms*

Sure buddy. Sure.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Could you rephrase it please? I don't get how "government attached to the state" is relevent to this discussion.
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How many people demanding rights of gay individuals are in fact including benefits from the state and NOT the act of simply being allowed to marry?



:roll: If you want to take the saying literally then...


Wiki ~ Shouting fire in a crowded theater

They also have a SCOTUS case refering to it.
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In order for an action to be a right violation it can't simply be a possibility of injury argument.
 
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Viktyr Korimir said:
I support equal marriage and kinship rights for homosexuals, and for age-of-consent laws to be equivalent for heterosexual and homosexual sex. Beyond that, I can't think of any other "gay rights" that gays require or that I would support.
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Viktyr Korimir said:
That's covered by marriage.
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Right, and they do not have the right to marry.


Viktyr Korimir said:
And what about the right to name someone as the beneficiary of your health insurance or your pension fund without marrying them? What about the right to adopt children without being married? Those are "extra rights", and they're being granted wrongfully because our society won't do the right thing and extend them the equal rights they should have.
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You can names anyone you want as a "beneficiary" of insurance, I am not sure what you mean as "beneficiary of your health insurance", do you mean adding them as a covered person?

Single people can adopt, heterosexual couples who are not married can adopt. A lot of what we are discussing are the same rights we had to make laws to cover blacks for because they were being discriminated against.
 
Henrin said:
How many people demanding rights of gay individuals are in fact including benefits from the state and NOT the act of simply being allowed to marry?
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Every right has a benefit to it. That's actually kinda the point of having rights. So its no surprise that people include the benefits that a right gives when talking about that right.

Henrin said:
In order for an action to be a right violation it can't simply be a possibility of injury argument.
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Why?
 
Kal'Stang said:
Every right has a benefit to it. That's actually kinda the point of having rights. So its no surprise that people include the benefits that a right gives when talking about that right.
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Benefits are benefits, rights are rights. They are not interchangeable as people are using them. The government providing you something is not a right, but a benefit. Everything that the government does in marriage is a benefit, not a right.

Why?
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Because otherwise you are taking away rights of individuals.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Did you read the link I gave you?



Being as polygamy was already addressed I'm only going to address the bold part. It is a fact that incestuous marriages where the couple has sex and has a child because of having sex affects the health of that child.



Incest




You have yet to dispute anything credibly.
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You are not addressing the issue: which is the fundamental right to marriage. Incestuous relationships occur, polygamous relationships occur. You have a fundamental right to engage in those relationships. Yet somehow you feel the state has a right to deprive those same people of their fundamental right to marry. Why? If these relationships are so damaging to the culture or to others, why does the state not ban sexual relationships between siblings, or between more than two partners? I will answer that for you--because you have the "fundamental right" to engage in those activities.
 
Well, I believe that homosexual equality, including the right to marry, IS a constitutionally-protected right. I hope that eventually SCOTUS will agree that when the constitution calls for equal protection and equal rights under law, it refers to ALL people. Homosexuals are people, the last minority that can be legally discriminated against. This must change, it must change on a federal level, and I believe that very soon it will change.
 
Fletch said:
In other words, to build upon my response to Kal'Stang, an individuals "fundamental right" to something is violable by the state because it might be a paperwork hassle. Sorry, not buying that. If I have a fundamental right to something, it is the obligation of the state to secure that right. How complicated it might be in doing so is irrelevant.
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The right is to have access to the legal contract itself, not necessarily legal marriage, when the people are similarly situated. The contract itself is specifically designed for two people only, at least in the US. This is more than "minor paperwork" being changed, it involves a lot of legal issues that would need to be resolved prior to allowing such unions to occur legally to avoid their unions costing the government more than they actually benefit it.

It is completely within the right of the government, state or federal, to not have legal marriage at all. I don't personally believe that this is in the country's best interest, but it wouldn't be wrong to do this. But as long as there is a contract, then all restrictions on it must be connected to a legitimate state interest in preventing the people in similar situations (in the case of SSM, why a man can marry a woman but a woman cannot marry a woman)(in the case of multiple marriages, it would be why a person can marry one other person but cannot marry more than one person) from entering the contract. There are legitimate arguments to keep marriages limited to two people and only allowing them into one contract, some I have given. There are no legitimate arguments of how limiting marriage by sex actually furthers in legitimate state interests at all, at least not one that wouldn't be discriminatory if it were not based on sex, but rather the actual ability of the two to procreate with each other.
 
digsbe said:
It protects everyone, but not under the basis of sexual orientation. It is silent regarding this and homosexuals are not recognize at the Constitutional level as being a protected class.

It is legal to discriminate against sex in some cases. If the ERA passed back in the 70's your argument would be correct. The government discriminates against sex by forcing only males to sign up for selective service and drafting. They discriminate against sex by having male and female only areas (like restrooms). It is legal for a state to say that a man can only legally marry a woman and visa versa.
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The Constitution itself doesn't actually mention protecting people on the basis of race either. Nor sex. The SCOTUS has stated that EP means that it applies to people similarly situated and has placed certain class restrictions at higher levels, but all things that can be discriminated against still have to meet their tier level of scrutiny when it comes to equal protection.

There is good reason for those discriminatory laws based on sex that actually meet an important state interest and have shown how they actually apply to furthering that state interest. Anti-SSM bans have not even demonstrated how they live up to the bottom tier scrutiny of meeting a state interest in any way, shape or form, particularly because of other laws and how we can see that there are other couples similarly situated to same sex couples (infertile couples) who are allowed to marry just because of their relative sexes.
 
Fletch said:
My marrying two women harms no one, yet you advocate the state violate my fundamental right to marry who I choose. Why?
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Many who want same sex marriage legalized are also for allowing multiple marriages or spouses. Some of us want to see the laws changed to allow at least some legal recognition of legal family given to multiple partners. But there are still inherent differences between the arguments for and against same sex marriage and those for and against multiple marriages/partners.

Fletch said:
When you can show me how polygamy or incestuous marriages harm any single person outside of that marriage.
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It is not "all about harm", but rather whether or not a restriction furthers an actual state interest in any way when applied to one group but not another. The arguments for and against same sex marriage are different from those for/against polygamy/multiple partners and the arguments for/against incestuous marriages.

Fletch said:
It was absurd rationale for allowing the state to violate a "fundamental right."
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The states cannot violate EP of the 14th Amendment.

If they want, states could possibly get around violating EP by making the restriction based on ability to procreate rather than sex. The only thing is that this would apply to opposite sex couples as well. Probably not really within a state's best interest to do this though, so it could still be argued that such a restriction is going to hurt a state interest more than it would further another, but it would certainly put it on the bottom tier of scrutiny.
 
I did not vote because homosexuals are already protected under the Constitution just like any other American. Homosexuals do not need special rights anymore than rednecks need special rights (although rednecks are special).
 
Henrin said:
How many people demanding rights of gay individuals are in fact including benefits from the state and NOT the act of simply being allowed to marry?
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How much do those benefits cost the state as compared to the benefits to the state for people being legally married? What is the difference in that comparison if the couple cannot have children together (but are still able and willing to adopt)? What is the difference if the couple has no desire to ever raise children together?

All marriages boost the economy because people who can get married, particularly a marriage that gives them benefits, spend money on the wedding. A lot of money.

The cost of gay marriage
Would Gay Marriage Help the State Economy? - NYTimes.com
Prop 8 Repeal Could Give California Economic Bump - US News and World Report
Gay Marriage Makes Cents

The list goes on. Most economists agree that legalized same sex marriage really is better economically than not having it.

Henrin said:
In order for an action to be a right violation it can't simply be a possibility of injury argument.
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That's right. In this case it is a violation based on discrimination because one group of people can marry people of one sex while another group cannot do so, despite the fact that this cannot honestly be backed up by evidence that such restriction furthers any state interest.
 
Henrin said:
Benefits are benefits, rights are rights. They are not interchangeable as people are using them. The government providing you something is not a right, but a benefit. Everything that the government does in marriage is a benefit, not a right.
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Rights come with benefits. Yes benefits can be tacked onto a right but that does not mean that a right does not have its own inherent benefits.

Henrin said:
Because otherwise you are taking away rights of individuals.
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At this point I'm wondering if we are even talking about the same thing.
 
Fletch said:
You are not addressing the issue: which is the fundamental right to marriage. Incestuous relationships occur, polygamous relationships occur. You have a fundamental right to engage in those relationships. Yet somehow you feel the state has a right to deprive those same people of their fundamental right to marry. Why? If these relationships are so damaging to the culture or to others, why does the state not ban sexual relationships between siblings, or between more than two partners? I will answer that for you--because you have the "fundamental right" to engage in those activities.
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First, it is illegal for siblings to have sexual relations. Second having sex between two partners is not in itself dangerous (so long as they are not in the same immediate family of course). Also just because incest and polygamy occurs it does not mean that there is no harm in those.

Now it is obvious that you did not read any of the links that I gave. As such I can only come to the conclusion that you are just trolling. Until you come up with some substance I'll be disregarding your posts now.
 
DiAnna said:
Well, I believe that homosexual equality, including the right to marry, IS a constitutionally-protected right. I hope that eventually SCOTUS will agree that when the constitution calls for equal protection and equal rights under law, it refers to ALL people. Homosexuals are people, the last minority that can be legally discriminated against. This must change, it must change on a federal level, and I believe that very soon it will change.
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Hail Hooters! Hail Hooters! Hail Hooters!
You just put to words what I always thought-that homosexuals are the last minority that can legally be discriminated against
 
FreedomFromAll said:
I did not vote because homosexuals are already protected under the Constitution just like any other American. Homosexuals do not need special rights anymore than rednecks need special rights (although rednecks are special).
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A lot of people say this and don't realize that homosexuals do not have the same rights that heterosexuals do, and there are no "extra rights". There is no federal law against housing discrimination that protects homosexuals, several states and municipalities have their own laws, but for the most part if you are gay a landlod can say you may not rent or you can be refused a loan for housing etc...

There are few employment laws explicity protecting homosexuals, there are other laws that they can argue with (ex. sexual harrassment) but there is no guarantee that they will stand up.

There are also no protections in place in cases of medical care (unless it comes to federal dollars) for visitation, rights to make medical decisions. The parties involved must have power of attorney, healthcare proxies etc.. If these are not in place then homosexuals do not have the rights as heterosexuals.

Some federal laws have been enacted to protect them from discrimination in FEDERAL housing and employment, but nothing to stop the private sector.

These are the rights that heterosexuals have. They are not "extra" rights.
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Please tell me what "special rights" they are asking for?
 
Here are my views in a nutshell. Marriage needs to be between the couple and the body performing, if a church wants to perform the ceremony then it's legal IMO and for Justice of the Peace marriages then it's legal for SSM period, there can be no discrimination. Homosexuals have all the rights afforded to humans under the U.S.C. including the right to be secure in their persons, treated as equal, speech, etc. There needs to be no other discussion as far as I'm concerned.
 
taxigirl said:
Please tell me what "special rights" they are asking for?
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Hate crime laws put more importance on prosecuting identical crimes based on the identity of the victim. It is negligent to artificially put more importance on one victim than another, in fact it is a form of discrimination. Laws should be equal period, no ifs ands or buts.

What is needed is to reinforce the importance of the Constitution. To enforce the idea that we are all equal regardless of anything. By singling out sections of society as needing special protection we undermine the idea of equality. Equal rights should be a broad application of the law, not specialized on the attributes of the citizens. We are all equal period.

Incase you are biased as to what you believe that I am saying, I will make it clear: All Americans require the same rights. Be it homosexuals, ex-cons or anyone we all should be under the same rights and same laws.
 
a related question-why do so many gay men talk the way they do. I have the oscar red carpet show on and one of the interviewers is some guy named TIm Gunn. I didn't even need to google his name to know after hearing 2 seconds of him talking to know he's a flamer
 
TurtleDude said:
a related question-why do so many gay men talk the way they do. I have the oscar red carpet show on and one of the interviewers is some guy named TIm Gunn. I didn't even need to google his name to know after hearing 2 seconds of him talking to know he's a flamer
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I dont think anyone really knows. My guess is its because gay mens brains are similar to women in certain areas but again that is just my guess. But I would like to point out that not all gay men have the stereotypical gay lisp.
 
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FreedomFromAll said:
Hate crime laws put more importance on prosecuting identical crimes based on the identity of the victim. It is negligent to artificially put more importance on one victim than another, in fact it is a form of discrimination. Laws should be equal period, no ifs ands or buts.

What is needed is to reinforce the importance of the Constitution. To enforce the idea that we are all equal regardless of anything. By singling out sections of society as needing special protection we undermine the idea of equality. Equal rights should be a broad application of the law, not specialized on the attributes of the citizens. We are all equal period.

Incase you are biased as to what you believe that I am saying, I will make it clear: All Americans require the same rights. Be it homosexuals, ex-cons or anyone we all should be under the same rights and same laws.
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Hate crime laws cover sexuality, sex, race ect...not just homosexuality, women, minorities ect. So a heterosexual white man is covered under hate crime laws.
 
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