• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

How will gay marriage affect your marriage?

How will gay marriage affect your marriage?

  • It wont

    Votes: 36 85.7%

  • It'll make me want to divorce my partner

    Votes: 6 14.3%
  • Total voters
    42
Wessexman said:
Yes that is one of the biggest purposes of marriage as well as its place at the core of the family an important intermediate association between the state and the individual.

However as I said one must try and avoid naked functionalism. The ideological and tradition ideas behind marriage are very important because men do not live by function alone as important as it is. We must take care to preserve the fabric of ideational factors that partly make up marriage in our society as well as the functional ones and therefore change it cautiously and with the maximum amount of continuity with the old beliefs.
Click to expand...

Sorry. I don't buy that all tradition is sacred. You thoughts on this are opinion, not fact.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
Sorry. I don't buy that all tradition is sacred. You thoughts on this are opinion, not fact.
Click to expand...
Not what I said far from it, that is a massive strawman.

Tradition is simply the recognition of the complexity of society and the limits of the individual comprehension of society and the limits of individual faculties.

Your individual reason is limited and not a good judge for an entire society to be based on.

All I'm maintaining is that marriage while important for functional reasons is not supported by these alone and contains many ideational elements which can have latent functions and consequences we can't readily comprehend hence any change should be cautious and aim at continuity with the past.
 
Wessexman said:
Not what I said far from it, that is a massive strawman.
Click to expand...

Not a strawman at all. You mentioned tradition, I spoke in generalities, not in absolutes.

Tradition is simply the recognition of the complexity of society and the limits of the individual comprehension of society and the limits of individual faculties.
Click to expand...

Tradition is a behavior or belief or set of customs that have been passed down from generation to generation. Traditions do not always ring true as time passes and often become obsolete.

Your individual reason is limited and not a good judge for an entire society to be based on.
Click to expand...

What individual reason is that?

All I'm maintaining is that marriage while important for functional reasons is not supported by these alone and contains many ideational elements which can have latent functions and consequences we can't readily comprehend hence any change should be cautious and aim at continuity with the past.
Click to expand...

And I'm not saying anything different. Except that continuity with the past is not more important than recognizing different needs for the present.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
Not a strawman at all. You mentioned tradition, I spoke in generalities, not in absolutes.
Click to expand...
I was refering to the way that the functionalism of marriage was being talked about without recognising that men and society don't operate on naked functionalism alone.

Tradition is a behavior or belief or set of customs that have been passed down from generation to generation. Traditions do not always ring true as time passes and often become obsolete.
Click to expand...
Indeed however society is extremely complex and institutions can have latent functions and their removal can have unintended consequences because the individual's reasons or even the reason of an entire generation cannot comprehend or know all the interdepedencies and interactions of society. Therefore one must be very careful in changing things, it must be done piecemeal and with a deep spirit of veneration for and continuity with the past.



What individual reason is that?
Click to expand...
As in your rationality, your ability to cognise the entire fabric of society with all its interactions and tangles of ideas, functions, roles, statuses, institutions, associations, authorities and so on.

And I'm not saying anything different. Except that continuity with the past is not more important than recognizing different needs for the present.
Click to expand...
Yes but keeping that continuity is a good way to try and create change while keeping as much of society that we don't want t change in tact.
 
Last edited:
Wessexman said:
I wasn't suggesting that, I support gay marriage cautiously.

One important conservative plank is too know society is so complex that we can't know what might go wrong if we do not stress continuity and are not cautious.
Click to expand...

I agree with you here. Also, "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar", and one who knew this was MLK. When trying to upset the apple-cart, do it with a smile and with grace. This way they don't know what hit them. :mrgreen:
 
Captain Courtesy said:
Firstly, this is not made up, it is one of the purposes that government supports and encourages marriage.
Click to expand...

While it can be argued to be one of many supposed purposes, it is not, by far, the only purpose, nor even the most important. Heterosexuals are not barred from marriage if they do not have children, therefore it is not a legitimate reason to bar homosexuals from marriage.

Secondly, you are still missing the point. I am not saying that this is the only reason government encourages marriage, nor am I saying that those who do not have children should not get married, or the government would prevent them from getting married. You are getting defensive for nothing. I am discussing the child-rearing position in the context of this discussion.
Click to expand...

Which is fine, but it seems to be irrelevant if it is not a position which would change whether or not someone should be able to get married. If you're going to propose a purpose which applies only to heterosexuals and homosexuals are inherently unable to fulfill, perhaps you might have a point, but so far, no one seems able to do that.
 
Wessexman said:
That is because institutions often have ideational factors beyond its function for society and these can be very important. Marriage helps to create children and to create the core of the important institution of the family but this kind of talk is not why the individual gets married, he does it mostly due to its ideational place within society as the cementment of love, union before god etc etc.
Click to expand...

Basically what you're saying is that people have individual biases based on their idealized expectations which may or may not have anything to do with reality.

Sorry, that's not a rational way to run a nation.
 
American said:
And whose thoughts are fact?
Click to expand...

Mine of course. :mrgreen:

Seriously, it's about communication. When someone presents something in a factual way, when it is not, I feel it is my obligation, when I see it, to point it out.
 
Cephus said:
Basically what you're saying is that people have individual biases based on their idealized expectations which may or may not have anything to do with reality.
Click to expand...
No what I'm saying is the place of an institution like marriage within any society does certainly have functional factors but it also has ideational ones which can have latent functions and whose removal may have unintended consequences hence caution and continuity should be stressed.
Sorry, that's not a rational way to run a nation.
Click to expand...
A rational way? You claim to be slightly conservative and yet the politics of prescription which you decry is one of the most two or three key planks of conservatism. It is part of a general distrust of individual reason alone without the guide of prescription and tradition and the need for caution and continuity in reforming.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
Mine of course. :mrgreen:

Seriously, it's about communication. When someone presents something in a factual way, when it is not, I feel it is my obligation, when I see it, to point it out.
Click to expand...

And basically agree with it a few posts later?:mrgreen:

And I'm not saying anything different.
Click to expand...
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
OK, but I've debunked your sample in post #192, so I'm not sure what water your position holds.

I am compartamentalizing the argument in order to go along with the parameters of the thread. However, you are correct in that there are numerous benefits to marriage that have nothing to do with child rearing. And I am uninterested in Loving or Skinner. You, yourself have said, many times that they do not pertain to the gay-marriage issue. Further, information shows that children reared in two-parent households, of any combination perform similarly, functionwise. Biology is not a prerequisite to this success.

OK, I stand corrected. You did present it as your opinion. And I showed how your opinion lacks foundation.

You stated this in the post I am quoting...I bolded the important part:

You are referring to procreation in marriage. This has been part of the argument, and continues to be.

The fallacy in your argument is that children brought up in families without both of their biological parents is inherently dysfunctional. This is not accurate. You have offered no evidence that this is true. Conversely, evidence shows that children brought up in two parent households for any configuration succeed, similarly. I have presented this evidence in several threads in the past, threads that you have participated in, Jerry.

I agree, that it is only part of the deal. And there are other reasons that have nothing to do with child rearing that would disqualify incest and polygamy.

The pro-gm position is about a combination of things, but I'm curious as to what you mean by "legitimizing the gay identity". Please explain.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Capt'n, as I am once again under restricted access to the internet.

A few points:
  • You did not show how my opinion lacks foundation as you did not explain how the primal drive to reproduce with the same gender is congruent with the actual functions of the reproductive organs;
  • I argued against the step-parent dynamic specifically, not against non-biological parents’ per-se. You did not address that point.
  • Please give the reasons to ban polygamy and incest in the absence of procreation. I'm particularly interested in the incest aspect, because if we don't have close relatives perpetuating genetic errors through generations of inbreeding, then we are left with 2 consenting adults no different than any other, no?
  • How many gay couples are there in the US? Of this number, how many have children. Of that number, how many are adopted and how many live in a step-parent home?
  • I look forward to having enough time to give more detail on my claim that the pro-gm argument is about legitimizing the gay identity in the public eye, and little or nothing about assisting children.
 
Hatuey said:
How will gay marriage affect your marriage?
Click to expand...

Another thought:

I have long argued that my problem with gay marriage is not the idea of same-sex marriage itself, but of the sociological ansestor it comes from, which it shares with abortion and other issues.

This common ansestor being hyper-indivigualism, which brakes down core social pillers without improving or replacing them.

Hyper-indivigualism is principly responcable for the failure of my marriage. Practiced by my wife and I both at diferent times, it is a mindset and ideology which is distructive to everyone and everything it touches.

Having aquired an objective view, a recent counsoler confermed to me that my wife views marriage as being as expendable as clothing.

At no point in either 2 times my wife and I exchanged vowes, nore when we signed the marriage licince, was our marriage defigned as an "at will" agrement.

To the contrery, our marriage was spicificly to last "until death"; the only accepted means out while both partys still lived being abuse or adultery, neither of which were present in our marriage.

Hyper-indivigualism removes the comitment, obligation and sence of duty from marriage by eroding away the idea of "until death" and replaceing it with "at will".

This is also strongly aperant in nearly all pro-abortion arguments, even going so far as to argue that the father should be relieved from financhial obligation if he so choses.

I've said this before on this thread but it bears repeating: I have little if any problem with gay-marriage when I look at it in a vaccume, but it's not in a vaccume and today stands to promote damaging behaviors.

Gay-marriage promotes the same mindset and behavior which distroied my family, so I opose gay-marriage.


*Normaly I edit my posts to the best of my ability, but the computer I'm using today has no word program of any kind. Please bear with.
 
Last edited:
rivrrat said:
And yet the human race survived for hundreds of thousands of years without marriage. Wonder how they did that :shock:

I mean... I wonder how people survive who AREN'T married. It boggles the mind.
Click to expand...
We have become civilized, more or less, most of us...
Marriage is but a religious institution, with the state making it official. As such, the homosexuals will have to pipe down or do something different (state unions ?)
 
rivrrat said:
And yet the human race survived for hundreds of thousands of years without marriage. Wonder how they did that :shock:

I mean... I wonder how people survive who AREN'T married. It boggles the mind.
Click to expand...

I suppose if I shared your wish to eliminate one of a few social institutions which makes Man better then every other animal, and merly survive as oposed to dominate the planet, this would appear to be a relivent point.

But I don't, so it isn't.
 
Jerry said:
I suppose if I shared your wish to eliminate one of a few social institutions which makes Man better then every other animal, and merly survive as oposed to dominate the planet, this would appear to be a relivent point.

But I don't, so it isn't.
Click to expand...

Exactly how does marriage make man better than any other animal? Please explain this one in detail.
 
Cephus said:
Exactly how does marriage make man better than any other animal? Please explain this one in detail.
Click to expand...

No, because you don't really care for honest exchange, only your usual evangelical-atheist trolling. You aren't worth the time.
 
Forgot to take out the trash today, blaming gay marriage. :x
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom