Hm, methinks I'll come out of hibernation now... Epic text wall of catching up, here we go!
Just going to go ahead and second everything Druid said.
I'm really flattered.
/me seconds most of what Synergy's said. (Not all of it because of things about being raised Catholic and such.)
Question: Are you friends with any homosexuals in real life? (This question can go for anyone who is for or against homosexual marriage as well)
More than I care to count. For the most part, I can't keep track of who's gay, who's bi, and who's straight.
thank god im an atheist :O
I hope the irony in this statement was intentional...
nope what will stop those billions worshiping a deity is a proper education for children that doesn't involve brainwashing them from birth. according to most world religions we are pretty much all going to this fictional place called hell.
fortunately though theres no such thing as the teachings of god and therefore no hell.........which is nice
And that is something no one can really know for sure. But what this hell would be like is also subject to debate. Do you just have to be good to not go there? Or are there a whole bunch of things that will get you sent there? (See random protesters outside my school with signs about how basically every group of people except them is going to hell...) If the latter is true, it's gonna be quite the party in hell, and heaven seems like it would be a drab, boring place.
i can understand the arguments " their disgusting and it shldnt be allowed" as these mainly come from the ignorant incompetent inbred illegitimate halfwits who cant see further than their own bigotry.
Regardless of whether or not I agree with this sentiment, I'm gonna point out that saying things like this won't help change people's minds. It will just make them defensive.
do you know the amount of children throughout the world that never get the chance to be adopted? that spend their youth getting moved around foster parents, in and out of state sponsored orphanages, never getting settled. many of which turn to crime, drugs and end up in youth correctional facilities. lives ruined before they have begun because they have had nothing even approaching settled family life?
do you really have the ability to rationalize that thats better for them than having two parents that will love and care for them based on the possibility that they might get bullied at school because of their parents sexual preference?
/me nods in agreement.
Two men together is just wrong. Two women, is perfectly fine. Case closed.
Case closed? How so? Because you say so? I think you should elaborate a bit more on your position.
@ Humpty, shush the big boys are talking :icon_cool:
...says little Matt. :icon_wink: And don't forget that there's at least one girl posting in this thread!
Does the truth hurt "big boy"?
I fail to see how you've established truth.
Its also a matter of lack of balance. With two male parents or two female parents it may give that child a unfair advantage.
Wait... So if having two parents of the same sex would give an advantage, how would same-sex marriage be a bad thing? Aren't you arguing against same-sex marriage?
For instance i don't know my father, i was raised by single mum and my sister. Growing up all i knew was about their stuff. I learnt how to cook (my mums a cook not being sexist) but to put it blunt i wasn't a normal boy.
Gender roles? Seriously? And for the record, all my cooking skills (minimal as they may be) come from my dad.
I didn't learn to change a bike tire until my next door neighbour (who was a year older then me) taught me. He also taught me how to fish, tackle, fight, play football, swim, even showed me how to build a coffee table so when i went to woodwork at school i knew what i was doing. Now i know there are alot of female parents out there who do know these sorts of things. But honestly - i didn't harden up and that until i had a male influence in my life.
Of these, swimming and fighting are the only ones my brother knows. Swimming he learned at the local pool, and fighting he learned at school. Oh, and guess who's the better swimmer of my parents? My mom, by far. I'm not exactly sure how bad my dad is because I see him in the water so rarely.
@willy, I'm not sure I follow. My opinions scare you? My being concerned for the well being of a child scares you? My worrying about how that child will be cast out of society because of the choices his/her parents made scares you...? Please, do explain that to me.
First, I thought you said earlier that sexuality isn't a choice. Secondly, should people really be denied the right to raise children because of something they had no control over?
But at one point or another, they meet their mother/father - regardless of whether it is every day, every week, every few weeks, every month, ever few months, yearly or rarely - they still meet their other parent. In this case, there are just two mothers.
They did, did they? What if one parent is dead? Or in jail? Or simply walked out of their life when they were a baby, or even before they were born? They definitely haven't always met both parents.
And it won't ruin their life necessarily, but what if to effeminate males fall in love, or two very masculine males were to fall in love? (Same goes for women in this case). It would be very hard to say the least to ensure that the child would get good homosexual parents and not have a girl growing up to be more masculine than the people on the rugby team or a guy who grows up wearing pink shirts and a voice higher than Justin Bieber.
I'm not sure how much nurture affects a child's voice, but I don't think it would do that much. And no doubt Justin Bieber's voice will get lower when he hits puberty. Anyway, I think one quality of a "real" man with courage is being able to wear a pink shirt and not care what other people think. As to tough girls, I don't see what the problem is with that.
It has the potential to. And in my scenario, I'm not even looking at the repercussions. What happens if the child is a homophobe? Does the child swear at them using multiple homosexual curse words then go out on to the street?
The child would be accustomed to homosexuality. They would have grown up with it. They would have no reason to insult their parents.
Religions against homosexuality, with sweeping changes, could change this. Though considering gay sex acts are punishable with the death penalty and Islam's hell-bent attitude to ensure that their religion remains as it was when Noah was a boy, I hardly see that happening in regards to Islam. Mind you, one stupid Islam semi-extremist went on A Current Affair here and made me /facepalm at the fact he was detesting the thing in the constitution which gave him the very right to speak and not get carried out by the AFP and executed.
My point is, Christianity could change their stance over time, Islam never will.
Um... You mean Noah as in the guy with the big arc during the flood? Islam didn't exist when he was a boy. Islam started around the year 600 CE. And one of my close friends was raised Muslim, and she has nothing against homosexuality. As a matter of fact, her older brother is either bi or gay, I'm not sure which.
It could be. In 1933, Hitler changed the textbooks in Secondary schools to be very pro-Germany. Guess what these children grew up to be by the time 1939 came around? Soldiers ready to fight in battle!
Surely its not on the same evil scale, but its doing a similar thing - lying to pupils about history, or in this case, biology.
Didn't we already come to the consensus that teaching that homosexual couples can conceive children together would be a bad idea?
Yes, its possible to minimize it, but as long as there is a weakness, people will pick on it until it becomes so normal its standard in society. And this will take decades to occur, if not longer. She understands, though they are her parents, unless she's a homophobe she's not going to desert them.
First, how would she end up as a homophobe when most of her life is spent around a lesbian couple? Secondly, I don't understand why you think we should wait. If it's a long process to full acceptance, why not start now? The sooner people start, the sooner the goal will be reached.
And tolerance can be preached, but as I explained earlier (along with dark), as long as there is religion, there would not be tolerance. If I was gay I hardly think the majority of my Christian right family would be overly tolerant of it. My dad would probably be the most tolerant, as he's one of the only people in my extended family who I believe is not actually religious (aside from myself).
Regardless of how much tolerance we preach, as long as there is religion, there will be people frowning upon homosexuality. Even as atheism grows, there will still be people against it. Inevitably, this change will take a long time.
I already talked about time. And as to the "religions are intolerant" argument, there are religions that accept homosexuality, and there are more and more religions changing their stance (Quakers, Episcopalians...).
My point is, parents cannot teach them one thing when they're 10 lets say, and then the school says something completely different the next. It doesn't work that way. And that is one of the main reasons against same-sex married couples having children. They simply can't have children, and as dark said, they could end up ostracised simply because they have gay parents. Not to mention how awkward it is when other kids ask 'What does your mum do?'. We would have to change the whole mentality of society.
Hm... And changing society's mentality would really be a bad thing? :icon_confused:
I'm gonna have to ask you to bring this more on-topic...this is a controversial conversation topic as it is, and religion being brought into it questions whether i should allow this to remain open - all religions are welcome here, and all beliefs, i do not want discussions about them happening here as someone is bound to be offended. Generally religious debates are locked so....keep it to proposition 8 aight?
Levy
The whole issue is completely entangled with religion. The group that put Prop. 8 on the ballot and is defending it in the courts, Protect Marriage, is a conservative Christian organization. And according to exit polls, voters were strongly divided along religious lines.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=CAI01p2 (Several categories starting in the middle of the page and extending to near the bottom)
So talking about Prop. 8 and not talking about the religions aspect of the debate is fruitless.
For the sake of Prop 8, it doesn't matter what people in other countries believe, and what religions they follow, it matters what people in California believe, and how much they are willing to open their minds.
Actually, at this point it matters what the federal judges say.
You do have to agree that genders have had and still have roles in everyday life. Girls/boys are just different, what would you think of some boy skipping around the town listening to Justin Bieber?
So liking Justin Bieber is a "feminine" trait? I guess that makes me pretty un-feminine then. (And I don't think I have any pink clothing either.)
No matter how much you "have a problem with" it, there will always been gender roles. If I see a guy walking around in a skirt or a dress, I'm going to turn and walk away as quickly as possible. If I see a girl walking around dressed like one of those idiots who wear their pants around their knees and with their boxers showing, I'm going to more likely than not fall to the ground laughing my ass off.
If I see a guy dressed like that, I figure he likes it. He can take my female slot for dress-wearing. I haven't worn a dress for over 2 years. And that dress didn't even belong to me. As to people who wear sagging pants, I think they look ridiculous regardless of their gender.
So you are saying phobias aren't built into us, but are rather a product of society? Hmmm.... isn't that a little hypocritical. If homosexuals are naturally homosexual, why can't homophobes be naturally homophobic.
I know Synergy also covered this, but I want to say it again. Homophobia isn't accurately named. It's not so much a fear as it is a prejudice. Prejudices come from the nurture part of growing up, not the nature part.
So then teach the children that they ended up with homosexual parents because no one else wanted them? That's the inevitable conclusion a child will reach. Why you ask? Because they won't know better.
1. You're too much of a pessimist.
2. No, they ended up with homosexual parents because that was who ended up adopting them. It's not that other parents rejected them. And in fact, they're some of the lucky ones who actually ended up with loving parents to adopt them, unlike the many who spend their childhoods in foster care.
For the second, that is not possible. You are an idealist who refuses to face the reality that the world does not change because a small group wants it to change. It cannot and will not happen. That's like asking everyone to stop fighting wars because killing is wrong. Do you honestly think it's going to work?
Yes, I do think that would work. Eventually. But that's one of the big differences between my personality and yours.
Agreed, and no, I wouldn't. Though it'd probably give me a good laugh... *me ponders watching matt skipping around like Justin Bieber...* lol[/QUOTE]
Actually, I would laugh about anyone I know doing this. Male or female.
Second, there shouldn't be ANY laws separating them.
I think it's funny how you think that the fact that there are only a few laws that separate us from them is okay... I don't think it's okay to have ANY laws that separate them from us... but that's because I think that they're equal to me.
Quoting this due to being very strongly in agreement.
I really can't be bothered to sift through all this. But interested to see who is against it, and who isn't. I posted at the start of the thread under my w51 alias, just wanted to see where this argument has got too...
Just curious about your position on the issue...
And what I was saying could be in the minority - sure, they could be good parents, but every child needs a masculine and feminine influence. To have two 'pink panties' gay guys bringing up a kid who is extremely athletic, sporty and slightly homophobic could end up giving his parents the finger and literally treating them like rejects. Each gender has its role in reproduction, and in all honesty, gender stereotypes still do, and will exist for decades to come. Each species has a role in bringing up its children. Why should humans be the only species on earth allowing homosexual parents, something which has basically never been tried in any species ever?
Yah... Not quite true. There are gay animal parents. And don't forget about the fish that change gender based on the ratio of the genders in their area. :icon_wink:
http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc&sc2=news&sc3&id=92139
I think Synergy covered the rest of your post pretty nicely.
Yep... but they can also be declared unconstitutional by the courts... so we'll find out if that is the case soon enough.
It already has been. Now we're just waiting for the appeals process.
Here is the line ,the dot represents you.
|.
:icon_cry:
To think I even play mines level 1-3 with you :O
And also pwned your ass at checkers :icon_cool:
And I pwnd your ass at chess, battleship, and all 3 levels of mines. :icon_cool:
Don't forget about that game of dominoes. I enjoyed watching that. :icon_biggrin:
All this talk of ass, was sctt at the party?
If you don't have anything productive to say, don't say anything at all.
