Christians need to stop attacking gays!!

Kaendar said:

I mean to be honest, nobody treats it any worse than drugs, prostitution, teen pregnancy, alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking, etc. There are just some things that people think are wrong. You may not think that but for everyone like you there is 100 that disagree. Its a fucked up world. One very rational argument against gay marriage I can think of is that it creates a standard for equal love. If marriage between a man and a woman is equal, why isnt it legal for 2 men. If gay marriage is made legal, well than the same train of thought will start popping up from every wierd corner of every basement in America. Eventually people are gonna start saying things like why cant a 14 year old marry a 29 year old? Its love and all love is equal. Eventually its gonna be at the supreme court because it wont be fair to everyone else who has alternative versions of love. We can stick to what we have now, or open up Pandoras Box.

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Padawanbater2 said:

People have every right to believe whatever they want is 'wrong', I have no contention with that. What I believe is a problem is, as already stated, when that contention comes into conflict with someone else's beliefs and their inherent right as a citizen of the United States of America to exercise that belief.

For every 100 that disagree with me, the Supreme Court is there to oblige.

'It creates a standard for equal love'. Why would the same train of thought between two consenting adults (those above the legal age of consent, 18 ) be any different if homosexual marriage was permitted?

A 14 year old couldn't marry a 29 year old because they have not reached the age of legal consent. A 14 year old couldn't give consent, if a 29 year old had any kind of intercourse with a 14 year old it would be considered statutory rape, and the parents of the minor would have legal grounds to press charges.

In that case, it's not considered love, legally speaking.

This line of reasoning is a slippery slope as inanimate objects, people under the age of legal consent, animals, or otherwise unconscious objects can't give legal consent, therefore, the analogy doesn't hold any water. Quite clearly. If homosexual marriage, that of two people of the same sex above the age of legal consent, were to be federally acknowledged, the other things you mentioned would not follow suit, logistically speaking. They would require a new set of moral standards yet to be defined and yet to be opposed under a equally as absurd set of moral standards.

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Kaendar said:

But your wrong. In some states the age of consent is 16. You are proposing the law be changed to define marriage? Well whats to stop people trying to get the law changed for age of consent? Or trying legalize beasteality. People are gonna start causing a ruckus because the definition of marriage needs to be changed to include them as well.

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Kaendar said:

I mean to be honest, nobody treats it any worse than drugs, prostitution, teen pregnancy, alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking, etc. There are just some things that people think are wrong. You may not think that but for everyone like you there is 100 that disagree. Its a fucked up world. One very rational argument against gay marriage I can think of is that it creates a standard for equal love. If marriage between a man and a woman is equal, why isnt it legal for 2 men. If gay marriage is made legal, well than the same train of thought will start popping up from every wierd corner of every basement in America. Eventually people are gonna start saying things like why cant a 14 year old marry a 29 year old? Its love and all love is equal. Eventually its gonna be at the supreme court because it wont be fair to everyone else who has alternative versions of love. We can stick to what we have now, or open up Pandoras Box.

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Kaendar said:

But your wrong. In some states the age of consent is 16. You are proposing the law be changed to define marriage? Well whats to stop people trying to get the law changed for age of consent? Or trying legalize beasteality. People are gonna start causing a ruckus because the definition of marriage needs to be changed to include them as well.

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Kaendar said:

You want rational argument? Secular?

"Civil marriage should be recognized as only the union of one man and one woman. Only the union of a man and a woman may involve the unique physical act from which children are created, and children best flourish when raised by their biological mother and father who are united in marriage. The legal institution of marriage has historically been the societal mechanism channeling men and women into permanent, exclusive sexual relationships to insure that the partners who participate in the creation of the child provide both material and personal support to the child.

There is a growing consensus in the social science literature that clearly establishes that children do best when they are raised by both biological parents who are married to each other...

Preserving the traditional institution of marriage need not eliminate any legal status for mutually supportive couples. Loving, committed relationships exist not only between same-sex couples, but also between many other individuals who are not sexually intimate. The civil institution of marriage should focus on insuring the well-being of children, but it is possible to create other legal arrangements to take care of the diversity of human relationships found in contemporary society. Creation of a reciprocal beneficiary status, like that found in Hawaii, is a viable and reasonable alternative to recognizing same-sex unions as marriage."
-Teresa Stanton

"f society permits same-sex marriage, it also will have to allow other types of marriage. The legal logic is simple: If prohibiting same-sex marriage is discriminatory, then disallowing polygamous marriage, polyamorous marriage, or any other marital grouping will also be deemed discriminatory. The emotional and psychological ramifications of these assorted arrangements on the developing psyches and sexuality of children would be disastrous...

Certainly homosexual couples can be just as loving as heterosexual couples, but children require more than love. They need the distinctive qualities and the complementary natures of a male and female parent.

The accumulated wisdom of over 5,000 years has concluded that the ideal marital and parental configuration is composed of one man and one woman. Arrogantly disregarding such time-tested wisdom, and using children as guinea pigs in a radical experiment, is risky at best, and cataclysmic at worst.

Same-sex marriage definitely isn’t in the best interest of children. And although we empathize with those homosexuals who long to be married and parent children, we mustn’t allow our compassion for them to trump our compassion for children. In a contest between the desires of some homosexuals and the needs of all children, we can’t allow the children to lose."
-Tray Hansen

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UncleBuck said:

since debating is simply copying and pasting now...

Compared with a group of control adolescents born to heterosexual parents with similar educational and financial backgrounds, the children of lesbian couples scored better on academic and social tests and lower on measures of rule-breaking and aggression.

A previous study of same-sex parenting, based on long-term health data, also found no difference in the health of children in either group.

“This confirms what most developmental scientists have suspected,” says Stephen Russell, a sociologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Kids growing up with same-sex parents fare just as well as other kids.”

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Kaendar said:

Social science has shown that children raised by their own biological mother and father, committed to one another in a lifelong marriage, are happier, healthier, and more prosperous than children in any other households.-Peter Sprigg

"I'm a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together...

All our scholarly instruments seem to agree: For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other...

Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution - marriage - that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing - the gift, the birthright - that is marriage's most distinctive contribution to human society. That's a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support."-David Blankerhorn

"It is also argued by those advocating same-sex marriage, that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is the same act of discrimination as prohibiting interracial marriage, which has rightly been recognized as a serious breach of human rights. That argument is not correct. Because an interracial marriage between a man and a woman does symbolize the procreative relationship, its prohibition is based on racial discrimination which is wrong. In contrast, not extending the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, is not based on the sexual orientation of the partners, but the absence of a feature of their relationship which is an essential feature of marriage.

In conclusion, society needs marriage to establish cultural meaning, symbolism and moral values around the inherently procreative relationship between a man and a woman, and thereby protect that relationship and the children who result from it. That is more necessary than in the past, when alternatives to sexual reproduction were not available. Redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would affect its cultural meaning and function and, in doing so, damage its ability and, thereby, society’s capacity, to protect the inherently procreative relationship and the children who result from it, whether those children’s’ future sexual orientation proves to be homosexual or heterosexual."
-Margaret Somerville DLC

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He worked as an actor and unit leader in Covenant Players, an international Christian drama ministry.[SUP][1]

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Kaendar said:

"The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society.

Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.

Today, I call upon the Congress to promptly pass and to send to the states for ratification an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife.

The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.

America's a free society which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens. This commitment of freedom, however, does not require the redefinition of one of our most basic social institutions."
-George Bush

"Marriage encourages the sexes to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Even the most successful homosexual relationships, at best, only mimic marriage.

Marriage is the union for the purpose of natural reproduction of the human race. Only a man and a woman can accomplish this. Even childless marriages are a social anchor for children.

It is wrong to create fatherless or motherless families by design. Same-sex marriages have more to do with the desires of adults than the needs of children. Human experience and a vast body of social science research show that children do best in married, mother-father households...

Marriage laws are not discriminatory. Marriage is open to all adults, subject to age and blood relation parameters. As with any acquired status, the applicant must meet minimal requirements, which in terms of marriage, means finding an opposite-sex spouse.

Same-sex couples incorrectly assert that they need marriage to gain certain legal rights, such as the right to visit one another in the hospital, but same-sex couples have had hospital visitation rights by New York State statute since 2004. Anyone, including homosexuals, can use legal instruments such as power of attorney, wills, etc. to share property, designate heirs, dictate hospital visitors and give authority for medical decisions."-Steven Blanch

"By redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, the meaning of marriage will be changed in ways that will loosen the already-impaired link between marriage and parenting; the intergenerational connections of marriage will become attenuated. The notion that marriage is merely a private matter - a 'common' that should be open to all - will grow, as the public commitments and expectations of marriage erode. The chaos of sexual irresponsibility (especially infidelity and promiscuity within marriage) will grow, and the moral expectations of the basic institution of society will fade as the sexual ethic of gay and lesbian lifestyles is embraced as marriage. Instability in marriages will increase as the pattern of transitory relationships of same-sex couples is included in the social understanding of what is marriage. Sexual segregation will increase and the historically gender-integrated public institution of marriage will be redefined to include sexual apartheid couples.

Instrumentalization of marriage partners will result from the inclusion of the gay lifestyle as an accepted form of the public institution of marriage. The transformative power of including gay and lesbian relationships in the public understanding of marriage will alter the institution of marriage as never before."
-Lynn D Wardle

I believe that same-sex couples should be entitled to the legal rights that married couples enjoy.... But, my friend, that is as far as I want to go. I define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Before you gay-rights folks land on me with both feet, I would like to remind you that I have been supportive of your movement for many years, have withstood a great deal of criticism in the process and have risked the wrath of some editors and publishers. I cannot support same-sex marriage, however, because it flies in the face of cultural and traditional family life as we have known it for centuries. And that's where I must draw the line. Sorry."
-Ann Landers

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Chief Walkin Eagle said:

Do gays go to heaven, Kaendar?

(Pretending like theres some kind of judgement)

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