It does and can hurt to allow it. America is such a fast-paced country. Our culture has been on a course of desensitization for the past 50 years. Some people call it "progressive," but I don't think that way.
Look at the way people connect to each other and communicate nowadays? Thirty years ago seeing the horror, violence, vulgarity, and lewdness that we now see on our daily television (or in a movie theatre), on radio, or in video games has contributed to the desensitization of America. We're not shocked by that stuff anymore. In fact, we look out for it. And when we see it, it doesn't effect us anymore.
Think about Nick Berg when he got his head sawed off in Iraq a few years back and every scrambled to the internet to see "the video." We were SHOCKED and the brutality and barbarity. Then there was Daniel Pearl, again we WERE SHOCKED. But nowadays, day after day, new videos are being released of that same sort of barbarity and it doesn't shock us anymore. The Saddam video didn't even shock us. It was a big deal because everyone wanted to see a brutal dictator die. But there was no shock value in it.
The above three paragraphs are subjective garbage that make grandose appeals to mass desensitisation to violence (and therefore homosexuality?). While you may not have been shocked by the hanging and decapitation of Sadam and his brother, respectively, but I certainly was. It was greusome and bloodthirsty.
We've quickly let these things enter into our society and as they spread throughout America, people begin to feel indifferent about what they're seeing. They begin to see that something which they once held as invaluable (that is entertainment without the sex, violence, drugs, and vulgarity) is lost and deemed "timid." It happens even on our news broadcasts.
Furthermore we've moved into a time and place where thinking about ourselves and how we are feeling in the here and now is what's more important. That's why divorce rates are as high as they are. The most important person in this relationship is "me," not "us." This cheapening of marriage is a byproduct of all that I explained above because of the images the media sells us. And it becomes acceptable.
Nonsense. You apply your own preconceptions of what 'should' and 'shouldn't' be acceptable in modern society, and act like society is corrupted from within for
daring to go against the almighty you!
What is it you said? "The most important person... is me". Well, you are a case in point.
America of course has become desensitized to the concept of homosexuality as well.
You have yet to demonstrate that homosexuality should
not be desensitised. Do you remember interracial relationships being desensitised? Women of equal importance and power as men, being desensities? Would you rather us retract those transgressions on your utopian vision?
If American allows gay marriage to become acceptable through legislation, it won't stop at the personal choices of a few people who want to get married. It will enter into our culture. We'll start seeing commercials that have the happy family with one man + one woman and a child being replaced by a family with two dads and a child or two moms. We'll start seeing movies and sitcoms (on a larger basis then we already do). We'll start hearing music. Our children will begin to see that as something that is acceptable and right and that's a normal happy family can look,
Personally, I look forward to that. The sooner society realises that same-sex families are just as stable and loving as different-sex ones, then the stigma will end (e.g., the "but the kids will be bullied!" argument against gay adoption).
despite all of the evidence against it.
Ah, and here it is. The tenative link to reality that is wholly unsupported.
What evidence?
Whereas such a family is destructive at worst because the child doesn't receive a male and female figure in their life as is needed or at best, comparable to a child growing up with a step-parent (I heard this from a Chicago University graduate, left-leaning, professor of Sociology that I had in college).
So what of single-parents? Should we enforce them to be rehomed to your utopian male-female units?
I also call for your evidence that a child is best raised by male-female familial units.
Furthermore (and I know people hate this argument, but it is true), it opens up the door for other types of "marriages" such as polygamist or polyamorous marriages as being acceptable and God knows what else. It would mean there would be no limit to what constitutes marriages.
First, what is wrong with polygamous marriages (bearing in mind that it must relate to homosexual arguments as well)?
Second, so long as there is love and informed consent, why are you fussing? It doesn't affect you, so [wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth].
Laws are put into place to maintain order in a society.
Indeed. The current laws forbid, for the most part, the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. This is a direct barrier to a more stable society.
Every law no matter what it is, tramples upon someone's toes. Some laws that trampled to much like those that oppressed black people (and other minorities) or women from voting, eating in a restaurant, riding on a bus, getting a job have been repealed.
And getting married. A black person could not marry a white person during segregation, so there is a
direct link between the current homosexual minority and the ethnic minority.
Those were civil rights issues. (And don't compare the current gay "marriage" and gay "rights" struggle to the civil rights issues of the past.
See above.
A black person can't become white.
Michael Jackson would beg to differ.
Despite what many would like you to think there isn't very much in the way of genetic or biological evience that being gay is biological.
Your point? So what if it's possible to change sexual orientations? It's such an integral part of someone, you might as well demand a change in accent, or handwriting, or hair colour.
Marriage is not a "right." It never has been, it never will be.
No, but the legal recognition of a marriage
does confer extra rights to the parties in question. Hospital visitation rights, for example, or financial matters after the death of a partner.
The state doesn't have to grant a marriage to anyone if it chooses not to. As with any law there are certain stipulations that must be met in order for them to apply. Marriage is just the same.
There is no rational reason to limit marriage to just one man and one woman. Therefore, since the blind eye of the law must base it's conclusions on logic and rationality, marriage should not be restricted to one man and one woman.
In regards to insurance and what not that a lot of people talk about and tax breaks. There are stipulations and items that must be met in order to get those breaks or insurance benefits. If a large business sees a tax break that a small business is getting and he wants it...TOO BAD...he can't have it, because he doesn't fit the qualifications. The same goes for anything. If this is really about stuff like that...complain to the insurance companies! Complain to your place of employment! They have the ability to allow "domestic partner" benefits. Because really that's all this seems to be about.
Aside from those benefit automatically conferred over by legal marraige, and other, less financial ones, it is also the principle of the matter. Irrationality
cannot be allowed to rule the courts of any nation, even the high and mighty USA!
Dave
