Quote Originally Posted by cheeseburger
Many want a 'gay' (homosexual) marriage to be identical to a 'straight' (heterosexual) marriage. My question is: why?
And mine is, "Why not?"

Silke, you mention some 'rights' you claim only heterosexual partners have. While I don't have enough information to contradict you on this, I personally agree with you (although I strongly doubt this is the case. It seems unlikely that a hospital would deny such information to a partner... but whatever).

If these little legal issues were really the problem, whats wrong with a 'civil union' as they call it? You get all the rights you want, (if you don't then you should, so please don't get into details about exactly what laws on civil unions are in place), but you don't get the recognition.

Thats what (I think) this is all about. Recognition. Acceptance. We want the little paper, dammit, so were gonna make a huge ruckus until we get it!
Even if you are right (and I don't think you are) so what? Acceptence isn't something just lightly brushed off. I can't help but put this in a bdsm context. I would love the freedom to walk down the street with my sub on a leash, but that ain't gonna happen for a loooong time, if ever. Because that has been labled as unacceptable. Don't folks have a right to acceptence if they aren't hurting anyone?

Marriage is supposed to be about having kids.
I can't disagree with that more as an overall statement. My marriage is about my wife and I. The kids give me a family, not a marriage.

Creating a good environment to raise angsty adolescents. Sure, you can argue, gay couples can adopt (as many straight couples do). But in adoption, you need to be extremely careful when you let someone adopt as child. If one were to create a 'parenting test' that determines if a couple can adopt, my opinion is that a large percentage of families - with biological children - would fail, but thats just my opinion.
Hmm...in another thread you seem to think there are just thousands of qualified couples out there ready and willing to adopt unwanted children, but here you stress how careful a body has to be when allowing adoption. A contradiction or did I miss something?

The point is people don't call homosexuals 'perverts' for no reason; regardless of wether you like it or not. And raising a little kid with two mother figures is great; why don't we legalize polygamy. Now you can have 2 mother figures, and a father figure. Perfect? C'mon.
That doesn't seem all that different than extended family living arragements. Seems to me the more love and guidance a child has the better. And you're right. They don't call them perverts for nothing. They call them perverts because they are ignorant, biased folks who have a narrow view on life. You do realize these same kind of people would love to have places like this shut down, don't you?

It would be very interesting to one day just legalize all gay marriages, no debate, no discussion, then watch what happens. My money is on people turning up in record numbers to marry, and then in a few years that number drops to close to zero. This issue is about 94% hype.
Of course they would show up strong at first. Everyone jumps the gun when it's new and these people would probably be the same. But I don't think it follows that the issue is 94% hype because of that. Some people want to get married. That's all.

Also, I kind of doubt these relationships would work out long term. I mean, so many people are divorcing out of 'normal' marriages, whats the rate going to be among homosexuals?
Well now to this I can't speak with any real accuracy, but I don't think it would be any worse than man-woman marriages. Might even be a little better. After all, you wouldn't have those cross sex issues to deal with.

Granted, I don't personally care about this, but wouldn't you say practicing this would be the symptom, for lack of a better word, of a mental disorder?
Practicing homosexuality is a symptom of a mental disorder? Or were you speaking of incest? I really just don't know what to say to you if you meant the former....

What I'm saying is the law will always contain some common-sense things in it. And it kind of should. If you stand for totally removing anything that isn't 100% logical and unsafe from it, you also stand for all kinds of weird and rather stupid things. Keep that in mind.
But there is no federal law (in the U.S. anyway) against gay marriage so I don't see what your point is here. The president and his lackeys are trying to get it passed into law.

Oh and,

The kind of obvious (I dunno, it is to me) reason this was brought up was because Bush realized he was getting bashed about everything he talks about; gay marriage is something he thinks he can use to divert attention away from all the bashing. I think at least.
I agree.