I didn't use two siblings in my example, I was after the father/daughter scenario. In the case of the two siblings, we are still talking incest, however, and as such there is damage done to the society genetically... not that it will create a trend.

So your saying that if two people get married they have to have sex and have children?

They just found a ring of people who get married to immigrants to make them citizens faster for lots of money, people who often times have never even met eachother.

Marriage is no indication of your relationship with another person, and having sex is no indication that two people love eachother. Atleast not in modern times.

Don't put words into my mouth. You wanted to take about civil marriage. I am attempting to tell you what my sociology professor provided as reasons why civil marriage is recognized in society. I don't necessarily share these beliefs, I'm just stating them because you said no one ever does it.

The idea is flawed. That's the point. We instituted special rights to marriage for stupid reasons:

They did assume that married couples reproduced. It was uncommon "back in the day" when these laws were formulated for couples to consist of anything but a man and a woman and in this case, they normally had children.

Right, so like I said, nobody has given an explanation to marriage as a government thing.

Saying that its to give bonsues to people who are bettering society isn't really an answer because people can get married who don't benefit society, and you don't have to get married to do those benefits.

My personal belief is that the government is engaged in marriage so that it can track families and who gives birth to who, probabbly dating back to the times of royalty and non-royalty and tracking such family lines. I do believe there are groups who still look at founding families of countries as being more important than the rest of the people. But thats a fairly evil thing for the government to be doing and which is why marriage as whole should probabbly be looked at, in a fair and just way without turning everything emotional and lableling people who disagree with your ideas of change.

At this point, it doesn't matter why marriage was created. While it would be wonderful if it were to be re-evaluated as a whole, we all know that isn't going to happen. The best possible outcome at this point in my opinion is to try and correct some of the flaws to the best it can be done.

What do you mean thats not going to happen?

Its allready happening.

Why does there need to be this difference to satisify you that marriage should be allowed? I am as different from my friend John as I am from my friend Veronica, even if she has boobs and I don't.



I've not heard of anyone getting arrested for polygamy in a long time, but alright I am willing to take your word on that. My point was, changes to marriage laws have been changed and the so-called institute of marriage has not fallen apart.

I'm not asking for polygamy or bestiality or incestual marriages to be allowed because they are not things that effect my life. I'm not someone to go around complaining for the sake of it. If there is an issue I will raise it, but I only have so much time on my hands to write letters to politicians and argue with people on forums.



It's a symptom of arguments, especially when they are close to someone's own heart, that their opponents will be villified. It is not something homosexuals do specifically. I apologise if I've labelled you as something you're not, that is not my intention.



From my point of view, you are not being rational or objective, you're not being overly consistant either. Jewish, yes, I know you're Jewish .



It's not a trend, it has been around for a long time. Look at any war and you will see that opponents are made to be less than human. Any political campaign will degrade into insults on some level eventually. A domestic argument quickly grows from a minor spat to outright name-calling. It is just how people react, you should not be so surprised.

By banning people from marri- even banning them from civil unions?

Doesn't that kinda show that the OPPOSITE is happening?

EDIT: @dag

Alright now that i'm convinced that Daganev is arguing for the sake of arguing, it's about time to point out that his earlier points 4 and 5 are possible through pagan/wiccan handfasting(marriage) regardless of an government recognition but the community would recognise it.

Though marriage under 18 probably won't be recognised any time soon, basing the descision around the beliefs of one religeous group is idiotic. So i'm just going to point out that a years worth of fighting erupted because a christian was afraid a wiccan would usurp the christian control of a state (or somesuchfunstuff) so now i just see this kind of thing as the christians trying to maintain control (of course only when they are the instigators)

I'd say that opposing something just because you think its based on a religion is just as idiotic.

Well, the political reason some non religious people gave here to oppose gay marriage was:
"If we allow them to marry, more people will enjoy social benefits. As the social benefits pool is limited, we normal old-married couples will receive less. NO GAY MARRIAGE!"

Wich is ridiculous, and was used a while ago against "de facto couples" legalization (You live with a person for two years, you become something with the same rights as a married couple. Free of charge, exactly like getting married normally, unless you make a big party).

Right now, if I had a child from my bf (wich whom I live) and I died during the child infancy, he would have a lot of trouble to get the legal custody of the baby, as we're not married and my parents would have precedence. Is this fair? Not really, but I at least have the option to marry him or sign a paper so he's my legal couple and so we don't have such trouble. This right isn't available to gay couples who, for example, have adopted a kid, or have a kid from a previous marriage.

Not to talk, if two gay people lived together for 50 years, one working at home, the other working outside, and the one working outside died, the one who works at home wouldn't have any social protection, wich the housewife in a classic hetero couple would have just by having living together for so much time. Thus, making their relationship somehow less than the usual hetero couple. Wich is the justification for this?

Also, I want to point out that being gay does not mean that you are free of paying taxes, that will go towards granting rights to the already mentioned married couples.

We'll I'm not opposed to this because of that, I think that you should be able to marry who ever you want because there is no excellent (in this case good isn't good enough) arguement for not preventing it.

Let me tell you this story from the good side of the ocean.

Next summer, august, maybe june, I will marry my boyfriend, who I've lived with for the last 7 years (I'm 28).

Of course, this will clear up many legal issues for us in an easy way. Like, we want to buy a house, this makes it easier. But such things can be arranged in other ways as well. The reason I want to marry is because of what it signifies, as a rite of passage sort of thing.
I want to celebrate my relationship with my friends and family. And I want to make clear to everyone it concerns, now and in the future, what my relationship is about. I'm not just hanging out with a buddy, this will last. To me, the legal and the symbolic are in the same package, I cannot separate them in my mind.

I rarely think of my marriage as gay, odd or controversial, getting married just seems the natural thing to do. It would feel very odd and out of place to me if I couldn't marry. I am so thankfull that I was born here, in this tolerant place. If I walk hand in hand with my boyfriend through Amsterdam we dont draw looks because there's nothing out of the ordinary.

that arguement doesn't work because nomatter what the opponents say, you'll say it wasn't good enough.
neither i nor i believe daganev would feel that your arguements were good enough either, or else both sides would agree the same thing.
ever played soduko? that's pretty much the only way to win an arguement with someone(the strategy required in order to win, i mean. being that this spot can only contain a nine, then there's only one spot left in this line, and the only number missing in this line is 3, therefore that spot needs to be a three. that kindof logic)

what if we only like benthic ocean life?

I guess by 'we' you mean homophobic buddhists. Which, so I am told, are very, very few.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_views_of_homosexuality

by scriptural basis i'm pretty shure they mean it's not written in the pali cannon.
apparently quite a bit of the confusious-buddhists are. but their mahayana, they're odd

I'm curious what religion you're of. I know you're not christian. I thought you were muslim, however someone else said that you were buddhist, or hindu. So, I'm curious. Which is it?

theravada

There's so much to this thread, I just don't have time to get caught up right now, so I'm going to pretend that no one has responded to this comment and go from there.

I'm very much a creature of the rational. In grade and middle school, the other kids delighted in calling me Spock, not meaning it as a compliment. I have been, at various times in my life, a heartless jerk, and have even made a living out of being able to completely tune out the screams of a house full of tantruming teenagers (long story, don't ask; not in this conversation at least).

And it's been less than a year since, without a moment's hesitation, I told the doctors: yes, go ahead and take the newborn daughter I'd been dreaming of all my life off of life support and let her die. Because it was the right thing to do. So you can be sure I'm with you on the call that rationality should rule.

As for my personal sexuality, even though I'm not the least bit into machismo (don't give a whit about sports or cars or hunting or drinking or any of the usual he-man pasttimes), you have never in your life met a man more utterly enthralled with women. I basically don't have time for the he-man stuff because I'd rather spend my time obsessing over women. For exhibit A, I offer my online gallery of the pin-up beauties I've painted. For exhibit B, I'll drop another mention of Exarius' wonderful harem (it's sooo good being the Raja). And while, like most men, I've got my share of girl-on-girl fantasies, I find the thought of male homosexuality a bit creepy.

The beginning of rationality, though, is the ability to divorce myself from those gut reactions, own up to them, and move on with a productive analysis.

And a productive analysis says that trying to look at the big picture of life by reducing it to cold chemical components makes about as much sense as looking at the string of ones and zeros behind the picture on your computer desktop. It's got you standing so close that you can't see what should be bloody obvious.

If we accept your assertion that life is about the chemistry that makes it possible, why are we even bothering to have this argument? Chemistry goes on, with or without us. Will the carbon molecules in our DNA honestly care if they fail to execute their program? No. They're just bloody carbon molecules, set into a sort of perpetual motion.

The Mona Lisa is not about the pigments used to paint her. The Beatles were not about the individual notes of their music. The collected works of Shakespeare are not about the paper they're written on. And rationale to the core though I may be, I will defend to the death the notion that there is more to me than the sum of my body chemistry.

People have feelings. They don't just imagine them, they have them. And feelings can move mountains, topple empires, and build nations. In Florida a few years back, a tiny handful of people changed the entire course of world history, and they did it by expressing their feelings through the tangible power of voting. Whether or not they'll ever produce children has nothing to do with it. They changed the world forever, and we ignore that sort of power at our own peril.

So here I (virtually) stand to tell you, go take your fear-driven pseudo-rationailty and stuff it someplace it can't the bother those of us who actually care about people. Because life is good. Life matters. And the people you don't like have just as much right to breathe the air and raise families as you do, so long as they don't go around trying to convince the world that you are a useless waste of space.