WeAreTheKey

I certainly haven't checked the "Bible facts", but it's a good, interesting read which, of course, has caused some uproar in various religious, or "conservative" circles.

Here it is:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653/page/1

Great article!!!

As you may or may not know Gay rights and the topic of marriage (overall) are two pretty heated topics on my end. I feel passionately about both of them seperately and especially together.

It was nice to read an article that while it had a specific "side" to it, seemingly managed to keep the mud slinging and really overall emotion out of it. It seemed professional and well done.

I am not about to go do all the fact checking simply cause , well, i dont feel the need to, maybe not till my next debate with the opposition, but for my self I dont need.

There was one thing that I realized that I am surprised I hadn't realized before.. It seems the "mass"(societal conscious perception of) Christian view point is to focus on all the things NOT to do, all the things that are bad wrong Sinful.. but it seems rarely that the "mass" is telling us how to live how to be what to do, what is good,. I think it does great harm, people miss the postive side, therefore they are less likely to actually live as jesus or God asks.

I believe marriage has been hijacked. Not by the gays, but by society. It isnt a religious commmitment, hell half the time it isnt even a personal honestcommitment, it has become a government sanctioned contractual agreement with legal repercussions. Marriage, how it is now, seems to have less about God and Love and more about Rights, and Legal Standing. You have to have a piece of paper from your government to be married. No personal, or religious act, oath or paper counts since the governemnt is the entity that watches over all and deems each "true" or not. Because of this be ing how it is; we must lose this delusion that Marriage is a Christian value. Cause it isnt. Monotheists Polytheists and Atheists of all manner have been getting MASRRIED for as long as humans have had a societal structure. Society will not fall if we allow people who wish to be in a legally cited committed relationship with some one they love. Let them do it. It isnt going to hurt anyone. REALLY. Does it hurt us when the stranger down the street gets drunk in vegas hooks up with a stranger and gets married on a whim? NO.
Is two people NOT getting married going to stop them from being in love? NO. Cause really when it comes down two it, everyone is fighting over not wether two people should be allowed to love eachother, it is wether we should accept them for who they are. Marriage is no longer about the union of two souls, it is about a public display for all the people in their life that they are happy, they are in love. A public declaration "solidifying it" Im not trying to sound cold or jaded, I am trying to state the reality (it doesnt stop me from liking the topic of marriage, i just see it as it seems to be)
This "mass" just doesnt want to be faced with the reality that two people of the same sex want to be together, they cant get over their discomfort with the sex aspect. Perhaps society spent too long thinking of sex and marriage as hand and hand? I dont really know why some one would care what two consenting adults do to eachother behind closed doors.
We arent litmus testing heterosexual marriages, to ensure they are not "perverse" or that they truely are taking marriage seriosuly.. all you need is two witnesses, a judge some cash and what.. a notary?
Why does it matter who gets married and when? Marriage should be a personal descion for the COUPLE, not s consensus of peers and community. LOVE should return back to marriage.Love should be seen as marriage, Love should be the goal, not a document, not a social status, not finances...
And Love is supposed to be the basis of Christianity. Supposed to be. Not that it is always seen that way, (or even that scripture sees it always that way) Pardon me for being a blashphemer but screw it. Jesus has some good words for us all, WORDS and if we stopped focusing so much on his DEATH and more on his WORDS, his LIFE is ACTIONS, maybe we would see that LOVE is kinda the theme. And if Love is the theme, then hating gays, and not wanting them to be seen as people with rights is a thing of the past, and that Lovingthem, amid all their differences and mistakes is the true way that God would want us to be.

No amount of quoted verses, from the bible, or any other important text/person will ever take from me the belief that Love is the path we must take. not justfor those we love but for those we do not know, do not agree with and in some instances do not like..





Also:
This myth of bestiality and child marriages coming next is a bogus fear based on delusion. Like trying to liken porn to child molestors. You take something that is deemed "bad" and link it to something that is defiently bad, makes it harder for people to disagree with you..Bestiality and pedophillia have one thing in common with homo/heterosexuality.. SEX aside from that they have one major MAJOR thing that stands different CONSENT. A child or animal can not consent, can not speak for itself, can not say no or even rationalize what is happening. Victimization is what happens in thes two things. Therefore the delusion that they would be made legal if we legalize homosexual marriage/union whatever you wanna call it...is BULLSHIT.. and the people who claim it to be, know it is purely bullshit. They are scared, and full of ignorance. USA (even today) would never allow such a thing to happen, and if they tried the people would not let it happend.


get over it!



Thanks for posting this article.. ive wanted to say my piece on it for a while, just hadnt gotten around to it.. [/i]

Here Here! Well said Alluscion, and I agree. People should all be given the right to do as they choose unless their actions inhibit the rights of others. And who's rights does gay marriage, or even the consensual sexual act, inhibit? I can't think of anyone.

My only concern with homosexuality has nothing to do with good/bad or judgement of people. My concern has to do with cause and effect. It's controversial to ask why a minority of humans have homosexual attraction when it's clearly not the attraction that nature meant to set up, but I think it's an important question because of the potential effect on children. I think that it would be worthwhile to research: 1) If sexual abuse in young children leads to a significant increase in the abused having homosexual desires, and 2) If children raised by homosexual parents show an increase in homosexual tendencies or sexual dysfuntions.

Again, I don't pose these questions as a judgement on people as if they are doing something wrong, but simply as a question for a better understanding and to avoid potential dysfunction in chidren.

I agree, even with heterosexual relationships there needs to be analysis of what causes what and how..
I do see the importance of the question of parenting/sexuality, I personally feel that question really can only be answered by essentially letting it happen.. other wise we will never know what they effects are.. It seems scary and unfair to the children in the "testing ground" but we cant tell what the effects are based soley on theroy..

I also believe that society has more of a role on the negative effects of children with same sex parents than the actual essence of the parents themselves.. It is the inability to accept and the divisciveness that cause the pain in the children. But again. I am basing my opinion based off of soley wht i have seen of gay children brought up in straight homes with straight communities.. (though my experiences have been small, they have from what i can telll a common thread with people)

It isnt a choice, otherwise most people would probably turn it off, to save themselves from alot of pain and suffering.Most, not all..
Either way, it doesnt matter, they are attracted to who they are attracted two, I like burnettes, no one is taking issuewith that, trying to force me into likeing blondes well that just doesnt make sense.. there is no benefit to me to go against who I am, and really aside from the inconvience of me not assimilating to liking exactly what everyone else may like, there is no benefit to them if I try to deny it. Really by trying to not be yourself, you essentially hurt everyone around you. (see Divorce, Lies, Cheating, ect..) So if you gay, be gay, straight be straight bi be bi.. Who cares.. we need as a society to pull our heads out of eachothers asses and start looking at who WE are not who the guy next to us is..


On a side note, I personally feel people are attracted to their opposites in a way, it seems (from a distant generalized bystander) that homosexual couples tend to have male and female roles as well (in a sense), which is essentially one of the key elements needed in a childs developmnet. Though I understnd that may not always be the case, (even in heterosexual couples) it isnt necessarily required for the gender roles to be learned from the specific gender it is portraying, it actually may be better ( going out on a limb with that assumption i know..) Allowing a lacking of sterotyiping the child into a rigid pattern of behavior? maybe.. who knows...

That is a fantastic point. Even with no "research", I believe it is same to assume that loving, caring homosexual parents is far, far better for children than even the most mildly abusive heterosexual parents. However, I wouldn't say that belief would justify simply having them raise children without studying the effects on those children and how they end up viewing sexuality as adults.

And let me just add that I am in NO WAY advocating for the government to make laws prohibiting people from having children because they are not heterosexual. That goes against everything I believe in. I am simply speaking about society developing a better understanding of how human sexuality develops from childhood so we can make better informed decisions. If most homosexual desires are the result of experiences in young childhood "skewing" (for my feeble mind not coming up with a better term) their sexual perceptions as they reach adolescence, then that should be understood for the rearing of future generations. And if it's found to be true, then still it's certainly not something that anyone should be ashamed of, hide, or feel that they did something "wrong".

As for the original topic of anti-gay marriage advocates using the Bible to justify having the government mandate only "one man and one woman" marriages, ...PLEASE! I'm going to get back to work now, but I'll try and come back later with some structured thoughts on that and respond to some more of your points, which I think are right on, Alluscion!

That was a pretty good article. I'm not sure how convincing it would be to people who are adamantly against the idea of gay marriage, but it does make some good points.

I agree that there should be more information/studies done on the effects of homosexuality and children, like the abuse question, and children raised by homosexuals.

That has been my only objection so far on the subject of gays: adoption. I just don't know if gay couples should necessarily be allowed to adopt and raise children. Not because of anything at all I have against them, but because it is still unclear what effect that might have on the children. It's odd, because even if homosexuality isn't generally a "choice", but more-so built in, even then, it seems that children raised in that envoronment would be more likely to grow up and be gay/bi-sexual... They would have that reality and possibility fully integrated into their consciousness, so they would no longer automatically look at their own sex as "off-limits" or "unattractive"...

I'm always baffled by people arguing over whether or not things are innate and built-in to their genes, or are a "choice" that they have decided.
As if those are the only two options. Give me a break.
Children raised around particular activities, in particular environments, eating particular kinds of foods, listening to particular kinds of music etc, will naturally reflect those traits and habits, likes and dislikes into adulthood without ever making any conscious "choice" about what to like or dislike.
There will always be some variations of course and most people won't perfectly reflect their upbringing, but when an abused child grows up with anger issues and violent tendencies, does that mean they were born that way, or was it a choice?

Neither, obviously! And I tend to believe that homosexuality generally falls into this gray-zone for almost all gays. Perhaps they weren't "born that way", but I have a very hard time believeing that all the gays woke up one day of their lives and "decided" to become gay, and were gay forevermore.
If it were a choice, and not their actual nature, then how in the world do gay people "turn off" their attraction to the opposite sex? Gay men make a decision, and then when they see very attractive, sexy women, they somehow are no longer attracted to them at all? Bullcrap!
It isn't a choice in that sense at all, which most Biblicaly-minded people don't seem to get.
it is a progression of their consciousness towards homosexual feelings, probably for a variety of reasons relating to their environment, their parents, their home-life, their close friendships, their school environment, etc... it all comes together to shape us all.

And that's why I would like to know more about children being raised by gays and how it might affect them. Even if it is more likely to make their children gay, is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't really care, as long as they are stable and mentaly sound when they get older. If they mature into sane, good people who happen to be gay, so be it.

IF homosexuality is primarily the result of early childhood experiences (including, but not limited to, sexual abuse and/or being raise by gay parents), then that should well be understood by parents and society in general. Because, although homosexual attraction may be no fault of the individual themselves, nor does it have any bearing on the kind of person that they are, it would still be a sexual dysfunction brought on by others to someone that had no choice in the matter.

Well, if it has no bearing on the kind of person they are, and they indeed grow up )with gay parents) to be good, kind, loving, happy people, but also gay, then would it still qualify as a "dysfunction"?
If that's the case, then all homosexuality from any cause is also a dysfunction, and I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that. It is obviously a preference, but what else beyond that?
At first I was thinking "well, if gay adoption makes gay children, then that's bad", but if we're saying that there's nothing wrong with being gay, then why would that really be a problem?

People can be kind and good and still have a dysfunction. If a child has autism, which is of course not the child's fault at all, they can still grow up to be good people, but that doesn't mean they don't have a dysfunction. And if autism is found to be largely linked to vaccination or other things, we ought to know about that to avoid it in the future.

There's three possibilities: 1-Born with it, 2-chose it, or 3-it was instilled in you while growing up.

If the first two are the case, then it's all good and fine, there should be absolutely no restrictions for gays beyond that of heterosexuals. However, IMO, if the third is usually or always the case, showing that homosexual desires are a human-caused "skewed" sexuality, then it would be utterly unethical to allow people that would otherwise grow up as heterosexuals to be otherwise. It's not a matter of them being a "good" person, for of course being gay has no bearing on that, but allowing people the opportunity to live life naturally, with the love and attraction for the opposite sex and the natural biological child-rearing qualities that go with it.

I wasn't saying that being a good person and having a dysfunction of any kind are mutually exclusive traits in a human, I was challenging the very definition of "dysfunction" itself, by asking "If there's nothing wrong with being gay, then what qualifies and defines it as a 'dysfunction' at all"?
If these gay people are happy with their own lives, and are decent loving people, then no matter how they got that way, how would it be "...utterly unethical to allow people that would otherwise grow up as heterosexuals to be otherwise."?
That presumes that homosexuality is inherently a bad thing for people to be, that children would be robbed somehow of particular aspects of life which are necessary for their fulfilment as proper human beings, which would be a pretty hard sell to gay people who are perfectly happy with their lives and satisfied with the way they are.
To me, it seems like they are simply swapping one desire for another, not losing anything necessarily in the process, other than (maybe) the ability to raise children. I'd say the much more appropriate yardstick for measuring the outcome of children raised by gays would be not their level of "goodness" from some arbitrary societal judgment, but their level of happiness. That's all that matters.

If being gay is simply a particular preference and nothing more, then children's subtle (or not so) ushering towards gayness during childhood would be no more unethical than parents ushering in other preferences, thereby "denying" their experience and enjoyment of the opposites. Like if they were raised to love veggies and fear/hate sugar, then you could just as well argue that they were raised unethically by being denied the glory of sweet pies and cakes.

Maybe? Is that too much of a stretch? I don't know......

I'm sorry, but I don't know how I can make it come across clearly that I don't believe there is ANYTHING unethical or immoral about being gay, whether it's by choice or not.

What I would find unethical is if parents/adults were to KNOW about human-caused actions that lead children toward homosexual desires and they were to purposefully push them in that direction.

A person freely choosing homosexuality, or a person being homosexual through no intentional direction of others is not an issue with me at all.

But adults who would intentionally nudge, or flat out shove, their children toward homosexuality is so far beyond unethical and immoral to me that, yes, I find the veggie and sweets comparison, at the very minimum, a stretch. And it's not because it would be outside the "societal" norm, I don't care about that, but actually because it would mean people would be intentionally placing their children outside the "biological" norm.

A better analogy, IMO:
A man is born with a bone deformation that causes his left foot to always point straight out to the left, instead out in front of him. Clearly, that deformity has absolutely no bearing on WHO that man is as a person or whether he is "good" or "bad". But, let's say that same man has a child, and the man chooses to constantly tie his child's foot back so that as the child grows, the bones will form so that the foot will always point out to the left like his father's. Now THAT would be unethical and immoral, even though, like his father, the intentionally deformed foot would, of course, not have any bearing on what kind of person the child becomes. A parent CHOOSING a biological abnormality for their children is wrong, IMO.

I see what you're saying.
I would counter however, that having a foot which is pointing the wrong way and hindering one's physical abilities has obvious and direct negative consequences, which directly affect the quality of life for any individual unlucky enough to suffer such a childhood.

The same cannot be said however for homosexuality, which we may not personally desire to be, but which doesn't affect a person's physical abilities to walk, talk, speak, think, hear etc... it merely alters their category of sexual preference, which is a far cry from being clearly unethical, especially if they are perfectly happy with being homosexual.

I believe that you don't find anything wrong with being gay, but that fact seems to come out of focus a bit when it is said that there is obviously something wrong with being raised to be gay.
Is it truly because it is outside the "biological norm"? Because that concept seems like a pretty slippery slope, since so many other things could be seen as such.
How about these things, for example:
Children raised to prefer dyed hair, raised to prefer painted fingernails, raised to prefer colored contacts, raised to prefer bald shaven heads, raised to prefer wearing makeup, raised to prefer wearing earrings through pierced ears......
etc, etc, etc...

All of these things would 'train' a child to prefer things which all 'fall outside the biological norm', and yet are not necessarily seen as unethical because we view these things as preferences, which they are. If they grow up happy with who they are, then who is to say they were raised 'incorrectly' or 'unethically'?

Homoesexuality seems to fall into a different category however, and why? Is it outside the biological norm to not have children? Or is it further outside the norm to have 8 children? Is there a problem with any of these preferences?

I guess the main question of ethics is this. What would a child raised to be homosexual lose by becoming homosexual, which is what would theoretically make it "unethical"? Where would the pain or suffering come in which would explain the unethical nature of their childhood?
Is it that they would possibly lose the ability to desire the sex which would possibly allow them to create offspring that they possibly would want in their lives which would theoretically enhance the quality of their happiness and therefore their overall enjoyment of life...?

I for one am not sure I could make any ethics determinations based on that criteria alone.

But maybe there are other criteria you're considering that I'm not thinking of right now?

On another note, we cannot assume that children raised by gays and becoming gay themselves means that their parents purposefully "chose" for them to be gay. It's likely to be a natural result of their upbringing, experiences, memories etc. than any direct indoctrination of gayness I think.
But who knows. Even if some gay people DID try to "make" their kids gay, should other gay couples be punished indirectly by being unallowed to raise children that they would have raised less "forcefully" in that way?

What a messy issue gayness is. (ha-ha-ha)

You make good points. I'm not sure how we got so far into this based on an article about religion and homosexuality. The factors that determine sexual preference are probably, in most cases, so much more complicated than what I'm talking about that the points I'm attempting to make are moot, anyway. I'm not sure that I agree with your lipstick/earrings analogy, it seems like comparing a light breeze to a tornado, but I understand your point: If homosexuality is judged as a "biological abnormality", what other dangerous roads could that lead us down? And that is a good point. The last thing in the world that I would want people to take from my arguments are negative labeling or judgement of others.

My only, ONLY, judgement on the entire gay issue is against parents that raise their children with the intention of them to be gay. I just see that as being in a different category from how they dress or look. There are certainly far, far worse things, and its not like I'm starting a crusade, but it's just a personal opinion. Heterosexuality should be the "default" parental preference, and if the person decides on his/her own that they prefer their own gender sexually, then that's great, but it should not be pushed upon them.

Ona slight tangent:


It might theoretically be GOOD for society to allow gay marriage and adoption, I mean think about it.. Population at all time highs, millions of children abandoned, discarded and in foster programs or on the streets, if suddenly there were couples who under no amount of genetically altering/invirto meddling could concieve children.. there would be more potential parents for these unclaimed children to have as their own..

And even if that did result in more homosexual adults (which I personally beleive to be not the case-maybe some..) There is NO way that the whole human race is going to become gay, people will not stop having children. I think that there would be less unwanted marriages, form people trying todeny their true feelings, less unwanted children(not as significantlyas needed, but less.. not every gay couple is going to want children..)

The way I see it, most likely gay adults today..were raised by heterosexual parents..(obviosuly not all of them, but alot) I tried to find statistics, but all I got were anti gay websites, and statistics on aids..which both were not the type of stats or reliability that i was looing for... Heterosexual parents have been kinda the thing for like ever.. sure there are probably some closet heterosexual's over time raising some of the results of some of the gay community.. but in reality.. there is no way to know until we study.. OR we can just accept them as the human beings they are and treat them as equals as they deserve and go from there.. Thats my best guess as to what we should do as the human community....

Pras, that's totally fair. If it comes down to your personal view on child raising, and that's what you believe to be right, then so be it. It's not like I have any statistics or anything to back up what I assume to be true, so there's a lot of presumption involved in this topic no matter what...
I wouldn't ever really suspect you of negatively labeling or judging people, but I see where you're coming from. I was trying to get to the heart of the reasoning behind being against it.

Perhaps, like Alluscion says, we should just allow gays to get married and adopt and see what happens. If these kids end up screwed up and it's clearly related to their confusion and stress caused by having gay parents, then maybe we could abolish it again, I don't know...
Which makes me wonder... can a single person adopt a child? Is that aginst the law or something? Because if not, then someone could adopt a child and raise them with their live-in boy/girlfriend and it'd be the same thing anyway, the state would never know.....
???

Yes, single people can adopt. However, the State is required to run a thorough background check of the potential parent, as well as anyone else living in the house. They also have a certain number of home visits (some planned, some surprise) that a State worker must make both before and after the child is given to their new parent. Therefore, it would be against the law, and unethical, (those checks are important to make sure the State isn't adopting children to homes with convicted child molesters) for a "single" homosexual parent to "hide" his/her significant other from the State. And as far as I know there is no law against homosexuals from adopting children, anyway. I don't think sexual preference is on the application form.

Alluscion, that's an interesting thought. Like I said above, I don't believe it's against the law for homosexuals to adopt, anyway, but I don't know for sure for every state in the union. That's a good question that I'll have to look up. And I totally agree that loving, nurturing people that are willing to adopt children that need homes is always a good thing, regardless of sexual preference. Gay men don't have the biological necessities (and other "motherly" instincts) to give newborns the very important breastfeeding time, but bottles and formula, although not ideal, certainly beats children living in foster homes or orphanages.