US Supreme Court supports gay marriage...a great day for America, a bad day for faith-based bigotry (Page 2)

near50ohoh: the part a lot of ppl lose sight of though, is that these religious laws were mostly written more than 10 thousand yrs ago. when religious leaders were trying to beef up their numbers for empire building. when the earth had a lot of empty spaces to fill. that was then
now the earth is overcrowded and empires dont shift or build easily. and even if they did there are plenty of spare ppl. so maybe the religious leaders need to recognize that the world she changes and grow their laws with the times.
their supplicants are starving and poverty stricken and maybe we need some good old fashioned population control now. embracing gay couples is in the interests of religious leaders now

davesdatahut: Embracing gay couples is in their interest because they preach all about love and acceptance. What possible justification do they have for not embracing everyone, regardless of their personal preferences?

near50ohoh: i cant speak for the leaders, but the followers are getting it. most anyway but you always hear from the nincompoops dont you?

davesdatahut: The true face of the preaching class is, all too often, one of self-serving sanctimony, greed and hunger for power. So they tow the official line, instead of really preaching the supposed core teaching of religion. We will reach a day on this earth, I hope, when organized religion need not exist. But we are a hell of way off from that.

electrician25hr: Marrage is only between a man and a woman, what will homosexual couples want next the right to procreate children

davesdatahut: Why is marriage only between a man and a woman?
Homosexual couples already have the right to have children. Two men can hire surrogate. Two women can get a sperm donor.

Zanjan: Near: "these religious laws were mostly written more than 10 thousand yrs ago. "

Writing has only been around for 6,000 years. Social and religious laws weren't the same for all people - they changed from from location to location, even tribe to tribe. They still do.


Dave: "There are marriages sanctioned by religions and there are marriages not sanctioned by religions, but by the state."

Well, this is the key, isnt it? Who recognizes what marriage?. You may have a certificate from anywhere, that doesn't mean everyone will recognize it, other than the holder and a few of his buddies. .

"We will reach a day on this earth, I hope, when organized religion need not exist. "

Why does organized religion need to exist now then?

"Homosexual couples already have the right to have children."

Not in my country or the USA either. No one has the right to adopt - they all have to apply for approval and many are turned away. In North America, an adopted child can still be reclaimed by a bio parent or the government. Any right can be removed.

No one has the right to produce illegitimate children but they still do - those children will need to be adopted to be recognized as legal family members.

davesdatahut: Illegimate children???? What century are you living in? I think that term went out of use a ways back.
Anyway, no one has the right to adopt? I think you mean no one is guaranteed the ability to adopt. They must apply and go through a review. They cannot be denied simply because of sexual orientation.
As an alternative, gays indeed can have children, men through a surrogate and women through a sperm donor. This is the law here in the US. I believe it also is the law throughout most the world, at least those countries not dominated by a religious government.
As for organized religion, it need to doesn't exist. It exists because people like to join clubs and feel like they are somehow righteous or elevated because of it.
Marriage, meanwhile, can be obtained in a religious club or outside a religious club. Religions can do whatever they want. Civil law must treat all law-abiding adults equally. Religious clubs don't have to recognize civil marriages. It's their right. But civil governments, under law, must recognize all marriages between consenting adults.
As an aside, if any right can be removed, then so can your right to be married or have it recognized by the goverment.

davesdatahut: Electriician, a democratic society is not governed by what it says in the bible because each religion has its own bible, which can say different things. A democratic society is governed by civil law, which applies to everyone. So, under the law, it doesn't matter what it says in any particular bible. You wanna live in a country governed by religiious law, go to Iran. Or maybe sign up with the Islamic radicals in Iraq and Syria. See how that works out for you.
And besides, what does it matter if gays want to get married? Let them. Why should this bother you? They aren't mocking marriage. They are embracing it. Amid your apparent faith-based bias, YOU might see it as mockery. But it's not mockery to people who want the same rights as straights.
And what makes you think gays will want to marry dogs? Straights don't. Why would you think gays would. Unless, of course, you think gays are perverted, godless lowlifes.

shadowline: Opposition to gay marriage on the basis of religious belief is not bigotry. It is morality. From the religious point of view homosexuality is a form of behaviour, therefore choice, therefore a moral matter. And since no one has ever proved that homosexuality is anything other than a psychological phenomenon, the religious viewpoint cannot be simply dismissed. It may still turn out to be closer to the truth than the popular view that homosexuality is akin to ethnicity, which is a contention for which there is no evidence whatever.

That the incidence of homosexuality has increased exponentially in what used to be the Christian world in tandem with the disappearance of Christianity, is an indicator worth looking at that religion, whether you find its claims to supernatural origin convincing or not, was once performing an essential function in channelling human nature toward a healthful integrity, keeping the conscious in touch with the unconscious. Without that, fissures and stresses appear, maturity becomes hard to achieve, wholeness becomes elusive. And I think it is very relevant that Carl Jung identified homosexuality as a symptom of the failure to individuate completely (i.e. a form of immaturity) - exactly the sort of thing that can happen (en masse, as it is happening now) when the psyche is cut off from its own sources.

Religion, in short, is not to be dismissed so lightly, or so contemptuously.

davesdatahut: Shadow, religions can think about and make rules relating to homosexuality however they want. That's not in dispute. I strongly believe that religion promotes bigotry toward gays. But it's not my call what religions do. They are private clubs that can make their own rules.
What they can't do is impose their morality on civil law, partly because it can lead to one religion's views and rules trumping others. Or trumping laws that protect people who want nothing to do with religions.
The issue at hand is equal rights under civil law. It's not a complicated issue. Straights have a legal right to be married. Under the equal protection clause of the Constitution, gays must be accorded the same rights. Otherwise, you have one set of rules for one class of law-abiding adults and another set for another class. And that cannot be allowed to stand in a democracy. It's as plain as the words written in the law.
As for Carl Jung, it would be kind to say that he had no clue when it came to human sexual preference.

shadowline: I really don't think that Jung can be dismissed like that, dave. You're not talking about some back roads huckster there. His assessment of the matter seems to me probing, objective, and wise. And he didn't have a religion.

As I was saying, there is more than bigotry in the religious view of homosexuality, and I think the charge is unfair. Obviously we live at a time when religion has lost its eminence socially, and that certainly has its good side. I shudder to think what society will look like if Islam ever acquires the kind of influence that Christianity once had here in the West. But religion is a human phenomenon which means something whether you believe it or not. Jung thought that too, and I think he was right.

Your belief that religion promotes inequality and injustice regarding gay rights reflects an assumption that you cannot make - that homosexuality is inborn, physical in basis, and analogous to ethnicity. No one has ever proved that, and the fact that someone has been trying to for decades suggests to me that it cannot be done. There is no more reason, yet, to see homosexuality as a matter of rights than there is to see alcoholism that way.

Lots of people have less-than-common mindsets and behaviours. That doesn't mean they have an inalienable right to them. If homosexuality is what Carl Jung said it was (to take that example) then legalizing gay marriage is not enlightenment, it is foolish, irresponsible, and perhaps dangerous.

davesdatahut: Shadow, did you just equate homosexuality with alcoholism???
Jung, I repeat, was utterly clueless when it came to human sexuality. He was either parroting religious dogma, fulfilling some need to debase gays or not piss off society. Or maybe he was projecting some of his own fears onto gays. I dunno. But he sure as hell wasn't talking to gay people! There is ZERO evidence that homosexuality is choice. It is not something people choose. They are born that way. Ask any gay person and they can tell you. In addition, research strongly suggests that it is indeed a preference gay people are born with. If you don't think so, ask this question: what person would actively choose a preference that is considered base and perverted by society to the point where he or she would be shunned and treated as a wierdo? Who would intentionally do that??
His analysis had the air of depth and perception, but in the end he basically was saying that gays become gay out of some kind of choice, and that over time, the mature ones could grow out of it and become more complete people. In his time, of course, homosexuality was considered an aberration to be punished, or at least shunned and despised. Today, we know better. So his take on this just doesn't pass the sniff test. It's a quaint footnote of archaic thinking.
And let me ask you again, did you just equate homosexuality with alcoholism? The latter is a disease.

davesdatahut: Electrician. Ok, I imagined that my parents were gay. So what?
Yes, my parents were married before I was born. So what?
On what arrogant basis do you declare that gay sex or gay marriage is unnatural? You are the arbiter of this? Sure, homosexuality is not the norm for most people. But who are we to declare it unnatural?
And if gays want to marry the trees, than sure as shit straights will, too. Your supposition is monumentally absurd.
As for questioning whether someone would want to procreate with me, don't be a douchebag.
Should any child of mine be gay and want to marry someone, I would support their wishes fully because it is not my place to tell them who they should love. It is my place to love and support them as long as they are not breaking the law. Does that register with you at all?

wayne elliott: "Homosexuals make a mockery of marriage," says electrician. Really? I thought shows like Bachelor and The Farmer Wants a Wife make a mockery of marriage. If someone wants to join a club with a 50 per cent failure rate, good luck to them, and that right should be extended to any consenting adult no matter what sexuality they are. As for gays next wanting to marry trees and dogs and blades of grass - what sort of idiot are you?

shadowline: What I said was, that it may be no wiser or more responsible to legitimize homosexuality than it would be to do the same with alcoholism. No one and nothing has proved otherwise, because no one and nothing has proved that homosexuality is anything other than aberrant. There is no "research" that proves that homosexuality is inborn, even though researchers have been trying to find some for decades. But to say that it is not inborn is not to say that it is therefore actively chosen. That would be absurd. It is not a matter of choice, it is a matter of psychological adjustment. The sources and causes are well known, and they used to be acknowledged before the misinformation campaign took over.

As for Jung, I can assure you that he was neither parroting religious dogma, nor fulfilling some need to debase gays, nor trying not to piss off society. Nor was he projecting some of his own fears onto gays. He was a psychologist who examined all aspects of human behaviour, objectively. What he had to say about homosexuality was the result of probing psychological study of how human personality works, how complexes are created, how misalignments in the psyche set in and what they lead to. His description of the sources of homosexuality - in the failure of a given personality to fully subsume the gender identity so that it becomes sectioned off from the psyche and must be sought in others of the same sex - is more convincing, and more honest, than anything I have seen in our current fashions on the subject. More importantly, it is a description of what Jung, and indeed all psychologists, devoted his life to helping - psychological failure. Responding to that by repeating "you're fine, you're fine, you're fine", isn't help.

Zanjan: "This is the law here in the US"

No it isnt. A child that is born outside of wedlock is not a legal child. So what law, specifically, are you talking about? Sperm banks are legal, yes - that doesn't mean a child is. The child is only legitimate if the donor and recipient are legally husband and wife.

The right to a child's custody is decided by the courts after application. But no one has the right to a child - civilized people don't own human beings; they're not dogs.

"They [prospective adoptive parents} cannot be denied simply because of sexual orientation"

Yes they can and are all the time, particularly in Canada, where children are adopted through government agencies. This is because the bio mother gave the child up for adoption to prospective hetero couples. There are quite a few other reasons gays can be denied.

When my first husband and I wanted to adopt, we were turned down because our combined income wasn't high enough to suit the authorities. However, the door wasn't closed to us entirely. Some countries are quite willing to sell their children to foreigners, married or not.

Surrogacy in Canada and the US is illegal insofar as marriage is concerned, also paying the surrogate for their services is illegal. We don't buy kids. But you can donate or be the recipient of a kidney, even if its gay.

"As an aside, if any right can be removed, then so can your right to be married or have it recognized by the goverment."

That's true. However, I'm not bothered by it. My husband and I will still be together - our hearts are wed. Even if we were both in jail for the rest of our lives, we'd still be together. What God has bound together, no man can rend asunder.

"Shadow, did you just equate homosexuality with alcoholism???"

I suppose you think there's no such thing in humans as sexual addiction? How about anger management problems - is that inborn too?

Zanjan: Some of us are born with defects, some acquire them through injury or the environment. Nevertheless, we find ways around them and try to rise above them; it's unnatural for us to succumb to our shortcomings.

Humans are very resourceful. When a disability makes it impossible to do a certain thing, we don't remain a cripple - we learn to become better at doing something else. That's the prime indicator of good health.

davesdatahut: Say what? A child born to unmarried parents isn't a legal child? And ls "legitimate" only if the parents are married? Where do you get this crap from? In the US, a child is legally the child of whomever is their mother and father. It goes down on each newborn's birth certificate, unless the child is put up for adoption, in which case the child is legally the child of the adoptive parents, whether they are gay, straight, married or unmarried.
Now let's trash the next bit of verbal feces you crapped out onto this thread, in your special god-given way...
People most certainly can NOT be denied an adoption simply because of sexual orientation. If that were so, there would be no adoptions allowed for gay parents. There must be other reasons, such as a judgment that someone would be an unfit parent, have unsuitable housing or no money. But this judgment cannot be made based on whether they are gay or straight.
Furthermore, yes there is such a thing as sexual addiction. But this has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or straight. It is a mental condition that can afflict gays or straights.

Sometimes, Zanjan, i wonder if you're not snorting lines of ground up bible pages when you post some of the shit you write, You are, at turns, arrogant beyond belief, ignorant, bigoted and cruel as you smear your faith-based dung on these pages.
How about you get resourceful and recover from the defects that religion has caused in you?

Zanjan: In Canada, and many other countries, only the newborn's name is on the birth certificate. I've never seen an American birth certificate with the parents name on it. FYI, birth certificates are fairly recent to the world stage; when I was young, most people didn't have them.

You're talking through your hat again.

I've worked with the Canadian adoption process up until a couple years ago. Here's what has happened through several generations:

Birth records had always been closed before adoption. There was a reason for that, you know. In the 70s, they opened them to the adoptive parents only (for medical reasons); then shortly after that, they opened them to the adoptive child, if the child requested it, once they reached the age of majority.

While some children who sought their birth parents out had happy reunions with them, most kids got a very disturbing 'education' and wished they'd never looked. Most adoptive parents were hurt in the process. The jury's still out on whether this is a good idea or not; they say more time is needed.

Adoption by gay singles was an experiment back in the 70s, which failed horribly and was quickly rectified by the mid 80s. While single people who were NOT gay were allowed to adopt, those had a tendency to send the kids back to the government because it didn't work out. Adoption used to be permanent; apparently, this generation, gay or not, is showing they can't handle it very well.

There are now discussions on terminating the 'single adoptive parent policy altogether; in turn, that would rule out the single foster parent as well. The government's desperation to get rid of kids in the system has presented other problems too, particularly attachment disorder in the children. You can't be shoving kids back and forth from home to home and not give them psychological damage.

You see, some results of change take longer while others come in pretty fast. Despite gay marriage being legal, no gay adoptions are permitted, or permitted to unmarried couples ok. These results are not going to change because of a national border.

I have no idea how it works in the US but they're not the center of the world as you presume. It's just a matter of their administration catching up to speed.

Instead of spewing invectives, how about you get your facts straight? By the way, are you a representative of the gay nation?

.

davesdatahut: Zanjan, what is the "gay nation." Is that another of your godly constructs to put gay people down? I don't know what the "gay nation" is. Ask god. He, she or it might know.

Meanwhile, the following is copied from the Adoption Council of Canada's web site. I trust this will clarify on the matter of gay or single-parent adoptions being fully legal in your country:

Q – Can I adopt if I am gay or lesbian?

A – Yes. In Canada, there are no legal prohibitions to same-sex adoption. However, some countries do not permit international adoptions by same-sex couples. Contact your local agency or provincial child welfare authority to find out their applicable guidelines.

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Myth - As a single parent, I will have a much more difficult time adopting a child, as I am perceived to be less capable.

Reality - A single parent can provide a loving stable home. Increasing numbers of children live in single parent homes (as the number of two parent homes declines) and thrive beautifully, and increasingly, single parents successfully adopt.



Myth - Same-sex parents are not good candidates for providing a healthy environment for an adoptive child.

Reality - Studies have shown that children of same-sex parents adjust well and thrive in positive environments just as well as those in heterosexual families do. Same-sex couples can and do adopt children in Canada.