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kengrOne of the really common arguments you'll hear is that it is necessary to ban same-sex marriage to "protect" "traditional marriage".
This argument has been demolished again and again. Heck, in the Prop 8 trial in CA, their own expert witnesses couldn't come up with evidence that stopping gays from marrying would have any effect on whether or not non-gays would marry.
Yet they continue to assert this is every state that they are fighting the issue.
But just a bit ago, something reminded me of this argument and something clicked.
The argument against them is flawed because of a basic premise, a fundamental postulate if you will, that differs between them and us.
Quite simply, we assume that if you aren't attracted to the opposite sex, there's no sensible reason for you to marry one.
But to *them* men and women *need* to be married. Men need to have a wife and women need to have husbands. It's both a "personal" issue and a *social* one.
Besides the idea of women needing a man to "guide" (read: "control") it also reinforces their desired social order in many ways.
Add in the fact that many of them *still* believe that gays can be "cured" and they definitely have reason to think that it's better for a gay man or women to be in a loveless marriage with a member of the opposite sex, than for them to be single, much less married to a member of their own sex, and their arguments make sense.
Alas, no court is going to be able to allow those arguments because they are either based on "facts" that science has disproven ("gays can be cured") or they are based on religious/cultural beliefs that run counter to things like equality for women.
This means that they are going to get a lot more desperate and a lot shriller as they keep losing and any victories they get are going to be short lived unless they get really lucky.
And since they are "right" anybody opposing them must be being deliberately evil.
So expect things to get a lot uglier as they lose ground.
This argument has been demolished again and again. Heck, in the Prop 8 trial in CA, their own expert witnesses couldn't come up with evidence that stopping gays from marrying would have any effect on whether or not non-gays would marry.
Yet they continue to assert this is every state that they are fighting the issue.
But just a bit ago, something reminded me of this argument and something clicked.
The argument against them is flawed because of a basic premise, a fundamental postulate if you will, that differs between them and us.
Quite simply, we assume that if you aren't attracted to the opposite sex, there's no sensible reason for you to marry one.
But to *them* men and women *need* to be married. Men need to have a wife and women need to have husbands. It's both a "personal" issue and a *social* one.
Besides the idea of women needing a man to "guide" (read: "control") it also reinforces their desired social order in many ways.
Add in the fact that many of them *still* believe that gays can be "cured" and they definitely have reason to think that it's better for a gay man or women to be in a loveless marriage with a member of the opposite sex, than for them to be single, much less married to a member of their own sex, and their arguments make sense.
Alas, no court is going to be able to allow those arguments because they are either based on "facts" that science has disproven ("gays can be cured") or they are based on religious/cultural beliefs that run counter to things like equality for women.
This means that they are going to get a lot more desperate and a lot shriller as they keep losing and any victories they get are going to be short lived unless they get really lucky.
And since they are "right" anybody opposing them must be being deliberately evil.
So expect things to get a lot uglier as they lose ground.
