This isn't an equal rights issue. It's a marriage issue. If gays are allowed to marry, what's to keep anyone from marrying their brother, sister, cousin, 12 year old lover, pet, tv, or football?
Do homosexuals really need to have a piece of paper signed by the state to love one another? How superficial of them. Of course, we all know that they're the tolerant deep thinkers around here. While all those evil religious people are the materialistic, superficial, close minded people....
First of all, the "slippery slope" argument is easily answered. People seem to consider it a tough question because they *want* it to be a tough question. All you have to do is come up with sane criteria that we can all agree on. For instance, Margaret Farley lays out seven criteria for just sex in her book
Just Love - A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics:
1) Do No Unjust Harm - Treat people as ends for themselves, not as sexual objects. Sexuality is partly defined by vulnerability, dropping your walls and opening yourself completely to the other... and thus you open yourself not just to physical but emotional and psychological harm. Such harm obviously needs to be avoided in any relationship, sexual or otherwise, but particularly in a relationship that is defined to such great degree by vulnerability.
2) Free Consent - Of course both parties must freely consent. This should need no explanation at all.
3) Mutuality - Both partners should be equally or near-equally committed to the sexual relationship as a sexual relationship. Put in coarse terms, it's bad if one partner is jonesing for sex all the time, and the other just allows himself or herself to be used. That's not exactly an ideal relationship.
4) Equality - This is the criteria that is most often pointedly ignored by the people who advance the "slippery slope" argument. The fact is, any sexual relationship must embody a certain power equality. Clearly a 40-year-old has more power than a 12-year-old in any relationship. While this is natural for a parent-child or teacher-student relationship, it is wildly inappropriate and morally appalling for a sexual relationship, because it fundamentally allows coercion. The 12-year-old really has no choice in the matter. And neither would a pet, television, or football. I can't help but think that people who advance this argument are being sarcastic or are just not considering the question very seriously, because it's clearly a specious argument.
5) Commitment - Robin Morgan notes that "Commitment gives you the leverage to bring about change - and the time in which to do it." For Farley, it is a means rather than an end... she is not out-of-hand ruling out single people having sex with other single, consenting adults. But commitment obviously can ease tensions and fears of jealousy, and she argues that it should ultimately be normative for sexual relationships, because it allows for growth that one-night stands don't. Which leads to:
6) Fruitfulness - This is another element which is often attacked when it comes to gay couples. After all, they can't have children (I will note, as an aside, that it seems odd to label this in any way bad, since the world is so overpopulated already). But the fact is that a loving sexual relationship between two people can lead to many other things than just children - like nourishing other relationships, providing role models, mutual growth of both partners in countless ways, the raising of other people's children, etc etc etc. I think it would be a hard argument to say that a straight couple that decided not to have kids could in no way be fruitful in their relationship, both for themselves and for society at large.
7) Social Justice - I'll simply quote Farley directly on this one: "This norm derives from our obligation to respect relationality, but not only from this. It derives more generally from the need to respect all persons as ends in themselves, to respect their autonomy and relationality, and thus not to harm them but support them... It points to the kind of justice that everyone in a community or society is obligated to affirm for its members as sexual beings. Whether persons are singled or married, gay or straight, bisexual or ambiguously gendered, old or young, able or challenged in the ordinary forms of sexual expression, they have claims to respect from the Christian community as well as the wider society. These are claims to freedom from unjust harm, equal protection under the law, an equitable share in the goods and services available to others, and freedom of choice in their sexual lives - within the limits of not harming or infringing on the just claims of the concrete realities of others. Whatever the sexual status of persons, their needs for incorporation into the community, for psychic security and basic well-being, make the same claims for social cooperation among us as do those of us all."
Those criteria are all you need. The only things it doesn't rule out are close familial sexual relationships. And hey, there are countries where first cousins getting married is A-OK. The dicey one is siblings. You'd have to come up with some special rules to exclude that. Of course, we can argue about all of these, add and subtract rules. But it really isn't difficult to come up with a sexual ethic that rules out animals and inanimate objects and yet includes gays. Even simply the criteria of free consent and equality alone go a long way.
Secondly, this whole thing really isn't about marriage. It never was. Because you're right to say that having a piece of paper signed by the state doesn't really mean all that much just for itself. What this is really about is the *acknowledgment* of the union by society at large. That's really the purpose behind marriage. It's an announcement to society that two people are devoted to each other and plan to make their lives together. That's why they're such big family affairs, and why weddings have so many guests... it's the public blessing that people support the couple's new life together. A marriage certificate only means something if the people in your community recognize it as legitimate... but if instead they always turn away and tell you you're going to hell, then it's just words on paper with no meaning at all. It's about - to use Farley's phrase - "psychic security and basic well-being." Would you enjoy everyone telling you you're evil and a bad person because you loved someone sexually? That's a day-in, day-out battle on your peace of mind, just trying to live your life.
That's why I think that the argument on both sides has been fundamentally misdirected. Homosexuals often frame the argument say "it's none of your business who I want to marry, your opinion shouldn't matter because it's my individual right to get married." Well, actually, in a macroscopic sense the opinions of others *do* matter, because marriage fundamentally *is* the blessing of the union by the community... otherwise people wouldn't bother to get married, they'd just decide to be together and not bother to tell anybody. But the societal acknowledgement and blessing *is* the marriage. So at the bottom of it, gays aren't asking to be married as such, just to have the piece of paper, they're fundamentally asking to be accepted. Because the fact is that they're going to be together no matter what anyone else says... but they may be scorned and spurned from society for doing so.
In any case, I watched the trailer for the movie mentioned in the thread title about Prop 8. Honestly, it looks pretty terrible. It's basically a Michael Moore flick. I may agree with a lot of it, but what good will it actually do? It's so polemical that you'll just be preaching to the choir. People on the other side aren't going to be able to stand sitting through it, and I hardly blame them.
But the fundamental point against the anti-gay marriage folks here (or even simply anti-gay folks in general), for which I've never heard a satisfactory response, is exactly who is hurt by gays getting married, or just being together. I just don't get it. We constantly hear these sound bites about how gays are a "threat to America" or a "threat to our way of life." What exactly does that mean? What threat? Gays are no more sexually perverted or more likely to be sexual predators than straight people. They're not evil. They don't "convert" people. So what exactly is this "threat"?
Can anyone tell me? I don't have the first clue.
) should be allowed to call their bond marriage now. This is a loving and Christ-like compromise. Do we have any gays who oppose this glorious proposition?
