Errrgh, no offense but all these long rambling posts against gay marriage are just throwing up the same old lame excuses.
I'm sorry to hear that, but that was my first post in the topic, which accounts for the length. I'll try to keep it shorter.
Do keep in mind that while yes, I am against same-sex marriage, my opinion that government should not intervene would actually extend equal marriage "rights" to all consenting adults in all conceivable consenting relationships. Full stop.
mue 26 wrote:1. Gay couples cant have children and no harm can come from it, whilst incestuous marriage would bring with it the risk of couples having unhealthy children(whom its unfair for) and then saying but its OK coz we were allowed to get married ect.
So I suppose people with severe heritable deformities/mental deficiencies should either be prohibited from getting married to a member of the opposite sex who is capable of reproducing or should be chemically castrated. If it's really "for the children," doesn't the government have an obligation to do that? After all, you would prohibit individuals from making private contracts with their siblings because of your arbitrary concerns, whilst justifying other individuals' choices (yes, marriage itself is a choice)--wouldn't your justification have all sorts of implications for policy?
Deformities that result from incestuous relationships are grossly exaggerated anyway.
2.All my friends who are gay have told me they were born gay(just have a different hormonal balance from hetrosexual people maybe), and I have no reason to disbelieve them, whilst I dont think anyone is really born naturally inclined to incest.
Scientific studies would back them up, so I have no reason to disbelieve them, either.
Is that really what it comes down to? So it's no longer a matter of individual contractual rights, but a matter of genetics. Most people are not predisposed to be sexually attracted to their specific sexual partners, but because of your concerns for potential births (a concern I tackled--I'll wait for your rebuttal before making any assumptions), you would stack that on top of the lack of specific genetic inclinations to deny individuals their rights.
Again, that seems dubious to me.
I'm going to propose a "magic" argument of my own: from a secular perspective, I suppose it could be said that heterosexual marriage is no more valid than homosexual marriage or anything else. Thus, since it's all arbitrary in the first place, why not extend it to anyone we see fit and bar anyone else we see fit? That's the best argument I can think of, although it would turn marriage itself into mush and remove all moral imperatives from the discussion. I'll address it if anyone wants me to, but yes, such arguments do exist.
Let me ask, upon what premises do you base your belief that same-sex marriage must be legalized? Without knowing that, it's hard to know whether you're being logically inconsistent--though I don't think your previous arguments were very persuasive (I may be missing something).
Suffice to say, you were consistent, but consistency comes at a serious cost: immense, borderline totalitarian (IMO) control over individual rights. And because consistency demands the issue of other marriages be addressed (that's hardly tangential), it's not bullshit or irrelevant to the argument.
