Sorry, I will respond to your other points, but not tonight. Must…get…sleep….

I said that the reasoning that two adults who love each other should be allowed to marry leads to the conclusion that incestuous marriages would be allowable.

Okay, how about this: gay and lesbian people should have the same legal rights as straight people do.

Is that clear enough?

Also, there are a great many people who get married that are involved in psychologically damaging relationships. The likelyhood of the marriage being pyschologically healthy rarely is a consideration.

I did not say gay marriage would lead to incestuous marriage. I said that the reasoning that two adults who love each other should be allowed to marry leads to the conclusion that incestuous marriages would be allowable. My point is that just saying two adults who love each other should be allowed to get married ignores that there are other aspects to marriage and mariage rights than just the wishes of the two people involved.

My intent was to say that a “civil union defined by law as such that it gave the same rights and privileges as a hetero marriage” WOULD BE just fine by me.

But don’t let that stop you from finding the citations on the differences, as I acknowledge my ignorance in that area, and I’m always eager to learn. :)

When I get more info on the differences between civil unions and marriages, I will put it on here.

Icepick – I just wanted to mention that your comment about this leading to marriage between brothers and sisters and cousins is way off base. There are lots of reasons, which are quite logical and scientific, for why we don’t allow close family members to marry. One, being that this type of inbreeding leads to a lot of birth defects and health problems for children. In fact, I believe that this is why we don’t allow first cousins but do allow more distant relatives to marry – it has to do with diversity in the gene pool. Two, being that it is a very psychologically unhealthy thing to be allowed, when there is trouble enough as it is with incest and sexual abuse in some families.

First, love does not of necessity need to be a part of marriage. That is a rather modern (and I believe Western) idea. And many lovers never even consider getting married. (Especially ones that are already married!)

Oh give me a break. You’re actually making this point? I can see that point being made for civil unions, but marriage?

First and foremost for me is that I don’t see how the arguements for gay marriage can’t be used for group marriage.

Well, except that gay marriages are between two people, and group marriages are for MORE than two people. Huh? I’m sorry, but this one is bewildering and completely doesn’t hold water at all. And if my statement about the religious right was absurd, then so too is your comparison about group marriage. However, mine was more of a personal statement. Obviously I feel very strongly about this and I only brought it up to highlight (and push) a trend.

Also, please remember that there are religions that are absolutely fine with marrying gays and lesbians. So automatically, “religious” arguments go right out the window and nullifies the civil union argument.

But Paul, I too think civil unions are the first step, with marriage (hopefully) not being too far behind. I’m just glad that Mass has seen the light of equality. It’s about time.

One position I’ve maintained has been roughly this: I don’t really care one way or the other about gay marriage; I’m ambivalent on it, and I have another (libertarian) rule that says that when I’m ambivalent on an issue, I’ll tend to err on the side of favoring it.

I don’t care much for arguments about gay marriage that require first assuming that one religion is to be held more important than all others. On the other hand, note that I use a definition of “religion” that is closer to “belief system” than to “one of the big organized religions of the world”. I was seeing a distinct crowd of gay marriage proponents who held their anti-Christian beliefs with no small amount of faith, and sought gay marriage more in order to slap down the Bible-thumpers they obsessed on so much, rather than to, say, ensure gay couples could visit each other in the hospital. I cared even less for such arguments. In fact, I believe they contributed strongly to the backlash in November 2004; they pushed too hard, in the wrong way.

I can respect arguments that say allowing gay marriage will weaken the cultural motivation behind strong family units, while also respecting counter-arguments such as: if we felt so strongly about this, we ought to decry divorce more vociferously. Gay marriages could be marketed, in fact, as yet another testament to the importance of commitment at this level; however, I fear not many of its proponents would be interested in pushing such commitment – they would advocate gay marriage, and then just as quickly advocate gay divorce.

Given all the mess around the issue, I felt, and still feel, that the best solution would be civil unions. Let the religious sacraments retain their distinctions, while still providing cultural support to gay couples who wish to commit to the point of handling each others’ stately affairs.

Remember people, marriage is about love and if two adults want to make a committment to each other and enjoy the same rights and benefits as everybody else, then why stop them?

First, love does not of necessity need to be a part of marriage. That is a rather modern (and I believe Western) idea. And many lovers never even consider getting married. (Especially ones that are already married!)

Second, why does it have to be two people? Why not three or four or more?

Third, everyone does not have the same marriage rights, even in the straight community. Close familial relations are not allowed to legally marry in this country, as far as I know. Cousins, especially distant cousins, usually can. The line of reasoning you’re using could be used to justify brother-sister marriages, or any other close blood relations getting married. I will presume that is not your intent.

And before this you wrote:

All of that fear the religious right peddled, saying that the very institution of marriage was at stake, is proving to be wrong and it’s incredibly obvious.

This is a patently absurd statement. You are going to measure the effects of gay marriage on society after a few test cases over a short period of time? That’s like arguing that the Detroit Lions are the team most likely to be the NFC representative in the Super Bowl because they currently lead the tie-breaks for home field advantage in the play-offs!

Sincerely, I ask everybody here, why would you stop them?

First and foremost for me is that I don’t see how the arguements for gay marriage can’t be used for group marriages. Other than being the only even prime I don’t see why two holds any special significance. There have been far more cultures that practiced men having multiple wives than have allowed gay marriage. And don’t even think of telling me that no one would be interested in such arrangements. There are all kinds of Heinlein fans alone who would want to try it. And once we go down that route we screwed.

Don’t believe me? Then consider what happens when a marriage arrangement with three husbands and four wives splits apart. Imagine the complexity of the divorce settlements! QDRO’s are a bitch to deal with when it’s just one man and one woman. And think about the custody battles! The legal complexities alone would suck up the entire energy of the nation.

In a somewhat more considered vein, Jane Galt had a very long post on gay marriage back in April. She doesn’t really come down on either side of the issue. But she does urge a certain circumspection about the issue. Here’s a concluding paragraph of a very loooooong post:

My only request is that people try to be a leeetle more humble about their ability to imagine the subtle results of big policy changes. The argument that gay marriage will not change the institution of marriage because you can’t imagine it changing your personal reaction is pretty arrogant. It imagines, first of all, that your behavior is a guide for the behavior of everyone else in society, when in fact, as you may have noticed, all sorts of different people react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways, which is why we have to have elections and stuff. And second, the unwavering belief that the only reason that marriage, always and everywhere, is a male-female institution (I exclude rare ritual behaviors), is just some sort of bizarre historical coincidence, and that you know better, needs examining. If you think you know why marriage is male-female, and why that’s either outdated because of all the ways in which reproduction has lately changed, or was a bad reason to start with, then you are in a good place to advocate reform. If you think that marriage is just that way because our ancestors were all a bunch of repressed bastards with dark Freudian complexes that made them homophobic bigots, I’m a little leery of letting you muck around with it.

There are also many interesting comments.

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html

I would encourage everyone with a little time to read this essay.

Gay groups haven’t even made a serious effort yet and the issue is rushing toward a tipping point.

I completely agree on both points, and it has been disheartening that we haven’t seen gays out in the streets AROUND THE COUNTRY protesting these amendments more fervently. If they did, I think they would gain much more traction and get much more credibility.