The Conservative Case for Gay MarriageFollow

If you think homosexual marriage devalues the government benefits of heterosexual marriage, you're too far gone to help. Same goes for your retarded kids. It's the tough shit rule. Learn to deal with it or don't, nobody else cares. If the existence of homosexual marriage stops a single heterosexual marriage from going through, their relationship was tenuous at best and would very likely result in divorce (which is the same effect as having a single parent anyway).

Except for the umpteenth time homosexual couples can still have children.



Edited, Jan 21st 2010 7:28pm by bsphil

Because it reduces the relative value of the benefits themselves. If everyone can qualify for it, it's not as valuable. All of the benefits are relative things. Someone else who is not married pays a bit more for something so that someone who is married pays a bit less. As you increase the total size of the group that is married, it decreases the relative cost benefit. If that size increase was representative of couples who might otherwise procreate, then it's not a problem. But when that increase is among ones who wont...?


Worse is the precedent that is set. Once you remove the assumption of potential procreation from the equation, then there's no reason not to use the same argument for including gay couples for other types of relationships. This is *not* a slippery slope fallacy, because it's not an unreasonable or unlikely outcome. It is, in fact, an almost certain outcome. The second gay marriage becomes the standard, the polygamists will step up to the plate. We all know this. And behind them will be the siblings, and parents and children, and every other type of relationship you can imagine.

Gay marriage becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back.




Stop being silly. You know I'm not saying that.





Let's use another analogy. Let's assume there's some kind of virus which only affects women. Let's call it "HPV". It's sexually transmitted, and can cause a higher incidence of cervical cancer. We might decide that this is a significant enough problem to produce a vaccine. And having that vaccine, we could wait until the women are adults and give them the option of taking it. Or, we might argue that the need to get women to take the vaccine prior to becoming sexually active is sufficient to justify giving the HPV vaccine to all girls while they are in grade school.

Here's the thing. We can't say which of those girls will be sexually active between grade school and the age of 18. And we can't say which of those girls will become infected. But we can say that statistically, some number of them will. So, even though not all of them will, we still have to vaccinate all of them to minimize the rate of infection. In case you're following this, it's the same rationale for why we provide marriage benefits to all heterosexual couples who marry, even if they don't end up having children. We don't know which ones will, just as we don't know which girls will end up infected with HPV.


Final question: Does it make any sense for the state to provide HPV vaccinations for boys in grade school? They can carry the virus, but are not adversely affected by it. It may be worth the money to provide the vaccine to all the girls, but should we spend the same money providing it to the boys as well? Do we get the same bang for the buck? Would it be somehow a violation of the boys rights that only the girls get a free vaccination? Presumably, they could pay for it themselves if they wanted to, but the state wouldn't pick up the tab...


To me. It's the same kind of absurdity. No one's telling gay couples they can't have whatever relationships they want. But it's not worth it to subsidize those relationships. Just as we might decide it's worth it to subsidize vaccinations for girls against HPV, but not the boys. Don't take it personally, gay couples do not have the biological equipment to be affected in the same way as heterosexual couples by sexual activity. It's really that simple and straightforward...

With such an alarming frequency, in fact, that they cannot take care of them all on their own! OH NOZ! Hey, how about encouraging gays to get together, marry, and adopt some of those overflow children so they are raised in healthy family environments. Wow! It's like it's meant to be!

/foreheadslap


Gee. If only someone else had thought to suggest that... Lol!

I'm not going to repeat the response I already gave to this silly suggestion.



Oh. And for the record. I'm still waiting for someone to present an alternative reason to mine as to why we created those marriage benefits. Any time now....

Really? Because I've seen like 6 different people give you a ton of them.

And, to note, some of those benefits are by default incompatible with your theory. For example, unrestricted access to your loved one in the hospital (assuming, of course, there's no risk of contact spreading a disease). That is not, in any way, something that would entice a couple to get married before they have children. WOULD it entice them? Yes. But only if they wanted to be together. It won't bring together the parents of an accidental child. And it is really only attractive to someone that wanted to be married anyway.

And it is one of the primary reasons gays want marriage. So that, God forbid, when the person they love gets into a horrible car accident and has minutes to live, they aren't on the phone with a lawyer trying to get their civil union agreement faxed to the hospital to prove the dying party gave their lover that right.

Your argument is incoherent and doesn't represent the way things actually are and have been in the world, Gbaji. I could see a point of not wanting to allow legislation that is purely social. And, on some level I could agree, IF marriage had NEVER become a state contract. If it was still handled by churches, there would be no reason to complain. But the choice that was made to make it a legal statute also means it has to be equal. It isn't. And there is NO argument of cost vs. benefit that applies, for the simple reason that it is covered in the constitution.

Either you change the constitution, or you change marriage. Those are the only options for things to be equal.

Polygamist is just fancy talk for pedophile.

I know it's rhetorical, but the answer is obviously because, according to modern biblical interpretations, Christianity forbids it.



It's rather ironic, when you start examining this in-depth, because Corinthians 7:10 happens to say:



The core of the issue is the fact that yet again, religion has influenced government.

Edited, Jan 21st 2010 9:23pm by BrownDuck

If there where 9 million gay couples getting married the same year I did, I would still get married. Whether or not gays can get married has no effect on me. And guess what? I've talked to A LOT of straight people who happened to be married who think the same way.

When the hell did marriage become some valuable prize to be won? I swear, these "arguments" get more and more bizarre. I have never met anyone who got married for all these thousands of benefits that are supposed to exist (but no one has ever seen). Wait, I'm sorry. They're not benefits, they're rewards. Silly me.

And I don't care about the history of marriage. It has change and changed and changed again over the years. We are talking about marriage right now. And if Bob and Steve want to tie the knot, it's not going to affect my marriage in any way, shape or form. Or anyone elses.

Let them be just as miserable as we straight people.

That's retarded, gbaji. That's your worst rationalization ever.

No. They haven't. Not a single one.



Sigh. That's not a benefit you get from the state though. It's a power granted to you as part of the civil contract you enter into when you get married and it's something every single gay couple can gain.


I'm talking about things like different tax columns (which are not always a benefit), better interest rates from some government loan programs, inheritance of social security funds, pension funds, and military survivor funds, and tax free inclusion on your spouses health insurance.

Those are the benefits you get from the government (plus some other minor ones each state may provide). That's it. That is the only thing you get by qualifying for a marriage license. Everything else is provided by the civil contract and is not in any way denied to anyone.


All of the legislation and legal challenges revolve around changing the criteria for those state benefits, so that is the *only* thing we should be considering. Why do those benefits exist, and does it make sense to provide them to gay couples.


It's funny that I start out explaining this, argue for awhile, then someone argues into a circle and forgets that. Then I remind them, argue it for awhile, responding to point after point, until once again someone tries to bring up non-state issued benefits. Repeat over and over...


Stick to the state benefits. That's all I'm talking about.




Yes. It's one of the huge bait and switch aspects of this entire issue. Gay couples have been convinced that the only way they can get this (which you correctly name as the most important thing they want) is by joining the fight to change the laws to include same sex couples on marriage license requirements. But that is not true. It's a freaking lie!

Any two people can obtain joint medial power of attorney over each other. Regardless of sexual orientation. How many gay couples have suffered this, not because it wasn't available to them, but because they believed their own "side" when they were told they must fight to change the marriage laws to get it? Who's victimizing them? Who's using them for a political agenda?


Yeah. But I'm the one who's anti-homosexual. I've proposed on several occasions over the years that if the gay rights movement had simply hired a few contract attorneys and paid a small pittance (about 10k as it turns out) to write up an iron clad civil contract containing all the things currently in marriage contracts as defined by statute, they could have made boilerplate copies of that contract and distributed them to anyone who wanted one. They could have done this at any point in time.


They chose not to. So if gay couples are unable to do this, it's not because of me or the people on "my side". It's because of their own leadership steering them down the wrong path.



Absolutely false. Every single government benefit program in existence right now includes some sort of qualifying criteria. None of them are "equal". The fact that you choose to make that argument only with this issue, but not with say handicapped placards, or housing assistance, or welfare funds, or school grants, or every single other government program is telling. It's telling me that you're not taking this position because you actually believe that any benefit granted by the government must be granted equally to all people, but that you've picked a "side" and just blindly accept and believe whatever they tell you.


Your position makes no sense. You cannot say that government benefits programs are applied equally. They quite obviously are not. Why then insist that it must be for this case and only this case? Has it occurred to you that you might be the victim of a bit of misinformation?




Huh? Could you explain to me where in the constitution marriage benefits are mentioned? I must have missed that page...



Tell you what. I'll agree to eliminate the benefits granted to married couples on the basis that it's not applied equally to everyone if you agree to eliminate every other benefit granted for any other reason which is not equal. Let's see where that leaves us...


Think it through. We do this all the time. If it's unconstitutional to do it when it's marriage benefits, then it's unconstitutional all the other times as well. I'm ok with that if that's the direction you want to go, but I doubt you are...

Sure, I would be. I'd also challenge you to list more than 3 benefits that you happen to think fall into that category, rather than merely imply they're commonplace.