That is absurd. So gays and lesbians are incapable of loving one another? What makes a loving homosexual couple not natural or legitimate? They're feelings towards each other are every bit as strong as a straight couple.
And what about people who are infertile, by your logic they can't have a "natural and legitimate relationship" either.
Natural: Homosexuality and bisexuality has been recorded as happening among animals in the wild. A scientific study recently showed that altering certain aspects of lab mice's genetic structure caused them to display homosexual behaviors.
Legitimacy: Love between two consenting adults is love. Anything beyond that being needed to legitimize a relationship is nonsensical.
edit: Source on the study in which female mice were shown to display homosexual behaviors. What it says is that if reproduction is not a factor in their behavior, these mice typically gravitated toward other mice of the same gender for sexual behaviors, whereas mice who had a reproductive gene (FucM, or fucose mutarotase) remained attracted to males. This firmly establishes that homosexuality can be the result of genetic makeup, down to a single gene, though in humans numerous other factors can and likely do figure in, given our more complex social, romantic, and reproductive behaviors.
Last edited by Thage; 2012-12-08 at 08:42 AM.
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So just because it happens to animals, it is natural? Animals have defects too, and they should not be supported or encouraged as normal. And to those who keep pointing out infertile people or people who choose not to have kids, I clearly said "capable of" (meaning, they could) and "barring defects" (covering infertility and whatnot.) I love my dog too, but I doubt we could get married if for some reason I tried. Some people might love their siblings, but they are not allowed to get married either. Standards....
What fucking definition of natural are you using?So just because it happens to animals, it is natural?
It happens in nature. Therefore it is by definition, natural. You have yet to explain why it is unnatural or illegitimate for homosexual couples to love one and another.
We're talking about romantic love.I love my dog too, but I doubt we could get married if for some reason I tried. Some people might love their siblings, but they are not allowed to get married either. Standards....
Sexual orientation is a (or two) continuum anyway, it's not like 90% of the population is totally straight and by some freak accident 10% are completely opposite to everyone else.
Marrying your dog is something entirely different. Your dog is not capable of giving informed consent to the relationship.
So is marrying your sibling, though it stems primarily from a taboo, much like anti-homosexuality. Siblings who have offspring are much more likely to pass on defects. While I, personally, would never marry my sibling, I also, personally, feel that if people want to and actually plan on taking care of the likely messed up children that result, that's all on them, not the government.
What others do is not your fucking business. If you don't like it? Who cares? It's not you, it doesn't affect you, leave it be.
3DS Friend Code: 0146-9205-4817. Could show as either Chris or Chrysia.
it's normal for a species of bird (forget the name) to have males that mate with a female, then drive her away and raise the chick with another male. there are also males that stay with the female. it's common, enough so that researchers didn't figure out that most of the birds they were looking at were actually engaging in homosexual behavior because there was nothing unnatural or crazy about two birds sitting on an egg. Took them actually being able to get close enough to watch it happen to realize that, oh shit, at least half the birds on the island were engaging in this behavior.
Incest-born children have a high probability of severe birth defects. A gay couple adopting a child just means the child lives with two parents of the same gender. No studies have conclusively demonstrated lasting psychological trauma can come from a straight child growing up with gay adopted parents, or even a birth parent and a gay stepparent.
Also, something found in nature is natural. That is the definition of natural. It's actually a significant aspect of pack behavior in wolves, where a male seeking to join the pack will allow the alpha male to mount him as a display of dominance on the alpha's end, and devotion to the pack on the new omega's end. Among other animals, again, studies have shown that if an animal does not have reproductive urges, it may gravitate toward attraction toward another of its gender.
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Incest is illegal on the basis that the greatly increased likelihood of passing on genetic defects constitutes considerable harm to any future children the couple may have. It's not something I entirely agree with, but it has a scientific basis.
What scientific basis against homosexual marriage can you provide?
3DS Friend Code: 0146-9205-4817. Could show as either Chris or Chrysia.
I look at it as, males and females were clearly designed to mate. Whether you subscribe to God or nature, it is a fact. If every single person in the world was straight, there would be no issue. If every single person in the world was gay, barring out artificial insemination (which is not natural) our species would die out within a couple generations. I need no further reason to see it as unnatural or wrong. Am I suggesting we should lock people up who are gay, no, but I see no reason for society to support it. But of course, I will never understand the liberal ideals of tolerance of everything over standards.
Being gay is very well supported in anthropology.
A person that is not interested in having a child themselves makes a perfect person to help raise kids. Humans have ALWAYS been about quality over quantity when it comes to kids, so having more people that would be able to invest in a group's children without contributing to the amount of kids is hugely beneficial.
The natural balance would be many hetero people and few homo people... which is just about what it is. It's something that's been documented in damn near every society, but western societies place a HUGE stigma on it as being unnatural, which non-western cultures tended to assign a third (or fourth, or fifth) gender and leave it be.
3DS Friend Code: 0146-9205-4817. Could show as either Chris or Chrysia.
I subscribe to both.
Also, if we're speaking in hypotheticals, it stands to reason that even if the entire species was homosexual, it would be understood that reproduction is important to continue the species. Sex and love are not intrinsically-linked acts; one would guess that an entirely-gay species would either evolve and adapt into a single-gendered race that can reproduce either asexually or with itself with no need for physical and genetic gender distinctions, or the culture would evolve first and artificial insemination would become the norm.
And the ideal of tolerance of those different from oneself is part of what it means to be human, to contribute toward making society more than just a sociopathic, self-centered, cutthroat race to the top. Standards are things like taking a stance against rape, or murder, or selling out your family for a buck. Wanting to deny someone else a basic human right (the UN has defined marriage as a human right, mind you) because of where their romantic interests lie is not a standard, it is hate. It may not be knowing or malicious hate, but it's hate nonetheless.
edit: As Chrysia also noted, informed consent is a cornerstone of debunking comparisons between homosexual marriage and, say, marrying your dog or a pedophile marrying that twelve-year-old he's sweet on. Your dog cannot give informed consent of your relationship and that girl is too young to give informed consent, which is why federal governments the world over have an age of consent where you can have sex with and marry them, as by that age it's generally understood that they should know, barring diminished capacity of any sort or rape, what they're getting into.
Last edited by Thage; 2012-12-08 at 09:00 AM.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
I'm sorry, but that is an incredibly shallow view that fails on multiple levels of logic. Humans are social animals, we function as a society. What is normal has to be defined in terms of the whole society, and not on an individual basis. Homosexuality and bisexuality has been well attested to since the dawn of human civilisation. It is normal for a minority of humans to be primarily attracted to members of the same sex. It is normal for most humans to be capable of some level of sexual/romantic attraction to a member of the same sex.
You cannot denounce a minority as abnormal based on a hypothetical situation that is not true, was not true, and will not be true (if everyone was gay).
This is incredibly offensive. Who are you to judge gays and lesbians? They aren't a lower standard than you.But of course, I will never understand the liberal ideals of tolerance of everything over standards.