And as with all government benefits, some of its recipients take the check but fail to ultimately accomplish the goal for which the program was designed (divorce, multiple marriages, infertility, don’t want kids…) But as the Liberal argument goes on government benefits, just because a few people abuse the system (or in this case, simply don’t end up contributing to the beneficial result government is trying to foster), that’s no reason to abolish it.

Ironically, but not surprisingly, that is one of the major reasons conservatives use for wanting to get rid of welfare.

I guess they want their cake and to eat it too.

I’ve read this site on and off for quite a while and I have always wondered if the conservative “gays” here aren’t just sockpuppets for some anti gay group.

However, if other people are being prevented from adopting because they are single I am sad to hear it.

No, not because they’re single. Because they’re gay. Singles can adopt.

That makes you, by definition, hysterical, unreasonable, asinine, willfully ignorant, and very likely deranged and psychotic. They are not ad hominem attacks if they are demonstrably true.

Cute. Really. So you’re able to give clinical diagnosis. Maybe it’s just that we fundamentally disagree?

We are not talking about adoption law in here. We are talking about marriage law.

Actually, I thought we were talking about “marriage” as an ideal, not a “law” at all. So I didn’t really want to hear about court cases, as 1) Courts can be wrong 2) Courts are not moral arbiters 3) Government is not a moral arbiter. I sincerely and honestly believe (and I am backed up by the facts, studies, and anecdotes from people I know) that gay families are just as good for children as straight ones. For that reason, I think that they should be treated the same by other people. My arguments, when framed in legalisms are quite different.

Marriage encourages all of the above. Love FROM biological parents. Yes, love is important. Thats why society allows loving people to adopt children. But adoption isn’t ideal. Being raised by biological parents who love you is always preferable to being raised by adoptive parents who love you.

I also think that that’s a complete load. I don’t think there’s an appreciable difference, and nor do my friends who were raised by adoptive parents. We certainly don’t see adopted kids underperforming in life compared to those raised by bio-parents. I honestly don’t see what in the relationship so hinges upon the biology; I mean honestly some biological parents who give children up for adoption do it out of love. Many abusive bio-parents claim to “love” their children. And besides that, we treat adoptive parents just like bio-parents, so we could go back to that whole thing. I think one of your fundamental premises is faulty, so clearly we have a deeply rooted disagreement.

[On lack of adoption rights in certain states] I am glad to hear it! You have demonstrated that you are far too selfish at the expense of children’s best interests to ever be allowed to adopt.

And you, sir, seem to be a complete and total asshole to even consider making a statement like that, without ever meeting or interacting with me outside an antagonistic setting online, let alone personally at all. Until this point I have not made any personal attacks on you here (or that was not my intent, at least, even if language was perceived as hostile). And yet every last one of your posts has been absolutely laden with them. What the hell is the bug up your butt for? Just because somebody doesn’t agree with you doesn’t make him an idiot automatically. That’s the true basis of a free society, the ability to disagree civilly. You seem to be incapable of such.

Now perhaps we come from two perspectives so radically different that you can’t address my points and questions in the way I feel they should be. And vice versa. I mean clearly we have a deeply-set disagreement when it’s not just the application of premises but the actual premises that we disagree one. But the fact that we don’t see eye-to-eye does not make you absolutely provably right, and besides that, however vociferously we may disagree, there is no need to lash out at me with these nasty pejoratives that you use.

And love matters a whole lot more than gender or biological relationships.

Proof that you are concerned only with what YOU want, not what is best for society or best for children.

Marriage encourages all of the above. Love FROM biological parents. Yes, love is important. Thats why society allows loving people to adopt children. But adoption isn’t ideal. Being raised by biological parents who love you is always preferable to being raised by adoptive parents who love you.

But you want to negate the importance of children being raised by their biological parents and tear down the institution built to encourage that ideal for your own selfish ends.

Actually, I can’t adopt in Florida.

I am glad to hear it! You have demonstrated that you are far too selfish at the expense of children’s best interests to ever be allowed to adopt.

However, if other people are being prevented from adopting because they are single I am sad to hear it. I imagine there are a great many children who go unadopted because there simply aren’t enough two-parent households for them all. But for the 500th time, this is adoption law, not marriage law. They are two very different things. We are not talking about adoption law in here. We are talking about marriage law.

Now you’ve called me, ““Shrill, ignorant, hysterical, asinine”, “deranged”, and “psychotic”. And besides these ad hominems, you’ve still failed to answer my questions. Sweet!

Wrong. We are now on post #61. Your questions have all been answered almost that many times. And because you are unwilling to listen, you have also been referred to the court decisions where your questions have been answered and rejected, with very eloquent and definitive reasoning. But you refuse to listen to reason and logic, and insist on asking the same questions over and over despite the fact that they have been answered countless times.

That makes you, by definition, hysterical, unreasonable, asinine, willfully ignorant, and very likely deranged and psychotic. They are not ad hominem attacks if they are demonstrably true.

Because gender amounts to a whole hell of a lot more than a person’s name.

And love matters a whole lot more than gender or biological relationships.

it doesn’t even mean they aren’t supportive of them — obviously since you are allowed to adopt, they are

Actually, I can’t adopt in Florida. And in all those states where I can adopt, many of them (28+) don’t allow joint adoption, so if the child were to become ill, or I were to die, there wouldn’t be a legal claim of custody by my partner in many cases. But just keep telling yourself that it’s fair and supportive.
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Also, add psychotic and deranged to the list. Now you’ve called me, ““Shrill, ignorant, hysterical, asinine”, “deranged”, and “psychotic”. And besides these ad hominems, you’ve still failed to answer my questions. Sweet!

And here’s bandwagon.

An opinion that has been resoundly defeated by the rest of the electorate

Ad hominem, again:

just goes to show how incredibly selfish and self centered you really are.

Appeal to authority:

in the very court decisions themselves

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I’m not talking about laws or court decisions. I’m talking about right and wrong. Denying a gay family the same protections as a straight one is flat wrong. Love is way more important than blood in a family.

2. If you can’t tell Pat’s gender from such basic information, then how, exactly, are gay families different on a such a fundamental level as you claim?

Because gender amounts to a whole hell of a lot more than a person’s name. Gender MATTERS.

Holy hell, are you really this farking stupid? (No need to answer that)

Please do not continue to give me the same tired argument about incentivizing child production.

I never said we had to incentivize child production, oh ye of abysmal reading comprehension, I said society wants to ensure that as many children as possible are born INTO a committed relationship between their biological mother and their biological father.

This is the ideal. An ideal you don’t fit into until such time as you are willing to marry your child’s mother. It doesn’t mean society is outlawing other family arrangements, it doesn’t even mean they aren’t supportive of them — obviously since you are allowed to adopt, they are. What it means, for the 500th time, is that it is the ideal scenario, and society wants to see as many kids raised in the ideal scenario as possible

It’s pretty clear that we don’t need to incentivize that.

That is your opinion. An opinion that has been resoundly defeated by the rest of the electorate. Please get this through your thick skull — YOU don’t get to decide what behaviors the people esteem. The people do. And they have said, through their legislatures, that they want the purpose of marriage to be to encourage the nuclear family.

Society has every right to encourage meaningful ideals. Your asinine point of view is that it doesn’t and we should allow couples that, by definition, contradict the ideal to be part of an institution thats purpose is to encourage that ideal.

The fact that you don’t think it is a “fair” or worthwhile goal to encourage children to be born into and raised under a union between their biological parents, just goes to show how incredibly selfish and self centered you really are.

As I said, you lost, it would behoove you to figure out why. And NO, you obviously DON’T understand the law. If you did, you wouldn’t keep up with your incessant and nearly psychotic repetition of the same arguments over and over and over and over. Arguments that have been discredited and rejected with eloquent explanation in the very court decisions themselves, not to mention the 500 times I have explained them to you. (make that 501)

WILLFUL ignorance of a deranged magnitude.

The last, for many, is almost entirely derivative from the first three

Notice that qualifier: “FOR MANY”. Not “for all”. And I certainly didn’t make any statement that a person can’t be successful without them, if he is happy and feels that he has succeeded. So, again, while I agree with your analysis of your hallucination, I’m afraid it’s still a hallucination, as usual when you try to tell me what I think.

It is interesting how gays and lesbians who are obsessed with marriage are also obsessed with other EXTERNAL indicators, such as whether or not one has children, whether or not one is partnered, and so forth.

You are incredibly shallow if you think we want these things as “status symbols”. Those of us who want these things want them because we have a drive to raise children, just like many straight people. (NOT ALL, I must add, or you’ll try to forcibly interpret my “many” as something that means more that it does.) We want these things for exactly the same reason that so many straight people do. Why is it just accepted as genuine when straights do it, but it becomes some desperate calculation when gay people do it. WE’RE NOT ANY DIFFERENT FROM YOU. STOP ACTING AS IF WE’RE SOME ALIEN SPECIES TRYING TO MAKE A SUPERFICIAL ATTEMPT AT SOME SORT OF STATUS. (The same applies to the following statement about “external indicators, too.)

Also, way to generalize:

For PSUdain and other liberal gays, the lack of marriage is a convenient excuse for refusing to confront their own behavior. They believe that society’s lack of respect for them is due to the absence of this external indicator rather than their behavior, just as the jerk teenager who doesn’t have any friends insists that he would if he had a cooler car.

You know, it takes some chutzpah (or just an incredible putz, I suppose) to reduce a whole sector of the populace to simple one-dimensional stereotype. Sounds like something that “jerk” you mentioned might do. Been looking to buy a cool car lately?

I’d like to ask what behavior exactly do you refer to? My total lack of promiscuity (not that it’s any of your business, but you bring it up so much as an immutable gay characteristic)? My church involvement (I serve on council and Worship committee, besides the normal involvement)? My involvement in charitible causes (often through my church)? My love of broadway? My love of Frank Sinatra music? My trombone playing behavior? My past political involvement in the Republican party before it started playing with divisive politics and turned on Barry Goldwater’s legacy? My old-style conservative ideas? (A la John Stuart Mill and Barry Goldwater. I’m not a liberal in any sense but the classical one, despite your broad brush-strokes (or perhaps “liberal” just means “one who does not agree with NDT all the time” these days).) Is it my This American Life-listening behavior? Maybe my Battlestar Galactica-watching behavior? Or would it be my computer engineering studying-behavior? I hope it’s not my love of reading (especially C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Sherlock Holmes stories) that makes them not accept me! I really hope it’s not the behavior where I cry whenever the hymn “Children of the Heavenly Father” is sung in church. There was nothing I could do about that one, even before we sang it at my grandpa’s funeral. I could go on and on.

Please, stop me if it’s one of these that society does not respect.

Maybe the reason you always accuse me of reducing myself to one aspect is that it’s what you do to me when you speak to me. You ignore the existence of all those other facets of who I am (and more beyond them) and reduce me to one flat stereotype that fits your perceptive and then talk to that stereotyped figure instead of me.

Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, there are bigoted people left in society who just can’t deal with the fact that one man can love another man in a real and sincere way, and that’s why there are parts of society that won’t accept me?

Absolutely none of which require marriage.

The problem here is what you betrayed in your last statement; you do not believe anyone who is not married, remains single their entire life, and doesn’t raise kids can be successful.

It is interesting how gays and lesbians who are obsessed with marriage are also obsessed with other EXTERNAL indicators, such as whether or not one has children, whether or not one is partnered, and so forth. These are all things that, while they ostensibly show one thing, are no guarantee that one’s behavior is worthwhile; for instance, Bill Clinton is married and has a child, but is a liar and serial philanderer.

For PSUdain and other liberal gays, the lack of marriage is a convenient excuse for refusing to confront their own behavior. They believe that society’s lack of respect for them is due to the absence of this external indicator rather than their behavior, just as the jerk teenager who doesn’t have any friends insists that he would if he had a cooler car.

In logic, there is a fallacy of reasoning that is called “accident.” To cite an infertile heterosexual married couple as an example for justifying homosexual marriage is to commit the fallacy of accident.

To my knowledge, no society as set out to reward infertile individuals who bond and marry. That is counter productive to the imperatives of continuing the society.

I am confused about the “Jim and Pat” scenario. If Pat is a female, then her mother instincts will rise to the fore. If Pat is a male, then he will have to guess at what a real woman’s instincts would be. The child, being patterned by two adults will simply have to look around at the greater world to figure out where and how he fits. If Pat is a female and the child is gay, then he has a challenge. I am not certain I know what the outcome is if Pat is a male and the child is not gay.

But, I suppose the Swedes and the Dutch have it all studied out.

You may be your sexual orientation, I am not. Most people are not.

You should probably give up on the whole reasoning thing — you’re not very good at it. For that matter you should probably give up the whole English language. “Sexual orientation” is not synonymous with “people”.

That’s just fatuous. You’re playing with words, and badly at that. Of course they’re not synonymous if he used one as a modifier (we call that an adjective, normally).

I’m going to assume that what you mean is that orientation does not define a person’s whole. However, race does not solely define people either, but it’s common to use that as a group identifier. Or a person’s sex; that’s a common one, too. Like, “Oh, look at those guys over there.” Does that mean the whole person is bound up in just their sex? Of course not! Get over yourself and your ridiculous claims that LGBT people identify ourselves solely based on orientation.

That said, it certainly is a huge part of who we are. I mean, think of the sort of prototypical “life goals”: Find love, make a family, raise kids, be successful. The first two of those are completely bound up with orientation matters, and the third springs from the first two. The last, for many, is almost entirely derivative from the first three.

So, don’t go saying that straight people don’t self-identify just as much based on orientation. It’s just so well-accepted and so common that nobody even blinks anymore. My orientation wouldn’t have to be such an issue if there weren’t crazy straight people running around trying to making it one any time it comes up naturally in conversation. (Or, you know trying to get reelected based on it…)

But most importantly, again, you ignored my request for an answer as to what the difference is besides the gender of the partners. I’m not asking you to regurgitate [discriminatory] case law. I’m not asking you to speak to laws and/or traditions. I am asking you to answer, in your own sight, beliefs, and words, what is the difference is between the two child-producing couples that I have posited, except that one is straight and one isn’t.

Let me rephrase it one more time, using an illustration:

Jim and Pat are a married couple living in Massachusetts. Jim and Pat adopted a son a couple years ago. They provide for him. They spend loads of time with him and one of them always reads to him before bed. They spent the time before the adoption went through worrying about all the little details and, of course, trying to make their son’s room just perfect for the time when he would arrive. They love their son, and he them.

So, now, I want you to try answering the following (which should provide some sort of answer to my overriding question):

1. Is Pat male or female? Use only information from the above text to answer.

2. If you can’t tell Pat’s gender from such basic information, then how, exactly, are gay families different on a such a fundamental level as you claim?

3. If Pat[ricia] is female and infertile, is this a legitimate arrangement, according to your own opinion? Why or why not?

4. If Pat[rick] is male, is this a legitimate arrangement, according to your own opinion? Why or why not?

Please to not bring the law into answering 3 and 4. I’m not interested in you telling me what the law says. I can read the law and I know the laws. I want you to explain this to me on a personal level.

Please do not continue to give me the same tired argument about incentivizing child production. It’s pretty clear that we don’t need to incentivize that. It’s pretty easy, and I understand that it can be pretty pleasurable and fun for straight couples to engage in child-producing activities. There are plenty of children, numbers-wise. We have kids coming out our ears in this country. We need more stable homes for them. What is/should be actually “incentivized” (if this is indeed an incentive system, as you claim - - I don’t cede the point for anything but argument’s sake) is the actual provision of a stable home for a child, not having the child in the first place. That being said:

5. If, as studies show, both gay families and straight families are equally capable of providing a healthy and loving environment that is good for children, why should the law not incentivize gay relationships in the same way it does straight relationships?

Now, my polymorphous kazoo, please actually answer my questions. I even numbered them to make it as hard as possible to miss** them this time.

**And by “miss”, I mean “ignore”.

“If you believe that a sexual orientation that cannot reproduce is equivalent to one that can, you do not accept your sexual orientation.”

This statement clearly means that we as LGBT people are less than heterosexuals.

You may be your sexual orientation, I am not. Most people are not.

You should probably give up on the whole reasoning thing — you’re not very good at it. For that matter you should probably give up the whole English language. “Sexual orientation” is not synonymous with “people”.

The prohibitions, such as they are, stand not against the choice to form a one-sexed arrangement (gay or otherwise) but against the merger of nonmarriage and marriage.

The gay relationship type is not a subset of marriage. But that’s because it lacks the other sex, not because of sexual attractions or identity.

The nature of the social institution is unchanging: it is 1) integration of the sexes, 2) contingency for Responsible Procreation, and 3) these combined into a coherent whole.

The man-woman criterion is a legal requirement that stands for sex integration; the marriage presumption of paternity stands for responsible procreation; and marriage, like all foundational social institution, is a coherent set of principles and practices and, yes, ideals. It is not a dismantled bunch of bits and pieces.

John said: “You allow a glaring exception in the case of infertile hetero couples but deny the same for childless homo couples as well as homo couples that do have children.”

That is only an apparent, not an actual, exception. Rather it is more of an exemption based on disability. But if you are trying to claim that homosexuality is a disability, then, that’s a different conversation.

Infertility is both-sexed, like fertility is both-sexed. The one-sexed alternative is not infertile since it categorically can not be fertile. The lack of the other sex is not infertilty. Sure, we mght sometimes use shorthand when we say that an individual is fertile or is infertile, but that means fertile, or infertile, with the other sex.

Fertility is variable. That’s the way it is. The human being is born non-fertile, matures and becomes fertile, and eventually experiences subfertility and infertility. Some men remain fertile long into old-age. Women generally reach menopause in their late thirties or early forties. Most couples are fertile but a significant minority (maybe 10%) of married couples do experience fertility problems. And, infertility, like fertility, is variable. Most of these couples resolve their problems through changes in behavior. Of infertile couples, only a very small percentage actually use the more intrusive medical interventions. And of those 90% do NOT use the gametes of third parties — usually the mother was impregnated with her husband’s sperm. So there is a significant question of proportionality and also a matter of seemingly infinite variability on the question of infertility/fertility.

On the other hand, the one-sexed arrangement is never fertile (without the other sex). That is a constant that does not change with behavior and even with medical interventions. A lone individual is no more fertile (without the other sex) than a couple — or a parade — of people of the same sex.

It is unreasonable to demand that society merge the sex-segregative arrangement with the union of husband and wife. It is unreasonable to demand that all marriages be treated as if they lacked the other sex. SSM argumentation makes these demands and undermines the marriage presumption of paternity — which cannot apply to an all-male or an all-female arrangement. Thus the SSM campaign is a direct attack on the nature of marriage — sex integration, responsible procreation, and the coherent whole that makes marriage a foundational social institution.

Marriage is not created nor is it owned by the government. It pre-exists governmental authority. That authority is derived from civil society — and it is a very bad idea to promote the take over of civil society by government.

And a point about Goodridge: it was not decided on the basis of a claim of unjust discrimination based on sexual orientation — nor based on sex classification. The court failed to produce a majority in favor of either claim. Instead, it went 6-1 against sex-based discrimination and 7-0 against sexual orientation discrimination.

The Goodridge plurality agreed only on its predrawn conclusion that SSM is a subset of marriage and must be imposed on society. And yet it stands as the prime example of how the SSM campaign elides the actual disagreement on the nature of marriage.

Therefore, all things being equal, same-sex couples can never be considered “equal” to any opposite sex couple.

Is an apple+orange equal to two apples or two oranges? How could it ever be?

I thought you were taking about relationships AE? This statement clearly means that we as LGBT people are less than heterosexuals. Producing children is not the only act that defines a person’s or even a relationship’s value. And before you say “that’s not what I said”, read what you said, it is. It’s a good thing that all the childless people in the world now and who have existed in history didn’t/don’t accept the ridiculous concept that you put forth here how bleak life would be. Millions of people support and enhance life without ever giving birth or providing sperm. There are and have been billions of people without whom history would have been different, where the lives of others would have been miserable and/or shortened. Did not God demand the the fertility shrines be torn down and destroyed? Seems you want to build them again, dangerous idea.

I see multiple examples of you putting down those who don’t agree with you. You seem to have mistaken arrogance with insight.

Just because her Father cannot love women is no reason that his daughter should have to give up her Mother in exchange for a redundant “dad”.

That would be cruel and unusual.

But, back to you my dear withywindle, I don’t need the government’s acceptance. It has none to grant because that’s not the business it’s in. I just need the same rights straight couples get, so I can protect my family someday.

Occasionally WC Fields is the only source:

Sometimes you have to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.

From the left side of the mouth comes: “I don’t need the government’s acceptance.” From the right side of the mouth comes: “I just need the same rights….” That is to say, just have the guvmint enforce the rights I want and buzz off on all other issues that I’m not into.

What a concept! Government as first responder to personal whim and strict wallflower when so directed.

I will call Fort Knox in the morning for my personal delivery.