there’s nobody who’s psychologically incapable of loving anyone other than a close relative.

Again, you have no proof of that. And anyway, the point is not whether the person *can* love someone other than a close relative, but whether they *do* love someone else.

Lust can be abstract: that is, one can lust after a category / type of person. But real love is never abstract. One loves a very specific person or thing, not a category / type, or else it isn’t love. You suggest in effect that society shouldn’t expect you to abandon the specific person you love. Fine. And neither should you expect the polygamist, incest couple, child-marriage couple or a bestiality person to abandon the specific person or thing they actually love. I don’t expect them to. I merely don’t grant them a marriage license either (because again it is a privilege with qualifications to be met, etc.).

To approach it from another angle: I could say, in the same sense as your quote above and with the same degree of justification, that there’s nobody who’s psychologically incapable of loving anyone other than the same sex. I mean, come on: gay men love women all the time. Either as deep friends, or even as sexual partners – the mother of their children, etc. (I’ve met several gay men like that.)

So don’t try to tell me that you can’t love a woman. But I respect the fact that you don’t. I respect the fact that (1) your same-sex orientation makes it easier to fall in love with a man, or strongly increases the likelihood that you will; and more than that, I respect the fact that (2) the specific person that you actually love, is a man. If anybody asks you to give up the man you love for a woman, I’ll call it stupid. And, since I see good policy reasons for extending the privilege of marriage to gay couples (where I don’t see reasons for extending them to the polygamous, the incestuous, etc.), it just happens that I would like give you a marriage license, if you want one.

If polyamory were a sexual orientation, not merely a sexual preference, we’d expect to hear a large number of people saying, “The only loving relationship I’m psychologically capable of having is a stable polyamorous triad.” We’re not hearing that.

As the saying goes, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Personally, I have heard polygamists make arguments along those lines. (The lines of ‘polygamy is natural and blessed by God; monogamy is unnatural; therefore I am only capable of polygamy’.)

A relationship based on rape isn’t loving.

Whoa. Was that meant to refute my saying “P.S., you’ve left out incestuous marriages”? I was think of incest couples in the media who have been adult siblings, adult child-parent, etc. Rape doesn’t enter it (so the refutation is inoperative).

Like the ACLU demanding the legalization of plural marriage, or the Beyond Marriage people above who are demanding that plus sibling and parent-child marriage?

And as for “not hearing that”, big surprise; people are understandably a bit reticient to talk about things like plural marriage, child marriage, bestial marriage, and incestuous marriage that carry prison sentences for practicing them.

(no, I’m not bitter, why?)

I don’t doubt that some people prefer polygamous relationships, but I find it hard to believe that there is anyone who is so deeply polyamorous that a monogamous relationship would be a sham. What would that be like? Can anyone sincerely say, “I love my husband, but I couldn’t sincerely love him or feel physical attraction to him if I didn’t have a stable relationship with a second partner who lives openly with my husband and me?” I find this hard to imagine. If there are people like this out there, we’re not hearing from them.

I’d say ‘nobody’ is an overly broad term. But that’s just me nitpicking.

as to polyamory, what about a bisexual man/woman who just can’t pick one?

How would you know, Rob? Evidence, please.

Fair question. The main evidence I would point to is the lack of evidence to the contrary. If polyamory were a sexual orientation, not merely a sexual preference, we’d expect to hear a large number of people saying, “The only loving relationship I’m psychologically capable of having is a stable polyamorous triad.” We’re not hearing that. To be sure, there are lots of people who feel that monogamy isn’t possible for them. Generally, though, these people don’t feel that stable polyamorous relationships are the only relationships they can have. They consider open relationships, with one long-term partner and temporary outside adventures, a live option.

So what? It may be “the only fully loving marriage” the person “is capable of”. P.S., you’ve left out incestuous marriages.

A relationship based on rape isn’t loving. As for incest, I’d make the same argument I made about polygamy. There are people who happen to fall in love with close relatives, but there’s nobody who’s psychologically incapable of loving anyone other than a close relative.

Heliotrope, though I disagree with much you say I trust you are intelligent enough to read what I said and actually have a clue as to what I was trying to get across.

Thanks for the expression of your trust. I am still grasping for a clue, but you will be the first to know if I am roused from sentience and struck with a sudden flash of perception. (Right now, the chin strap on my helmet is too tight and my brain itches.)

Thank you for letting me bask in your light.

As a gay man, the only fully loving marriage I could have is a marriage with another man. I could choose to marry a woman, but it would be a sham marriage. By contrast, polyamorists are capable of loving monogamous relationships…

How would you know, Rob? Evidence, please.

…As for child marriage and bestial marriage, neither is consensual

So what? It may be “the only fully loving marriage” the person “is capable of”. P.S., you’ve left out incestuous marriages.

Look, NDT’s point is right: a polygamist, an incest couple, a child marriage couple or a bestial situation are all situations where one or more human beings could say “I have no choice… this is the person/thing I love” and you have not left yourself a leg to stand on, Rob, in refusing them a marriage license.

I support gay marriage for public policy reasons. I don’t want to go into those reasons at the moment, because yes, you could stretch them to cover other ‘couplings’ too. My point is, the other ‘couplings’ have countervailing public-policy reasons *against* recognizing them as marriage. By recognizing that State marriage licenses are a privilege not a right, and making extension of the privilege a public-policy question, I leave myself moral and logical ‘room’ to continue excluding those other ‘couplings’ who should be excluded. You don’t. You thereby set up a dynamic where the rest of society has no choice but to reject gay marriage – i.e., to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Now imagine that instead of merely doing something very rude at tens of thousands of weddings, this person tries to prevent tens of thousands of weddings from happening at all. What would you think about that person? Would you say that this person has expressed animosity?

Rob: No, I wouldn’t. It happens all the time. We (as a society) routinely prevent tens of thousands of couples from getting a State marriage license, who don’t qualify for the license for a variety of reasons. It doesn’t express animosity; it expresses that the license is set up to have certain qualifications before you can get it. I happen to think the opposite-sex restriction is bad public policy and should be lifted; I don’t think it expresses animosity per se.

how many gays would take the “cure” if medicine were to find one?

I wouldn’t, at this point. I’m used to how I am. and honestly, I don’t buy the idea of God having any problem with it. God would have a problem with my behavior if I raped, cheated or did other abusive things – but the same is true of straights, i.e., behavior (which a mentally normal person can always control) is different from orientation (which is innate for most people).

So, I stand full ready for an education. We have heterosexuals and homosexuals. The definition of those terms is all about sex.

heliotrope, that’s the problem: The terms are misnomers. They were constructed – in the 19th century, I believe – by a doctor or psychiatrist, to emphasize sex. There should be a different term that encompasses love as well as sex.

I think of “straight” as “the predisposition to fall in love with, and/or have sexual relations with, the opposite sex”. I think of “gay” as “the predisposition to fall in love with, and/or have sexual relations with, the same sex.” So it isn’t sex alone; it’s love-and/or.

Think of it this way: If a straight person is celibate, do they stop being straight? No, because they still have an opposite-sex orientation (predisposition). They know in their hearts that, if for some reason they were to have relations-or-a-relationship and not be celibate, it would be opposite-sex. Same with a gay person. Celibacy does not make a gay person un-gay, for the reason just given.

No, it acknowledges the reality that gay relationships are different than straight relationships.

Inferiority is in the mind of the beholder. The screaming insistence that recognizing gay relationships differently makes them inferior comes from the narcissism inherent in liberalism, in which treating people differently due to different results, different abilities, or different societal impacts is considered a cardinal sin. It is the same mentality as we see in public schools, where if a child performs poorly on a test, it is the test’s fault, never the child’s, and thus the child should be given equal treatment as the other children who did better.

(Great, now I have coworkers looking at me strange for saying “Mawwige is what bwings us togeffer today.”).

I know that some state will (correctly) establish gay marriage via legislative means. Then we’ll see the typical reversion of roles, with Liberals saying that the full faith and credit exercise should be exerted, and the Conservatives remembering their roles in States rights. (Ironically, Dick Cheney will be unfazed as he’s a states rights guy already.)

Already we’re seeing Dred Scott cases to try to force the issue down the throats of people who have made their opinions clear. That couple in Rhode island who wanted to have their marriage recognized in RI so they could divorce. (I can’t find out if their marriage in MA is actually legal, actually). We’ll see more I’m sure.

And if I supported the current proposition for slave reparations it would be the Democrat party who would have to pay, since they committed treason to try to continue the slave trade.

I refuse to accept the Mormon excuses for the MMM. By the way, the Catholic Church has yet to be punished for the Spanish Inquisition.

At this point I must again take a break from reading right wing hate blogs.

Promises, promises…

the decision must be made whether to continue to allow yourselves to be defined by the lunatics who have nothing to offer but hate.

I completely agree! republicans have been losing because they have allowed lunatic hate-filled Democrats to define them, and it must not be allowed to continue.

From Rob:

It’s unfair to judge an entire community for the actions of a few people on the fringe.

From adDave:

Here, as in the rest of the conservative world, the decision must be made whether to continue to allow yourselves to be defined by the lunatics who have nothing to offer but hate.

In short, the gay liberals Rob and adDave are saying that conservatives should be concerned about their being judged by a process that said gay liberals shriek is unfair — when applied to them, but not when applied to conservatives.