Rokkitsci said:
First - I salute your dedication in responding to Mr. Sowell's article in a point by point manner. Few do that - sincere congratulations to you.
I have excerpted your points in the above quote
1) restricted rights - you may not have any restricted "right" based on an agreement you have with your spouse. But in most cases, community propery laws restrict what you can do with property. Certainly you cannot - by law - ignore you spouse's views in how your children are treated. And, society places some restrictions on what you "may" do when you are "married" that it does not place on non-married people. Now, there are many many many imperfect marriages. This is not a good reason to abandon the notion of marriage as it has come down to us thru the eons.
2) contracts contested in courts - you may have a good point here - If that is the case - and is a problem - then the better application of energy may be to attack these unreasonable interpretations of law. I would supporty you fully in this regard. Any covenant that two adult agree to should have the full effect of law. I fully support "civil unions" in this regard. I would even support "common law" civil unions = just as common law marriages are valid.
3) better wives - good comment - no rebuttal possible on this one.
4) "traditional" children - Here is where I may be accused of bias. I do not think that it is universally "good" for homosexual unions to be encouraged to rear children. I know there are bad marriages and I know there are excellent homosexual couples and I know there are desperately abusive situations where anything is better than the present situation. However - in view of all this, I still maintain that -except for unusually abusive situations - homosexual couples should not be encouraged to rear children. I will admit to being ignorant on anecdotal evidence - I know of nobody in this relationship. I do know homosexuals who have natural children all of them 'came out' after their children were grown. I do have concerns about homosexuals having 'token' children for show - which probably reveals whatever bias I have.
5) lifestyle opinion - Your statement is also a matter of opinion of course. But, those of us who are opposed to changing the definition of marriage have the opinion that this re-definition does have the effect of forcing us to "approve" a definition we disagree with. Marriage is an institution that for tens of thousands of years has been commonly understood to mean the union of one man and one woman for the purposes of establishing a family unit for the procreation of the species. A homosexual relation does not fit this commonly understood definition. The fact that there are imperfect marriages does not at all give carte-blanc permission to redefine the basic concept. The fact that homosexuals "want" to feel better about their choices also does not give permission to change. Changes this elemental in nature can only come about naturally - not by legislation nor judicial fiat.
6) infringement of rights - see above for most of my opinion. However, this is a good place to posit another of my 'opinions' about homosexual 'marriage.' I know this will be described as too far out = but ..... What about two criminals who decide to get "married" so that they can never be forced to testify against one another. .... What about the pressure for multiple marriage partnerships. ..... what about incestual relationships. ..... what about pedophilic marriage. Now - I know the answer to all of these is that "nobody wants that" but I can assure you that 40 years ago nobody 'thought' there would ever be a move for two men to marry either. Once the erosion of definitional terms begins, there is not logical stopping point. THAT is the "right" that we feel is being infringed. The "right" of knowing what words and institutions really mean. We really don't CARE what people do in their bedrooms. Never have - never will.
7) and 8) AIDs is ubiquitous - yes - AIDs is no respector of sex, race, or location. BUT it is largely a VOLUNTARY disease. One can CHOOSE to not get AIDS, except for unimaginable foulups of transfusions or unlucky accidents. Before you say "what about an unsuspecting wife who gets it from her husband?" I say refer to your observation of item 3 - Choose better husbands.
Also - not all homosexuals are sex-crazed idiots, but at the beginning of the AIDS pandemic it was the promiscuous homosexual bath-house attitude in places like San Francisco that allowed the desease to become so pervasive in society that it DID affect other than the strictly homosexual community. The homosexual community bears DIRECT responsibility for this epidemic. Nothing they can say now really absolves them of their liability here. IF they had NOT been so promiscuous, the disease would more than likely have been detected before there were hundreds of thousands of carriers. It could have been contained. However, as much as you want to think of all homosexuals as pure as the driven snow, dedicated to one partner for life, wanting nothing but the best for all mankind, you cannot escape the fact that there WERE thousands of sex-crazed idiot homosexuals who gave rise to this terrible epidemic. And I consider it the height of chutzpah for the homosexual community to now demand that the REST of us abandon every OTHER problem that WE have in order to save them from a problem of their own making.
9) sex education - There was a time when it was not required to introduce young children to the awful realities of what can happen in promiscuous sexual relations. Yes, there were unwanted pregnancies - they went away to visit "aunt Helen" for a few months. Now - thanks to the sexual revolution of the sixties we have pregnant freshmen walking the halls of high schools and demonstrations with bananas in the classroom. This is ridiculous. I for one would like to return to all the uncertainty and the ignorance of the fifties. We figured it all our by ourselves. And now, we certainly don't need homosexual advocates to come into classroom promoting their lifestyle and we certainly don't need them to be handing out business cards to the nearest bathhouse. Not in our schools. This was the point of Mr. Sowells comment in case you overlooked it in your haste to define him as a illiterate bigot living in a cave.
10) Acceptance and tolerance - How many more times do we have to say - we ACCEPT homosexuality - we TOLERATE homosexuals. We just don't want to redefine thousands of years of definition for marriage. WHY do we have to sacrifice our definitions for the sake of making homosexuals "feel" better? WHAT good comes from this re-definition - WHY should be do it? I have seen no good reason for it at all. I suggest that homosexuals stop being so sensitive. They are all 'tolerated' until they get in our face and demand that we become more demonstrative in our "acceptance."
Finally - we really don't care what homosexuals do - we really don't - we tolerate them just fine. We just want them to be quieter about it, and leave the rest of us alone.
Firstly - thank you for actually giving discussion topics to think about rather then a
or *cough*. This is a good example of a grown up conversation. So thank you.
#1) not really much to argue except that not all states are community property states and therefore we can not hold all examples to what people in community property states have to do or not do.
#2) I agree. I think our first step is to overhaul the entire court system for more then just this reason.
#3)
#4) Whether homesexuals couples should have a raise children is for another debate. My point is that the evolution of marriage that your author speaks of he said is defined by the outcome of children. Since homosexuals cannot have children in the conditional sense their is no outcome of children to worry about and therefore is not a logical reason to deny marriage.
#5) Marriage is a contract between two consenting adults. The genders of those two people should not matter to the state they are getting married into. Marriage as defined in religion is something different - and I have absolutely no problem with any church saying that they will not marry same sex partners. I do however have a problem with the state stepping in on who and who cannot enter into a legal contract.
#6) Back in the 50's black men and white women were not allowed to marry in some states. I'm sure at the time it never dawned on anyone that they would want to. Doesn't make it right. Marriage is a contract between two consenting adults race, religion, ethnicity, handicapp, eye color, hair color, or sexual orientation should not be a consideration.
#7&8) No one is a pure as snow and we all have faults and have made mistakes in history. During the rage of bath houses yes homosexual who were promiscutious did spread AIDS. Does that mean we should hold all homosexuals accountable for it? In that case should we also hold decendants of the first settlers of America accountable for the murder of thousands of Native Americans. Or how about Caucasian people are now all accountable for having slaves. See how that doesn't make any sense? And I do not think they are asking us to save themselves - but we obviously have a world wide problem with it and I would think that we should all want to save ourselves, our families, and our neighbor.
#9) I think returning to the ignorance of the fifties is the last thing we need. Please read some women's literature from that time period of young girls being forced to give up their children when they didn't want to and then suffering from depression. Or abortions that went terribly wrong. I am currently reading "The Cider House Rules" and it has been extrememly interesting to me. Do I agree with freshmen girls in high school getting pregnant - no I don't. But that comes down to parenting and has nothing to do with whether or not homosexuals marry or not. Also I have never ever heard of homosexuals going into public schools and promoting their lifestyle. If you could please provide some sort of link or source to this information I would love to read it. And yes I do still find him to be a bigot and I did not say cave - I said bomb shelter.
#10) Ignorance is bliss I guess. You do not accept or tolerate a homosexuals lifestyles because you blatantly are denying them the privelege to enter into a marriage contract. I suggest you stop being so sensitive to this and stop rallying the troops whenever a gay man or woman wants to marry their partner. If you truly didn't care - then you wouldn't be in this conversation.
~Amanda
And those that have a child out of wedlock......does the legal system make them get married? What if one or both of the parents are already married to someone else? All of the above are just excuses and not valid reasons for same sex partners to not be married. 
