1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid becasue they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can’t legally get married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if Gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are property, blacks can’t marry whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire counrty. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
10. Children can never suceed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven’t adapted to things like cars or longer lifespans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a “seperate but equal” institution is always constitutional. Seperate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as seperate marriages for gays and lesbians will.
[Via BEB]
Personally, I’d prefer the the parochial institution of marriage be disentangled from the legal contractual institution of civil union. “Marriage” (at least in the Catholic Church) is a sacrament, like Reconciliation or Communion. When Amber and I got hitched in our back yard, there was nothing sacramental about it.
If the term ‘marriage’ is what’s really at stake here, then by all means, rip it out of the legal vocabulary, and relegate it back to the parochial scope where it really applies.
It’s actually a thin layer with community-specific semantics on top of a legally binding contract. Were it not so, you wouldn’t need the officiant to bear witness to a legal document for the contract to be valid.
Well, on that count, I agree. If people want to make “Marriage” a strictly religious term, I have no problem with it being only between a man and a woman. However, since the State sanctions “marriages” the term either needs to be secular, and therefore open to gays, or we need to abolish all State support “marriages” and term them all “Civil Unions”. I don’t have a problem with that, actually…