Is homosexuality a choice or is it genetic?

[jb_1430]

This argument is based on the two different kinds of interpretation placed on law by different groups. In some situations something is legal as long as the law does not specifically DENY its legality, conversely in some situations everything is illegal unless it is specifically ALLOWED in the wording of the law.

This sometimes referred to as interpreting the law "broadly" or "narrowly". The fact is that the law is ambiguous on this point and each one of you is correctly arguing from one of the two positions.

Nooooo. The UDHR is not about whether gay marriage is "legal" or "illegal". This is a declaration of human rights. Nobody is arguing that gay marriage is not a Human right and therefore should not be allowed. robpeh is arguing for an interpretation he wishes were true. I, the interpretation that was intended when written in 1948 and has been applied ever since.

Can there be any doubt that those delegates more than 50 years ago wanted to protect the natural marriage union and family, comprised of a husband, wife and children?
http://www.ucg.org/commentary/politicians.htm

and thats why

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLARC) is seeking to amend the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include the protection of homosexuality.
http://www.worldcongress.org/wcf3_spkrs/wcf3_landolt.htm

AND, even that is in the context of trying to secure rights for gays in countries where homosexuality is criminalized by law and openly and freely discriminated against by the culture, and doesnt even address any "right" to marriage.

Yet as the century draws to a close, a sizeable minority of the world's population continues to be denied full membership of that ''human family''. Governments around the world deploy an array of repressive laws and practices to deprive their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered citizens of their dignity and to deny them their basic human rights. Lesbian and gay people are imprisoned under laws which police the bedroom and criminalize a kiss; they are tortured to extract confessions of ''deviance'' and raped to ''cure'' them of it; they are killed by ''death squads'' in societies which view them as ''disposables''; they are executed by the state which portrays them as a threat to society.

These are violations of some of the fundamental rights which the UDHR seeks to protect and which AI campaigns to defend.
http://web.amnesty.org/802568F7005C4453/0/E5DAC0E3A6A36FEE80256A4C00522F56?Open&Highlight=2,gay

You need to live in OZ to believe that

2. The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized.

cleary supports [any man] (including those who wish to marry men...) and [any woman] (including those who wish to marry women).

and that the governments of the world, except for 5 nations and Mass., are all violating anybody's declared human rights.

 

[vyo476]

They have children within the union?

Please!

You're right, a man and a man cannot produce a child alone. They shouldn't be allowed to get married. And while we're at it, let's ban all sterile people from getting married - especially those sterile people who would marry fertile people, those scoundrels. It'd be a real shame if the world's burgeoning surplus population became more tolerable.

YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER.

Infertility is a ground for nullification of a marriage.

Yes, but infertility is not a grounds for not allowing them to get married in the first place.

A woman has the RIGHT TO MOTHERHOOD, however else she chooses to get pregnant.

So she has the right to become a mother by whatever means she chooses, but not to become a mother while married to the consenting person of her choice - because she cannot become a mother the consenting person of her choice biologically if that consenting person is another female. This presupposes that the only point of marriage is to biologically produce offspring and that's just a crock.

What rights do you think are conferred to married couples that cannot be enjoyed by homosexual ones?

I don't think it's any specific right other than the right to be equal. Heterosexuals are allowed to get married, and if homosexuals are to be considered fully and completely equal, they should be, too.

They can enter into the legal institution of marriage. Only with another person of different gender. Same goes for homosexuals and heterosexuals.

Equality enough for you?

The definition of marriage was formed in a time when homosexuality was considered to be wrong and evil. It's defined as a union between a man and a woman because any other kind of union would have been blasphemous - even one hundred years ago. We've updated how we think of homosexuality - we ought to update the definition of marriage, too. It's only fair.

It is the natural union between a man and a woman for the purpose of FAMILY.

And if the purpose is family within the union, then a homosexual relation is NOT AN OPTION.

It has been this way long before any conception of law came to be.

The natural purpose of sexuality is the creation of children. The natural purpose of marriage is to join together the parents who will raise the child (or children). Should we force all married couples to breed? Once again, should we outlaw the marriage of sterilized heterosexuals?

People screw to make kids. They get married so that those kids have a stable family structure to grow up in. People don't get married to have kids - they get married before having children to set up that structure preemptively and give it time to grow. If the one main reason for marriage was the production of children than the wedding ceremony would just be the bride and groom ****ing on stage.

However, a child's existence was never the choice of the child. The child, more than anyone in any marriage, requires the protection of the state.

You've stated that the only purpose of marriage is to produce children, right? And that a homosexual marriage cannot produce children. Therefore, how are you "protecting" children by disallowing homosexual marriage? The whole point of your argument is that there wouldn't be any children to protect.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Vyo answered your post quite nicely, I thought, thank you, Vyo.

Tax breaks are not rights - they are privileges. Adoption is not a right - it is a privilege.

A privilege codified into law becomes a right for those whom the law specifies the benefit and one can go to court to force the granting of this right. Adoption should be a right for married couples so that if one enters the marriage with a child the other person has the right to adopt that child and become a legal family member for them, should they? That would protect the child if their natural parent was killed. So why deny this to a lesbian couple? Or a gay male couple? If your interest is protecting the child, then anyone with a child--no matter what legal way they obtained the child: surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, adoption--should be given the same rights to guarantee the child's protection.

What rights do you think are conferred to married couples that cannot be enjoyed by homosexual ones?

There are 1049 specific rights and privileges (according to the Government Accounting Office) reserved for legally married people in US Law, none of those are available to homosexual people because they are denied legal marriage.

Infertility is a ground for nullification of a marriage.

So does this mean that if you married a person and swore before God and church full of your friends and family to love them till death do you part, that you would throw them out like last week's garbage if it turns out that they are incapable of bearing children?

 

[jb_1430]

This presupposes that the only point of marriage is to biologically produce offspring and that's just a crock.

Why people get married isnt the issue. In some countries you get married because your dad sold you for a dowry. Why the government has decided to license and regulate opposite sex marriage is the issue. Only a man and a woman can produce their child.

 

[jb_1430]

There are 1049 specific rights and privileges (according to the Government Accounting Office) reserved for legally married people in US Law, none of those are available to homosexual people

None of them are available to my girlfreind and I. On what basis do you think justifies denying me those rights?

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Why people get married isnt the issue. In some countries you get married because your dad sold you for a dowry. Why the government has decided to license and regulate opposite sex marriage is the issue. Only a man and a woman can produce their child.

Twaddle! The fact that it takes input from each to produce a child in no reason to limit marriage to hetero couples now that in vitro fertilization is available. Continuing to support outmoded ways of thinking and outdated laws in hardly conducive to progress. The whole argument is stupid, a few years ago the argument was about intrerracial marriage, before that it was women getting to vote, before that it was women getting to own property... on and on it goes. There used to be huge theological battles over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, whether the Earth was the center of the Universe, whethere the Earth was flat. Religious people have been dragged kicking and screaming into the future against their will for thousands of years. Rights for homosexual people is just the flavor of the month and soon enough it will be replaced with some other idiocy based on scripture and homosexual rights will be just as much a non-issue as interracial marriage is now.

Sometimes I wish God would Rapture up all the religious people and leave the rest of us in peace.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

None of them are available to my girlfreind and I. On what basis do you think justifies denying me those rights?

You have not gotten married, these rights are reserved for legally married consenting adults. You do have the right to marry your girlfriend as long as you are male and both of you are of age. This right is denied to homosexual people, they are not allowed to marry the consenting adult of their choice as you are.

Unlike yourself, I am campaigning for equal rights, I am not asking anything for myself that I would deny to anyone else, whereas you wish to retain your right to marry the consenting adult of your choice, but prevent others from doing the same. It's religious bigotry.

 

[numinus]

If that's the case (in bold) why does insurance / taxation etc related to marriage, that's the biggest issue. I call shenanigans.

Article 23
1. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
2. The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized.
3. No marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
4. States Parties to the present Covenant shall take appropriate steps to ensure equally of rights and responsibilities of spouses as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. In the case of dissolution, provision shall be made for the necessary protection of any children.

The right of men and women (not of a man and a woman) does not have quantifiers related to the number of gender inclusive to the marriage. This has NO baring on the rights of women or children save the inclusion of the provisionary requirement for child protection in the case of dissolution (divorce). You're interpretation is outside of the obvious intention.

as for your question: Are you arguing that a homosexual union relates to these rights, thereby necessitating the institutionalization of such a union?

2. The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized.

cleary supports [any man] (including those who wish to marry men...) and [any woman] (including those who wish to marry women). as there is again, no quantifier or designation that constitutes man + woman as the prerequisite to be subject to these inherent rights.

So as to your argument, you've sealed it yourself. Clearly denying homosexuals marriage is a violation of a treatise we are signatory to, since were the intention to provide ONLY for a man and a woman, it would have been worded as such rather than simply stating Men and Women to include all persons...good day sir.

The article says that 'the family is the NATURAL AND FUNDAMENTAL group unit of society' and you go on to claim that this is applicable to homosexual unions?

What sort of logic are you using?

Btw.

"Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection."

 

[numinus]

The fallacy in your argument is bolded, the idea that homosexual people never have children, cannot have children is nonsense as demonstrated by the tens of thousands of homosexual families in this country alone. Homosexuals can have children through all the same ways that any other couple can have them--including surrogacy or in vitro fertilization like sterile hetero couples do.

There is no fallacy.

Children can never come from a homosexual union.

You need to procreate OUTSIDE the union for that.

You want to define "family relations" by one single kind of sex act and restrict legal rights based on performing that one single kind of sex act, you practically worship that one single kind of sex act--it becomes the be-all and end-all of your legal existence, when in point of fact it is just one of many kinds of sex acts and has no more intrinsic value than other. It does have utilitarian value in that it can produce offspring sometimes, but it isn't the only way to have children so it cannot be the Holy Grail that you are trying to make it out to be.

And family relations derive from this single 'utilitarian value', which by some stroke of coincidence, is also the one thing that makes the family 'the NATURAL AND FUNDAMENTAL group unit of society'.

 

[numinus]

Until the sodomy laws were declared un-Constitutional homosexuality was a felony in many places. I know a woman who had her son taken from her by the courts in Texas because she was in a lesbian relationship. She was arrested at work, handcuffed, placed in jail, her own Mother testified against her in court and she was declared an unfit Mother, convicted of the felony of having homosexual relations, and she has never seen her 6 year old son again.

You have got to be a very young man.

See how logical the law operates!

A defective law made null.

 

[numinus]

I never said that space was metaphorically infinite. At least quote me correctly if you are going to try to refute me.

"I was using the term space metaphorically"

"If something is expanding then there must be space into which it CAN EXPAND, that space is part of the Universe for which their is not even a theoretical end."

Do you deny having said any of the above?

Please refrain from dishonest debate and from ridiculing my comprehension of simple english.

YOU postulated that God's Will existed outside of space/time. I referred to the area where God's Will existed as a "space" metaphorically--how else could I refer to it since, according to you, it exists outside of space/time. I needed some way to refer to that God's Will area which may very well be infinite. Are you now saying that the God's Will area (come up with your own description of that area) is NOT infinite? Are you placing limits on God by doing so?

Please spare me the run-around.

 

[r0beph]

Actually I must argue this here. If something (space) is expanding, it DOES NOT (via physics) require space to expand into, since space itself is what is expanding, space is thus being created. As far as the "universe" theoretically it is "infinite" as far as the layman need be concerned. The thing is that the "universe" spatially is created by it's very expansion, beyond that, no idea, depending on the dimensional theory applied you could simply go to XYZ 0,0,0 and end back up at 10^a, 10^a, 10^a coordinately (where a is the exponential of the arbitrary coordinates given for the opposing side of the universe in which you entered by exiting at the 0,0,0 coord.) Or you could simply cease to exist, though I doubt this, since mass itself creates the space around it, ones mass by being their to observe the location and crossing that threshold actually would create space but I digress this is not for this thread, nor forum.

A lesbian has the right to motherhood. Parenthood of her biological child, however, cannot be legally transferred to her lesbian partner.

And while her lesbian partner may act as 'de facto' parent, that is within the exclusive province of her choice. The state may not legally bind her to it whenever she chooses otherwise.

This is your bias speaking. Plain and simple. Anti-gay rhetoric. Marriage has nothing to do with "motherhood", if you even think that..I have about 30 friends I'd like you to meet of mine who have no marriage and children. To say that marriage has anything to do with children is ridiculous.

Marriage is the state of being a married couple voluntarily joined for life (or until divorce); a close and intimate union. Which should be afforded to ANY two people regardless of gender or orientation. The fact that workforce insurers have a prerequisite ALONE should be reason enough to allow for marriage between same sex partners. Any other definition is purely a religious idealism.

You need only browse social and political philosophies to realize that the natural rights of man are indeed defined.

A contract is an agreement between parties. There is no reason for the government to interfere with an agreement between consenting adults.

But a marriage, on the other hand, involves the lives of children that result from this union. So there are compelling reasons for the government to involve itself in marriage.

Marriage does NOT effect the children in any way. A father and mother NOT married can both apply their workplace insurance to their child as well it should be. Now where this DOES come into play is due to the bad insurer policies on many insurers have. Here's a hypothetical that shows the problem with your definition. A woman has a child, the father is no where in the picture, she is in fact a lesbian and ends up in a lesbian relationship. Now she has a car accident and can no longer work and ends up losing her insurance that covered her and her child. Now the spouse of this woman has insurance that will not cover the child nor the disabled mother. Another hypothetical. A woman has a child and remarries, now whatever supposed "for the children" effects that the marriage have now apply to this father EVEN THOUGH HE HAS NO CHILDREN OF HIS OWN. How is this supported by your argument?

Consenting homosexual adults have every right to live their own lives as they please. If cohabitation is their thing, nothing is stopping them.

They cannot, however, claim certain privileges granted married couples because these privileges are there as the result to FAMILY RELATIONS.

And what, exactly, are these privileges? Mostly tax breaks. All other privileges can be had with the help of even the most mediocre lawyer and some foresight.

I cannot see anything that is afforded via marriage that has anything to do with anything here. You don't really get tax breaks unless you have kids, which has nothing to do with marriage itself, as you can get those same breaks married or not with kids. And in fact being married OFTEN costs more in taxes.

Are you in favor of giving an inalienable right to motherhood, the basis of all family relations and hence the marital institution, to gay men?

again your supposing something that is completely aside from marriage. that inalienable right is given by biology, not a marriage license. And again, motherhood has nothing to do with marriage. If you think that then you MUST by virtue NOT allow sterile couples to marry.

If a female employee is given maternity leave, is it logical to give this to male employees as well?

This is stupid, however there is precedence for this. I worked with a man who took maternity leave because the wife had a job that required her attention and the father cared for the kid after it was born. The only maternity leave his girlfriend took was to pop the lil kid out.

And in divorce proceedings, is the right of the husband to custody of the children equal to that of the wife?

this is purely due to tradition and not law.

And if some couples can adopt, why not everyone?

they should be allowed, this is more religious ideology becoming law, something that should not exist. notice the locations and their majority religious beliefs.

• Florida and New Hampshire had laws forbidding adoption by homosexuals;
• Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota and Virginia had legal precedences in which courts ruled that gays and lesbians are automatically unfit as parents because of their sexual orientation.
• California, Minnesota, New York and New Jersey had laws or regulations which specifically permit homosexual adoption.
• The remaining 40 states and the District of Columbia had no laws either forbidding or permitting adoption by gays or lesbians individuals or couples.

Spare me this patently defective notion of equality.

Equality is not defective, it's simply not applied all the time, when it very well should be. Women don't get paid as much as men, same education, same abilities, it's a statistic fact. It still isn't right though.

 

[jb_1430]

I did say produce "their child", not "a" child.
You seem to start with the presumption that government should license and regulate everything, and must have a reason NOT to regulate to support any decision not to. I start from the other perspective, that government needs some valid governmental interest before they regulate a human relationship. And I dont think helping gays feel a little bit better about themselves is a valid governmental interest.
As well, absent the governmental interest involved in the procreation of children, there is no rational reason to deny my girlfriend and I the rights and privilidges granted to married couples.

Twaddle! The fact that it takes input from each to produce a child in no reason to limit marriage to hetero couples now that in vitro fertilization is available. Continuing to support outmoded ways of thinking and outdated laws in hardly conducive to progress. The whole argument is stupid, a few years ago the argument was about intrerracial marriage, before that it was women getting to vote, before that it was women getting to own property... on and on it goes. There used to be huge theological battles over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, whether the Earth was the center of the Universe, whethere the Earth was flat. Religious people have been dragged kicking and screaming into the future against their will for thousands of years. Rights for homosexual people is just the flavor of the month and soon enough it will be replaced with some other idiocy based on scripture and homosexual rights will be just as much a non-issue as interracial marriage is now.

Sometimes I wish God would Rapture up all the religious people and leave the rest of us in peace.

 

[jb_1430]

Unlike yourself, I am campaigning for equal rights, I am not asking anything for myself that I would deny to anyone else, whereas you wish to retain your right to marry the consenting adult of your choice, but prevent others from doing the same. It's religious bigotry.

Noooo you are arguing for unequal rights. Rights superior to the rights of my girlfriend and I, seemingly, without any rational purpose for doing so.
And I am an atheist, Im just familiar with the purpose of marriage laws.

 

[vyo476]

I start from the other perspective, that government needs some valid governmental interest before they regulate a human relationship.

So allowing homosexual marriage to be made legal is regulation? And disallowing it is...deregulation? I think you have it mixed up there. If it weren't for governments sticking their noses into this, homosexual marriage would be freely legal in a lot of places in this country. It took government regulation to strike it down (think San Francisco).

The government has regulated homosexual marriage to make it illegal. Making it legal would not be regulating it.

And I dont think helping gays feel a little bit better about themselves is a valid governmental interest.

Of course you don't. You aren't gay. You have nothing to gain by helping gays. I'm not sure if you honestly think you have anything to lose by helping gays, but hey, maybe you do think that.

Isn't it tricky when minorities start asking for equality? Damn those black people for wanting to be considered human beings instead of property. Damn those women for wanting to vote. Damn those gay people for wanting to get married. The white, straight men of this country have nothing to gain by allowing any of those things to happen - other than living up to the ideals of freedom and equality.