The truth is that being gay or lesbian is not likely a lifestyle choice. The facts would seem to suggest that it is the way you were when you born - in pretty much the exact same way that you are born black, white, whatever, etc. - and environment may only be a factor in how it can effect the genetic code that people are born with. And not just no, but HELL NO! I am not going down that Nazi like road of eugenics to "eliminate or treat" what some of you crazies want to call a disease... That is just sick.For over seven minutes last night, Jon Stewart grilled former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on his opposition to gay marriage. Huckabee is touring the country to promote his new book, “Do The Right Thing.” When Stewart compared gay marriage bans to interracial marriage bans, Huckabee restated his view that homosexuality is simply a behavior choice:
Huckabee tried to insist that “60 percent of the American population” opposes gay marriage. Stewart interrupted him, calling it a “travesty” that gay Americans have to plead for their civil rights... (READ ON)STEWART: Segregation used to be the law until the courts intervened.
HUCK: There’s a big difference between a person being black and a person practicing a lifestyle and engaging in a marital relationship.
STEWART: Okay, actually this is helpful because it gets to the crux of it. … And I’ll tell you this: Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion — we protect religion. And talk about a lifestyle choice — that is absolutely a choice. Gay people don’t choose to be gay. At what age did you choose to not be gay?
And even if it were a choice?
Who cares... Exercising free will, to make your own choice, is as much a right as it is a personal responsibility. Even according to the Bible, Free Will is a Divine Institution:
1.Free will, 2.Marriage, 3.Family, 4.Government etc.
Yeah... You hear a lot from the religious wing nuts about the "Divine Institution of Marriage" - the second divine institution...
But they conveniently choose to skip the First Divine Institution in their bankrupt arguments.
Free Will - The one God supposedly gave everyone to choose their own destiny.
Religion is quite simply and for certain nothing more than a lifestyle choice...
You aren't born that way. Even if you are a believer - God gave you the free will to choose to believe. In fact some of these religions make a big deal out of converting people into believers. Because. People. Were. Not. Born. That. Way.
They made a choice.
People choose their religions all the time. Often they change their choice of religion on a whim.
Often that religion of choice has clearly bigoted views that they would like to force upon the rest of the world. Anti-Marriage Equality views would be included there. It is no different than other bigoted religious views that have been argued for in the past:
Christians and their ever changing views on traditional marriage...The term "miscegenation" has been used since the nineteenth century to refer to interracial marriage and interracial sex, and more generally to the global process of racial admixture that has taken place since the Age of Discoveries, particularly through the European colonization of the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade. Historically the term has been used in the context of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, so-called anti-miscegenation laws. It is therefore a loaded word and is considered offensive by many.
Today, the word miscegenation is avoided by many scholars, because the term suggests a distinct biological phenomenon, rather than a categorization imposed on certain relationships. The word is considered offensive by many and other terms such as "interracial," "interethnic" or "cross-cultural" are more common in contemporary usage. However, the term is still used by scholars when referring to past practices concerning multiraciality, such as anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages.
I am pretty sure most of them have given up the bigoted views against interracial marriages.
Huckabee talks about "5000 years of traditional marriage" based on his own personal lifestyle choice's rulebook - the Bible - but will, no doubt, refuse to accept what that loaded definition actually includes if implemented as law:
A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in
addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a
virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden.
(Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)
G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLTJust remember that these are precisely the views and lessons that have formed people like Mike Huckabee's "family values and morals" in the religious lifestyle choice they have made.
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
History will not be kind to you and yours, Huckster...
Time and time again these family values types have had to be forced to re-define their idea of traditional marriage because of what societies morals have defined as abhorrent practices. This time is no different than any of the other times. It truly sickens me that in a nation where all men are supposedly created equal... That we constantly have to sink down to these morally corrupt and repugnant people's level to argue for the most basic civil rights of other men and women. Their right to choose.
Those of you on the other side of these arguments - and I assure you, they are all the same arguments repeated over and over again - will be viewed in the history books as the bigots and haters that you are. But let's be clear on this...
That was your choice.
Not mine. My choice and belief would be that other people have no right to stick their noses in to the love lives, bedrooms and marriages of other adults. And I never had to ask for Mike Huckabee's or any one else, Gay, Lesbian, heterosexual, religious, atheist or other, for permission to get married - other than my wife-to-be at the time. All of you on the wrong side of this argument have been left with the freedom to choose your religion, your morals, your values and even your spouse.
The LGBT community deserves the same rights, the same freedoms guaranteed to them under the Constitution, to make all of these same choices without your 5000 years of traditionally misguided, immoral and bigoted input.
11 comments:
And I should have the right to marry my adult daughter or 3 or 4 for that matter. Or would you propose saying I can't do that? Maybe saying that society has the right to prohibit such wrongful marriages?
What other consenting adults choose to do of their own free will is their own god damned business. Regardless of my own morals and values. It Ain't My Bidness.
Now... If they wanted to force me to do those things that I, personally, find are against my morals and values... Then it would be my business.
Kind of like forcing the morals and values of the bigoted anti-marriage equality set on everyone else. It ain't their business, nor do they have the right to do so.
But if marriage is sex and sex is marriage, as some in religious circles would believe:
In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)
Then they are the idiots that would argue for your right to marry all of your daughters. Not me.
They would call it traditional marriage too... If they weren't making ridiculously hypocritical arguments all of the time.
BTW Anon... I find your standing questioningly on some mythical straw man slippery slope quite humorous when I am standing on the very real moral high ground.
You should be disturbed by your own meritless and nonsensical argument for a morally bankrupt point of view.
As I said in the post... It sickens me that I have to lower myself to argue an issue that the other side is wrong on in every way conceivable. Even by their own warped standards.
Answer my question directly, consenting incestial marriage legal yes or no if no why?
I already told you that you are standing on a mythical STRAW MAN argument slippery slope that doesn't exist.
I am talking about consenting adults and the biblical definitions of marriage and you may as well be talking about someone wanting to marry a dolphin.
If you need me to be answer you more directly: You are intellectually dishonest and your argument is a joke.
And you know this so you hide behind an anonymous comment.
I should also add the fact that you make demands of others that you have no right to make.
Incestuous relationship concerning close relations have a very real, and tangible dangerous side effect, that was outlawed as a health issue many moons ago. The detriment to society from inbreeding causes an actual decline of society through genetic encoding that destabilizes society at it's very core - through genetic mutations causing mental problems, and physical disabilities.
Furthermore, a marriage or relationship between a parent and child does not occur only once the child is an adult - the attraction comes before that time, and a marriage legalizing parent/child relationships condones child abuse in that manner.
Furthermore, kin relationships already posses the rights and protections afforded to married couples, by mere relationship. The need for the contractual obligations between non related spouses is to, in effect, protect non related spouses from the spouse's family members, usurping legal rights, benefits, and obligations that are guaranteed to the spouse because they've invested their time and energy to said person.
In other words - the legal benefits and protections of marriage are already afforded to family members, and adding it on by way of marriage would be redundant.
Anok. You are one smart person. Remind me never to debate you...
Part of the reason I refuse to address the question is because we have already heard the slippery slope straw man argument in CT when they were debating same sex civil unions here.
The debate literally digressed to the level of "next people will want to marry dolphins" on their side as they were badly losing the arguments.
Since the real issue has absolutely nothing to do with their typical mythical arguments of incest, pedophiles and even bestiality, I really don't see the need to address it.
It is, I believe, their not-so-veiled attempt at equating homosexuality with those other things.
Not that I will ever stop anyone from trying to make a point one way or the other around here, as low and intellectually dishonest as that one may be.
Though I may not always address them, I do reserve the right to mock the crazy points...
LOL! Thanks - I've had years of practice in this debate arena (unfortunately). I'm a huge gay rights activist and so I've done a lot of research on the subject. If you catch me off guard in another topic, I'm doomed!
I actually hesitated before responding, because like you, I tend to wonder if a reaction is even warranted. But in the end, I just can't keep my mouth shut (LOL).
Oi...
I'm a little late to the party, but damn, great post there. I saw that episode, and there was one point Huckleberry made that was pretty offensive to me, and you missed.
As it became clear that he couldn't fall back on the bible argument, he began making the 'other' reason that I hear all the time. The biological one.
In short the argument goes, "Marriage exists for the next generation's benefit. Gay marriage shouldn't exist because they can't produce offspring."
At first, this seems, if not rational, at least not insane.
But if you think about it, by that measure, a marriage isn't 'real' until the couple produces a child. If one accepts this argument, one is also saying that people who choose to not have children, or are sterile, don't have the privilege of being married.
Anyway, great article.
All very valid points, Dan, that I am sure they would try and avoid addressing since it would make them feel uncomfortable in their lifestyle choice.
Post a Comment