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The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays, and that gullible young people have been tricked to support the gay agenda in

The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays, and that gullible young people have been tricked to support the gay agenda in the first place, and also to believe anyone who disagrees with that agenda is a "reprehensible bigot". If "gay rights" are really so self-evident, let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. The thing is that reasonable people disagree, and shouldn't be shamed for that disagreement. Pro-gay activists have gotten all progress by bullying opponents and teaching people that anyone who dares to question them is automatically a "reprehensible bigot", and foolish children have been flattered into accepting this patently ridiculous line of thought.

bane 13y ago
> let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. It's actually pretty easy. Any number of court opinions on the issue are readily available and generally easy to read. These represent the best-of arguments from both sides. Once the issue was raised as a legal issue, it became subject to constitutional scrutiny and the U.S. Constitution simply doesn't allow for that kind of discrimination and the kinds of argument used in support of.
- shasta 13y ago
  > Once the issue was raised as a legal issue, it became subject to constitutional scrutiny and the U.S. Constitution simply doesn't allow for that kind of discrimination and the kinds of argument used in support of. This is actually completely backwards. It only became tenable to approach as a legal issue after gay marriage had become culturally acceptable.
  - bane 13y ago
    Yeah, courts are subject to popular opinion in a way. I suspect many gay couples wanted to get married, but were denied in lower courts and appeals denied after. It's finally reached the popular critical mass to make it to the Federal level and that's why it's suddenly an issue. But more importantly, when you actually read the arguments put forward in the cases, it takes the courts a very big legal stretch to side with the non-gay-marriage arguments, as they're almost uniformly non-legal and unconstitutional religious and traditionalist arguments.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  You act as if the decisions are uniform. Legislation banning gay marriage has been upheld repeatedly by the courts. Prop 8 itself has had an eventful docket, and was most recently struck by a court (after being upheld), and the Supreme Court refused to decide on the case's claims because the party appealing the decision did not have standing to bring the case. The Supreme Court has made no ruling on Proposition 8. Nationally binding case law on relevant marriage topics didn't exist until Windsor last year, and even that stopped short of claiming that all bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, and 4 sitting Supreme Court justices disagree even with the narrow logic by which sections of DOMA were invalidated, which essentially punted the issue back to states and said that the Feds were obliged to honor marriages granted by states. Should we all go boycott the Supreme Court as long as John Roberts is Chief Justice? It's completely misleading to pretend that reasonable, non-bigoted people can't oppose gay marriage and/or can't believe that bans on gay marriage are constitutional and fair.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - bane 13y ago
    Your are absolutely correct, the lower courts have decided one way or another depending on their state's legal tradition, while the Federal Courts must measure against the U.S. Constitution and those courts' decisions have been remarkably uniform, especially in terms of what arguments they'll accept from the two parties. > Should we all go boycott the Supreme Court as long as John Roberts is Chief Justice? Well, you and I both know that you can't boycott a court. And losing votes against a decision don't matter much outside of an interesting historical footnote and some light reading of the dissenting opinions. One of the really cool things about the U.S. legal system is that, at least it seems to me, that the higher the court, the better written the opinions are for the layman. SCOTUS opinions (and the dissenting side) are actually pretty easy reads. > It's completely misleading to pretend that reasonable, non-bigoted people can't oppose gay marriage and/or can't believe that bans on gay marriage are constitutional and fair. The ultimate problems is that, when measured by the U.S. Constitution (used by Federal judges and SCOTUS alike), a reasonable legal argument has yet to be presented. At best the arguments (if you read the court case transcripts and opinions) are grossly in contrast with a handful of Amendments and are presented purely as religious and traditionalist arguments -- but not legal arguments. More importantly is that Federal judges keep finding that those arguing against are not able to demonstrate any legal harm to themselves if gay marriage is made legal -- a very simple and low bar that millions of dollars in lawyers has yet to figure out. So while arguments scoped to a State might succeed, because the State has different legal standards to measure against. It's just a matter of appealing it up to the Federal level where the standards of measure are different before the arguments no longer work. There's all kinds of Federalist-style arguments that States should be able to be masters of their own destinies in this regard, but that's not the status of the U.S. legal system today. I'll also note, that some of the State Supreme court decision against gay-marriage have been similarly interesting reading -- as in "we acknowledge that the arguments against gay-marriage are unconstitutional, but we'll go along with them anyway" a la Hawaii. The beauty of course about our legal system is that the court only has to find a law in violation of a single amendment to strike it down. If your interested, here's the decision and dissents about DOMA and Prop 8. https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/717668/doma.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7176... https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/717698/prop-8-decision.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7176... http://www.scribd.com/doc/35374462/California-Prop-8-Ruling-August-2010 http://www.scribd.com/doc/35374462/California-Prop-8-Ruling-... They're amazing reads. The last document affirms previously found decisions on the fundamental human right to marry which SCOTUS has found on several occasions and has not yet seen fit to decide against. For the record, SCOTUS also frequently comes to decisions I disagree with, and I always find reading the decisions illuminating. Here's one of the best discussions on this topic I've seen on the Internet. http://www.brambletonian.net/forums/topic/16509-the-conservative-case-for-gay-marriage/ http://www.brambletonian.net/forums/topic/16509-the-conserva... It's a little dated now, but still a good read and accurately predicts most of the Federal decisions that happened after this discussion.
wpietri 13y ago
Trying to strip civil rights from people for no rational reason may, for some individuals, may not be motivated by hate. But if you're on the receiving end of it, I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. It would be great if you could solve civil rights problems by patiently explaining obvious facts to people. But that's not how it works. If you think you can do better than current gay rights activists (who have many approaches besides the ones you acknowledge), you should demonstrate your solution.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  I think the gay rights activists have to resort to bullying precisely because their case is not supported by rationality. I also do not believe that this is a "civil rights" issue, nor do I believe that same-sex marriages should be legal. In fact, I don't even believe homosexual behavior should be legal.
  - Crito 13y ago
    I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'll bite anyway: What rational reason do you have for desiring the criminalization of any sort of sexual activity between two consenting adults, in the privacy of their own home?
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      Homosexual behavior doesn't only occur in the privacy of a home, and if kept truly private, it'd be impossible to arrest anyone for engaging in the activity. I'm more concerned about public homosexual behavior and the message that tolerance of this behavior broadcasts, which is that a) we no longer understand or value the pre-eminent importance of the male-female sexual partnership, which is the only way children can be conceived and the preferred way for children to be raised, providing in the child's upbringing proper balance of inherent masculine and feminine traits that cannot be sufficiently replicated by same-sex parentage, and b) that we tolerate incursions that threaten the establishment of that sexual partnership as the fundamental unit of social cohesion or that indicate alternative sexual behaviors are acceptable. This is my rationale. Perhaps you don't agree that male-female sexual union is ideal or important. Perhaps you don't think society needs to prioritize or promote opposite-sex unions. That doesn't make my rationale invalid, it doesn't mean I hate everyone (or anyone in particular), and it doesn't mean I'm a bigot. It just means we don't agree. I would suggest that some people no longer recognize male-female sexuality as preferential despite biological imperatives that mandate this as a necessity for continued national, cultural, and indeed basic human survival, indicates that, to a large extent, our society is already extremely ill and probably terminal. The mere fact that homosexual marriage can be a controversial issue shows that. If anyone doubts that acceptance of homosexuality destroys the place of heterosexual marriage and child-bearing, just look at the discussions that occur now which would've been considered plainly ridiculous by societies more in touch with reality (like ourselves, 50 years ago). The fact that persons can propose with a straight face that marriage be done away altogether is a literal fulfillment of the prediction that gay marriage destroys and impacts marriage as a whole (of which straight marriage is the only acceptable form).
beedogs 13y ago
What's ridiculous about it? People who would deny homosexuals the right to marry are reprehensible. It's not too hard to understand.
- exodust 13y ago
  See, there's your problem. Labeling people "reprehensible" who don't agree with you about the limitations of what defines "marriage", but who otherwise might completely support the legal rights of same-sex couples in regards to health benefits and so on. The bullying tactics and manipulation of the argument by pro-gay marriage activists is what's reprehensible. Including forcing CEOs to resign, attacking web browsers, and generally accusing people who believe in a traditonal definition of marriage as "anti-gay", which in most cases they are not.
  - beedogs 13y ago
    Your argument is absolutely absurd. Were black people who fought against separate-but-equal segregation policies "bullies" to you, too?
    - exodust 13y ago
      Marriage isn't a bus or restaurant. Marriage is something else entirely, it is not needed for survival. For the record, if I had to vote for gay marriage, I'd vote yes - but mainly to shut people up about it because I'm sick of hearing about it. This is because I don't particularly believe in marriage to begin with. So if I hold such a low opinion of marriage to begin with, how do you think I'm going to react when I visit okcupid to find them discouraging my fav web browser because someone donated $1000 back in 2008 to.... you know the rest. Please don't draw parallel lines between gay marriage and the struggles of minorities to achieve equal rights in basic services such as catching the bus. That's completely different.
      - isleyaardvark 13y ago
        Marriage has been declared a basic civil right in more than one Supreme Court case, including but not limited to Loving v. Virginia and Turner v. Safley. The first one being about interracial marriage.
phaus 13y ago
>The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays. I agree that many of the Christians that support Prop 8 don't know that they hate homosexuals, but the act of supporting Prop 8 is a hateful act. Whether they realize it or not, they are actively attempting to prevent their fellow Americans from being able to live as equals in our society. >If "gay rights" are really so self-evident, let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. When it comes to deep-rooted beliefs, whether they are religious or not, most people aren't going to change their minds. Yes, reasonable people do disagree with one another, but not every disagreement involves two reasonable people. I've nearly always been an atheist, but when I was younger I was highly opposed to the concept of homosexuality. However, when I actually started to think about it, I couldn't find a single, reasonable argument for homosexuality being immoral. I challenge you or anyone else who feels up to it to present a logical, non-religious argument that illustrates why homosexuality is immoral. I'm pretty sure it can't be done. Just to clarify, no reasonable person would consider the lack of child-producing capabilities as a valid argument. Its perfectly accepted among the overwhelming majority of Christians and non-Christians alike for a sexually active couple to refrain from having children, so it can't reasonably be considered an issue of morality.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  >I challenge you or anyone else who feels up to it to present a logical, non-religious argument that illustrates why homosexuality is immoral. I'm pretty sure it can't be done. See above. >Its perfectly accepted among the overwhelming majority of Christians and non-Christians alike for a sexually active couple to refrain from having children, so it can't reasonably be considered an issue of morality. It's actually not perfectly accepted among religious communities. Many believers have chosen to discard their religion's guidance on this topic, but most religions do not look kindly on contraception. The opinions typically range from "no, it's never ok to do that" to "you should think REALLY hard before you do that, and make sure you have a good excuse to present when God asks you about it later". Fertility is never guaranteed in heterosexual unions, but infertile heterosexual unions are allowed and blessed anyway for a few major reasons. First, a happily married heterosexual couple supports and promotes marriage as the bedrock of social cohesion and encourages others to get married by example, whether children can be produced or not. Second, you never know when infertility will go away, and if the potential is there because the partners are heterosexual, it's worth it to wait and see. Third, the male-female sexual duality is still ideal for child-rearing and the stable married couple may be able to adopt an unwanted child and provide him with a normal and healthy upbringing where both sexes are represented and where marital protections are in place to safeguard the domicile.

bane 13y ago

> let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. It's actually pretty easy. Any number of court opinions on the issue are readily available and generally easy to read. These represent the best-of arguments from both sides. Once the issue was raised as a legal issue, it became subject to constitutional scrutiny and the U.S. Constitution simply doesn't allow for that kind of discrimination and the kinds of argument used in support of.

shasta 13y ago
> Once the issue was raised as a legal issue, it became subject to constitutional scrutiny and the U.S. Constitution simply doesn't allow for that kind of discrimination and the kinds of argument used in support of. This is actually completely backwards. It only became tenable to approach as a legal issue after gay marriage had become culturally acceptable.
- bane 13y ago
  Yeah, courts are subject to popular opinion in a way. I suspect many gay couples wanted to get married, but were denied in lower courts and appeals denied after. It's finally reached the popular critical mass to make it to the Federal level and that's why it's suddenly an issue. But more importantly, when you actually read the arguments put forward in the cases, it takes the courts a very big legal stretch to side with the non-gay-marriage arguments, as they're almost uniformly non-legal and unconstitutional religious and traditionalist arguments.
cookiecaper 13y ago
You act as if the decisions are uniform. Legislation banning gay marriage has been upheld repeatedly by the courts. Prop 8 itself has had an eventful docket, and was most recently struck by a court (after being upheld), and the Supreme Court refused to decide on the case's claims because the party appealing the decision did not have standing to bring the case. The Supreme Court has made no ruling on Proposition 8. Nationally binding case law on relevant marriage topics didn't exist until Windsor last year, and even that stopped short of claiming that all bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, and 4 sitting Supreme Court justices disagree even with the narrow logic by which sections of DOMA were invalidated, which essentially punted the issue back to states and said that the Feds were obliged to honor marriages granted by states. Should we all go boycott the Supreme Court as long as John Roberts is Chief Justice? It's completely misleading to pretend that reasonable, non-bigoted people can't oppose gay marriage and/or can't believe that bans on gay marriage are constitutional and fair.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- bane 13y ago
  Your are absolutely correct, the lower courts have decided one way or another depending on their state's legal tradition, while the Federal Courts must measure against the U.S. Constitution and those courts' decisions have been remarkably uniform, especially in terms of what arguments they'll accept from the two parties. > Should we all go boycott the Supreme Court as long as John Roberts is Chief Justice? Well, you and I both know that you can't boycott a court. And losing votes against a decision don't matter much outside of an interesting historical footnote and some light reading of the dissenting opinions. One of the really cool things about the U.S. legal system is that, at least it seems to me, that the higher the court, the better written the opinions are for the layman. SCOTUS opinions (and the dissenting side) are actually pretty easy reads. > It's completely misleading to pretend that reasonable, non-bigoted people can't oppose gay marriage and/or can't believe that bans on gay marriage are constitutional and fair. The ultimate problems is that, when measured by the U.S. Constitution (used by Federal judges and SCOTUS alike), a reasonable legal argument has yet to be presented. At best the arguments (if you read the court case transcripts and opinions) are grossly in contrast with a handful of Amendments and are presented purely as religious and traditionalist arguments -- but not legal arguments. More importantly is that Federal judges keep finding that those arguing against are not able to demonstrate any legal harm to themselves if gay marriage is made legal -- a very simple and low bar that millions of dollars in lawyers has yet to figure out. So while arguments scoped to a State might succeed, because the State has different legal standards to measure against. It's just a matter of appealing it up to the Federal level where the standards of measure are different before the arguments no longer work. There's all kinds of Federalist-style arguments that States should be able to be masters of their own destinies in this regard, but that's not the status of the U.S. legal system today. I'll also note, that some of the State Supreme court decision against gay-marriage have been similarly interesting reading -- as in "we acknowledge that the arguments against gay-marriage are unconstitutional, but we'll go along with them anyway" a la Hawaii. The beauty of course about our legal system is that the court only has to find a law in violation of a single amendment to strike it down. If your interested, here's the decision and dissents about DOMA and Prop 8. https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/717668/doma.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7176... https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/717698/prop-8-decision.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7176... http://www.scribd.com/doc/35374462/California-Prop-8-Ruling-August-2010 http://www.scribd.com/doc/35374462/California-Prop-8-Ruling-... They're amazing reads. The last document affirms previously found decisions on the fundamental human right to marry which SCOTUS has found on several occasions and has not yet seen fit to decide against. For the record, SCOTUS also frequently comes to decisions I disagree with, and I always find reading the decisions illuminating. Here's one of the best discussions on this topic I've seen on the Internet. http://www.brambletonian.net/forums/topic/16509-the-conservative-case-for-gay-marriage/ http://www.brambletonian.net/forums/topic/16509-the-conserva... It's a little dated now, but still a good read and accurately predicts most of the Federal decisions that happened after this discussion.

wpietri 13y ago

Trying to strip civil rights from people for no rational reason may, for some individuals, may not be motivated by hate. But if you're on the receiving end of it, I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. It would be great if you could solve civil rights problems by patiently explaining obvious facts to people. But that's not how it works. If you think you can do better than current gay rights activists (who have many approaches besides the ones you acknowledge), you should demonstrate your solution.

cookiecaper 13y ago
I think the gay rights activists have to resort to bullying precisely because their case is not supported by rationality. I also do not believe that this is a "civil rights" issue, nor do I believe that same-sex marriages should be legal. In fact, I don't even believe homosexual behavior should be legal.
- Crito 13y ago
  I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'll bite anyway: What rational reason do you have for desiring the criminalization of any sort of sexual activity between two consenting adults, in the privacy of their own home?
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    Homosexual behavior doesn't only occur in the privacy of a home, and if kept truly private, it'd be impossible to arrest anyone for engaging in the activity. I'm more concerned about public homosexual behavior and the message that tolerance of this behavior broadcasts, which is that a) we no longer understand or value the pre-eminent importance of the male-female sexual partnership, which is the only way children can be conceived and the preferred way for children to be raised, providing in the child's upbringing proper balance of inherent masculine and feminine traits that cannot be sufficiently replicated by same-sex parentage, and b) that we tolerate incursions that threaten the establishment of that sexual partnership as the fundamental unit of social cohesion or that indicate alternative sexual behaviors are acceptable. This is my rationale. Perhaps you don't agree that male-female sexual union is ideal or important. Perhaps you don't think society needs to prioritize or promote opposite-sex unions. That doesn't make my rationale invalid, it doesn't mean I hate everyone (or anyone in particular), and it doesn't mean I'm a bigot. It just means we don't agree. I would suggest that some people no longer recognize male-female sexuality as preferential despite biological imperatives that mandate this as a necessity for continued national, cultural, and indeed basic human survival, indicates that, to a large extent, our society is already extremely ill and probably terminal. The mere fact that homosexual marriage can be a controversial issue shows that. If anyone doubts that acceptance of homosexuality destroys the place of heterosexual marriage and child-bearing, just look at the discussions that occur now which would've been considered plainly ridiculous by societies more in touch with reality (like ourselves, 50 years ago). The fact that persons can propose with a straight face that marriage be done away altogether is a literal fulfillment of the prediction that gay marriage destroys and impacts marriage as a whole (of which straight marriage is the only acceptable form).

beedogs 13y ago

What's ridiculous about it? People who would deny homosexuals the right to marry are reprehensible. It's not too hard to understand.

exodust 13y ago
See, there's your problem. Labeling people "reprehensible" who don't agree with you about the limitations of what defines "marriage", but who otherwise might completely support the legal rights of same-sex couples in regards to health benefits and so on. The bullying tactics and manipulation of the argument by pro-gay marriage activists is what's reprehensible. Including forcing CEOs to resign, attacking web browsers, and generally accusing people who believe in a traditonal definition of marriage as "anti-gay", which in most cases they are not.
- beedogs 13y ago
  Your argument is absolutely absurd. Were black people who fought against separate-but-equal segregation policies "bullies" to you, too?
  - exodust 13y ago
    Marriage isn't a bus or restaurant. Marriage is something else entirely, it is not needed for survival. For the record, if I had to vote for gay marriage, I'd vote yes - but mainly to shut people up about it because I'm sick of hearing about it. This is because I don't particularly believe in marriage to begin with. So if I hold such a low opinion of marriage to begin with, how do you think I'm going to react when I visit okcupid to find them discouraging my fav web browser because someone donated $1000 back in 2008 to.... you know the rest. Please don't draw parallel lines between gay marriage and the struggles of minorities to achieve equal rights in basic services such as catching the bus. That's completely different.
    - isleyaardvark 13y ago
      Marriage has been declared a basic civil right in more than one Supreme Court case, including but not limited to Loving v. Virginia and Turner v. Safley. The first one being about interracial marriage.

phaus 13y ago

>The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays. I agree that many of the Christians that support Prop 8 don't know that they hate homosexuals, but the act of supporting Prop 8 is a hateful act. Whether they realize it or not, they are actively attempting to prevent their fellow Americans from being able to live as equals in our society. >If "gay rights" are really so self-evident, let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. When it comes to deep-rooted beliefs, whether they are religious or not, most people aren't going to change their minds. Yes, reasonable people do disagree with one another, but not every disagreement involves two reasonable people. I've nearly always been an atheist, but when I was younger I was highly opposed to the concept of homosexuality. However, when I actually started to think about it, I couldn't find a single, reasonable argument for homosexuality being immoral. I challenge you or anyone else who feels up to it to present a logical, non-religious argument that illustrates why homosexuality is immoral. I'm pretty sure it can't be done. Just to clarify, no reasonable person would consider the lack of child-producing capabilities as a valid argument. Its perfectly accepted among the overwhelming majority of Christians and non-Christians alike for a sexually active couple to refrain from having children, so it can't reasonably be considered an issue of morality.

cookiecaper 13y ago
>I challenge you or anyone else who feels up to it to present a logical, non-religious argument that illustrates why homosexuality is immoral. I'm pretty sure it can't be done. See above. >Its perfectly accepted among the overwhelming majority of Christians and non-Christians alike for a sexually active couple to refrain from having children, so it can't reasonably be considered an issue of morality. It's actually not perfectly accepted among religious communities. Many believers have chosen to discard their religion's guidance on this topic, but most religions do not look kindly on contraception. The opinions typically range from "no, it's never ok to do that" to "you should think REALLY hard before you do that, and make sure you have a good excuse to present when God asks you about it later". Fertility is never guaranteed in heterosexual unions, but infertile heterosexual unions are allowed and blessed anyway for a few major reasons. First, a happily married heterosexual couple supports and promotes marriage as the bedrock of social cohesion and encourages others to get married by example, whether children can be produced or not. Second, you never know when infertility will go away, and if the potential is there because the partners are heterosexual, it's worth it to wait and see. Third, the male-female sexual duality is still ideal for child-rearing and the stable married couple may be able to adopt an unwanted child and provide him with a normal and healthy upbringing where both sexes are represented and where marital protections are in place to safeguard the domicile.