In being really really REALLY pissed off at those trying to stop same-sex marriage bill going through?

[StoicButStressed]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22588954

^^^^^^^^^^^
THAT

My eldest DS is gay, I genuinely have NO concept or understanding of how anyone thinks he (or the other pretty significant % of our population who also happen to have been born gay?) should in any way be denied the same right as his two brothers have to be able to get married.

AIBU? Or is there something I am simply missing?

"There are times when their views are contemptible. You would allow someone to talk about racism in that way, I'm sure"

The point is that the definition of a Bigot is not the person whose views you find contemptible, but the person who treats another with contempt because of their views.

What frustrates me is seeing people say 'the heterosexual married family is the best environment to bring up a child'. This is simply not true. Consistently, all the psychological research has absolutely no difference in the outcomes of children brought up by homosexual and heterosexual parents. In fact in some studies, the children of lesbian parents actually do better. If this is truly about the best environment for children then we should all be lesbians.

I am totally in favour of equal marriage and have absolutely no idea why it would devalue mine-which was between me and my husband and no one else!

It strikes me that most religous people who oppose it have very shaky ideas of the biblical definition of marriage (Adam and Eve? Jacob with 2 wives and 2 concubines- not to mention impregnating his daughter in law? King David with 8 wives (including 1 through adultery and murder) and 10 concubines? In the NT most of the disciples who were married seemed to travel alone. Paul said that it was better to stay unmarried but it you couldn't then marriage was the best option.) None of these have much relevance to our modern day idea of marriage.

Incidentally I just read that marriage between one man and one woman has only been enshrined in law for 40 years or so, before that it was not actually stated! The definition of marriage has been fluid and changing for 1000s of years.

Registrars/vicars etc are not asked to judge the morality or life style choices of heterosexual couples, they have no need to judge or personally approve gay couples-all they are asked to do is perform a ceremony/legal contract according to the law. Why should this affect their own beliefs-no one is being forced to have a same sex marriage?

As for the argument that it is taking up to much time in parliament-a)gay people/parents/relatives/friends etc are tax payers and citizens and have as much right to the legislative process as anyone else and b)let us stop trying to derail the bill and waste time and money and just get on with passing it so that we can move on to these 'more important' things!

This is all just me jotting down some ideas in the midst of making breakfast so is not very coherent. But being tolerant cannot IMO extend to tolerating bigotry because by definition the bigots are attempting to curtail the human and equal rights of others. It's been said before-but if you don't agree with same sex marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex! And until the gov't try to outlaw heterosexual marriage then you are not being oppressed!

The tu quoque logical fallacy Lazy
Not working.

This may have already been said but I saw the best line on FB regarding this.

"No man who has ever masturbated or got off to two women making out is allowed to be opposed to gay marriage"

I cannot see the whole upset about this, it's two people in love, why does it matter what colour, religion or sex they are?

Correct lljk.

It is supremely ironic that the only people who gain from this bill being enacted are in fact all religious. They are gay Christians who want to have their unions recognised as part of a traditional Christian institution and appropriately blessed by the Church.

As for the rest, who form the vast, vast majority, it is really about nothing but the right to use a term. It provides no additional civil rights. So, it is about more than wanting equal rights - it is about wanting society to adopt a sort of wilful blindness about the fact that certain relationships are M-M or F-F rather than F-M.

Odd.

Anyway, I don't see what the US Constitution has to do with this debate. If law is used to determine what is morally right and wrong (and as a lawyer I reckon that's a bloody stupid idea), well, in the UK, that is Parliament's job, as the UK is not a gerontocracy even if it is becoming an oligarchy.

As much as gay people have the right to get married, people should also have the right to say no I don't like it.

Absolutely people should have the right to say they don't like it, they just shouldn't have the right to prevent it, it's absolutely nothing to do with them.

I think it is down right ridiculous. If you don't like gay marriage don't have one. To be honest I know a gay couple who have survived longer than any straight couples I know, married or not. Does it affect you if two men, or two women get married. No. It matters not what someone does behind closed doors, in there own home.

I think all this time energy and bitching would be better off focusing on topics which have victims and destroy lives. Like child abuse, which the church seems more than happy to advocate!

Rant over.

It's worth reposting this speech by a Conservative MP in NZ about the subject.

And this made me laugh. The hashtag all over twitter yesterday was #aggressivehomosexual

"As for the rest, who form the vast, vast majority, it is really about nothing but the right to use a term. It provides no additional civil rights. So, it is about more than wanting equal rights - it is about wanting society to adopt a sort of wilful blindness about the fact that certain relationships are M-M or F-F rather than F-M"

Actually - someone posted an interesting link yesterday that shows it is more than just the term. Marriage gives more legal rights to those in it, including post death pension. And it affects how people are able to travel together or be treated in other countries. And then there are the more subtle issues of how marriage vs CP are perceived.

If the argument that "it's just a term" was valid, then all all those words we consider offensive should be allowed to be used by anyone. Perhaps we should all just accept that "wench", "bitch", "cunt" are just words and don't actually affect us as women? Or perhaps we could start using words like, "Spick", "Chink" "nigger" to describe people of different races?

The first time I read the suggestion that allowing same sex couples to marry would change the meaning of the term 'marriage' and affect people who are married already, I thought what a strange thing it was to say. It didn't make sense and appeared to be something you'd say in an attempt to find an objection when your real objection was that you just didn't like the idea of same sex relationships or same sex marriage. I'm amazed to hear the same 'argument' used over and over since then.
AFAICS it's not a valid argument. It's just a piece of nonsense used by people who can't think of a valid argument.

Thanks for that excellent link, SuffolkNWhat. Every time I hear people argue against same sex marriage, I think that the same arguments must have been used in the past against divorce and against marriage where the couple come from different racial backgrounds. If someone thinks their own marriage will be damaged by allowing same sex couples to marry, then surely they must think their marriage is damaged by couples who divorce, couples who marry in a drunken moment a day after meeting, couples who marry for money or status and not love, couples who have open marriages. Marriages for reasons other than love having been going on since marriage has existed, and in fact the ideal a lot of people have as marriage for love lasting 50 years til death is the unusual thing.

Caroldecker, regarding incest, well as it's illegal it makes sense that a marriage where sex between the 2 parties would be incestuous would be illegal too. Multiple partners to a marriage might make sense though. Same sex marriage is being introduced because there are people that want it. If enough people wanted the right to multiple partners in a marriage, then they could lobby parliament for that.

The thin end of the wedge argument, "if we agree to same sex marriages then next thing we'll be agreeing to incest/polygamy" is a non argument really. There is no logical reason why agreeing to one thing is going to automatically lead to another. I'm old enough to remember the official age of adulthood being lowered to 18. A dangerous move, because what was there to stop it being moved to 16? 14? 12? It could still happen! But it hasn't. Because there is no particular interest in making it happen. If there were it would be a whole new debate.

There's actually nothing stopping anyone pushing right now to legalise incest or polygamy - hell, there's been a mad old bat of a lawyer advocating lowering the age of consent to 13 so that dirty old perverts won't be prosecuted - but legalising marriage for gay couples is not going to make any difference to any of those, because they are separate issues with separate arguments and each initiative for change must stand on its own merits.

I, for example, passed my driving test at 18 (many, many moons ago) and was immediately allowed to drive my dad's car on the open road. What, then, stopped my 15-year-old sister from doing the same? How soon before my 6-year-old brother was allowed to drive a Chieftain tank with loaded 120mm down Oxford Street? WHERE WILL IT ALL END???

Or, I could have just waited for Jan49 to say the same thing :)

Jan49

But it does change the meaning of the term "marriage".

Since time immemorial the term has been understood to mean an enduring (in theory) union between a man and a woman. It is a social institution, not IMHO a state or even a religious one, though both the state and organised religion try to get in on the act.

Although it has not automatically involved the raising of children, quite probably the institution would not exist were it not for the fact that to bring up a human child is a big and long job, taking well over a decade.

I personally would like to see the state get out of marriage, and just stick with civil partnerships, whether hetero os homo sexual, with equal legal rights.

In fact I would extend this so that (to give an example that I know of) two aged sisters who have never married and now live together, could specify themselves as a civil partnership with all the legal safeguards that this entails.

I think what pisses people off is not the matter giving various couples legal safeguards, but the fact that the government is presuming to rewrite the english dictionary and impose the new usage on everyone by statute, even though it is at odds with all previous usage, even among people who were gay themselves or totally sympathetic.

@ Annie

You know the dictionary gets re-written pretty much yearly, don't you?

Vajazzle, anyone?

somebloke: Well, it might have usually meant between a man and a woman, yes. But it also used to mean "a woman now belongs to her husband instead of her father" or "A woman must obey her husband in all things". And we changed that. I would argue that changing the concept of marriage so that it's no longer about ownership was a far more significant step than changing the concept of marriage so that it's not just about gender will be.

The "traditional" concept of marriage was based on religious views about children, men and women and their respective places and so on. I see no reason to challenge all of the concepts rather than just picking the ones some people like.

YANBU especially with the massive deal being made of it. It recently came up for debate in my country, and I was honestly shocked that it wasn't already legal, as were many of my friends. We had all grown up assuming that gay marriage was legal, why wouldn't it be? I am so happy GLAD to be able to say the law was passed, and future generations that grow up just assuming that it is legal will actually be correct.

Also, let's be clear - we're talking about changing a legal definition. Not a dictionary defintion. Yes, the dictionary definition may change as a result, but the core change here is the legal one.

No that's not true. Slang terms yes - they do come and go like froth. But basic standard english has remained remarkably constant.

Of course the power relationships within a marriage have changed. In the past the wife was pretty much a chattel, unable for example to sign legal contracts off her own bat, and there were all sorts of oppressive behaviours that are rightly regarded as unacceptable today.

But I think the long term man-woman union is pretty entrenched and not to be changed by state diktat.

Times have moved on, and rightly so. Gay men & Lesbians should have the same rights as everyone else to legally marry their partner.
I don't get why the church doesn't agree to disagree, as I'm sure some of them are gay themselves or even have gay family members.

Unfortunately some people haven't moved on from homophobia, it's time they got their heads out of the sand and realised that gays exist and are people.

Although I very much hope this goes through, I do think this is Cameron's way of getting brownie points.

somebloke,

"In fact I would extend this so that (to give an example that I know of) two aged sisters who have never married and now live together, could specify themselves as a civil partnership with all the legal safeguards that this entails."

Have you been reading Norman Tebbit again?