Any logical or empiracle reason to oppose gay marriage?

[humanistheart]

A friend of mine opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, however she claims there are perfectly legitimate reasons to oppose homosexual marriage on logical and legal grounds.

She believes marriage is a religious concept (despite the fact that marriage predates all religions currently being practiced) and thus religions should retain the exclusive right to marriage.

She also argues that since only in a union of man and woman can a child be conceived that only a man and woman can reach the full potential of parenting, again, despite the little evidence we have that indicates that children raised by homosexual couples are no less adjusted than those raised by 2 parent straight couples.

How might you respond to these arguments? I find them weak. Do you have any good arguments against gay marriage that aren't ultimately based on something like 'the bible says its wrong'?
I should add, just in case it's not apparent, that I'm in favor of gay marriage, I'm just looking to understand the arguments, assuming there are any not based in religous bigotry, againt it.

[TheEmpire]

It isn't natural.

If it were meant to happen then they could produce offspring.

Burrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnn

even though I'm for gay marriage.

[GorgeoustxGoSpursGott]

No.

The only reason to deny gay marriage is rooted in ignorance and bigotry.


"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed.'' - James Madison (Original wording of the First Amendment; Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).)

[LaurenW]

I've heard this great one thrown around. It's something like, marriage is only necessary for the continuation for the human race, so unless a marriage can potentially end in children, there's no need for it.

That's so easy to counter I'm not even going to bother explaining it.

But frankly, it's a pretty illogical argument to begin with. Trying to argue it logically is like trying to logically argue the moon is made of cheese. How the heck can you do it?

[SteelyDan]

Your friends just plain wrong.

Marriage DOES pre-date current religions.

And if it was all about procreation - why are old or infertile straight couples allowed to marry?
Yes, homosexuality doesn't give us babies - but neither does tennis. What's her point? And we're not exactly running out of people on this planet either.

TheEmpire, you know that animals practice homosexual sex and coupling as well, right? Homosexuality is natural. Homosexual procreation is unnatural - but thats because its impossible.

[terafloop]

If she is taking the route that marriage is a "religious concept," if you look at the very first book in the Bible, we see that people were in polygamous marriages, Genesis 4:23, so her idea of a marriage being between one man and one woman since the beginning of time is BS.

Secondly, if her argument is that gay marriage should not be allowed because only a man and a woman can have kids then she should be consistent and advocate outlawing marriage between impotent men and women, or marriage between men and women who never want to have kids. Is she willing to say God hates impotent married couples?

[KingoftheWoad]

"marriage is a religious concept"

Of course it isn't, it's a legal contract. It regularizes and makes publc the fact of a couple's cohabitation; to be blunt, it identfies who you can have sex with.

Historically, marriage was also about property rights; the concept of legitimacy was of vital importance in determining who inherited property and title. In that context, gay marriage would seem an irrelevance, since it would not be producing any offspring, unless children were adopted.

The main argument that occurs to me is semantic, and actually I'm changing my mind about this partly through spending time on R&S. It goes: you can't have gay marriage in the way that you can't have a single-sex game of mixed doubles. It's there so that men and women can get together, that's what the word means. Let gay people have equal rights of course, give their unions full legal status, but don't call them marriage because that's the one thing they can't be. Call them cviil partnerships, as we do in England. What's next, are gay men going to talk about their wives, who just happen to be men? Lesbians about their female husbands? For pity's sake, words mean something, you can't mess about with them like this.

However, if gay people want to use marriage terminology to describe their relationships, I don't think that I as a straight man have any right to say they shouldn't. It means that the word marriage is going to change its meaning. But that happens to words. We'll get over it.

[AB]

Nope. There are no non-religious arguments against gay marriage. It should be legal due to separation of church and state. Same with gay adoption.

I'll add that I'm childfree by choice. By one argument (marriage is for children) I can't get married either.

[MartinS]

You can only oppose it on purely logical grounds if you accept certain observational theories about human societies and the impact of laws on behavior.

For instance, one could point back to civilizations like Rome and say that one of the symptoms of decay that led to the fall of that empire was a falling away from traditional marriage and sexual morality.

One could argue from a psychological viewpoint that children need established norms of behavior when they are raised and whether or not so called "gay marriage" is legal, it is certainly not normative and could send mixed messages to children as they enter adolescence.

On could argue from a biological viewpoint and throw in the continuation of the species to point out that the design of the human body clearly indicates that men and women were made to have sexual relations with members of the opposite sex and that in the truest sense of the word, it is a perversion of nature for people of the same sex to have sex with one another.

PERVER'SION, n. [L. perversus.] The act of perverting; a turning from truth or propriety; a diverting from the true intent or object; change to something worse. We speak of the perversion of the laws, when they are misinterpreted or misapplied; a perversion of reason, when it is misemployed; a perversion of Scripture, when it is willfully misinterpreted or misapplied,

A politcian could make an argument against it on the grounds of the potential cost to tax payers and businesses.

But in the end, the final argument and the only one that really matters is "What does our Maker say about it?".

Matthew 19:4 "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' 5 and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Jesus reiterated a passage from Genesis chapter 2 in order to show that God's plan for human marriage has always been for it to be between one man and one woman.

[Eliaas2]

it is not something I would welcome with open hands, but I would not oppose it in word or deed, for I believe in welcoming th fulfillment of God's word