Are the legal rights granted by marriage...

markin ball

...in place because of "love" or "attraction" or something else? And if the answer is "something else" does that mean "love" or "attraction" is probably not the best basis to support a LEGAL ARGUMENT for granting same sex marriages equivalent rights and responsibilities to that of opposite sex marriages?

polaris_x

something else: equality

Jason P

Why let the government control love in the first place?

justam

markin ball wrote:

...in place because of "love" or "attraction" or something else? And if the answer is "something else" does that mean "love" or "attraction" is probably not the best basis to support a LEGAL ARGUMENT for granting same sex marriages equivalent rights and responsibilities to that of opposite sex marriages?

How about "fairness" as a reason for granting same sex marriages? At the moment, some adults are excluded from the whole process.

mikepegg44

markin ball wrote:

...in place because of "love" or "attraction" or something else? And if the answer is "something else" does that mean "love" or "attraction" is probably not the best basis to support a LEGAL ARGUMENT for granting same sex marriages equivalent rights and responsibilities to that of opposite sex marriages?

love and attraction is not the best basis for any legal argument. The basis of any argument that talks about love and attraction is also probably adding to the larger point of legal equality and freedom. Which are good legal arguments

markin ball

polaris_x wrote:

something else: equality

The legal rights in place are because of equality? Can you explain this to me?

markin ball

mikepegg44 wrote:

markin ball wrote:

...in place because of "love" or "attraction" or something else? And if the answer is "something else" does that mean "love" or "attraction" is probably not the best basis to support a LEGAL ARGUMENT for granting same sex marriages equivalent rights and responsibilities to that of opposite sex marriages?

love and attraction is not the best basis for any legal argument. The basis of any argument that talks about love and attraction is also probably adding to the larger point of legal equality and freedom. Which are good legal arguments

My problem is this: All citizens currently get all the rights and priveleges of marriage if we marry someone of the opposite sex. The very unfortunate thing for homosexual people is, of course, they cannot marry the ones they love. The discrimination, legally speaking, seems to occur when you put love into the equation. So is love a component of the marriage contract, legally speaking, which grants/assigns the current rights and responsibilities of marriage?

keeponrockin

markin ball wrote:

mikepegg44 wrote:

markin ball wrote:

...in place because of "love" or "attraction" or something else? And if the answer is "something else" does that mean "love" or "attraction" is probably not the best basis to support a LEGAL ARGUMENT for granting same sex marriages equivalent rights and responsibilities to that of opposite sex marriages?

love and attraction is not the best basis for any legal argument. The basis of any argument that talks about love and attraction is also probably adding to the larger point of legal equality and freedom. Which are good legal arguments

My problem is this: All citizens currently get all the rights and priveleges of marriage if we marry someone of the opposite sex. The very unfortunate thing for homosexual people is, of course, they cannot marry the ones they love.

The same could be said in the 1960s when interracial marriages weren't allowed.

Prince Of Dorkness

Amazingly enough I'm not really going to take the bait on this one other than to say it seems like some people feel the need to scramble around moving the goal posts.

I've seen many reasons to limit marriage to opposite sex couples...

It's to raise children
It's a religious thing
It's always been one man one woman
It's so men can support their wifves who stay home


Not a single one can't be shot down with a five word sentence.

I'm getting tired of hearing new reasons to play keep away. If you expect me to believe that Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears short-lived marriages were traditional Christian unions borne from love and meant to form a bed for procreation and so they could stay at home as house wives while their husbands supported them... Well I don't and neither do you.

The good thing is that those absurd arguments just show more people every day how stupid this argument is. So... Please... Keep going.

markin ball

keeponrockin wrote:

The same could be said in the 1960s when interracial marriages weren't allowed.

I'm not sure its the same thing. In the interracial scenario, all persons, both black and white, were discriminated against. By replacing black and white with homosexual and heterosexual, the hypothetical replacement analogy would be heterosexuals were not allowed to marry homosexuals.

markin ball

Prince Of Dorkness wrote:

Amazingly enough I'm not really going to take the bait on this one other than to say it seems like some people feel the need to scramble around moving the goal posts.

I've seen many reasons to limit marriage to opposite sex couples...

It's to raise children
It's a religious thing
It's always been one man one woman
It's so men can support their wifves who stay home


Not a single one can't be shot down with a five word sentence.

I'm getting tired of hearing new reasons to play keep away. If you expect me to believe that Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears short-lived marriages were traditional Christian unions borne from love and meant to form a bed for procreation and so they could stay at home as house wives while their husbands supported them... Well I don't and neither do you.

The good thing is that those absurd arguments just show more people every day how stupid this argument is. So... Please... Keep going.

The only thing I'm trying to bait you into is a legal discussion. In fact, to use your analogy, I'm trying to find out where the goal posts actually are.

Prince Of Dorkness

markin ball wrote:

The only thing I'm trying to bait you into is a legal discussion. In fact, to use your analogy, I'm trying to find out where the goal posts actually are.

That's the whole problem.

They are everywhere. And imaginary.

Every person who supports marriage inequality has a different acid test.

They say marriage is for procreation but we let senior citizens get married and there are plenty of couples who adopt kids or choose not to have them.

Some say it's because marriage has always been one man and one woman in a RELIGOUS ceremony.

There have been many cultures that support polygamy, you can get married in a grocery store by an Elvis impersonator and there doesn't have to be religious to be legal.

Some simply say that letting us have equal rights will lead to people fucking their dog, lead to straight people divorcing (because they don't ever do that now) and child molesting.

Some say it's for some other reason that has no basis in reality. I'm tired of talking about abstracts and trying to justify why I want the same protections for my family.

mikepegg44

markin ball wrote:

mikepegg44 wrote:

markin ball wrote:

...in place because of "love" or "attraction" or something else? And if the answer is "something else" does that mean "love" or "attraction" is probably not the best basis to support a LEGAL ARGUMENT for granting same sex marriages equivalent rights and responsibilities to that of opposite sex marriages?

love and attraction is not the best basis for any legal argument. The basis of any argument that talks about love and attraction is also probably adding to the larger point of legal equality and freedom. Which are good legal arguments

My problem is this: All citizens currently get all the rights and priveleges of marriage if we marry someone of the opposite sex. The very unfortunate thing for homosexual people is, of course, they cannot marry the ones they love. The discrimination, legally speaking, seems to occur when you put love into the equation. So is love a component of the marriage contract, legally speaking, which grants/assigns the current rights and responsibilities of marriage?

No love doesn't need to be a part of the contract legally speaking. However the state not allowing people to enter into a legal contract based on the participants gender is state sponsored discrimination isn't it? Two people can enter into a contract...

JonnyPistachio

I'm guessing (and hoping) gay marriage will be legally available nationwide one day.

I was once propositioned to marry a Polish girl as a contract, for $15K, just so she could stay in the country. She was a friend of a friend...I almost did it. She said she would pay me $5k up front and $300 monthy for XX years...I asked her how I was guaranteed that she would pay me. She said they'd write up a contract. haha a contract for something illegal! Too funny. Thats when I realized that marriage can be a joke to many, a business deal, religious, etc, etc...its all what the individual makes of it.

inlet13

Prince Of Dorkness wrote:

markin ball wrote:

The only thing I'm trying to bait you into is a legal discussion. In fact, to use your analogy, I'm trying to find out where the goal posts actually are.

They say marriage is for procreation but we let senior citizens get married and there are plenty of couples who adopt kids or choose not to have them.

First and foremost, I don't think the government should be involved in marriage at all (heterosexual or homosexual or anything). That's my stance.

But, to play devil's advocate... for the government to have the non-homosexual marriage stance in the issue, let's look at it from their perspective. A government needs revenues to provide benefits. Because of this, the procreation argument is not that easily shot down, in my opinion. The rational for not having same sex marriage would probably go like this... there's ZERO chance of a homosexual couple creating a child / a new tax payer (without some other party involving themselves). So, it's not in the government's interest to grant monetary benefits to that union because, in and of itself, there's zero chance that the union can create offspring (or future tax payers). Now, I'm sure the response to that would be what you wrote above.... there's plenty of heterosexuals who are married that don't procreate. And I think the simple response back would be... They CAN procreate though. And there's no foreseeing if they will or won't. Also, monitoring it would be too costly. So, in conclusion, heterosexual marriage receives benefits because they can procreate (although they don't always) and in doing so, the monetary benefit is paid back on average via the new tax payer created.

Is this a good enough reason? I'm sure the answer from most here will be no.

I just wanted to explain what I think could be another rationale.

Prince Of Dorkness

And you can see how annoying it is when people make up rules on the fly. Marriage has never been about raising children. It was about sharing and acquiring property. Not all straight couples who marry could have kids. My grandfather married at 75 and his wife was 72. They were not going to have kids. 

We also don't ask couples if they plan to have kids when they get a marriage license. Or annul their marriages and charge them with fraud if there are no kids in a year. 

And it's not like there aren't enough kids out there. Orphanages are filled with the unplanned and unwanted kids. 

It's the gay parents who often take the misfit toys. The crack babies with HIV, the disabled, mixed-race children that are the result of rape and abusive relationships. 

We understand giving love to the ones who need it most. 

Gay couples have, and I mean this, shown is what a parent really is. We take in your cast-aways and misfit toys. We welcome them into our families. We define what a family really is and I think there might be a bit of bitterness of our community's altruism. 

And you know what? Many straight couples need surrogate mothers or sperm donors just like gay people. Nobody has ever suggested that they shouldn't get married. 

And of course the "children" is just another in a long line of rules that Christians make up and expect me to follow but they exempt themselves from following. 

Some People hate having to share their place at the top of the hill. 

Doesn't change that the majority of people support equality and the numbers are growing. 


One last thing... The government must be in the business of marriage. There are way too many laws like immigration, property, power of attorney and even things like not having to testify against your spouse. 

You try to end those for straight couples in the interest of keeping playing keep away with marriage equality. Just try. 

norm

Gay marriage, and especially gay parenting, has been in the cross hairs in recent days.

On Jan. 6, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told a New Hampshire audience that children are better off with a father in prison than being raised in a home with lesbian parents and no father at all. And last Monday (Jan. 9), Pope Benedict called gay marriage a threat "to the future of humanity itself," citing the need for children to have heterosexual homes.

But research on families headed by gays and lesbians doesn't back up these dire assertions. In fact, in some ways, gay parents may bring talents to the table that straight parents don't.

Gay parents "tend to be more motivated, more committed than heterosexual parents on average, because they chose to be parents," said Abbie Goldberg, a psychologist at Clark University in Massachusetts who researches gay and lesbian parenting. Gays and lesbians rarely become parents by accident, compared with an almost 50 percent accidental pregnancy rate among heterosexuals, Goldberg said. "That translates to greater commitment on average and more involvement."

And while research indicates that kids of gay parents show few differences in achievement, mental health, social functioning and other measures, these kids may have the advantage of open-mindedness, tolerance and role models for equitable relationships, according to some research. Not only that, but gays and lesbians are likely to provide homes for difficult-to-place children in the foster system, studies show. (Of course, this isn't to say that heterosexual parents can't bring these same qualities to the parenting table.) [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

Adopting the neediest

Gay adoption recently caused controversy in Illinois, where Catholic Charities adoption services decided in November to cease offering services because the state refused funding unless the groups agreed not to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Rather than comply, Catholic Charities closed up shop.

Catholic opposition aside, research suggests that gay and lesbian parents are actually a powerful resource for kids in need of adoption. According to a 2007 report by the Williams Institute and the Urban Institute, 65,000 kids were living with adoptive gay parents between 2000 and 2002, with another 14,000 in foster homes headed by gays and lesbians. (There are currently more than 100,000 kids in foster care in the U.S.)

An October 2011 report by Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that, of gay and lesbian adoptions at more than 300 agencies, 10 percent of the kids placed were older than 6 — typically a very difficult age to adopt out. About 25 percent were older than 3. Sixty percent of gay and lesbian couples adopted across races, which is important given that minority children in the foster system tend to linger. More than half of the kids adopted by gays and lesbians had special needs.

The report didn't compare the adoption preferences of gay couples directly with those of heterosexual couples, said author David Brodzinsky, research director at the Institute and co-editor of "Adoption By Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension of Family Diversity" (Oxford University Press, 2011). But research suggests that gays and lesbians are more likely than heterosexuals to adopt older, special-needs and minority children, he said. Part of that could be their own preferences, and part could be because of discrimination by adoption agencies that puts more difficult children with what caseworkers see as "less desirable" parents.

No matter how you slice it, Brodzinsky told LiveScience, gays and lesbians are highly interested in adoption as a group. The 2007 report by the Urban Institute also found that more than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians in the U.S. would like to adopt. That adds up to an estimated 2 million gay people who are interested in adoption. It's a huge reservoir of potential parents who could get kids out of the instability of the foster system, Brodzinsky said.

"When you think about the 114,000 children who are freed for adoption who continue to live in foster care and who are not being readily adopted, the goal is to increase the pool of available, interested and well-trained individuals to parent these children," Brodzinsky said.

In addition, Brodzinsky said, there's evidence to suggest that gays and lesbians are especially accepting of open adoptions, where the child retains some contact with his or her birth parents. And the statistics bear out that birth parents often have no problem with their kids being raised by same-sex couples, he added.

"Interestingly, we find that a small percentage, but enough to be noteworthy, [of birth mothers] make a conscious decision to place with gay men, so they can be the only mother in their child's life," Brodzinsky said.

Good parenting

Research has shown that the kids of same-sex couples — both adopted and biological kids — fare no worse than the kids of straight couples on mental health, social functioning, school performance and a variety of other life-success measures.

In a 2010 review of virtually every study on gay parenting, New York University sociologist Judith Stacey and University of Southern California sociologist Tim Biblarz found no differences between children raised in homes with two heterosexual parents and children raised with lesbian parents.

"There's no doubt whatsoever from the research that children with two lesbian parents are growing up to be just as well-adjusted and successful" as children with a male and a female parent," Stacey told LiveScience.

There is very little research on the children of gay men, so Stacey and Biblarz couldn't draw conclusions on those families. But Stacey suspects that gay men "will be the best parents on average," she said.

That's a speculation, she said, but if lesbian parents have to really plan to have a child, it's even harder for gay men. Those who decide to do it are thus likely to be extremely committed, Stacey said. Gay men may also experience fewer parenting conflicts, she added. Most lesbians use donor sperm to have a child, so one mother is biological and the other is not, which could create conflict because one mother may feel closer to the kid.

"With gay men, you don't have that factor," she said. "Neither of them gets pregnant, neither of them breast-feeds, so you don't have that asymmetry built into the relationship."

The bottom line, Stacey said, is that people who say children need both a father and a mother in the home are misrepresenting the research, most of which compares children of single parents to children of married couples. Two good parents are better than one good parent, Stacey said, but one good parent is better than two bad parents. And gender seems to make no difference. While you do find broad differences between how men and women parent on average, she said, there is much more diversity within the genders than between them.

"Two heterosexual parents of the same educational background, class, race and religion are more like each other in the way they parent than one is like all other women and one is like all other men," she said. [6 Gender Myths Busted]

Nurturing tolerance

In fact, the only consistent places you find differences between how kids of gay parents and kids of straight parents turn out are in issues of tolerance and open-mindedness, according to Goldberg. In a paper published in 2007 in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Goldberg conducted in-depth interviews with 46 adults with at least one gay parent. Twenty-eight of them spontaneously offered that they felt more open-minded and empathetic than people not raised in their situation.

"These individuals feel like their perspectives on family, on gender, on sexuality have largely been enhanced by growing up with gay parents," Goldberg said.

One 33-year-old man with a lesbian mother told Goldberg, "I feel I'm a more open, well-rounded person for having been raised in a nontraditional family, and I think those that know me would agree. My mom opened me up to the positive impact of differences in people."

Children of gay parents also reported feeling less stymied by gender stereotypes than they would have been if raised in straight households. That's likely because gays and lesbians tend to have more egalitarian relationships than straight couples, Goldberg said. They're also less wedded to rigid gender stereotypes themselves.

"Men and women felt like they were free to pursue a wide range of interests," Goldberg said. "Nobody was telling them, 'Oh, you can't do that, that's a boy thing,' or 'That's a girl thing.'"

Same-sex acceptance

If same-sex marriage does disadvantage kids in any way, it has nothing to do with their parent's gender and everything to do with society's reaction toward the families, said Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell, the author of "Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of Family" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010).

"Imagine being a child living in a state with two parents in which, legally, only one parent is allowed to be their parent," Powell told LiveScience. "In that situation, the family is not seen as authentic or real by others. That would be the disadvantage."

In her research, Goldberg has found that many children of gay and lesbian parents say that more acceptance of gay and lesbian families, not less, would help solve this problem.

In a study published online Jan. 11, 2012, in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Goldberg interviewed another group of 49 teenagers and young adults with gay parents and found that not one of them rejected the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Most cited legal benefits as well as social acceptance.

"I was just thinking about this with a couple of friends and just was in tears thinking about how different my childhood might have been had same-sex marriage been legalized 25 years ago," a 23-year-old man raised by a lesbian couple told Goldberg. "The cultural, legal status of same-sex couples impacts the family narratives of same-sex families — how we see ourselves in relation to the larger culture, whether we see ourselves as accepted or outsiders."

http://news.yahoo.com/why-gay-parents-m ... 02676.html