Brain Fertilizer

No sodomy in the back rooms of bars? What are we supposed to do, play Monopoly? ;)

Anyway, I will only say that you're right about 2. Well, you're right that the loudmouths making the arguments are mostly opportunistic, parasitic, self-serving bloodsuckers. I'm not sure that they're any worse than any other single-issue activists, but that doesn't excuse them.

As far as 1 goes...sigh. Yes, sure, there are people who are at the wrong place and at weak points in their lives, and they become homosexuals in terms of activity, even though they're probably heterosexual by fundamental orientation. I know that it's pointless to argue with you over this, so I won't get all steamed up about it, but still...America is a free society. Whatever way of life you're talking about, there are going to be people who fall into it that would have been happier living another way. It just isn't feasible to use government-sanctioned behavior modification to prevent every good kid from going astray.

Homosexuality is not for the weak-minded, even if it's your fundamental orientation, and I agree that it's not right to paper over the risks people are going to be getting themselves into if they make certain choices. But I have not, in my entire flaming adult life, seen any evidence that there's a "significant number" of people who signed on to long-term homosexual living because they were somehow recruited into it. Being gay is viewed as countercultural, so it's going to have a certain appeal for people with immature resentments against authority to work through. No one can do anything about that. But I don't see why it affects the options bona fide homosexuals who accept responsibility for their choices should have.

I thought it was "Chutes and Ladders" vice "Monopoly"...but different strokes....err what ever floats your boat.

Anyhow, I'll toss my couple o' pennies in the mix. Your second point seems valid and good enough for me. But I would also argue (as have others) that marriage is a religious rite and or sacrament depending on the faith of your choice....so if there would be a church out there which allows for same sex unions in the name of (their) god so be it. But the only thing the government should have any say in is the legality of a "civil union" or that which is not "blessed by (insert deity here)", but is recognized by the state.

Yet the activists would stomp their feet at this and cry foul. Sorry, you cannot mandate that my church support your wanting to be married...but even the President has supported a civil union.

There is much more going on then just wanting the perks...It would appear the agenda of those pushing for the marriage proposal are in fact going after a much larger prize.

This entire rant smacks of an internal dialogue, justifying bigotry. Yep, I said it, "You're a bigot.", and you have to justify that fact to yourself because you know that it's wrong to be a bigot. Not just wrong but weak-minded and just plain old run of the mill stupid. Here's another fact, you have a close friend whose gay and afraid to let you know that because you are a stupid bigot. This person may be married and may have children but he/she knows he/she is gay and not happy in a hetero-sexual relationship. He/She loves his/her children and maybe even his/her wife/husband. It's biology moron. It exists and it's normal for a percentage of any mammalian population. To try and couch this in anything other then, "they're differant so let's persecute them" terms is completely disingenuous. And as I stated at the front of this post, is in need of massive rationalizations

Different understandings of the same terminology might be tripping us up here.
I left "significant" specifically vague (specifically vague? Sheesh, I need some sleep!) because I don't want to put even a broad stamp like 10% on it. I freely admit I have no idea how many.
I've said before that one way I understand homosexuality is like smoking. Some people end up doing it for self-protection, some people because the cool people are doing it, some because they tried it once and are hooked on the sensations, some because they just seem to be natural smokers.
I agree with you about people being adults....but what if they aren't adults? The scope of the "experimentation" with homosexuality that I saw in my Drama experiences...the number of Senior One-Acts that revolved around "becoming comfortable with homosexuality" really makes me question how many would have ended up homosexual if they had majored in, say, accounting? Maybe all, because I can certainly see how perhaps it was merely that potential homosexuals are attracted to the Arts, or even marginalized to the Arts.
Dawn quotes the figure that condoms fail to protect users from HIV-infection 15% of the time. That's if the individual even uses them, and the recent rise of syphillis and other non-HIV STDs among the homosexual population indicates that maybe there is some resurgent complacency there.
So even engaging "responsibly" in homosexual behavior has a significant chance of a death sentence with a lifelong-dependency on a cocktail of drugs as your only lifeline.

Is society served if the general message is: "Go ahead! Unfettered fulfilling of your every sexual desire is a guaranteed right, and we'll find some way to make society shoulder the costs to protect you from your decisions!"? Or would it be better if society said: "This behavior is not barred, but the natural consequences can be quite horrible if intervention/protections are unsuccessful or ignored."? Please note: this isn't limited to homosexuality, it's a point I'm trying to make about heterosexual extra-marital sex as well. But we're never going to get heterosexuals to wait until a committed marriage if the bottom-line assumption of the currently-powerful SSM lobby is that "sexual fulfillment is a basic human right at any age".

All this is predicated on the idea that people want to believe they are good and their decisions were right, even if the objective evidence is to the contrary. I am quite content in my life, and I know peace. Part of it is my faith in Jesus, of course, but it is also true that I have learned to not seek sensual fulfillment or physical sensations as an end in themselves. I make my choices based on what is most likely to be good for me and my family in the long-term rather in the fulfillment of immediate urges. Add to this what I understand about something as basic as language: No matter what the parents intend, kids speak the same language/accent as their friends. The only way to control the language the child uses is to control the environment. Even if the parents use one language exclusively to speak with their children, if the child's friends speak a different language, it is that second language the kids will speak. Now, if something as simple as language is so strongly influenced by environment, might sexual activity also be? I think so. If so, I would prefer to not raise my children, and for them to raise their children, and so on, in an environment that encourages them to experiment with homosexual behavior by presenting it as just another equally-valid choice.

Maybe another way to put it is that many homosexuals pushing for SSM say that it's what they want/need to be happy...but since they weren't happy with other successes, I'll bet they would find SSM to be only a temporary satisfaction, as well. I'm not willing to let them change society in the name of personal happiness/peace when the first place they should look to make changes is within themselves.

"Dad",
LOL!
You might want to look up the word "projection" in the dictionary...

SSM -- no such thing. Marriage involves two genders. Redefining "marriage" to remove one gender or the other makes the term meaningless.

But no matter. In a way, this is a good thing. It demonstrates to us who believe just how far the culture has fallen. This shouldn't be the surprise it is to me and perhaps others. It's not like Jesus didn't predict all this would unfold this way: Jesus said the time would come when men would no longer tolerate sound doctrine, and would go chasing after their own lusts, and they would raise up leaders among themselves who would applaud them for doing so. Well, the time's here. It's part of God's plan, apparently.

The key is to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and if our culture wants to repeat the errors of ancient Rome and Canaan, we can't say we weren't warned.

Okay, Nathan, forgive me for letting you have it with both barrels here, but it drives me up the wall when people pull things like this. You quote Dawn:

A choice. Yes, that's it. A 15 percent choice of dying from AIDS. That is the probability that a person will be exposed to HIV while having sex when using using a condom.

But she isn't actually quoting her own source:

Available data provides strong evidence for the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission - approximately 85 percent risk reduction.

I don't think that either of you is an idiot, obviously, but there is no way anyone with even a passing familiarity with the concept of percent difference can fail to see the problem here. Using condoms leaves 15% of the original risk that HIV will be transmitted (assuming sex with an HIV+ partner). But the original risk is not 100%, at least not for an individual encounter, so you cannot just say (100 - 85)/100 = 15% risk of getting AIDS. (Your formulation, that condoms fail 15% of the time, is at least a little better, but you're still wrong that she's quoting her source.)

FWIW, I've posted about this yet again, too.

Okay, that's a good point. It's also the strength of blogs, since we can all go and read for ourselves. I took it the other way (well, duh: I said as much), but I can see that perhaps I was taking the suggestion.

Still, though: condoms fail due to breakage, slippage, improper use, etc. Advocating condoms only and letting people go about their normal sexual lives is why we still have 40,000 new HIV cases a year. Short of criminal rape, in which a condom isn't going to help much either, abstinence does prevent HIV perfectly.
I do think there is a resistance to encouraging moral choices based on religious principles based on even more faulty logic, i.e., "I believe religion is a crock of manure, therefore anything religion suggests must also be a crock of manure." That's ridiculous. Either religion is actually God's word, in which case we should probably listen...or it's not, but passing off as God's word to a significant number of people because it does work, because it does represent accumulated wisdom proven over time in many various cultures and situations, in which case we still would be stupid to ignore it.

It's about time to rewrite my Case for Morality post, eh?

IB Bill, you must have posted while I was writing yesterday, because I missed it. And yes, your view is pretty much the way I see and why I'm not too upset.
Again, I do think homosexuality is like smoking...maybe we do need to let it run its course so its general harmfulness to the individual can become clear. Lord knows no one currently practicing it admits the possibility that homosexual behavior might not be a good thing.

Homoexuality in all the mammalian populations? ...hmm, what purpose would that serve ? Think very hard about that one, especially those of you who belong exclusively to the cult of Darwin.---While people should be able to control their own property and decide "who gets to be by their side at the hopital bed", there are legal ways to accomplish those ends. It's all very simple: How can people who can't mate, marry? It could never mean the same thing. Instead of attempting to alter the meaning of marraige, maybe the community should develop its own institution.

To legalize SSM is to degrade our society, what are would youdo if you child saw a gay couple and said that looks like fun I wan't to be like them? It's moraly wrong, yet being American they have a "right" being deined to them. I don't agree with it but as long as they don't influence my family (which is impossible) I'm okay, yet it's not possible, why because everybody wants to vioce their views on TV, they don't care what happens to others, just that they get what they want