Gay marriage in Australia

[Tom Sawyer]

This whole issue is a bit of a beat up the way everyone is painting it.

You are getting your panties in a knot because I suggest that creating a very similar legal structure to marriage to accommodate the needs of homosexuals would be a reasonable solution.

This does not align exactly with the politically correct attitude to have towards this issue and it becomes a huge hissy fit for the homosexual political bandwagon.

From a practical perspective there is not a massive amount of difference between my solution and your solution.

The outrage seems to grow exponentially in inverse proportion to the size of difference that is suggested may exist between what is legally and culturally appropriate for homosexuals and heterosexuals. If I suggest a solution that is 99% the same but with a tiny difference then the protests will reach seismic crescendo proportions.

The whole debate seems to be primarily emotional rather than logical.

Just an oblique observation on the arc of the thread. Nothing really to add to what has been said - although it seems a shame to let it run out of impetus on the home straight to 1000 posts.

Holy shit, dude. The fact that you're accusing others of basing their arguments off of emotion instead of logic is the most unintentionally ironic thing I've ever read.

The world is a far better place with people like you being relegated to the dustbin of history.

 

[Keith&Co.]

This whole issue is a bit of a beat up the way everyone is painting it.
You are getting your panties in a knot because I suggest that creating a very similar legal structure to marriage to accommodate the needs of homosexuals would be a reasonable solution.

Not at all. My panties are in a knot over your refusal to engage in a discussion of the reasonable nature of your suggestion. You SAY things but never support them.

And, also, because you paint everyone who disagrees with you as a liar who's taking their position as part of a PC Fad.

This does not align exactly with the politically correct attitude to have towards this issue and it becomes a huge hissy fit for the homosexual political bandwagon.

You keep showing that you don't understand that actual politics behind this movement, either in the distribution of opinion or the motivations of others. So you're in no position to dictate what we SHOULD be feeling or saying.

From a practical perspective there is not a massive amount of difference between my solution and your solution.

Just the massive man-hours to implement your solution, and the court cases that will be entailed, and the end result being that gays are still second class citizens.... Other than that, no, hardly any difference. Do you know what the word 'massive' means? Or is that a PC term?

If I suggest a solution that is 99% the same but with a tiny difference then the protests will reach seismic crescendo proportions.

See?
Right there, you show that you do not understand the opinions held by anyone else in this argument.
The fact that your way fucking enshrines discrimination is a bit more than 1% of difference.

And even if you can support the value, I mean, if you can prove you didn't just pull that number out of your tight ass, it's a very critical point of difference.

The whole debate seems to be primarily emotional rather than logical.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, god, I fell out of my chair, there, mojo. Thanks for that. WHOO! I can't breathe....

Just an oblique observation on the arc of the thread.

Oh, yeah. Facts have always been on YOUR side of the argument. Starting with 'marriage' being a universal tradition going back 10's of 1000's of years. That's when WE got emotional....

 

[Rhea]

You are getting your panties in a knot because I suggest that creating a very similar legal structure to marriage to accommodate the needs of homosexuals would be a reasonable solution.

You're thinking, "one group will be 'allowed' to protect their children through adoption and one group won't" is something you would call "very similar" and hence "reasonable"?


Or,
you were thinking "one group can celebrate openly, the others needs to acknowledge their 'aberrance' publicly" is something you would call "very similar" and hence "reasonable"?

This does not align exactly with the politically correct majority attitude to have towards this issue and it becomes a huge hissy fit for the homosexual political bandwagon majority of Australians.

It does not align at all with equality.

When are you going to address (or even acknowledge) the whole history of "separate but equal" and how that went? You allergic to facts? Too busy being emotional?

From a practical perspective there is not a massive amount of difference between my solution and your solution.

Are you seriously saying that the ability to have legal care for the children in your house is not a massive difference from a practical perspective?
I already know that you don't think "separate but equal" has any practical impact. Despite, you know, the FACTS that it created a huge difference.

The outrage seems to grow exponentially in inverse proportion to the size of difference that is suggested may exist between what is legally and culturally appropriate for homosexuals and heterosexuals. If I suggest a solution that is 99% the same but with a tiny difference then the protests will reach seismic crescendo proportions.

Good question. Do you suppose that as the gap narrows the "reasons" boil down to a more and more concentrated syrup of hate? And the strong the hate, the more people react?

The whole debate seems to be primarily emotional rather than logical.

Only on your side, dude.
FACT homosexuality has existed since the dawn of humanity
FACT it hasn't stopped our species
FACT countries have dropped their bans and nothing bad has happened
FACT homosexual parents are just as good as hetero
FACT separate but equal is both unequal and unjust (and also stupid)

You haven't presented any facts. Just your feelings. Which are hateful.

Just an oblique observation on the arc of the thread. Nothing really to add to what has been said - although it seems a shame to let it run out of impetus on the home straight to 1000 posts.

Not a shame at all. You just need to open your eyes and your heart and stop being hateful and petty and mean and we'll all happily let it drop.

 

[Jarhyn]

One thing of note: I keep suggesting that instead of separate but equal, I propose that both heterosexuals and straights (and for that matter asexual persons and platonic domestic partnerships) all get treated equally with something that ISNT called 'marriage' in the laws, and that marriage no longer be validated by any civil authority whatever. Let churches and persons and whatever else decide if what they have is a marriage. Leave the sexual bits entirely out of civil domestic partnership contracts.

 

[Rhea]

It seems that it would be easier to take the sexual bits out of marriage, and let the churches create the "new thing" for whatever they want it to be. It would be some new thing, because marriage has NEVER been a monolith. So marriage should be the name for all domestic partnerships, and the churches can create some "sacred" thing for themselves.

Marriage has a meaning, it's fairly secular and pragmatic at this point. Let it continue its meaning. Then the fundies can have their "sacred binding" and talk about it all they want.

 

[Keith&Co.]

It seems that it would be easier to take the sexual bits out of marriage, and let the churches create the "new thing" for whatever they want it to be. It would be some new thing, because marriage has NEVER been a monolith. So marriage should be the name for all domestic partnerships, and the churches can create some "sacred" thing for themselves.

Marriage has a meaning, it's fairly secular and pragmatic at this point. Let it continue its meaning. Then the fundies can have their "sacred binding" and talk about it all they want.

Yeah, if they're the ones that don't want to share, they can come up with the term all for their own.
Maybe the Catholics could have The Sex Sacrament.
Protestants the It's A No-no No More Union.
Mormons the 'Got One Endowment.'

And each church could decide if their marriage included straights, gays, bis, divorce, infertile couples, May-December romances, Lolitas, Gold-diggers, incest....

 

[blastula]

Churches can and already do decide what their sanctioned marriages mean right now, they are free to marry and not marry whomever they want. Marriage licenses and law only applies to how government considers marriage.

 

[mojorising]

One thing of note: I keep suggesting that instead of separate but equal, I propose that both heterosexuals and straights (and for that matter asexual persons and platonic domestic partnerships) all get treated equally with something that ISNT called 'marriage' in the laws, and that marriage no longer be validated by any civil authority whatever.

I think this is a reasonable solution.

The law should define a legal structure intended for a committed relationship between 2 people regardless of gender.

This should be done using a neutral legal term such as 'civil partnership'. Existing cultural institutions such as heterosexual marriages and homosexual partnerships could both be governed by this new legal structure.

The thing that is annoying about the 'redefinition of marriage' approach is the way that this is presented in such a holier-than-thou morally goody-two-shoes way where society's moral evangelists get to force the 'sharing' of marriage with homosexuals upon a sceptical but cowed population to achieve the ubiquitously righteous goal of 'equality'.

Cause y'know everybody learns at kindy that 'sharing' is 'nice' don't they? and everybody learns from the 21st century morality police that any cause that co-opts the word 'equality' into its title (however inappropriately) must be the good guys team right?

With the new legal structure in place we can then leave debating the rights and wrongs of homosexual child adoption, public displays of homosexuality, how to present the concept of homosexuality to children and whether homosexuality is a developmental defect or not for another day.

 

[J842P]

One thing of note: I keep suggesting that instead of separate but equal, I propose that both heterosexuals and straights (and for that matter asexual persons and platonic domestic partnerships) all get treated equally with something that ISNT called 'marriage' in the laws, and that marriage no longer be validated by any civil authority whatever. Let churches and persons and whatever else decide if what they have is a marriage. Leave the sexual bits entirely out of civil domestic partnership contracts.

I've actually always advocated this solution, but it doesn't seem very realistic, politically. So, as long as that is the case, homosexual marriages should be allowed.

 

[Jarhyn]

Now that we agree (on most sides) that this is the correct solution for all involved and that THIS is what you will advocate, I believe it is now time to have those other debates. The cleared answer to all of the above being that homosexuality is the exact moral equivalent of any other kind of consensual sexuality.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Now that we agree (on most sides) that this is the correct solution for all involved and that THIS is what you will advocate, I believe it is now time to have those other debates. The cleared answer to all of the above being that homosexuality is the exact moral equivalent of any other kind of consensual sexuality.

Yeah... Mojo wants to keep homosexuality from being seen as equal to heterosexuality so he'll ban marriage from them, then ban marriage from EVERYONE so they're all equal before the whatever-agreed-upon term to be memed at a later date.

Then there's no barrier to whatevership's all adopting kids, too, since they're all equal before the law.

 

[Jarhyn]

Now that we agree (on most sides) that this is the correct solution for all involved and that THIS is what you will advocate, I believe it is now time to have those other debates. The cleared answer to all of the above being that homosexuality is the exact moral equivalent of any other kind of consensual sexuality.

Yeah... Mojo wants to keep homosexuality from being seen as equal to heterosexuality so he'll ban marriage from them, then ban marriage from EVERYONE so they're all equal before the whatever-agreed-upon term to be memed at a later date.

Then there's no barrier to whatevership's all adopting kids, too, since they're all equal before the law.

to be perfectly honest, I very much dislike marriage being in the laws as it is. Domestic partnership is moving further and further in the direction of nonsexual and platonic arrangements. I agree there should be nothing standing in the way of any partners seeking to raise a child. But for whatever reason, marriage laws assume sex, expect sex, and regulate sex. 'Marriage' is a sex contract. It is a legal, official contract of which some significant fraction is about sex. I find laws regulating who is allowed to have consensual sex with whom are unjustified and are even on the face of them unethical. I don't want to BAN it or ever see it banned. I just don't want it to be something the government acknowledges in any way.

I like 'domestic partnership contract'. It's descriptive and unambiguous. It couldn't mean one of a bazillion different cultural constructs or any of just as many particular views from within a culture of what it might be. It doesn't assume sex, it doesn't assume romance is necessary. It doesn't expect kids or imply a family. It is sterile and clinical and exact in what it is, and what it isn't. 'Marriage' is a fuzzy, ill-defined, oft argued, arguably religious, and otherwise ambiguous term. It has no meaning outside a cultural context. We have no business legislating what an 'official' version of any cultural construct might be, let alone one so disputed.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Mojo.

Why do you only want to know what MALE posters want to happen to their MALE children with respect to MEN adopting them?

Your own focus is much narrower than the range of people you want to limit, and I begin to understand that all the rational statements you ignore are overlooked because they don't address your real concern.

Rest assured that if homosexuality is genetic, as you concede, then all the domestic interactions these putative adopted children witness will just teach them how to interact with whatever gender their inner nature chooses for them.

But I am curious why women's insights aren't important and female children aren't important and the child raising abilities of female couples don't factor in.

Also curious about the "reproductive disability" of gay couples. There are thousands of gay couples with children biologically related to one of them, which puts them on a par with the blended families that get your seal of approval. There are thousands of couples who get your seal of approval who choose not to breed, or are ACTUALLY disabled in this respect. That puts them on a par with homosexual couples.

You can't have it both ways.

 

[mojorising]

Why do you only want to know what MALE posters want to happen to their MALE children with respect to MEN adopting them?

I think women are the natural primary care-giver for children so I don't find lesbian's looking after kids as much of a problem as homosexual men. For me 2 homosexual men adopting an unrelated baby boy is the most objectionable scenario.

Rest assured that if homosexuality is genetic, as you concede,

I don't concede this. We don't know the causes of homosexuality. They may be genetic or from conditioning or both or something else.

Also curious about the "reproductive disability" of gay couples.

Homosexuality is unarguably a reproductive disability. Of course it can be got around by forcing yourself to copulate against your desires with a member of the opposite sex but without knowingly working around the disability you are not going to be joining in with the birds and the bees and the educated fleas.

I don't buy the idea that the traditional male female couple family environment is an artificial construct. I think for a child the natural environment is to have a mother and a father and that homosexuals should be behind heterosexuals in the adoption queue.

 

[Jarhyn]

I think women are the natural primary care-giver for children so I don't find lesbian's looking after kids as much of a problem as homosexual men. For me 2 homosexual men adopting an unrelated baby boy is the most objectionable scenario.

Rest assured that if homosexuality is genetic, as you concede,

I don't concede this. We don't know the causes of homosexuality. They may be genetic or from conditioning or both or something else.

Also curious about the "reproductive disability" of gay couples.

Homosexuality is unarguably a reproductive disability. Of course it can be got around by forcing yourself to copulate against your desires with a member of the opposite sex but without knowingly working around the disability you are not going to be joining in with the birds and the bees and the educated fleas.

I don't buy the idea that the traditional male female couple family environment is an artificial construct. I think for a child the natural environment is to have a mother and a father and that homosexuals should be behind heterosexuals in the adoption queue.

Throwing a few more cowchips into the pile I see. A thing is only a disability if it inconveniences a person. I would say heterosexuals have the greater reproductive disability: the inability to turn off reproduction. Of course they can work around the disability with condoms or birth control, but they need treatments. Of course they can try anal, but women just don't get the same thing out of it that guys can so generally it doesn't work very well.

The natural environment for children is in a savanna or under a tree, pissing and shitting itself in the open air. It is an environment of starvation, need, and extremely high mortality rates. So by your logic, we should be air dropping our babies on islands and villiages of uncontacted peoples

 

[Rhea]

I think

mojo, we've already determined that what you"think" has litttle relationship to reality.

And you still have not answered (and you really must, at long last, if you have any decency,)

Are you aware that you are advocating that it's okay to pass laws that harm others based on what one guy thinks!?

And your mnd does not see the OBVIOUS flaw in this practice?

You just keep saying it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

"I think, therefore law"
And we ask you for studies and you just repeat, well, in my personal view, "I think, therefore law"

And _we_ show data, which you ignore and repeat, "I think, therefore law"
And you just look like a narcissistic idiot for ignoring all the ACTUAL data that shows what you think to be bunk.

After all these pages. Still no data from you, just this claim that what exists in your head should be law to others.

God, it's idiotic.

women are the natural primary care-giver for children so I don't find lesbian's looking after kids as much of a problem as homosexual men.

"I don't find," ignoring the _data_ that we have shown you that significant numbers of women are not good caretakes and significant numbers of men _are_. But your broad-brush world is binary. On-off no nuance or variation.

For me 2 homosexual men adopting an unrelated baby boy is the most objectionable scenario.

Yeah, yeah, "for you" with no reason except hate. No data, no history, just your mind.

Also curious about the "reproductive disability" of gay couples.

Homosexuality is unarguably a reproductive disability. Of course it can be got around by forcing yourself to copulate against your desires with a member of the opposite sex but without knowingly working around the disability you are not going to be joining in with the birds and the bees and the educated fleas.

I don't buy the idea that the traditional male female couple family environment is an artificial construct. I think for a child the natural environment is to have a mother and a father and that homosexuals should be behind heterosexuals in the adoption queue.

Oh, have you officially changed your status and they should not be "banned" from adoption anymore? Glad you've open your eyes just a peek, anyway.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I think women are the natural primary care-giver for children so I don't find lesbian's looking after kids as much of a problem as homosexual men. For me 2 homosexual men adopting an unrelated baby boy is the most objectionable scenario.

Homosexuality is unarguably a reproductive disability. Of course it can be got around by forcing yourself to copulate against your desires with a member of the opposite sex but without knowingly working around the disability you are not going to be joining in with the birds and the bees and the educated fleas.

I don't buy the idea that the traditional male female couple family environment is an artificial construct. I think for a child the natural environment is to have a mother and a father and that homosexuals should be behind heterosexuals in the adoption queue.

I can only respond with "I know, but WHY?"

You have made a number of statements about what you think, usually in opposition to the facts, but never once given a reason why anyone would think that.

 

[mojorising]

I thought this thread would have got a bump since there is a postal survey scheduled for Australian registered voters

http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/home/AMLPS+-+Process

 

[Keith&Co.]

I thought this thread would have got a bump since there is a postal survey scheduled for Australian registered voters

http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/home/AMLPS+-+Process

Maybe the result's'd be worth bumping...

 

[bilby]

I thought this thread would have got a bump since there is a postal survey scheduled for Australian registered voters

http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/home/AMLPS+-+Process

Maybe the result's'd be worth bumping...

Not really. The results are not seriously in doubt, nor are they in any way binding on anyone.

The entire exercise is just an excuse for the Arshole wing of Australian Christianity to get taxpayer funding for their abuse of the LGBTI community, with the usual legal barriers to outright falsehoods in advertising suspended.

This is a staggering misuse of public money, to nominally answer a question to which everyone already knows the answer, in a way that leaves the government free to completely disregard the results, regardless of what they are.

It's a no-lose for the Arsholes; the expected result will change nothing, but the anger in the community over the very existence of the survey (and the resulting opportunities for the public dissemination of dangerous lies) could result in a low response rate from the 'yes' camp, and anything other than the expected overwhelming 'yes' vote will be used as a stick to beat the rest of us for decades.