I love listening to people try to defend their homophobia. It's a real laugh. Except when the people in question are in charge of things, like new Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd, who seems to enjoy making second-class citizens out of gays and lesbians. That aside, let's take a look at some of the common arguments, and how stupid they are:
1.
The God Argument: God does not condone same-sex marriage.
Okay, this is entirely up to interpretation. Some people consider God to be against same-sex marriage, and some people consider God to be for same-sex marriage. Some people consider God to be ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ while some people consider God to be just ‘the Father.’ Some people consider Jesus to have been fathered by God, some people consider Jesus to be a prophet of God, and some people consider Jesus to be God. Some people consider God as a woman, and some people consider God to be fiction. The Bible itself cannot answer any of these questions in a straightforward manner. It's all opinion and interpretation. Letting personal opinion, or the opinion of the church that you personally chose, to affect civil law is obnoxious and arrogant.
2.
The Procreation Argument: One essential reason for marriage is for spawning children.
Heh, nice. So, I guess that means that we will have to void the marriage of any people who are sterile, and any women who have been through menopause, and even people who just choose not to have children. Seriously, do you really expect that argument to hold water? Enact a law that nullifies any marriage that fails to produce children within a few years, and let me know how that turns out.
3.
The Tradition Argument: Marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman, and tradition should not be changed.
Tradition also says that people with dark skin can be taken as slaves, and that women have no right to vote, and that Christians should be fed to lions in front of a large audience. If a tradition is bigoted, discriminatory, prejudiced or narrow-minded then it needs to be cast aside. Hanging onto tradition merely for the sake of tradition, while thousands of people are suffering, is just sick.
4.
The Nature Argument: Homosexuality is unnatural, and thus should not be encouraged.
No, it's natural. Many animals are homosexual in nature and in captivity. National Geographic News has
an article on it.
5.
The Encouragement Argument: Same-sex marriage will only encourage more homosexuality.
Uh, so what? If someone has gay or lesbian tendencies, is it not best to let them exhibit that, rather than repress it? Repressed sexual tendencies lead to bad things, like when priests are denied sex with adult partners, so they start preying on
innocent children. Let people make their own decisions; provided everyone involved is a consenting adult, there should be no issue.
6.
The Slippery-Slope Argument: Same-sex marriage is only the start; if it is accepted, then we will see people marrying animals, children and blow-up dolls.
Well, if you don't understand the concept of
consenting adults, then answering this argument is going to be pointless. Seriously though, if two adults are intelligent enough to identify that they love one-another, then they deserve the right to wed. If it's a child, an animal, or an inanimate object, they they lack the understanding and comprehension to willingly and knowingly enter into a romantic relationship with another individual.
7.
The Sanctity Argument: Allowing same-sex marriage will affect the sanctity of marriage in general.
Okay, let's take a look at some high-profile straight marriages in recent times. Paul McCartney married Heather Mills, and they were divorced after 4½ years, with Heather entering into a very bitter court battle over Paul's money. Britney Spears married Jason Allen Alexander, and they got divorced within 55 hours. Anna Nicole Smith married J. Howard Marshall, when she was 26 years old and he was 89 years old, followed by his death 13 months later, and another bitter court battle over his will. Opposite-sex couples have marriages all the time that lack any form of identifiable ‘sanctity’. Claiming that same-sex marriage would affect sanctity is foolish.
8.
The Filthy Argument: Homosexuality involves activities that are disgusting, so same-sex marriage is inherently dirty.
Whether involved in a same-sex or opposite-sex relationship, there are always going to be activities that might seem disgusting. If you're a straight man, and you're calling a homosexual act filthy, consider how clean your manhood is after you've inserted it into your girlfriend. Everything down there is pretty dirty, so complaining about one thing while committing a similar act is just hypocritical.
9.
The Judeo-Christian Argument: Both Christianity and Judaism do not accept homosexuality, and as marriage is a Judeo-Christian tradition, same-sex marriage is not permissible.
I'm afraid that marriage is not a Judeo-Christian tradition. Many ancient societies celebrated marriage. As a matter of fact, same-sex marriage was celebrated in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the pre-Communist Imperial China. Additionally, in modern day, opposite-sex couples have the option of wedding independently of any church, with non-denominational celebrants; civic proof that modern marriage is independent of any religious link. So claiming that marriage is exclusively Christian and Jewish is ignorant.
10.
The No Love Argument: Same-sex couples are incapable of feeling love for each other, so their marriages would be a sham.
Love is a difficult thing to measure, like any emotion. It cannot be weighed on a scale, counted on a calculator, or timed on a stopwatch. How can a homophobic person truly be expected to understand what a homosexual person might feel towards their partner? While lust exists across all the sexual spectrum (be it homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual), so can love. Some people infer that true romantic love cannot exist within a same-sex coupling, because of the apparent lust observed in some promiscuous groups in the LGBTI subculture. But that is like inferring that true romantic love cannot exist within an opposite-sex coupling, because of there are some straight couples that like to experience such things as ‘wife-swapping’ and ‘swingers clubs.’ Personally, I do not enjoy the concept of promiscuity; I love my partner deeply and I could not allow either of us to demean our love for one another with such activities. However, labeling an entire group of people as being unable to love, simply because of a stereotypical understanding of their group, is quite clearly narrow-minded.
11.
The Disease Argument: Homosexuality is a disease, and shouldn't be encouraged with legal acceptance.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. This was followed by the World Health Organisation in 1992, the United Kingdom government in 1994, the Russian Federation Ministry of Health in 1999 and the even the Chinese Society of Psychiatry in 2001. Dr Joseph Merlino covers this issue in
an interview, in which he identifies that much of the ‘data’ used in the US against homosexuality's declassification was based on theories and deliberately skewed samples. So no, homosexuality is
not a disease, mental or otherwise.
12.
The Society Argument: Society would never accept the concept of same-sex marriage.
Oftentimes, society needs to undergo dramatic change, in the best interests of equality. Apartheid in South Africa was removed, as it was a clear violation of the human rights and dignity of various racial groups. There was a lot of social upheaval over that change, but it was for the best, as apartheid is horrifying, and a crime against humanity. Even so, I doubt that the acceptance of same-sex marriage would cause as dramatic a result, and if it were, it would mostly be caused by homophobic people touting one or more of the above-mentioned reasons that I have rebutted here.
13.
The Framwinkle Argument: “What has to be understood and accepted is that homosexuality is not a good thing.” (
link)
Yeah, good try there. You've got an overbearing obsession with a cartoon mouse, but you think that being gay is ghastly? Funny.
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