Same Sex Marriage Debate -

Texas Lynn · 05-09-2014, 03:19 AM

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And yet....Lo and Behold. Three women and a baby!

A married lesbian trio from Mass. are expecting their first child.
(Such an emotional ceremony judging by the lump in someone's throat.)

I’m not sure what the parenthetical comment means except an emphasis on meanspiritedness. I’m sorry you have to go there, but, since your argument is so pitifully weak it seems there’s little else for you to do. You do realize, of course, such a marriage is not one in the legal sense, and therefore not relevant to the debate, I hope? I would not imagine you were so incredibly thick to think otherwise.

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The SSM lobby are openly intolerant of consanguineous (incest) relationships between fathers and daughters, uncles and nieces, brothers and younger sisters...

Whether or not there is any truth to that I cannot say. A movement is not obligated to support any other movement and even then a movement is composed of individuals who may differ on such things. But as there is no clamor for such things it is yet another distraction. Actually, in the U.S., the more retrograde states which have electorates which firmly support limiting marriages to het unions only, also permit unions between cousins. Perhaps you need to learn more about your movement before your alligator mouth gets your parakeet ass in trouble again.

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They want to open the floodgates partially to change the definition of marriage just barely enough to include adult, monogamous, homosexual couples then slam them shut again to prevent any further erosion of the so-called ‘meaning’ of marriage.

Meh. Another categorical statement devoid of evidence. But even if so, so what? This is about same sex marriage, not other types of marriage.

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Don’t anyone dare use the word bestiality and homosexuality in the same sentence or you will face the wrath and fury of someone who finds zoophilia an abomination.

Whatever. One would think you’d tire of these irrelevancies and false equivalencies.

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What a bigoted insult to animal lovers everywhere. And what hypocrisy to do the very thing that SSM lobbyists accuse against the supporters of traditional marriage.

Irrelevant and off topic again.

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Another of the philosophical obstacles in the SSM debate is caused when people like Texas Lynn equivocate on the meaning of the word love.

Equivocate? I haven’t even discussed it. And it has nothing to do with the topic here.

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Love of human beings is the greatest higher truth there is… according to Texas Lynn.

It’s probably not a good idea to claim someone said something which they did not say.

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But that is NOT the same type of ‘love’ Macklemore & Ryan Lewis meant when referring to same-sex attraction and matrimonial love.

Word salad.

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She invokes Jesus Christ who said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Does Texas Lynn really not understand the asexual, gender neutrality of the original Greek hermeneutics for that ‘agape’ word ἀγαπᾶτε

Sure, but that’s not this topic.

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The Marriage Equality lobby claims theirs is a “simple” request. Three simple words – love, honor, commitment. That’s all you need apparently.

OK.

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But they immediately stipulate that what they mean is... only same-sex couples should be able to get married. They are intolerant in their insistence that the strict definition of “marriage’ must be couples only. And so….were back to that ugly word DISCRIMINATION.

Not the issue.

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It is a logical fallacy to claim that because “marriage” is such a unique, virtuous and noble institution… everyone therefore should have the “right” to marry. Marriage is only such “an institution” because it is attended by unique notions of selective rights (and responsibilities.)

And now you contradict yourself.

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If everyone who wanted to be married were allowed to be married without restrictions being placed on the definition and meaning of marriage, it would be an anathema to talk about who should have the “right” to get married.

I never proposed “everyone” be allowed to marry.

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In this debate, words have important meanings. It is the SSM proponents who are tied up in linguistic knots and tripping up on their oxymorons as they try to dilute and mangle the legal concept of marriage into a puddle of mud just so that everyone can have their particular sexual preference and SOGI validated as “normal".

I forgot what “SOGI” is but that’s not relevant. It is you “tied up in linguistic knots” in your defense of an invalid concept. “Normal” is just a setting on the dryer.

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One territorial jurisdiction in Australia, - the ACT - took this LGBTQIA legal/philosophical, SOGI word salad to a sublime new level by arguing that their same sex "marriage" legislation didn’t conflict with Federal heterosexual marriage law because (they said) national, heterosexual marriage laws only applied to straight people.

They claimed the ACT legislation didn’t violate Australia's Constitution as it was was totally different and unique and ONLY applied to gay folk - whose relationships aren't the "same".

The ACT attempted to circumvent the potential conflict with the Federal Constitution (that would have invalidated the ACT law) by creating a distinct and separate type of marriage that could sit alongside the (heterosexual) federal laws.

The particulars of the Australian Capital Territory’s legislation is only relevant to that particular legislative and constitutional conflict there locally, not to the global issue which you have avoided. In this post you have veered off topic at least 60% by a generous benefit of the doubt and failed to address the issue at hand. You have utterly failed to defend your position with this post. Better luck next time.

Lion IRC · 05-12-2014, 03:28 AM

Third Substantive Post – Lion IRC

When I stumbled across the most recent round of comments that Texas Lynn dropped into the peanut gallery, at first I thought she was abandoning the 'formal' debate and opting for a line-by-line skirmish back in the trenches.

I didn't realise that response was actually intended to be in here.

Now, I don’t mind the staccato form of dialogue commonly known as 'fisking', but surely she didn't challenge me to a 'formal debate' in order to do that sort of gainsaying, and hand-waving, and quote-mining and cherry picking. This isn't a relay chat room.

Please let's stick to the bigger, broader, sociological scope of this debate proposition - the law, democracy, values, autonomy, The State interest versus self-interest, family, morality, SOGI.

So far in this debate, as far as I can tell, Texas Lynn has not in any way resiled from my accusation that her case (thus far) rests on subjective self-interest.

If one minority can claim the supposed 'right' to define marriage according to their self-interest, so can any other minority. That's just relativist special pleading about what The State "ought" to allow. And as such there's no objective (or transcendent) persuasive reasoning to resolve or reconcile her competing self-interest with that of her opponents.

Most functional jurisdictions around the world resolve these matters (peacefully) by using a model we call DEMOCRACY. But Texas Lynn completely dismissed the notion that an autonomous jurisdiction might legitimately self-determine that, collectively - democratically - they want to define marriage differently to Texas Lynn.

I started the debate with a reference to the US declaration of political/legal independence. Does an individual jurisdiction of like-minded constituents have the liberty and the equality to freely accept (or reject) the proposition subject of this debate? Because it seems to me THAT would be the real democratic essence of "equality".

It's not even clear to me whether the notion of "equality" which she espouses as the basis for (selectively) redefining marriage, extends to the democratic principle of 'one vote, one value'. The single voter who holds to a heterosexual definition of marriage is surely entitled to have their vote counted as EQUAL to the single voter who holds a different view.

Texas Lynn is tenaciously avoiding the democratic principle that people are free to express their collective will in opposition to SSM and that they are certainly entitled to challenge her (ungodly) authority to proclaim moral edicts.

She asserts that the principle of equality ought to apply in one area when it suits her, but don't I equally have the 'right' to live in a jurisdiction where voters (with votes of equal value) decide to keep a stricter, clearer, heterosexual, gender-balanced definition of marriage?

My argument from divinity was an attempt to explain to Texas Lynn that even though some people (for whatever reason) don't think a Higher Being is relevant to morality and "ought" questions, there are majority jurisdictions around the world that collectively do agree (for whatever reason) that an objective, transcendent moral law actually IS relevant to society. And their response to a non-theist assertion about what "ought" to be, is ..."says who?"

Op Ed public letter at realclearpolitics.com wrote :
"...We cannot wish away the objections of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith traditions, or browbeat them into submission. Even in our constitutional system, persuasion is a minority’s first and best strategy."
(Signed by 50+ academics, intellectuals and experts in the bleeding obvious.)

They were talking to you Texas Lynn! Where’s your persuasive case?

Texas Lynn doesn't seem to understand the "Duck Season / Wabbit Season" nil-all-draw that results from non-theist, humanist versions of competing moral law claims. And she doesn't seem able to offer her opponents anything more than gainsaying and argument from silence instead of positive persuasive reasoning.

Well, you can’t argue a special-interest cause based on the…no harm, mind your own business, my SSM doesn’t affect you trope. If everyone took that approach to moral questions then the starving people in Africa would be none of my business. And the unmarried moms who got pregnant (their body/their choice) would be none of my business. And the people who view internet child porn would be none of my business. The social pathologies of domestic violence and family breakdown and depression and self-harm and drug abuse and child welfare would be none of my business.

While Texas Lynn continues to squib her responsibility to present a “formal” debate case in support of the proposition which she asserted, I would like to develop the theme of social pathologies which arise from the dysfunction of family law and explore the States well-founded concern the biologically heterosexual institution of marriage and family and their connection with (biological) procreation.

The Law^TM can be seen to function according to three “P”’s.

The law Prohibits – undesirable, unwanted social outcomes. (Dysfunction.)
The law Promotes – desirable, advantageous, propitious outcomes.
The law Permits. – neutral, inconsequential no net harm outcomes.

In family law, this three-fold view can be seen played out around the world where marriage has always been gender specific and always reflected a (Darwinian) biological view in promoting the heterosexual nuclear family and the stability of procreation.

Statistics like this are a concern for The State.

When Texas Lynn proposed the topic that; “Same sex marriage should be legal in all jurisdictions with the inherent benefits regarding same extended in full,” she must have understood that the primary benefits of legal marriage are underscored by recognition of The State (or by God, in the case of a sacred, religious imprimatur,) that marriage is a foundation for the biological family which, (in most cases) entails offspring and, that The State generally has a benevolent disposition to marriages because they provide safe and stable environments for children. (Future citizens.)

In family law, The State “promotes” the benefit of ‘family’ stability and prohibits dysfunctional social behaviour that is seen as detrimental to the welfare of the biological family.

Does homosexual “marriage” promote or dilute the family law outcome which is sought by The State? Should it be merely “permitted” as a socially neutral activity such as platonic friendships that have no nett impact on the nuclear family because they don’t incline or aspire towards procreation? Or is The State reasonably entitled to proscribe (prohibit) certain public behaviour in the area of sexual preference/orientation and self-expression of gender identity precisely because they are thought to lead to social dysfunction that might harm marriage and the stability of the family?

For example, if a person’s SOGI involved multiple partner infidelity and lack of long-term monogamous commitment, (open-marriage,) would The State have a valid concern for the welfare of any biological offspring?

If one of the inherent benefits of marriage is its basis as the foundation for building a stable nuclear family, should same-sex “marriages” be promoted as normal and desirable in their aspiration to raise step-children or adopted children or surrogate children?

Texas Lynn says “Normal” is just a setting on the dryer. but if an unthinking, robotic household item of whitegoods can tell the difference between normal and not normal, then I'd say The State is entitled to do likewise.

Anyway, I've run out of time so I will have to continue developing this issue of (Darwinian) biological family law and matrimony in the next round.

Texas Lynn · 05-14-2014, 03:19 AM

dropped into the peanut gallery, at first I thought she was abandoning the 'formal' debate and opting for a line-by-line skirmish back in the trenches.

I didn't realise that response was actually intended to be in here. [/QUOTE]

Sorry, I misposted it, but Testycalibrated fixed it so it’s all good.

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Now, I don’t mind the staccato form of dialogue commonly known as 'fisking', but surely she didn't challenge me to a 'formal debate' in order to do that sort of gainsaying, and hand-waving, and quote-mining and cherry picking. This isn't a relay chat room.

Call it whatever you like but my concept was always for a point by point rebuttal.

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Please let's stick to the bigger, broader, sociological scope of this debate proposition - the law, democracy, values, autonomy, The State interest versus self-interest, family, morality, SOGI.

Ah, so no more going off topic, then? OK.

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So far in this debate, as far as I can tell, Texas Lynn has not in any way resiled from my accusation that her case (thus far) rests on subjective self-interest.

And neither have you.

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If one minority can claim the supposed 'right' to define marriage according to their self-interest, so can any other minority. That's just relativist special pleading about what The State "ought" to allow. And as such there's no objective (or transcendent) persuasive reasoning to resolve or reconcile her competing self-interest with that of her opponents.

The exact same thing is true of your argument.

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Most functional jurisdictions around the world resolve these matters (peacefully) by using a model we call DEMOCRACY. But Texas Lynn completely dismissed the notion that an autonomous jurisdiction might legitimately self-determine that, collectively - democratically - they want to define marriage differently to Texas Lynn.

This is a debate on what should happen. Certainly every jurisdiction is free to do as they wish – the argument is only over what they should do. You have not conceded any marriage in which you would wish to enter can therefore of right be banned so the argument’s fair.

Texas Lynn · 05-14-2014, 03:30 AM

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I started the debate with a reference to the US declaration of political/legal independence. Does an individual jurisdiction of like-minded constituents have the liberty and the equality to freely accept (or reject) the proposition subject of this debate? Because it seems to me THAT would be the real democratic essence of "equality".

Democracy becomes tricky when rights of minorities become threatened. In the U.S., our constitution guarantees such rights, despite the majority’s preferences, as does all other free societies by similar means.

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It's not even clear to me whether the notion of "equality" which she espouses as the basis for (selectively) redefining marriage, extends to the democratic principle of 'one vote, one value'. The single voter who holds to a heterosexual definition of marriage is surely entitled to have their vote counted as EQUAL to the single voter who holds a different view.

By definition, rights are not subject to majority vote. This is the principle detailed in Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), .

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Texas Lynn is tenaciously avoiding the democratic principle that people are free to ;lexpress their collective will in opposition to SSM and that they are certainly entitled to challenge her (ungodly) authority to proclaim moral edicts.

I am not about to argue in favor of tyranny of the majority.

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She asserts that the principle of equality ought to apply in one area when it suits her, but don't I equally have the 'right' to live in a jurisdiction where voters (with votes of equal value) decide to keep a stricter, clearer, heterosexual, gender-balanced definition of marriage?

No, because the rights of the minority ought not to be subject to simple majoritarianism.

Texas Lynn · 05-14-2014, 03:31 AM

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My argument from divinity was an attempt to explain to Texas Lynn that even though some people (for whatever reason) don't think a Higher Being is relevant to morality and "ought" questions, there are majority jurisdictions around the world that collectively do agree (for whatever reason) that an objective, transcendent moral law actually IS relevant to society. And their response to a non-theist assertion about what "ought" to be, is ..."says who?"

No, the subject of the signatories’ concern has nothing to do with whether same sex marriage is legal or not. It assiduously avoids that issue purposefully. It is another vain attempt to steer the debate off topic.

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Where’s your persuasive case?

I have argued that equity demands recognition of same sex marriages just as Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza did last Friday when he struck down a ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that the state has “no rational reason” for preventing gay couples from marrying in Arkansas. You have failed to argue otherwise.

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Texas Lynn doesn't seem to understand the "Duck Season / Wabbit Season" nil-all-draw that results from non-theist, humanist versions of competing moral law claims. And she doesn't seem able to offer her opponents anything more than gainsaying and argument from silence instead of positive persuasive reasoning.

Pot, meet kettle.

Texas Lynn · 05-14-2014, 03:31 AM

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Well, you can’t argue a special-interest cause based on the…no harm, mind your own business, my SSM doesn’t affect you trope.

Trope defined:

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troʊpShow Spelled [trohp] Show IPA
noun
1.
Rhetoric.
a.
any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense.
b.
an instance of this. Compare figure of speech.
2.
a phrase, sentence, or verse formerly interpolated in a liturgical text to amplify or embellish.
3.
(in the philosophy of Santayana) the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence

I just did. At some point a line exists where “the freedom to swing your arms exists until it meets my nose.” You have failed to prove how a same sex couple’s marriage harms you or any other objector’s.

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If everyone took that approach to moral questions then the starving people in Africa would be none of my business.

Logical error of post hoc ergo propter hoc (“it does not follow”).

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And the unmarried moms who got pregnant (their body/their choice) would be none of my business.

Wait, what? Are you ready to outlaw single motherhood now? Anyhow, another effort careening off topic.

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And the people who view internet child porn would be none of my business. The social pathologies of domestic violence and family breakdown and depression and self-harm and drug abuse and child welfare would be none of my business.

Kitchen sink spotted.

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While Texas Lynn continues to squib her responsibility to present a “formal” debate case in support of the proposition which she asserted, I would like to develop the theme of social pathologies which arise from the dysfunction of family law

Yep, passing laws against whatever you don’t like should work, but if it did, it’d be the first time.

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and explore the States well-founded concern the biologically heterosexual institution of marriage and family and their connection with (biological) procreation.

Please proceed, Governor.

Texas Lynn · 05-14-2014, 03:32 AM

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The LawTM can be seen to function according to three “P”’s.

The law Prohibits – undesirable, unwanted social outcomes. (Dysfunction.)
The law Promotes – desirable, advantageous, propitious outcomes.
The law Permits. – neutral, inconsequential no net harm outcomes.

In family law, this three-fold view can be seen played out around the world where marriage has always been gender specific and always reflected a (Darwinian) biological view in promoting the heterosexual nuclear family and the stability of procreation.

Statistics like this are a concern for The State.

Hey, quit making my arguments for me! All you have presented there provides direct evidence of how LGBT folk would benefit from the marriage franchise. Thank you.

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When Texas Lynn proposed the topic that; “Same sex marriage should be legal in all jurisdictions with the inherent benefits regarding same extended in full,” she must have understood that the primary benefits of legal marriage are underscored by recognition of The State (or by God, in the case of a sacred, religious imprimatur,) that marriage is a foundation for the biological family which, (in most cases) entails offspring and, that The State generally has a benevolent disposition to marriages because they provide safe and stable environments for children. (Future citizens.)

Exactly! Thank you again for making my point for me. Children of LGBT families deserve the protection marriage entails.

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In family law, The State “promotes” the benefit of ‘family’ stability and prohibits dysfunctional social behaviour that is seen as detrimental to the welfare of the biological family.

Perhaps as an ideal, but not in reality. “Dysfunctional” combined with “family” produces a redundancy. By any reasonable measure no such thing as a “functional” family exists or has ever existed. That is why we in the therapeutic community have dropped the term, excepting people who ought to have their licenses to practice revoked.

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Does homosexual “marriage” promote or dilute the family law outcome which is sought by The State?

“Promote,” by any reasonable measure.

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Should it be merely “permitted” as a socially neutral activity such as platonic friendships that have no nett impact on the nuclear family because they don’t incline or aspire towards procreation?

Well, the very concept that any government do otherwise is abhorrent to all who believe in justice, although the pompous invocation of “procreation” is an irrelevancy. BTW, quite a few gay and lesbian couples getting married these days are planning on procreating and any regime which does not openly embrace fascism is powerless to stop that.

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Or is The State reasonably entitled to proscribe (prohibit) certain public behaviour in the area of sexual preference/orientation and self-expression of gender identity precisely because they are thought to lead to social dysfunction that might harm marriage and the stability of the family?

No, because that line of “thought” is not rational and such legislation violates basic human rights.

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For example, if a person’s SOGI involved multiple partner infidelity and lack of long-term monogamous commitment, (open-marriage,) would The State have a valid concern for the welfare of any biological offspring?

Not for a minute. Heterosexual relationships carry exactly the same risks. But it is none of the government’s business whatsoever. A society based on such idiocy is by definition an unjust one, as well as one whose precepts are not based upon reality in any form.
Take it from a child protection professional: any attempts to legislate such madness puts all families at risk from a tyrannical government.
Aside: The extreme right wing in the U.S. frequently rails against the child protection authorities for their freedom of religion to beat and assault children, but when handed the reins of power they do not hesitate to advocate tyranny against those against whom they bear animus.

Texas Lynn · 05-14-2014, 03:33 AM

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If one of the inherent benefits of marriage is its basis as the foundation for building a stable nuclear family, should same-sex “marriages” be promoted as normal and desirable in their aspiration to raise step-children or adopted children or surrogate children?

That seems reasonable to me, Reege.

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Texas Lynn says “Normal” is just a setting on the dryer. but if an unthinking, robotic household item of whitegoods can tell the difference between normal and not normal, then I'd say The State is entitled to do likewise.

A fascist state certainly is by its nature. We who advocate for freedom and justice find such abhorrent.
The human operator of laundering machines makes the decision to choose the “normal” setting. Occasionally, errors result.
We seek to avoid same by reducing options for official bullying and micromanagement whether in Puritan Plymouth or Sharia Tehran or terror states like Uganda manipulated into homophobia by religious right hucksters violating their sovereignty.

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Anyway, I've run out of time so I will have to continue developing this issue of (Darwinian) biological family law and matrimony in the next round.

OK. If you can do so without advocating imposition of a terror state, you may accomplish something but I cannot see how you can. Why not just post a link to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and let that suffice?

Lion IRC · 05-17-2014, 01:20 AM

Fourth Substantive Post - Lion IRC

Don’t blame social primate heterosexism on Christian fundamentalists. Blame Darwinian sexual selection.

(I should say “thank” rather than blame.)

Intelligent design, aka – evolutionary/Darwinian sexual selection in homo-sapiens has conferred upon human kind, a survival advantage which has placed us at (what appears to be) the top of the ladder, with optional dominion over any and all other creatures. And if primate homosexual behaviour has played even any part at all in our success as a human race, it has done so by keeping the [expletive deleted] OUT OF HUMAN MATRIMONY AND MATE SELECTION AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT/REARING!

As a species, our existence and our dominant survival, proceeds by heterosexual procreation which functions according to a mechanism of anatomical jigsaw pieces which only “fit” together in UNION in one way.

Male + Female = one flesh = offspring/family.

Our ongoing evolutionary survival as a species depends upon individuals making themself attractive to the opposite sex and/or intimidating, deterring or defeating same-sex rivals. (Conspicuous ability to bear children and breast feed is not altogether irrelevant here.) There’s no point thinking about the future of your selfish DNA unless and until you have passed the competitive natural selection ‘hurdle’ called attracting a mate of the opposite sex.

Merely wanting someone to spend your life with, (as if their gender was irrelevant) is NOT the main game. Reproduction is! And we would be headed for evolutionary extinction if “mating” had nothing to do with the act of heterosexual procreation - which involves a bizarre form of sexual activity that homosexuals apparently do not or cannot enjoy. (either with or without an orgasm)

As Geoffrey Miller* says, “sexual selection is basically the realisation that evolution proceeds by reproductive success.”

And that means, before we can actually physically procreate, (make a family) we need to successfully lure/attract/entice an available mating partner of the opposite gender.

Traditional, heterosexual, human marriage including courtship and betrothal is about the ‘evolutionary psychology’ of mating.

“The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature”
Geoffrey Miller (2000) Doubleday
(Associate Professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico)

My opponent says… “quite a few gay and lesbian couples getting married these days are planning on procreating and any regime which does not openly embrace fascism is powerless to stop that.”

But the name of the ‘fascist’ regime that prevents two men from procreating is called - BIOLOGY

One common (naturalist) argument for SSM is that homosexuality has “always been with us”. But so have murder, rape, paedophilia. And the claim that homosexuality “just is” - a brute reality - doesn’t mean anything when considered in the normative context of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 thousand years of permanent, dominant, biologically successful, heterosexual procreation.

To claim that “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” is nebulous because there is (still) no biologically obvious evidence to substantiate the born-that-way myth. Sexual preference/orientation is NOT an early, fixed, and uniformly developing trait. If it were, Texas Lynn would have presented evidence of such.

Instead…

This 1994 study by Lisa M. Diamond, assistant professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, began studying a group of 89 females aged 16 to 23 who were attracted to other females. Sampling included LGBTQ community events.

Over the course of the study, almost two-thirds had changed their self-identified sexual orientation. (Without having been subjected to reparative therapy)

Lisa M. Diamond, 2003 Journal of Personality & Social Psychology Vol 84, No. 2
http://www.psych.utah.edu/people/peo...0a%20Phase.pdf
(Last accessed 13th May 2014)

The myth that people can’t change their sexual preference/orientation is made obvious when you consider that countless people every year are helped by medical/mental health professionals to treat their unwanted sexual dysfunction. Sex addicts CAN get professional, certified, science-based, reparative therapy.

The ability of a person to even consider reparative therapy demonstrates that there is free-will volition to try something that, if they were born-that-way, they would realise is inherently impossible and hence not make the attempt.

In May 2000, the American Psychiatric Association issued a Fact Sheet, “Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues,” acknowledging that, to date “there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality.”
http://www.psychiatry.org/lgbt-sexual-orientation
(Last accessed 13th May 2014)
Home>Mental Health>People>LGBT/Sexual Orientation

Perhaps the difficulty in studying these SOGI cohorts is because there are so many minorities within minorities and they are such a small percentage in number relative to the wider (heterosexual) demographic

According to large-scale population studies carried out in the US, the proportion of men actually having had a male sex partner in the previous year is only about 1-3 percent.
(Spira et al. 1993; Lauman et al. 1994; Black et al.2000).

Now I know Texas Lynn thinks… “the pompous invocation of “procreation” is an irrelevancy.”

But that’s exactly what you would expect from someone who grossly misunderstands the relationship
between marriage and mating.

And the relationship is biologically heterosexual by nature.

When science tries to study the (fundamental) sociological differences between;

a) Traditional, heterosexual gender-balanced families, in which children are conceived and raised by their two biological parents

and...

b)Experimental alternatives where same-sex attracted (gay) people try to emulate the heterosexual model of family, and artificially arrange surrogacy or adoptive parenting in order to play “mummy and daddy” just like the grown-ups do.

…the studies fail to scientifically conclude anything objectively meaningful insofar as the LGBTQ mythology that Same Sex ‘Marriage’ activists would like society to believe.

…I was biologically born this ‘way’ see, here’s my gay gene
…babies don’t really need (female) maternal nurturing for normal childhood development
…maternal breastfeeding is optional
…children are never influenced or conditioned* by the gender role models around them.
…two gay men can provide all the parental guidance needed by any adopted girl beginning puberty.

*Tabula rasa - an epistemological theory. (Blank slate)

Steven Nock, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, who was asked to review several hundred studies as an expert witness for the Attorney General of Canada concluded;

“…all of the articles I reviewed contained at least one fatal flaw of design or execution”

“…not a single one of those studies was conducted according to general accepted standards of scientific research.”

Examples of flawed “study” methodology.

* No nationally representative sample (self-selection effect),
* Reliance on maternal anecdotal reports,
* Outcomes measured by the research are unrelated to standard measures of child well-being,
* Studies focused on static or short term measures of child development,
* Studies focussed on lesbian women ignoring gay male adoption,
* Little or no control method for demographic variables.

Lion IRC · 05-17-2014, 01:21 AM

Fourth Substantive Post - Lion IRC
(cont.)

This is a fundamental problem in quantitative studies on LGBTQ cohorts. A man who identifies as heterosexual, marries, has biological children but then later exhibits bisexual infidelity and divorces, going on to form a homosexual relationship is somewhat difficult to formally categorize as a “gay parent”.

“The Birdcage” 1996 Remake of La Cage Aux Folles
Original Quad Poster - Film Poster - Movie Poster - Cinema Poster.

So how can we trust a study that that fails to prove something about the numbers of gay people or the numbers gay parents or whether a person really is in fact gay or whether they are really, really, really absolutely gay?

"Let me just define my terms here - I identify as gay myself," Szubanski said
"Now when I say that, what that means is I am absolutely not straight. I wouldn't define myself as bisexual either. I would say I am gay, gay, gay, gay, gay ... essentially I absolutely identify as gay.”

As the 2004 Gunnar Andersson research paper puts it;

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"To give a statistical portrait of any gay and lesbian population using traditional population surveys has also been considered difficult because of the mere size of the target groups. Or put another way, in standard demographic data sources, it may seem like looking for the needle in the haystack.”

Texas Lynn will no doubt cling to the studies as supportive of her case. (Though she hasn’t presented much in the way of evidence so far.) And the reader of this debate can decide whether the doubt extends both ways. If a study which supposedly validates the SSM argument is called into doubt what then do we make of studies that appear to contradict earlier/similar research?

Does the empirical data (evidence) show that children are worse off if they are deliberately deprived of upbringing by their biological parents?

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“A child who is not living with their own two (ie. biological) married parents is at greater risk of child abuse.”

Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, 1985. “Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Parents,” Ethology and Sociobiology 6: 197-210.

We can’t just have two opposite sides in the debate rejecting each other’s data claims

The debate MATTERS.

:

“…whether American society succeeds or fails in building a healthy marriage culture is clearly a matter of legitimate public concern.”

Signed by the following people;

(From : Why Marriage Matters - Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences. (Page 6)
http://www.marriageresourcesforclerg...ageMatters.pdf

What are we to make of gay adoption when there is data which shows that;

In 1999, 55 percent of Swedish births were outside of marriage. (ie. 53 divorces for every 100 marriages.) Overall, gay male couples were 1.5 times as likely (50 percent more likely) to divorce within the 8-year study period and lesbian couples in legal unions were 2.67 times as likely (167 percent more likely) to divorce.
Source : Gunnar Andersson, et al., 2004. “Divorce-Risk Patterns in Same-Sex ‘Marriages’ in Norway and
Sweden,” paper presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (April 3),
http://paa2004.princeton.edu/papers/40208
http://paa2004.princeton.edu/sessions/138

What are we to make of claims about genetically inherited homosexuality and the claim that one can't change their sexuality?

Is gender conditioning real or imaginary?

The feminist movement of the 70’s and 80’s loudly proclaimed that children could be (and were being) conditioned into CIS gender stereo types by what they experienced in childhood.

But if sexual preference is immutable, how then can children be influenced by gender role models? Why would anyone care – for reasons of political correctness - about girls being given dolls and dressed in pink if they were born-that-way?

How exactly do the parents of a 7 year old find themselves listening to their son announce that he is gay - just like a character on the TV show Glee that he watches? (See Huffington Post article.)

Why would anyone in the adult SSM lobby find the need to have Bert and Ernie get "married" on Sesame Street - a show watched by children - unless the psycho-sexual development of children was plastic?

You can’t have it both ways. If the science says children can be conditioned by the SOGI themes they see in the media, and if heterosexuals in prison can be conditioned to enjoy homosexual behaviour (orgasms), and rape trauma can dramatically alter the sexual behaviour patterns of the victims, (sex-aversion,) then so too can psychological/medical therapies intervene to modify same sex attraction.

A person who voluntarily enters into gay conversion therapy is exercising CHOICE.

If they can exercise choice, volition, free-will, decision-making... in the matter of voluntarily seeking professional, science-based, medical therapy to cure sex-addiction for example, how can anyone argue the..."born that way'' opposite line of reasoning?

The ability to deliberate and to choose to contact a sex therapist proves that you CAN exercise choice.

It is a recognized science discipline, after all, which informs us that;
Sex therapy is the treatment of sexual dysfunction such as non-consummation, premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, low libido, unwanted sexual fetishes, sexual addiction, painful sex, or a lack of sexual confidence, assisting people who are recovering from sexual assault, problems commonly caused by stress, tiredness, and other environmental and relationship factors. Sex therapists assist those experiencing problems in overcoming them, in doing so possibly regaining an active sex life.

From The Hart Center where private Health Insurance Rebates and Medicare Rebates apply. (Medicare = taxpayers.)

:

''…But, many users of porn are often surprised at how easily porn use can change from an occasional diversion or fantasy to a habitual problem that has the potential to destroy almost every aspect of their real lives. More and more, porn use is playing a role in relationship breakups and divorce....''

:

''...Pornography is all about impersonal, unromantic, unemotional, casual sex. It sexually objectifies people.

Many men will be surprised to know that regular Porn use is a serious relationship issue, as it has serious effects on the user’s inner life, as well as his interaction with his partner and other family members….''

Yep – Medicare pays up to 75% (So someone in the government must think it works.)

From Psychology Melbourne;

:

''The role of a sex therapist is to firstly to identify the problems that you are facing and what you want to achieve or improve in your sexual relationships. The therapist will work with you to uncover underlying causes of your problems, explore various options and identify solutions.''

:

''...Most people find that their sexual problems are temporary. If problems last, however, modern sex therapy offers a repertoire of psychological and specific physical techniques that can help individuals and couples overcome the difficulties that prevent them from engaging in and/or enjoying satisfactory intercourse and orgasm....''

Now, I would like to know, what is the difference between undesired hyper-sexuality and undesired homosexuality?

If a person’s family says to them that they need professional help for their ''porn addiction'' and a medical science professional says it can be ''treated'', why can’t a person voluntarily seek psychotherapy to modify their undesired same-sex attraction/preference?

The gay activism, SSM lobby, hate it because if a person can voluntarily undergo sex therapy in relation to homosexual behaviour, (just like many other people VOLUNTARILY undergo psychological therapies to treat other unwanted behaviours like sex/porn addiction for example,) then it undermines and even invalidates the gay lobby argument that homosexual behaviour is not a preference.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:35 AM

:

Don’t blame social primate heterosexism on Christian fundamentalists. Blame Darwinian sexual selection.

(I should say “thank” rather than blame.)

Intelligent design, aka – evolutionary/Darwinian sexual selection in homo-sapiens has conferred upon human kind, a survival advantage which has placed us at (what appears to be) the top of the ladder, with optional dominion over any and all other creatures. And if primate homosexual behaviour has played even any part at all in our success as a human race, it has done so by keeping the [expletive deleted] OUT OF HUMAN MATRIMONY AND MATE SELECTION AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT/REARING!

Gobbledygook introduced. Not a convincing argument, and nothing at all in here (and most of what follows) concerning marriage.

:

As a species, our existence and our dominant survival, proceeds by heterosexual procreation which functions according to a mechanism of anatomical jigsaw pieces which only “fit” together in UNION in one way.

Not necessarily. All that is required for reproduction is form sperm to meet egg and create zygote. This occurs regardless of what relationships exist. Moreover, scientific advances have created new realities in which reproduction may occur in vitro, or by the longstanding process of tukeybaster babymaking. In the future even more innovations will occur in these processes. This says absolutely nothing about marriage.

:

Male + Female = one flesh = offspring/family.

The nuclear family, in human experience, is a quite recent innovation. And, for purposes of this debate, another irrelevancy. LGBT persons have entered heterosexual marriages, but society no longer requires this as a survival mechanism. As always, any form of marriage is optional based upon the needs of the individuals involved. And its existence says nothing about LGBT marriages.

:

Our ongoing evolutionary survival as a species depends upon individuals making themself attractive to the opposite sex and/or intimidating, deterring or defeating same-sex rivals. (Conspicuous ability to bear children and breast feed is not altogether irrelevant here.) There’s no point thinking about the future of your selfish DNA unless and until you have passed the competitive natural selection ‘hurdle’ called attracting a mate of the opposite sex.

For heterosexuals this may be in some sense be true, but, of course, not everyone is heterosexual. But even so not everyone reproduces. Given current population growth, official policy to facilitate same is unneeded. Human mating will always occur, regardless of marital status.

:

Merely wanting someone to spend your life with, (as if their gender was irrelevant) is NOT the main game. Reproduction is! And we would be headed for evolutionary extinction if “mating” had nothing to do with the act of heterosexual procreation - which involves a bizarre form of sexual activity that homosexuals apparently do not or cannot enjoy. (either with or without an orgasm)

Again, ignoring scientific innovation and the complexities of human relationships these are irrelevancies.
Part of what Lion may be here implying is National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM’s) argument marriage is primarily for the purpose of reproduction. It is at best a specious argument. In agricultural societies, reproduction was considered a necessity to obtain farm laborers within the family. Yet even then, “orphan trains,” apprenticeships, imposition of servant status, and more recently, the obtaining of Haitian immigrants to become household servants, have been instituted to provide household labor. But today, chores for children are relatively benign processes aided by use of labor saving machinery. Forms of family constellation are immaterial here.

:

As Geoffrey Miller* says, “sexual selection is basically the realisation that evolution proceeds by reproductive success.”

Again, nothing concerning marriage here.

:

And that means, before we can actually physically procreate, (make a family) we need to successfully lure/attract/entice an available mating partner of the opposite gender.

This is no longer the case due to social and scientific changes to society.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:38 AM

:

Traditional, heterosexual, human marriage including courtship and betrothal is ab
out the ‘evolutionary psychology’ of mating.

It may indeed still be, for most heterosexuals. Of course, “mating” can mean “pairing” without regard to reproduction, especially given the increased number of couples who choose to not reproduce and are consciously childless by choice or “childfree,” as the term of choice many adopted from the author Ellen Peck’s work,

:

My opponent says… “quite a few gay and lesbian couples getting married these days are planning on procreating and any regime which does not openly embrace fascism is powerless to stop that.”

But the name of the ‘fascist’ regime that prevents two men from procreating is called - BIOLOGY

Most assuredly not. Those lesbian and gay couples seeking to reproduce have little difficulty doing so. Biology is not bound by relationships. Early matriarchical societies had no difficulty keeping going. Even today some societies continue in these forms in Melanesia, Micronesia, and central Asia. Even the June 2014 issue of The Advocate features an article by Charles J. Upchurch delineating “Types of African Homosexuality” including the Akan people among whom “lesbian affairs were virtually universal” and The Lovedu people of Lesothoto Who “were ruled by queens who were required to take wives and even assembled female harems.”

:

One common (naturalist) argument for SSM is that homosexuality has “always been with us”. But so have murder, rape, paedophilia. And the claim that homosexuality “just is” - a brute reality - doesn’t mean anything when considered in the normative context of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 thousand years of permanent, dominant, biologically successful, heterosexual procreation.

….From which homosexual relationships remove nothing at all. Indeed, most pregnancies which create children of LGBT individuals commence the old fashioned way. When lesbian author Susie Bright became pregnant with her daughter Aretha, she was asked by friends, “did you turkeybaster, or did you party?” Her answer was the latter.

:

To claim that “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” is nebulous because there is (still) no biologically obvious evidence to substantiate the born-that-way myth. Sexual preference/orientation is NOT an early, fixed, and uniformly developing trait. If it were, Texas Lynn would have presented evidence of such.

Instead…

This 1994 study by Lisa M. Diamond, assistant professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, began studying a group of 89 females aged 16 to 23 who were attracted to other females. Sampling included LGBTQ community events.

Over the course of the study, almost two-thirds had changed their self-identified sexual orientation. (Without having been subjected to reparative therapy)
Lisa M. Diamond, 2003 Journal of Personality & Social Psychology Vol 84, No. 2
http://www.psych.utah.edu/people/peo...0a%20Phase.pdf
(Last accessed 13th May 2014)

None of this is relevant to the issue of same sex marriage. Sexual orientation for some bisexuals is temporal.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:39 AM

:

The myth that people can’t change their sexual preference/orientation is made obvious when you consider that countless people every year are helped by medical/mental health professionals to treat their unwanted sexual dysfunction. Sex addicts CAN get professional, certified, science-based, reparative therapy.

This post of Lion’s is covering every topic but the one we’re debating. Here, there’s nothing about marriage. Unethical therapists do all sorts of things. No one in a school of social work or marriage and family therapy will graduate if in the course of their study they reveal an intent to engage in attempts to change clients’ sexual orientations, and quite rightfully so. This is not the same or even a similar area of therapy to addressing sexual dysfunction or addiction. For the former, some practitioners know as sexual surrogates will be employed to help the client. Some are of the same gender as the client. Sex addiction is a valid area of treatment. I’ve had clinical privileges to perform same due to my graduation from a course by the go-to guy on the practice area, Dr. Patrick Carnes, who views with askance any attempts to change sexual orientations as all ethical therapists do.

:

The ability of a person to even consider reparative therapy demonstrates that there is free-will volition to try something that, if they were born-that-way, they would realise is inherently impossible and hence not make the attempt.

False premise. There are countless unethical practitioners out there. There are people who seek herbal medication form similar practitioners of quackery for cancer treatment. But as before not related at all to the issue of marriage.

:

In May 2000, the American Psychiatric Association issued a Fact Sheet, “Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues,” acknowledging that, to date “there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality.”
http://www.psychiatry.org/lgbt-sexual-orientation
(Last accessed 13th May 2014)
Home>Mental Health>People>LGBT/Sexual Orientation

Biology’s complicated. But it’s not relevant to a discussion of marriage.

:

Perhaps the difficulty in studying these SOGI cohorts is because there are so many minorities within minorities and they are such a small percentage in number relative to the wider (heterosexual) demographic

According to large-scale population studies carried out in the US, the proportion of men actually having had a male sex partner in the previous year is only about 1-3 percent.
(Spira et al. 1993; Lauman et al. 1994; Black et al.2000).

And your point is….nothing whatsoever regarding marriage.

:

Now I know Texas Lynn thinks… “the pompous invocation of “procreation” is an irrelevancy.”

But that’s exactly what you would expect from someone who grossly misunderstands the relationship
between marriage and mating.

And the relationship is biologically heterosexual by nature.

Sure – for heterosexuals.

:

When science tries to study the (fundamental) sociological differences between;

a) Traditional, heterosexual gender-balanced families, in which children are conceived and raised by their two biological parents

and...

b)Experimental alternatives where same-sex attracted (gay) people try to emulate the heterosexual model of family, and artificially arrange surrogacy or adoptive parenting in order to play “mummy and daddy” just like the grown-ups do.

…the studies fail to scientifically conclude anything objectively meaningful insofar as the LGBTQ mythology that Same Sex ‘Marriage’ activists would like society to believe.

The smarm and spleen notwithstanding, the relationships described in (b) above are hardly at all “experimental,” as they have always existed since time immemorial. To designate these as marriages or not begs the question. Lion’s back to invoking the tired old “dysfunctional family” canard toward those he doesn’t like. It’s no different from invoking the same social and legal enforcement mechanism toward fundamentalist families. As an adoption practitioner, I’ve completed dozens of adoption studies including on married hets, LGBT couples, and singles, and approved and disapproved some of each, all based on relevant factors, of which sexual orientation is not one. No ethical practitioner would place an LGBT child with a fundamentali mily or a fundamentalist child with gay parents.

:

…I was biologically born this ‘way’ see, here’s my gay gene
…babies don’t really need (female) maternal nurturing for normal childhood development
…maternal breastfeeding is optional
…children are never influenced or conditioned* by the gender role models around them.
…two gay men can provide all the parental guidance needed by any adopted girl beginning puberty.

OK, Lion, is you’re claiming this stuff is “the LGBTQ mythology that Same Sex ‘Marriage’ activists would like society to believe” I call bullshit on all of it.
1. As for the gay gene, we don’t know, but even so it’s irrelevant.
2. Nurturing of children of any age is never an essential task to one particular gender. What are you going to do, pass a law requiring babies be removed from fathers whose wives or girlfriends died in childbirth? If not this is just more smarm and vitriol.
3. Maternal breastfeeding often occurs for adopted nursing babies, sometimes especially for nursing babies adopted by gay male couples, through the common practice of open adoption. So, by invoking same, you must to be consistent condemn previous adoption practices – sometimes still carried out within fundamentalist sects – in which single mothers give birth without even viewing their baby, or by being only to see it momentarily while enforcers snatch it away. Other times women who give babies up for adoption voluntarily and desire no further contact do not therefore nurse or provide breast milk, so, are you going to advocate they be forced to? Even if you did it’s irrelevant to marriage issue.
4. Gender roles are social constructs. Gay men who adopt girls are specifically asked how they seek to provide such tasks. Most have a grandma or a female friend (often a lesbian) to take care of it. Those who don’t have a similar plan of action often are disapproved, decide to adopt a boy instead, or drop out of the application process.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:40 AM

:

Steven Nock, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, who was asked to review several hundred studies as an expert witness for the Attorney General of Canada concluded;

“…all of the articles I reviewed contained at least one fatal flaw of design or execution”

“…not a single one of those studies was conducted according to general accepted standards of scientific research.”

Examples of flawed “study” methodology.

* No nationally representative sample (self-selection effect),
* Reliance on maternal anecdotal reports,
* Outcomes measured by the research are unrelated to standard measures of child well-being,
* Studies focused on static or short term measures of child development,
* Studies focussed on lesbian women ignoring gay male adoption,
* Little or no control method for demographic variables.
This is a fundamental problem in quantitative studies on LGBTQ cohorts. A man who identifies as heterosexual, marries, has biological children but then later exhibits bisexual infidelity and divorces, going on to form a homosexual relationship is somewhat difficult to formally categorize as a “gay parent”.

Only to people who don’t think water’s wet. He’s gay, he’s a parent, QED, he’s a gay parent.

:

So how can we trust a study that that fails to prove something about the numbers of gay people or the numbers gay parents or whether a person really is in fact gay or whether they are really, really, really absolutely gay?

"Let me just define my terms here - I identify as gay myself," Szubanski said
"Now when I say that, what that means is I am absolutely not straight. I wouldn't define myself as bisexual either. I would say I am gay, gay, gay, gay, gay ... essentially I absolutely identify as gay.”

As the 2004 Gunnar Andersson research paper puts it;
Quote:
"To give a statistical portrait of any gay and lesbian population using traditional population surveys has also been considered difficult because of the mere size of the target groups. Or put another way, in standard demographic data sources, it may seem like looking for the needle in the haystack.”

“Studies” of gay people and gay parents, etc. are immaterial to a discussion of gay marriage. No one is going to be forced to marry someone of the same sex.
Of course, the U.s. Census Bureau, God bless ‘em, are now tracking gay families and this will unearth a motherlode of reliable and valid data.

:

Texas Lynn will no doubt cling to the studies as supportive of her case. (Though she hasn’t presented much in the way of evidence so far.)

You haven’t cited any relevant ones, so, I can’t say how they affect it. There’s been no studies of ill effects since Massachusetts legalized same sex marriage a decade ago. You’d certainly think if there were, the right-wing would be touting them, instead they cling to discredited research by ideologically biased and unethical researchers Paul Cameron and Mark Regernus, neither of whose work address gay marriage... [/QUOTE]

:

And the reader of this debate can decide whether the doubt extends both ways. If a study which supposedly validates the SSM argument is called into doubt what then do we make of studies that appear to contradict earlier/similar research?

If the studies don’t address gay marriage, they’re immaterial to this debate.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:41 AM

:

Does the empirical data (evidence) show that children are worse off if they are deliberately deprived of upbringing by their biological parents?

No such studies exist, because whenever children are “deliberately deprived of upbringing by their biological parents,” gay marriage is never a factor in that.

:

“A child who is not living with their own two (ie. biological) married parents is at greater risk of child abuse.”
Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, 1985. “Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Parents,” Ethology and Sociobiology 6: 197-210.

That’s because of stability of het families, which LGBT families would have when allowed to marry and already do in the most enlightened jurisdictions.

:

We can’t just have two opposite sides in the debate rejecting each other’s data claims

The debate MATTERS.

Sure it does, but you have not provided any data whatsoever that’s relevant to the topic.

:

Quote:
“…whether American society succeeds or fails in building a healthy marriage culture is clearly a matter of legitimate public concern.”
Signed by the following people;

(From: Why Marriage Matters - Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences. (Page 6)
http://www.marriageresourcesforclerg...ageMatters.pdf

None of these “conclusions” address gay marriage. The signature list is however relevant because there is one name on it which is very familiar to me, that of Dr. John Gottman of the University of Washington. It so happens I am a graduate of the Gottman method course for therapists on marriage and family counseling. Gottman is indeed a proponent of preserving marriage. How interesting it is that on thr Gottman Institute’s website:

:

In separate lines of research, Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman have observed the strength and resilience of same-sex couples—even in the midst of the cultural and social stresses to which same-sex couples are uniquely vulnerable. These couples—like all couples—need and deserve tailored, research-based support when they are in distress.
Together, the Gottmans have a commitment to assuring that lesbian and gay couples have resources to help strengthen and support their relationships. Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman made a key contribution to research on daughters of lesbians: her work showed that daughters with lesbian moms do just as well as those raised by straight moms. Dr. John Gottman conducted the first longitudinal study of its kind of gay and lesbian relationships using multiple methods and measures. He was able assess the emotional strengths and weaknesses of the relationships, and to learn what makes these relationships more or less stable.
http://www.gottman.com/research/publ...bian-research/

Likewise, David Popenoe’s Life without Father was found by Zack Ford of Think Progress to have

:

only examined the consequences of divorce, single parents, and stepfamilies — situations in which a heterosexual father was no longer involved in his children’s life. It drew no conclusions about same-sex parenting; in fact, studies about “fatherlessness” rarely include data about lesbian couples raising children together, but conservatives still use them to draw conclusions about same-sex parenting anyway.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/1...iage-equality/

Similarly, William Galston was part of a group which proposed moving beyond the question of ‘should gay marriage be permitted?” to

:

We propose a new conversation that brings together gays and lesbians who want
to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. The new
Conversation does not presuppose or require agreement on gay marriage, but it
does ask a new question. The current question is: "Should gays marry?" The new
question is: "Who among us, gay or straight, wants to strengthen marriage?"
http://www.americanvalues.org/search/item.php?id=102

Concerning Linda J. Waite, Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller noted a book she coauthored with Maggie Gallagher “Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) readers might find in the book new arguments to bolster the case for legalizing same-sex marriage, but the book’s authors carefully avoid taking a stand on this issue.”

http://www.unmarried.org/review-the-case-for-marriage/
[/QUOTE]
It appears as I suspected a cursory review indicates arguments these individuals have made toward improving marriages, preserving the institution, strengthening marriages, and marriage’s benefits to children do not, as the religious right grasps at straws to seek to do, condemn gay marriage at all, but, conversely, that the research of these individuals is misused by religious right groups to seek to imply it says things about gay marriage which it does not say at all.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:42 AM

:

What are we to make of gay adoption when there is data which shows that;

In 1999, 55 percent of Swedish births were outside of marriage. (ie. 53 divorces for every 100 marriages.)

That is exactly like arguing what are we to conclude about the dangers of feeding bears in our National Parks from a study related to tourists’ feeding prairie dogs, as we saw people doing at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument in Colorado.
Lion is, by these sorts of argument, directing people to conclude absurdities like “Shep is a dog; Shep is a German Shepherd; therefore, all dogs are German Shepherds.” As owners of Corgis, Pekingese, and Beagles well know, this is simply not so.

:

Overall, gay male couples were 1.5 times as likely (50 percent more likely) to divorce within the 8-year study period and lesbian couples in legal unions were 2.67 times as likely (167 percent more likely) to divorce.
Source : Gunnar Andersson, et al., 2004. “Divorce-Risk Patterns in Same-Sex ‘Marriages’ in Norway and
Swfor having eden,” paper presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (April 3),
http://paa2004.princeton.edu/papers/40208
http://paa2004.princeton.edu/sessions/138

And here he enters the realm of “blaming the victim,” a favorite argument for advocates of all sorts of oppression. It is equivalent to blaming African Americans for having relationship issues while simultaneously facing racist oppression. When people are denied jobs, housing, education, healthcare and other essentials due to who they are it is little wonder they as well experience difficulty maintaining satisfactory relationships which continue to last. All the more reason to institute legal recognition of same sex marriages to help folks overcome!

:

What are we to make of claims about genetically inherited homosexuality and the claim that one can't change their sexuality?

That’s another debate with nothing to do with this one.

:

Is gender conditioning real or imaginary?

And then it’s onto the merry-go-round for another tangent which does not address the issue at hand.

:

The feminist movement of the 70’s and 80’s loudly proclaimed that children could be (and were being) conditioned into CIS gender stereo types by what they experienced in childhood.

But if sexual preference is immutable, how then can children be influenced by gender role models? Why would anyone care – for reasons of political correctness - about girls being given dolls and dressed in pink if they were born-that-way?

Here, Lion is conflating gender roles and sexual orientation, two separate and distinct concepts.

:

How exactly do the parents of a 7 year old find themselves listening to their son announce that he is gay - just like a character on the TV show Glee that he watches? (See Huffington Post article.)

I assume this is a rhetorical question not needing an answer. The fact that some do is not a factor in this debate at all.

:

Why would anyone in the adult SSM lobby find the need to have Bert and Ernie get "married" on Sesame Street - a show watched by children - unless the psycho-sexual development of children was plastic?

I think the premise that that is why “anyone in the adult SSM lobby” has a “need” to do so (If any indeed do – I have not heard of any) is faulty. Any matter related to entertainment and celebrity (for instance the Michael Sam brouhaha) is about influencing opinion, not sexual orientation.

:

You can’t have it both ways. If the science says children can be conditioned by the SOGI themes they see in the media, and if heterosexuals in prison can be conditioned to enjoy homosexual behaviour (orgasms), and rape trauma can dramatically alter the sexual behaviour patterns of the victims, (sex-aversion,) then so too can psychological/medical therapies intervene to modify same sex attraction.

That could possibly be so but it’s not the topic of this debate. Arguing about sexual orientation from prison sex is just like arguing for concealed carry because soldiers carry firearms. The human being is a complex animal and we certainly don’t know everything there is to know about our species as of yet.
Arguing about the ethics of therapeutic modalities which promise to change sexual orientations is, however, quite another story. We in the helping professions are duty bound to only work with clients toward reasonable goals which are attainable. Antigay reparative therapies have dismal success rates. Some of their once most touted spokespeople like John Paulk have changed their positions and asked for forgiveness from the LGBT community for such misdoings.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:45 AM

:

A person who voluntarily enters into gay conversion therapy is exercising CHOICE.

But professions and institutions are ethically bound to protect clients from quackery, as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wisely noted in signing legislation outlawing the practice in the Garden state.

:

If they can exercise choice, volition, free-will, decision-making... in the matter of voluntarily seeking professional, science-based, medical therapy to cure sex-addiction for example, how can anyone argue the..."born that way'' opposite line of reasoning?

The premises again do not support the conclusion. Moreover the assertion antigay reparative therapy is “science-based” is false. No credible science supports it. It is an imposition of religious doctrine masquerading as science, and irrelevant to this debate.

:

The ability to deliberate and to choose to contact a sex therapist proves that you CAN exercise choice.

It is a recognized science discipline, after all, which informs us that;
Sex therapy is the treatment of sexual dysfunction such as non-consummation, premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, low libido, unwanted sexual fetishes, sexual addiction, painful sex, or a lack of sexual confidence, assisting people who are recovering from sexual assault, problems commonly caused by stress, tiredness, and other environmental and relationship factors. Sex therapists assist those experiencing problems in overcoming them, in doing so possibly regaining an active sex life.

From The Hart Center where private Health Insurance Rebates and Medicare Rebates apply. (Medicare = taxpayers.)
Quote:
''…But, many users of porn are often surprised at how easily porn use can change from an occasional diversion or fantasy to a habitual problem that has the potential to destroy almost every aspect of their real lives. More and more, porn use is playing a role in relationship breakups and divorce....''
Quote:
''...Pornography is all about impersonal, unromantic, unemotional, casual sex. It sexually objectifies people.

Many men will be surprised to know that regular Porn use is a serious relationship issue, as it has serious effects on the user’s inner life, as well as his interaction with his partner and other family members….''
Yep – Medicare pays up to 75% (So someone in the government must think it works.)

From Psychology Melbourne;
Quote:
''The role of a sex therapist is to firstly to identify the problems that you are facing and what you want to achieve or improve in your sexual relationships. The therapist will work with you to uncover underlying causes of your problems, explore various options and identify solutions.''
Quote:
''...Most people find that their sexual problems are temporary. If problems last, however, modern sex therapy offers a repertoire of psychological and specific physical techniques that can help individuals and couples overcome the difficulties that prevent them from engaging in and/or enjoying satisfactory intercourse and orgasm....''

No serious sex therapist equates homosexuality with sexual dysfunction. Even so that has nothing to do with whether or not the government should recognize gay marriages.

:

Now, I would like to know, what is the difference between undesired hyper-sexuality and undesired homosexuality?

I’m really not sure “hypersexuality” is a valid term. Porn addiction is foremost a relationship issue whether than one of sexuality. Frequency of desire varies and this most often occurs with individuals who devalue women and carry religious guilt and shame – for instance research has found a large number of Southern Baptist ministers are porn addicts.
“Undesired homosexuality” is like short people who wish they were tall. People are what they are. Any ethical therapist will not try to change something for which the success rate of change is so poor.
As a social worker I am bound by the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics section 1.05, which states

:

1.05 Cultural Competence and Social Diversity
(a) Social workers should understand culture and its function in human behavior and society, recognizing the strengths that exist in all cultures.
(b) Social workers should have a knowledge base of their clients’ cultures and be able to demonstrate competence in the provision of services that are sensitive to clients’ cultures and to differences among people and cultural groups.
(c) Social workers should obtain education about and seek to understand the nature of social diversity and oppression with respect to race, ethnicity, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, political belief, religion, immigration status, and mental or physical disability.
http://socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp

Anyone with an elementary knowledge of oppression knows oppressed people often absorb negative messages about the groups to which they belong from the larger society and often those most active in committing oppression are engaging in a form of self-hate, as the Nazi regime’s Judenpolizei were Jews who acted to oppress Jews. Likewise it has been found that many virulently antigay people such as Ted Haggard, George Rekers, Larry Craig, etc., had secret gay lives. In the churchgoing African-American community being “on the down low” is practically institutionalized. Of course at intake a competent therapist does not cavalierly inform a client with such a goal “you are a self-hating queer” even if it’s true but rather informs them the therapist cannot help them and those who claim they can are acting unethically.
But, as before, this is not addressing the topic of same sex marriage.

:

If a person’s family says to them that they need professional help for their ''porn addiction'' and a medical science professional says it can be ''treated'', why can’t a person voluntarily seek psychotherapy to modify their undesired same-sex attraction/preference?

They can in jurisdictions which permit that variety of quackery.
But whatever the answer it is not relevant to the topic of same sex marriage.

Texas Lynn · 05-19-2014, 03:46 AM

:

The gay activism, SSM lobby, hate it because if a person can voluntarily undergo sex therapy in relation to homosexual behaviour, (just like many other people VOLUNTARILY undergo psychological therapies to treat other unwanted behaviours like sex/porn addiction for example,) then it undermines and even invalidates the gay lobby argument that homosexual behaviour is not a preference.

That’s an assertion for which evidence is lacking. As a therapist and a lesbian I hate it because it is unethical – it gives people an unattainable goal which is at best an incredibly stupid and futile gesture.
I don’t find the “what causes homosexuality?” question to be very interesting or relevant to policy discussion. We assume heterosexuality is caused by some sort of elusive “normality” type social construct which facilitates oppression. In the past – and, unfortunately still in some less enlightened cultural milieus - left-handedness was severely punished in children. These days someone assaulting children for exhibiting that particular variation of human experience is likely to be reported for child abuse and quite rightfully so. And so is someone who does the same to their LGBT child.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0179116/?ref_=nv_sr_1

:

As the advocacy group AllOut noted, “The medical community has overwhelmingly denounced so-called "gay conversion therapies" as harmful, particularly to vulnerable minors.”
https://www.allout.org/en/actions/govbrown

I’m continuing to feel bad for Lion’s inability to make an effective argument. The post to which this is a reply is a mishmash of tangents which have nothing to do with the policy we’re supposed to be debating.
Often our positions on issues are related to our emotions – as we say in the helping professions, “start where the client is.” Some who unleash vitriol and anger toward those they consider less than they are harbor personal secrets not unlike Haggard, Rekers, and Craig as noted above. Others have negative personal stories with members of hated groups, like a fellow I knew who was antigay whose wife had bad feelings because her father was gay – he loved her and thus rationalized an animus toward gays due to this situation. Those seeking power and control over others often urge those in hierarchical relationships to focus on “the other” – persons excluded from a circle of trust. In fundamentalist Christianity LGBTs are a particularly useful “Other” to employ because within the flocks there is often little personal knowledge of LGBT persons and much of what exists is negative. Conversely as gay youth flee places like Red America for tolerant cities, they leave a vacuum of ignorance in Fritters, Alabama, or wherever they came from. A colleague from rural East Texas also pastors a small church in a conservative denomination and is dealing with a matter where a married couple among his parishioners is “cut off” from an adult lesbian daughter, but is considering reconciling with her, especially now that they are grandparents and have not yet met their grandchild. While he is caught in a dual relationship as pastor and therapist, his biggest obstacle to helping them attain such reconciliation is other members of the church who angrily denounce the adult daughter and imply the couple were bad parents to have made her queer. It’s not the first time humans have implied our species did what the Grand Architect of the Universe did in some form or another.

Lion IRC · 05-22-2014, 01:24 AM

Final Substantive Post – Lion IRC

LOL. I knew it had to “come out” eventually.

:

I feel bad for Lion’s inability to make an effective argument …often our positions on issues are related to our emotions …some who unleash vitriol and anger…harbor personal secrets not unlike Haggard …negative personal stories with members of hated groups…father was gay …rationalized an animus toward gays…seeking power and control over others …hierarchical relationships

In other words, Lion IRC’s only real reason for opposing SSM is because he probably has a secret inner gay demon he’s fighting.

Texas Lynn, you didn’t need to challenge me to a *cough* 'formal' debate if that’s your idea of a debating coup de grâce

This is the closing round for the major part of the debate and I want to direct most of it toward rebutting Texas Lynn’s earlier claim that, in jurisdictions where SSM has been technically legalized, (in most cases by judges rather than democratic voter majorities,) there have allegedly been no negative, slippery slope developments of the type predicted by the opponents of SSM.

By now, it will be obvious to readers of this debate that Texas Lynn unashamedly pleads a very narrow special case for monogamous, same-sex, couples-only ‘marriage’ and she draws a clear, albeit subjective line of discrimination (intolerance) when it comes to identical arguments for infidelity, polygamy, consanguinity, zoophilia, marriageable age of consent, arranged marriages of convenience…

But that is a fatal flaw in her case. She can’t argue for SSM without all the legal flow-on effects that such a change entails.

When people, 10 years ago, warned that redefining family law to allow same-sex ‘marriage’ would also logically destroy the philosophical barrier preventing the (closely-related) legal discrimination against polygamy, the SSM lobby mocked it as blatant homophobic scare mongering.
...even though lawyers and liberals were among those anticipating the consequences.

If one side of the SSM debate couldn’t see what the scary ‘slippery slope’ future held in store, then neither could their opponents make optimistic predictions that there would be no..."sky is falling, pandoras box opening, straw that broke the camels back, thin-edge-of-the-wedge, chickens coming home to roost, unscramble the omelette, frog in a simmering pot, can't put humpty dumpty back together" flow on effects.

And yet SSM advocates blindly assured everyone that you could fine-tune the legal discrimination to suit one minority special interest without opening the door to every other minority special interest wanting to avail themselves of the emerging new concept of SOGI LGBTQI 'marriage' equality.

"Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional"
Source = http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...constitutional
“Their status under domestic law is a civil rights issue deserving the same protections afforded to homosexuals and other minority groups” says Prof. Jonathan Turley at George Washington University who was involved in the case.

In a different same-sex marriage case, The Federal High Court of Australia formally conceded in November 2013 that we are already on the slippery slope to more legal complexity.

:

[Family law]…must be recognised now to be more complex [because]… jurisdictions outside Australia in a variety of constitutional settings, now permit marriage between same sex couples.

Now, I have previously argued that spiralling legal complexity and increasing litigation as a result of experimental changes to family law are a bad thing for society. (Not for lawyers and judges. $$$)
And I think that many jurisdictions around the world are beginning to realize that “tweeking” of the previously heterosexual, committed, monogamous, meaning of marriage comes at too high a cost in terms of democratic stability, legal complexity, social security and cultural angst.

Little wonder that many autonomous jurisdictions are increasingly content to sit back and cautiously wait while other experimental same-sex ‘marriage’ jurisdictions do all the legal crash-testing.

TRIGGER WARNING - IRONY

Of course, it’s not “marriage” that the courts are debating – it’s legal universal recognition of SOGI. People are suing for their demands that every jurisdiction they ever step foot in – not just where they live and vote - must “recognize’’ and affirm the acceptability of same-sex ‘marriage’.

Texas Lynn has no argument with my claim about the historic ‘preciousness’ of marriage as an institutional, social template for mating and the creation of family. But, she says that’s irrelevant to this debate.

Without even blinking an eye, she says the definition of marriage can simply be changed – not whenever some random person happens to want it changed – but only when she wants it changed to meet her narrow definition of who can and can’t get married. And she doesn’t seem to care that the definition is not changed by democratic majority vote, but by judicial activism and subjective reinterpretation of the PREVIOUS existing legal definition that was decided by a democratic legislative process.

Texas Lynn has all but conceded that votes and democratic jurisdictions shouldn’t even matter and that all she has to do is hand wave and declare by ‘divine’ fiat that her definition “ought” to be accepted.

Yes, family^TM is and should be a special protected institution agrees Texas Lynn, but she nonetheless asserts that suddenly, in the 21st century, gender balance is now irrelevant to the definition, and that unenlightened human society in the past, simply hasn’t realised how wrong and bigoted and hate-filled and homophobic they (and their systems of government) have been for the past 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 thousand years.

Now, I think it is very important in the broader social debate about SOGI and marriage to understand that “hating” your ideological opponent isn’t an argument.
A persons arguments can be wrong.. right even if they do have a bad temper or a foul mouth.

Simply putting the suffix “…phobe” or “…phobia” at the end of a word doesn’t win any intellectual contest of ideas. In fact, technically it’s a logical fallacy to say… you’re just a homophobe, therefore I win..

I don’t “fear” homosexuality. I don’t have a phobia about pedophilia or beastiality or leather gear either.

In fact, for as much as Texas Lynn likes to dismiss things she says are irrelevant to this debate such as;

…I think she needs to accept that it is actually irrelevant whether her intellectual opponent is a Christian or straight or a Republican or married or single or gay or a homophobe, (or an African American.)

(Yes there are gay people who vote no to same sex “marriage” and they aren’t homophobic.)

Laurie Essig of salon.com writes about the constraints of marriage as a model, pointing out that her (lesbian) opposition to institutionalized SSM relates to the fact that it is...

:

…the lack of state and societal recognition that gave us the freedom to organize our lives according to desire rather than convention.

People have various reasons for their opposing positions on maintaining the integrity of the institution of marriage.

As for me, I am opposed to SSM for the same reason I am opposed to adultery – because the word marriage has a specific definition related to heterosexual mating and the stability of the family (offspring) which arises FROM marriage. And Texas Lynn seems to agree with my puritan view of extra-marital sex and the traditional family value of commitment and fidelity.

EG. “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery”.

But that does not make either of us bigots or ‘haters’ of any/everyone who cheats on their spouse.

The philanderer who says “I ought to” be able to do whatever I want in and out of ‘marriage” does not advance their case with the ad hominem that;
…anyone who disagrees is an intolerant, totalitarian, bigot with a phobia against promiscuity who probably hasn’t read The Handmaids Tale and secretly goes around cheating behind the back of their own spouse

The State and society can have valid logical reasons to prevent the dilution of marriage * and family and the slide down a slippery slope into polyandry/polygyny.
*Activist Judge defends marriage, as a fundamental value in Western society from the earliest of times. Rails against non-traditional marriages which harm children. Preaches about the institution of monogamous marriage.
...then gives his ruling denying marriage equality to the Church of Latter Day Saints. Canada 2011.

However, quite incongruously, Texas Lynn’s old-fashioned “couples-only”, no-adultery, version of legal marriage and family law artificially stops there.

She doesn’t seem to think it matters if biologically procreated children are able to “Honor your Mother AND your Father.”

So the slippery slope into open, polyandrous marriages DOES need a defensive legal bulwark to ensure children only have TWO married people at the head of their family...but the gender balance, and biological relatedness of those two people is irrelevant according to her.

What say you Texas Lynn?

Is 'serial monogamy' is an oxymoron?

Texas Lynn says, yes , couples only! 1 + 1

Commitment definitely!

Love actually! (Meh, not so much. Not everyone who is “in love” has the same “rights” according to Texas Lynn.)

Texas Lynn is using emotion rather than reason. (Fair enough. *shrug*)

But I have seen emotional special pleading from people who want legal pet brothels in Denmark too. (Same Love)

Meanwhile, in related news, Denmark has had a legalized definition of gay “marriages” since 1989. And a recent poll found that 79% of Danes still support same-sex marriage.

The Daily Mail online reports...
"Bestiality brothels are spreading through Germany faster than ever…"

:

Madeleine Martin told the Frankfurter Rundschau current laws were not protecting animals from predatory zoophiles who are increasingly able to turn to bestiality as a 'lifestyle choice'.

Yes – A lifestyle choice.

And an ethical one says ZETA - honest, open-minded, liberal, tolerant, pro-human, my-body-my-choice, don’t judge me you @%&!!! puritan bigot you cant tell me what to do with my sexuality
you Christofascist theocracy nazi who dreams of a Handmaids Tale totalitarian regime!!!

Meanwhile, in related news, recent poll found that 66% of Germans support same-sex marriage.

What say you Texas Lynn?

Do you believe animals can feel “love”? Would legalized interspecies "unions" be progressive and tolerant? Are we climbing up to the top of Mount Enlightenment or sliding down its slopes into dystopia?

:

...For years scientists have told us the bond between a pet and its owner goes no further than their need for food and security.
But new research suggests what dog owners knew all along – that they do in fact experience feelings of love and affection.

Source http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...ts-humans.html

:

Scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discovered that a part of the brain associated with positive emotions, was similar in dogs and humans

How similar? Similar enough for "equality" or equivocation?

You want commitment? Loyalty? Devotion? Faithfulness until death us do part?
Yep a dog ticks all your boxes. And, not to put too fine a point on it, in many cases of beastiality, the animal giving 'consent' IS THE HUMAN!

So without using the yuck factor or the slippery slope fallacy, show me your argument against inter-species "marriage"

The so-called ‘right’ to happiness is something ancient lawmakers have taken seriously too.

We aren’t breaking any new ground here people! Amoral, no-boundary, liberal self-expression of sexuality is nothing new.

The folk at Folsom Street Fair (NSFW) aren’t doing anything that would shock ancient (un)civilizations. In fact, it is argued by some, that the ancient social consequences of such unfettered, sexually flagrant, pathological, if-it-feels-good-do-it, lifestyle, was what triggered the subsequent emergence of a moral backlash.

The Western “free-love” mantra of the 60’s and 70’s didnt come first. It wasn’t a unique, ground-breaking rebellion against puritan social morality. It was just a return to a forgotten past.

Puritan morality was the true rebellion against the negative social effects of living at the bottom of the slippery slope.

Ancient Roman liberal, educated values.

Caligula(1979 film) Directors: Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula_(film)

What say you Texas Lynn?

Would it be a "moral" thing to change the marriage laws and allow 13 year old girls to get married?

This legal change to the (age of consent) definition of marriage would certainly "tick all the boxes" suggested by the sweeping philosophical idea of “Marriage Equality for All”.
1. It’s a biological fact that some people can give birth at ages well below the statutory minimum. (Born that way.)
2. These are a statistical minority. (Legally discriminated against. And there’s plenty of lawyers willing to build their careers on ground-breaking legal cases which set precedents and facilitate judicial activism.)
3. An appeal to natural justice. (If they can do it why can’t we?)
4. NOYB. (None of your business who I marry or why.)
5. Children deserve to be raised in families where “mummy and daddy” or daddy and daddy are “married”
6. Consensual. (If high school teenagers can voluntarily, publically declare that they prefer “homosexual” sex,
then presumably so too can heterosexual teens give informed consent to have sex – protected or unprotected.)

Gay rights activists are breaking down barrierS (plural) and they have a moral responsibility for the moral ripple effects caused by their activism.

There's a stigma attached to bestiality.
But if a man and his goat 'wife' were able to hold up a "Legally Married" certificate, it would help break down those disgusting social barriers of bigotry and intolerance right?

If SSM advocates think their cause will lead to more tolerance and less bigotry, where is the downhill slope?

Arguments that were accused of being slippery slope fallacy 10 years ago are now chickens coming home to roost. Yes, Texas Lynn, same-sex marriage does materially affect those who have a conscientious objection to it.

Liberals aren’t the only ones affected by constraints on their “non-negotiable” free speech.

Example #1
Free speech? Yeah right! A federal judge in San Francisco ruled in favour of the City of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors and upheld their ban on religious television advertisements called "Truth in Love."
When the "Truth in Love" people started to purchase TV spots, the Board of Supervisors contacted media outlets to discourage them from running the ads, one of which included the words;
“If you're hurting, lonely or confused, Jesus can set you free" and featured a former homosexual expressing his new-found happiness at now having a wife and kids. The Board of Supervisors claimed that these ads contributed to "horrible crimes committed against gays and lesbians." In short, this was "hate speech," that would lead to "hate crimes" including murder of homosexuals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America..._San_Francisco

Example #2
Christian photographer in New Mexico fined $7,000 for not wanting to photograph a same sex (lesbian) wedding. What if he doesn’t want to film gay porn? A $10,000 fine?
Link https://www.google.com.au/#q=Elane+Photography

Example #3
Two doctors in California sued for discrimination law when they objected on religious grounds to helping a lesbian woman conceive a child through artificial means. SSM anti-discrimination activists even want Medicare to fund gay surrogacy and fertility procedures because, through no fault of their own, gay couples are “infertile”.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/...es/s142892.pdf

Example #4
United States Air Force, Senior Master Sergeant Phillip Monk victim of discrimination, fired for refusing to make a statement of support for same-sex “marriage”. It’s legal under the constitution’s free speech amendment, for him to burn the US flag but illegal for him to speak his mind about SSM.
http://blog.libertyinstitute.org/201...ndized-in.html

Example #5
Colorado Attorney General’s office files a complaint against the owners of Masterpiece Cake shop for refusing to take part in same-sex wedding plans. Freedom of association? Yeah right!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3398660.html

Example #6
They said it wouldn’t happen. Churches forced to conduct gay marriages.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreli...es-in-denmark/

Example #7
Lawyers in England agree. The courts can’t impose SSM equality everywhere APART from the places that provide wedding services. If priests and pastors and imams are allowed to exercise their religious freedom of conscience, why can’t everyone else?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...Coalition.html

Texas Lynn · 05-23-2014, 04:14 AM

first question for Lion IRC:

In your last post, you make various "slippery slope" arguments: are any of them substantial at all? I mean, other than speculation as to what might occur, what evidence do you believe you are in possession of which validates this mostly elusive line of argument?

Lion IRC · 05-23-2014, 05:47 AM

:

first question for Lion IRC:

In your last post, you make various "slippery slope" arguments: are any of them substantial at all? I mean, other than speculation as to what might occur, what evidence do you believe you are in possession of which validates this mostly elusive line of argument?

That’s 2 questions.

Well, the actual examples I presented were not merely hypothetical.

They may not be “substantial” to people who don’t care that a business owner is fined $7,000 for their conscientious objection to SSM. And it may not be important to atheists, for example, whether churches are forced to conduct same-sex weddings.

And the idea that SSM advocates are judicial trail-blazers for the sexual freedom of expression of other minority “lifestyle” choices may not be an issue for the Folsom Street Fair people.

But YES, I do think these disruptive issues are very substantial for other broad cultures within our society.

Lion IRC · 05-23-2014, 05:49 AM

My personal (spiritual) view of marriage is that it’s a sacred institution involving;

a) The transcendent law-giver, Higher Authority – God.
b) My wife
c) Myself. (husband)

Whether or not The State recognizes my marriage in secular terms is of little interest to me apart from the need to lodge tax returns. ($$$) If I wasn’t “legally” married and a bunch of filthy politicians said they didn’t “recognize” my church wedding, it would make ZERO difference because the preciousness and love of my marriage transcends taxes and politics $$$

Why do SSM lobbyists place so much importance on secular, legal recognition?

Texas Lynn · 05-23-2014, 01:05 PM

OK, that's easy. It's because of two things, (1) many policies, both public and private, are related to marriage, i.e., "family memberships" at things like country clubs and spas, death benefits, group insurance, etc., and (2) having the powers that be recognize that a same sex marriage is every bit as good as a heterosexual one. Many arguments boil down to "are X and Y equal?" A negative answer requires a value judgment. For the question, is a marriage between a gay or lesbian couple and another between a heterosexual couple equal to each other in terms of the views of the society both economically and symbolically. As I mentioned, when I first heard of the idea i was quite skeptical. But seeing as how symbols matter I jumped on the train before it pulled out of the station. I used to think such matters were wasted efforts over trivia when instead attention needed to get paid real substsantiative issues like the employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA). But it now appears that legal recognition of same sex marriage will pave the way for a transformed society which will become more just in other ways as a result of this struggle.

Texas Lynn · 05-23-2014, 01:18 PM

Now I have to say I do not know all that much about the British Commonwealth nations' histories of oppressions of minorities but I know there is some. I've read Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden." In the U.S., civil rights laws were instituted to alleviate longstanding discrimination in employment, housing, public accomodations (access to such facilities as restaurants, hotels, etc.) and several other areas. The right-wing's "horror stories" to them involve the fact when sexual orientation is included in these provisions as a protected status then there have been rare cases of bigoted business people who have been fined a pittance for their documented refusal of services. The best known of these are bakers, photographers, and wedding venues (particularly a pavillion used for weddings as well as other things). Now, legal recognition of same sex marriages does not confer in and of itself the public accomodations access, but equal protection provisions do. Why is protecting the right of this cohort of business operators to discriminate a worthwhile goal at all, given that if jurisdictions do not have civil rights protections, boycotts and negative publicity would result anyway?

Lion IRC · 05-23-2014, 10:29 PM

I take it this is the actual question;

:

...Why is protecting the right of this cohort of business operators to discriminate a worthwhile goal at all, given that if jurisdictions do not have civil rights protections, boycotts and negative publicity would result anyway?

Because, (just as you admitted) LGBTQ lobbying is about symbolism and the opponents of SSM are equally entitled to exercise their free-speech conscientious symbolic objections in defence of THEIR cultural, moral, religious values.

That's why.

If its a contest of symbolism, then BOTH sides are entitled to fight for or against that which the symbol represents. People, including business people, are entitled to fight for their democratic, 1 vote = 1 value, freedom of speech, moral convictions.

The LGBTQ lobby are saying that everyone in society should be forced to give symbolic public recognition of homosexual 'marriage' as a token of approval. But it's not symbolic approval of family, and love, and sacred, monogamous commitment that the gay lobby are asking for. They want public approval for (what should be) their private sexual proclivities.

:

..."family memberships" at things like country clubs and spas.

Market forces are very efficient and accurate measures of demographic demand for gay country clubs and spas. And people vote with their feet (and wallets.)

Yes or No Texas Lynn.

Should I have the right to freedom of expression by way of opposing SSM as a conscientious objector - in where I shop, how I vote, which church/mosque/synagogue I attend, where I choose to live, what I say in the public square, which movies, books and magazines I find immoral and offensive to children?

05-12-2014, 03:28 AM	#2360192 / #27
Lion IRC Senior Member : Aug 2010 : 1,750	Third Substantive Post – Lion IRC Third Substantive Post – Lion IRC When I stumbled across the most recent round of comments that Texas Lynn dropped into the peanut gallery, at first I thought she was abandoning the 'formal' debate and opting for a line-by-line skirmish back in the trenches. I didn't realise that response was actually intended to be in here. Now, I don’t mind the staccato form of dialogue commonly known as 'fisking', but surely she didn't challenge me to a 'formal debate' in order to do that sort of gainsaying, and hand-waving, and quote-mining and cherry picking. This isn't a relay chat room. Please let's stick to the bigger, broader, sociological scope of this debate proposition - the law, democracy, values, autonomy, The State interest versus self-interest, family, morality, SOGI. So far in this debate, as far as I can tell, Texas Lynn has not in any way resiled from my accusation that her case (thus far) rests on subjective self-interest. If one minority can claim the supposed 'right' to define marriage according to their self-interest, so can any other minority. That's just relativist special pleading about what The State "ought" to allow. And as such there's no objective (or transcendent) persuasive reasoning to resolve or reconcile her competing self-interest with that of her opponents. Most functional jurisdictions around the world resolve these matters (peacefully) by using a model we call DEMOCRACY. But Texas Lynn completely dismissed the notion that an autonomous jurisdiction might legitimately self-determine that, collectively - democratically - they want to define marriage differently to Texas Lynn. I started the debate with a reference to the US declaration of political/legal independence. Does an individual jurisdiction of like-minded constituents have the liberty and the equality to freely accept (or reject) the proposition subject of this debate? Because it seems to me THAT would be the real democratic essence of "equality". It's not even clear to me whether the notion of "equality" which she espouses as the basis for (selectively) redefining marriage, extends to the democratic principle of 'one vote, one value'. The single voter who holds to a heterosexual definition of marriage is surely entitled to have their vote counted as EQUAL to the single voter who holds a different view. Texas Lynn is tenaciously avoiding the democratic principle that people are free to express their collective will in opposition to SSM and that they are certainly entitled to challenge her (ungodly) authority to proclaim moral edicts. She asserts that the principle of equality ought to apply in one area when it suits her, but don't I equally have the 'right' to live in a jurisdiction where voters (with votes of equal value) decide to keep a stricter, clearer, heterosexual, gender-balanced definition of marriage? My argument from divinity was an attempt to explain to Texas Lynn that even though some people (for whatever reason) don't think a Higher Being is relevant to morality and "ought" questions, there are majority jurisdictions around the world that collectively do agree (for whatever reason) that an objective, transcendent moral law actually IS relevant to society. And their response to a non-theist assertion about what "ought" to be, is ..."says who?" Op Ed public letter at realclearpolitics.com wrote : "...We cannot wish away the objections of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith traditions, or browbeat them into submission. Even in our constitutional system, persuasion is a minority’s first and best strategy." *(Signed by 50+ academics, intellectuals and experts in the bleeding obvious.)* Jonathan Adler Case Western Reserve University School of Law Kenneth Anderson American University Washington College of Law Brian Bix University of Minnesota Law School David Blankenhorn President, Institute for American Values Reginald J. Brown Partner, WilmerHale Jim Burroway Box Turtle Bulletin Steven G. Calabresi Northwestern University Law School Dale Carpenter University of Minnesota Law School Brian Chase Former senior staff attorney, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund James Chen Michigan State University Law School Jeff Cook-McCormac Senior Advisor, American Unity Fund John Corvino Wayne State University Donald Downs University of Wisconsin—Madison Beth Elliott Daughters of Bilitis California Committee for Sexual Law Reform Richard Epstein New York University School of Law William A. Galston The Brookings Institution Margaret Hoover President, American Unity Fund Lisa Graham Keegan Former Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction Timothy Kincaid Box Turtle Bulletin Gregory J. King HRCF Communications Director, 1989-1995 James Kirchick The Daily Beast Heidi Kitrosser University of Minnesota Law School Jim Kolbe Former member, U.S. House of Representatives David Lampo Author, “A Fundamental Freedom” Log Cabin Republicans Eli Lehrer President, R Street Institute James Lindgren Northwestern University Law School David Link Fred Litwin Fabulous Blue Tent Brett McDonnell University of Minnesota Law School William McGeveran University of Minnesota Law School Ken Mehlman Businessman; 62nd Chairman, Republican National Committee Stephen H. Miller Independent Gay Forum/IGF Culture Watch Charles Murray American Enterprise Institute Norman Ornstein American Enterprise Institute Richard Painter University of Minnesota Law School Branden Petersen Minnesota State Senate Mark Pietrzyk David Post Temple University School of Law Randy R. Potts Box Turtle Bulletin Joe Radinovich Minnesota State House of Representatives Jonathan Rauch The Brookings Institution Stephen Richer The University of Chicago Law School Purple Elephant Republicans Jonathan W. Rowe Mercer County Community College Will Saletan Slate.com Robert Sarvis 2014 U.S. Senate candidate, Virginia Sally Satel American Enterprise Institute Leah Ward Sears Partner at Schiff Hardin LLP Former Georgia Supreme Court Justice. Rick Sincere Chairman, Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty Christina Hoff Sommers Resident Scholar American Enterprise Institute Andrew Sullivan Berin Szoka President, TechFreedom Rich Tafel Public Squared Peter Thiel Co-founder, PayPal Rob Tisinai Box Turtle Bulletin Eugene Volokh UCLA School of Law Sasha Volokh Emory Law School Milan Vydareny Cathy Young Contributing Editor, Reason Magazine They were talking to you Texas Lynn! Where’s your persuasive case? Texas Lynn doesn't seem to understand the "Duck Season / Wabbit Season" nil-all-draw that results from non-theist, humanist versions of competing moral law claims. And she doesn't seem able to offer her opponents anything more than gainsaying and argument from silence instead of positive persuasive reasoning. Well, you can’t argue a special-interest cause based on the…no harm, mind your own business, my SSM doesn’t affect you trope. If everyone took that approach to moral questions then the starving people in Africa would be none of my business. And the unmarried moms who got pregnant (their body/their choice) would be none of my business. And the people who view internet child porn would be none of my business. The social pathologies of domestic violence and family breakdown and depression and self-harm and drug abuse and child welfare would be none of my business. While Texas Lynn continues to squib her responsibility to present a “formal” debate case in support of the proposition which she asserted, I would like to develop the theme of social pathologies which arise from the dysfunction of family law and explore the States well-founded concern the biologically heterosexual institution of marriage and family and their connection with (biological) procreation. The Law^TM can be seen to function according to three “P”’s. The law Prohibits – undesirable, unwanted social outcomes. (Dysfunction.) The law Promotes – desirable, advantageous, propitious outcomes. The law Permits. – neutral, inconsequential no net harm outcomes. In family law, this three-fold view can be seen played out around the world where marriage has always been gender specific and always reflected a (Darwinian) biological view in promoting the heterosexual nuclear family and the stability of procreation. Statistics like this are a concern for The State. When Texas Lynn proposed the topic that; “Same sex marriage should be legal in all jurisdictions with the inherent benefits regarding same extended in full,” she must have understood that the primary benefits of legal marriage are underscored by recognition of The State (or by God, in the case of a sacred, religious imprimatur,) that marriage is a foundation for the biological family which, (in most cases) entails offspring and, that The State generally has a benevolent disposition to marriages because they provide safe and stable environments for children. (Future citizens.) In family law, The State “promotes” the benefit of ‘family’ stability and prohibits dysfunctional social behaviour that is seen as detrimental to the welfare of the biological family. Does homosexual “marriage” promote or dilute the family law outcome which is sought by The State? Should it be merely “permitted” as a socially neutral activity such as platonic friendships that have no nett impact on the nuclear family because they don’t incline or aspire towards procreation? Or is The State reasonably entitled to proscribe (prohibit) certain public behaviour in the area of sexual preference/orientation and self-expression of gender identity precisely because they are thought to lead to social dysfunction that might harm marriage and the stability of the family? For example, if a person’s SOGI involved multiple partner infidelity and lack of long-term monogamous commitment, (open-marriage,) would The State have a valid concern for the welfare of any biological offspring? If one of the inherent benefits of marriage is its basis as the foundation for building a stable nuclear family, should same-sex “marriages” be promoted as normal and desirable in their aspiration to raise step-children or adopted children or surrogate children? Texas Lynn says “Normal” is just a setting on the dryer. but if an unthinking, robotic household item of whitegoods can tell the difference between normal and not normal, then I'd say The State is entitled to do likewise. Anyway, I've run out of time so I will have to continue developing this issue of (Darwinian) biological family law and matrimony in the next round.

05-17-2014, 01:20 AM	#2362615 / #34
Lion IRC Senior Member : Aug 2010 : 1,750	Fourth Substantive Post - Lion IRC Fourth Substantive Post - Lion IRC Don’t blame social primate heterosexism on Christian fundamentalists. Blame Darwinian sexual selection. (I should say “thank” rather than blame.) Intelligent design, aka – evolutionary/Darwinian sexual selection in homo-sapiens has conferred upon human kind, a survival advantage which has placed us at (what appears to be) the top of the ladder, with optional dominion over any and all other creatures. And if primate homosexual behaviour has played even any part at all in our success as a human race, it has done so by keeping the [expletive deleted] OUT OF HUMAN MATRIMONY AND MATE SELECTION AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT/REARING! As a species, our existence and our dominant survival, proceeds by heterosexual procreation which functions according to a mechanism of anatomical jigsaw pieces which only “fit” together in UNION in one way. Male + Female = one flesh = offspring/family. Our ongoing evolutionary survival as a species depends upon individuals making themself attractive to the opposite sex and/or intimidating, deterring or defeating same-sex rivals. (Conspicuous ability to bear children and breast feed is not altogether irrelevant here.) There’s no point thinking about the future of your selfish DNA unless and until you have passed the competitive natural selection ‘hurdle’ called attracting a mate of the opposite sex. Merely wanting someone to spend your life with, (as if their gender was irrelevant) is NOT the main game. Reproduction is! And we would be headed for evolutionary extinction if “mating” had nothing to do with the act of heterosexual procreation - which involves a bizarre form of sexual activity that homosexuals apparently do not or cannot enjoy. (either with or without an orgasm) As Geoffrey Miller* says, “sexual selection is basically the realisation that evolution proceeds by reproductive success.” And that means, before we can actually physically procreate, (make a family) we need to successfully lure/attract/entice an available mating partner of the opposite gender. Traditional, heterosexual, human marriage including courtship and betrothal is about the ‘evolutionary psychology’ of mating. “*The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature” Geoffrey Miller (2000) Doubleday (Associate Professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico) My opponent says… “quite a few gay and lesbian couples getting married these days are planning on procreating and any regime which does not openly embrace fascism is powerless to stop that.” But the name of the ‘fascist’ regime that prevents two men from procreating is called - BIOLOGY* One common (naturalist) argument for SSM is that homosexuality has “always been with us”. But so have murder, rape, paedophilia. And the claim that homosexuality “just is” - a brute reality - doesn’t mean anything when considered in the normative context of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 thousand years of permanent, dominant, biologically successful, heterosexual procreation. To claim that “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” is nebulous because there is (still) no biologically obvious evidence to substantiate the born-that-way myth. Sexual preference/orientation is NOT an early, fixed, and uniformly developing trait. If it were, Texas Lynn would have presented evidence of such. Instead… This 1994 study by Lisa M. Diamond, assistant professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, began studying a group of 89 females aged 16 to 23 who were attracted to other females. Sampling included LGBTQ community events. Over the course of the study, almost two-thirds had changed their self-identified sexual orientation. (Without having been subjected to reparative therapy) Lisa M. Diamond, 2003 Journal of Personality & Social Psychology Vol 84, No. 2 http://www.psych.utah.edu/people/peo...0a%20Phase.pdf (Last accessed 13th May 2014) The myth that people can’t change their sexual preference/orientation is made obvious when you consider that countless people every year are helped by medical/mental health professionals to treat their unwanted sexual dysfunction. Sex addicts CAN get professional, certified, science-based, reparative therapy. The ability of a person to even consider reparative therapy demonstrates that there is free-will volition to try something that, if they were born-that-way, they would realise is inherently impossible and hence not make the attempt. In May 2000, the American Psychiatric Association issued a Fact Sheet, “Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues,” acknowledging that, to date “there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality.” http://www.psychiatry.org/lgbt-sexual-orientation (Last accessed 13th May 2014) Home>Mental Health>People>LGBT/Sexual Orientation Perhaps the difficulty in studying these SOGI cohorts is because there are so many minorities within minorities and they are such a small percentage in number relative to the wider (heterosexual) demographic According to large-scale population studies carried out in the US, the proportion of men actually having had a male sex partner in the previous year is only about 1-3 percent. (Spira et al. 1993; Lauman et al. 1994; Black et al.2000). Now I know Texas Lynn thinks… “the pompous invocation of “procreation” is an irrelevancy.” But that’s exactly what you would expect from someone who grossly misunderstands the relationship between marriage and mating. And the relationship is biologically heterosexual by nature. When science tries to study the (fundamental) sociological differences between; a) Traditional, heterosexual gender-balanced families, in which children are conceived and raised by their two biological parents and... b)Experimental alternatives where same-sex attracted (gay) people try to emulate the heterosexual model of family, and artificially arrange surrogacy or adoptive parenting in order to play “mummy and daddy” just like the grown-ups do. …the studies fail to scientifically conclude anything objectively meaningful insofar as the LGBTQ mythology that Same Sex ‘Marriage’ activists would like society to believe. …I was biologically born this ‘way’ see, here’s my gay gene …babies don’t really need (female) maternal nurturing for normal childhood development …maternal breastfeeding is optional …children are never influenced or conditioned* by the gender role models around them. …two gay men can provide all the parental guidance needed by any adopted girl beginning puberty. *Tabula rasa - an epistemological theory. (Blank slate) Steven Nock, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, who was asked to review several hundred studies as an expert witness for the Attorney General of Canada concluded; “…all of the articles I reviewed contained at least one fatal flaw of design or execution” “…not a single one of those studies was conducted according to general accepted standards of scientific research.” Examples of flawed “study” methodology. * No nationally representative sample (self-selection effect), * Reliance on maternal anecdotal reports, * Outcomes measured by the research are unrelated to standard measures of child well-being, * Studies focused on static or short term measures of child development, * Studies focussed on lesbian women ignoring gay male adoption, * Little or no control method for demographic variables.

05-23-2014, 04:14 AM	#2364241 / #45
Texas Lynn Navy Mom and M-I-L : Aug 2008 : Park Slope AKA Dyke Slope : 11,814	first question for Lion IRC: In your last post, you make various "slippery slope" arguments: are any of them substantial at all? I mean, other than speculation as to what might occur, what evidence do you believe you are in possession of which validates this mostly elusive line of argument? __________________ "The brutal logic of neoliberal financial capitalism strikes at the heart of the socialist revolution." Matthew Yglesias

05-23-2014, 05:49 AM	#2364257 / #47
Lion IRC Senior Member : Aug 2010 : 1,750	Q & A round 1 My personal (spiritual) view of marriage is that it’s a sacred institution involving; a) The transcendent law-giver, Higher Authority – God. b) My wife c) Myself. (husband) Whether or not The State recognizes my marriage in secular terms is of little interest to me apart from the need to lodge tax returns. ($$$) If I wasn’t “legally” married and a bunch of filthy politicians said they didn’t “recognize” my church wedding, it would make ZERO difference because the preciousness and love of my marriage transcends taxes and politics $$$ Why do SSM lobbyists place so much importance on secular, legal recognition?

05-23-2014, 01:05 PM	#2364300 / #48
Texas Lynn Navy Mom and M-I-L : Aug 2008 : Park Slope AKA Dyke Slope : 11,814	OK, that's easy. It's because of two things, (1) many policies, both public and private, are related to marriage, i.e., "family memberships" at things like country clubs and spas, death benefits, group insurance, etc., and (2) having the powers that be recognize that a same sex marriage is every bit as good as a heterosexual one. Many arguments boil down to "are X and Y equal?" A negative answer requires a value judgment. For the question, is a marriage between a gay or lesbian couple and another between a heterosexual couple equal to each other in terms of the views of the society both economically and symbolically. As I mentioned, when I first heard of the idea i was quite skeptical. But seeing as how symbols matter I jumped on the train before it pulled out of the station. I used to think such matters were wasted efforts over trivia when instead attention needed to get paid real substsantiative issues like the employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA). But it now appears that legal recognition of same sex marriage will pave the way for a transformed society which will become more just in other ways as a result of this struggle. __________________ "The brutal logic of neoliberal financial capitalism strikes at the heart of the socialist revolution." Matthew Yglesias

05-23-2014, 01:18 PM	#2364305 / #49
Texas Lynn Navy Mom and M-I-L : Aug 2008 : Park Slope AKA Dyke Slope : 11,814	Now I have to say I do not know all that much about the British Commonwealth nations' histories of oppressions of minorities but I know there is some. I've read Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden." In the U.S., civil rights laws were instituted to alleviate longstanding discrimination in employment, housing, public accomodations (access to such facilities as restaurants, hotels, etc.) and several other areas. The right-wing's "horror stories" to them involve the fact when sexual orientation is included in these provisions as a protected status then there have been rare cases of bigoted business people who have been fined a pittance for their documented refusal of services. The best known of these are bakers, photographers, and wedding venues (particularly a pavillion used for weddings as well as other things). Now, legal recognition of same sex marriages does not confer in and of itself the public accomodations access, but equal protection provisions do. Why is protecting the right of this cohort of business operators to discriminate a worthwhile goal at all, given that if jurisdictions do not have civil rights protections, boycotts and negative publicity would result anyway? __________________ "The brutal logic of neoliberal financial capitalism strikes at the heart of the socialist revolution." Matthew Yglesias

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