A new study just published concludes that gay marriage is healthy for gay couples in a number of different ways. This has long been an argument I've made, that social conservatives, if "pro-family" really meant something objective and not merely a code phrase for "get the fags", should be all for gay marriage. Marriage is a stabilizing institution that really does strengthen societal bonds and work for the best of the couple making a commitment:
The report says civil partnerships will reduce the prejudice and social exclusion that gay couples feel and should help to cut the high rates of depression and drug-taking among homosexuals.
Heterosexual marriage is known to improve the mental and physical health of couples, reducing alcoholism, heart disease and sexually transmitted diseases.
The report, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Heath, suggests that homosexuals who enter into partnerships should gain many of the same advantages. It says: "Less discrimination against, and greater societal support for, long-term, same-sex relationships may increase self-respect in gay and lesbian people, reduce the tendency to have contact with multiple partners and lead gay people to seek help more promptly for sexual infections."...
Other studies have revealed that "married" same-sex couples are more open about their sexuality and have closer relationships with their relatives than same-sex couples not in civil partnerships.
These family relationships are very important to a stable society. For some reason, social conservatives believe tha when it comes to heterosexual couples, but they abandon it when it comes to homosexual couples. Which just proves all the more that "family values" is nothing more than catchphrase for anti-gay policies.
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Ed, you're missing the whole point. Social conservatives are not the least bit concerned for the mental and psychological well-being of homosexuals. It's all about what you do with your ding-dong or your hoochie.
If you put your ding-dong or hoochie in places where you shouldn't, then you're cast into an eternal lake of fire.
If, on the other hand, you suppress the sexual desires God, in his infinite wisdom (whatever the hell that is) gave you, and put your ding-dong and hoochie where Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly say you should, then you go to heaven.
Good Lord, the imagery of that last paragrah... I may never put my ding-dong in a hoochie again.
Why is it, people who don't want me to have a sex life are more interested in what I do in bed than I am?
They know in great detail about sexual activities that would never have occured to me - though some of them are physically impossible.
When I have sex, it's an enjoyable way to spend the night with a new friend, an old friend, or (when there's someone special) a person who's a bit more than a friend. That's what it is to *me*.
To Falwell and his type, it's a way to simultainiously reject God, worship Satan, be a communist, support Darwinism, protect the environment, burn the flag, attack democracy *and* destroy the family. And probably oppose the occupation of Iraq.
He should be telling terrorists, "If you want to kill The Free World (TM), don't plant bombs or hijack planes! Take the easy way and have lots of gay sex."
Gay Sex. The fun way to destroy civilisation.
Just another example of fundie hypocrisy at its finest.
When will these idiots learn that being gay is no more a choice than being brown skinned or blonde haired? It should be obvious to all people that stable, monogamous relationships are healthier regardless of one's sexual orientation. Not to the fundies though due to their Bible-blind bigotry and ignorance.
--JK--
My loss of faith in my early teens had nothing at all to do with evolution (which, growing up in a Catholic family, I was never taught to reject), nor with science (which had always interested me). It had everything to do with sex. At just about the moment I hit puberty, I suddenly couldn't understand why so much supernatural hoo-hah had to surround matters of sex and sexuality.
And, that revelation certainly didn't cause me to run wild. My own love life started late and was pretty tame for someone who came of age in the 1970s. Nothing in the process of going from Catholic to atheist made me want to take bad risks with my body and emotions, nor with anyone else's.
I've got nothing against gays forming stable relationship which enjoy legal protection. Out of respect for tradition, I am against calling it "marriage".
Call me a fundie if you wish.
Roman:
Why? Why should tradition itself be respected? Why just becuase it's tradition should it be priveleged?
If it was wrong at the beginning doesn't using 'tradition' just insulate an idea from correction?
So essentially your entire point comes down to simple words. That is irrational.
On this general subject, and Ed may wish to elevate it, has anyone been catching the firestorm that Focus on the Family (Dobson) has been generating in Colorado by actually backing a form of reciprocal beneficiary legislation that would be available to same sex couples? Mega-idiots like Paul Cameron are slamming them on it. It's serious enough that Fotf is devoting a second radio broadcast (airing Thursday 16 Feb)http://www.family.org/fmedia/broadcast/a0039537.cfm to damage control.
JK -
You could be up to your eyeballs in scientific evidence that homosexuality is not chosen, but it wouldn't make a bit of difference to the bigots.
Any bit of science that doesn't agree with their politics is ignored or dismissed as "athiest", Darwinist", etc. etc. It's the same phenomenon that happens with creationists and IDiots.
Science is all well and good when it yields the technology to beam TV and radio signals or to create websites in order to spread their propaganda, but when it comes to "controversial" subjects (to the Fundies and Wingnuts anyway) such as human origins or homosexuality, then suddenly science becomes anti-God.