Defense of Marriage

[minn_stat]

Originally Posted by YOhio

I may attempt a short summary.

There are two conflicting forces in the fight to define the purpose of marriage.

One believes that government should sanction marriage for the purpose of propagating our species in an ideal family situation where the birth father and birth mother raise the child.

The other believes that the government should sanction marriage for the purpose of promoting love and healthy relationships between two people.

Those who promote the latter purpose do not believe that it will have any impact on the former. Those who support the former purpose disagree, believing that the shift in focus from future generations to current generations will have a negative overall societal impact on future generations.

It's my understanding that minn_stat believes the former.

As for me, I'm conflicted about the whole matter. I'm not offended at the idea of two homosexuals entering a marriage or civil union, but I remain unconvinced of the necessity that government sanction their relationship. If it's a matter of filing joint income taxes or receiving insurance benefits, I can see the argument. If it's purely a symbolic act, then I'd prefer to take a wait and see approach. On this day, it seems appropriate to quote William Buckley in the first publication of National Review when he declared that he was standing athwart history, yelling STOP!

See? I told you, you guys are much better than I at this stuff. My pages and pages of rambling rolled into a couple of paragraphs. Oversimplified, of course, but pretty good.

I think it is pretty obvious that historically, the former view has been far more the norm than the latter.

[minn_stat]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

where are the quotes and citations?

I put most of this together about two years ago, primarily for consumption by my extended family and a few friends. I was not academically rigorous in my citations and so forth, so I'd need to dig a bit to find sources. If I get a chance, I'll try to dig up at least some of them. But I'm amazed at how much some of you post on here -- most of the time, I'm lucky to find time to read the threads I find most interesting. All of you either have a lot more free time than I do, are much more efficient at getting things done in your lives, or are much quicker at crafting your posts than I. So don't hold your breath too long.

This was originally written as a tool to get people to question what they'd been hearing in the media, at least to consider alternative ways of looking at the issue, to provide some solid logical reasoning for being against gay marriage. It was not intended to be an airtight logical case for being against gay marriage. I hesitated posting it for this reason, but (probably against better judgment) decided to do so anyways.