On why I imagine people who are against gay marriage are against it:

[xiphias]

Underneath the following cut tag are concepts which many people on my friends list may find offensive.

But who I'd REALLY like to hear from are people who ARE against gay marriage.

I'd like to put together an argument which, I suspect, may be a reason why people are against gay marriage. This is not an argument which I believe; rather, it is an argument which I can imagine which leads to the same conclusions that I perceive among people who are against gay marriage.

What I'd really love is if people who are against gay marriage would let me know if this argument is close to how you feel.

Anonymous commenting is on, and IP tracking is off. And I'm going to do something which I NEVER do on my LJ: if anyone gets nasty against people, I'm going to delete comments. I'm inviting people to say things which actually, in a real sense, are personal attacks against other people on my friends list.

In other words, if this works the way I hope it will, griffen, you, among other people, are not going to want to read it.

In Leviticus, gay sex is one of the ONLY forms of sex referred to as "an abomination". In Hebrew, it's a much stronger form of condemnation than any of the other things.

It is understood that people will, in their own private lives, make choices that you don't agree with. But to place legal government sanction on this act is to state that you agree with it.

Taking laws against sodomy off the books -- that's fine. By doing that, you are "agreeing to disagree". If it's an abomination, well, it's THEIR abomination, and you can live and let live. If they want to be public, and even have ceremonies -- that's, again, something where you can agree to disagree.

But by placing actual government sanction on such relationships -- that crosses the line between "not opposing" and "supporting". Allowing "abominations" to have the same status as REAL marriages, well, that gives marriages the same status as abominations. And THAT'S why it destroys marriage.

Even "civil unions" can be seen as a live-and-let-live compromise. But this -- putting a real marriage and an abomination in the same category? That calls into question the legitimacy of ALL marriages.

So -- people who are against gay marriage? Is this somewhat similar to how you think about it?

Comments

[mr-clarinet.livejournal.com]

I'm staunchly pro-gay marriage, and so might not be of much value in your quest here, but I'd always thought a lot of the anti-gay marriage camp is somehow based on the idea of linking "marriage" and "family" and therefore "family values"?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This was what my parents thought (complete with Leviticus), last time I cared to discuss it with them, and I don't see any reason they should have changed their minds.

[ckd]

Have you read penknife's post about this same topic? I found it very thought-provoking.

[brooksmoses]

I did as well. Thank you for linking to it!

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

I regularly surprise my friends by expressing ambivalence about gay marriage. Long essay coming soon, I promise; I held off until after Prop 8 out of deference to my friends who cared more about it than I do, and I have a couple of other things to write about first, but I will get to it in the next couple of essays.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

I am of course not against gay marriage. But I agree that that at least seems like a reasonable argument. If I believed the premise that gay sex was an abomination, then the conclusion is reasonable.

[arib.livejournal.com]

With regards to religious Jewish or Christian folks that are anti-gay marriage, that's usually the argument I hear.

(I disagree with their reasoning for various reasons of my own, mind you.)

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

The other part is the fear that, if gay marriage is legal, that *their* pastor/priest/reverend will have to perform them in *their* church or place of worship or be sued/accused of discrimination. "Marriage" means "the kind of marriage I have."

[navrins]

This isn't the argument I've heard from someone who is at least mildly against gay marriage. (I alluded earlier today to the argument I have heard; I forget where.) I also suspect - perhaps wrongly - that while many people may formulate an argument like this, the actualy REASON they are against gay marriage is far more visceral. (Similarly, I'm sure a lot of people who write very cogent, rational, persuasive arguments FOR gay marriage, to try to convince others, didn't actually reach their own opinion because of such arguments, but rather because they wanted to be allowed to marry their sweetie. I don't think this weakens the argument, but it does mean that persuading someone the argument is invalid isn't going to change their opinion.)

Since I'm not actually against gay marriage myself, I won't go into further details here which I may very well be mangling.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

"Similarly, I'm sure a lot of people who write very cogent, rational, persuasive arguments FOR gay marriage, to try to convince others, didn't actually reach their own opinion because of such arguments, but rather because they wanted to be allowed to marry their sweetie."

Or that they know and are fond of someone and really want that person to be able to marry their sweetie. (At least, last I checked knowing queerfolk correlated most highly with supporting queer rights.)

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I think it's more than just the text based argument. (I mean, really - how much of Leviticus has most of the country been perfectly happy to ignore?)

The text based argument is something you can point to and makes something that sounds like a rational argument about (at least if you think such religious texts have any place in a rational argument). But there's also the whole cultural stigma bit, which runs pretty deep, still. (Would you call it oppositional sexuality, in that "gay" is posited as the opposite of "straight", and both weak and flawed and yet inherently threatening?)

Hmm... In some ways I'd compare it to some of the more anti-female traditions in Islam. I mean seriously, if you look at the Quran, women actually are guaranteed more rights than in other Abrahamic faiths. (Right of divorce, right of property, etc. Hell, right of pleasure during sex, for that matter.)

But there is a convergence of some anti-female material in the Quran with a lot of other cultural influences... and out of that you get everything from veiling (which is only prescribed by wild interpretation) to clitoredectomy. (Though I think the whole issue of veiling tends to be horribly glossed as anti-female when in fact it is much more complex.) And then it gets wrapped up in all kind of other cultural issues around modernization and westernization... (Islamic feminist movements, past and current, are really worth looking into.)

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

"at least if you think such religious texts have any place in a rational argument"

Just to nitpick, I do think religious texts have a place in rational argument. That is, rational argument *about and within the context of the religion itself*. It doesn't have a place in helping to decide secular law.

[tpau]

if gay marriage is acceptable, then thier kids will think it is ok to be gay. this is why my parents are against it.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's one I don't entirely get. If gay marriage is acceptible, then it WILL be okay to be gay. What do the kids have to do with it?

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing a whole lot of discussion about Prop 8, and "why we lost", and trying to understand why people who voted Yes on 8 did what they did.

I think that it's important work, and it's good that it's being done.

What I *really* want to know, and I'm stealing from other smart people who have already asked this, is why we're only seeing all of this discussion *now*, and we didn't see any of it a couple of months ago, when it might've made a difference.

It's been pointed out that liberals in generally, and the No on 8 people specifically, have a tendency to talk *at* people, when they're supporting something. They talk a lot about how their way is right, and we should all vote for their way because it's right. But they don't talk *to* people as much.

I had a good friend of mine try to tell me, in casual discussion last night about the election returns, that he doesn't think that conservatism or libertarianism is even a reasonable position to hold. Which is dangerously close to the sort of closed-minded One True Way thinking that I've been railing against on the far right.

I'm wandering off topic, and getting wordy. Which probably means that I should stop now, and possibly repost a more coherent version of this on my own journal sometime when I'm not supposed to be working.

[brooksmoses]

Yeah, that.

Maybe Obama can teach a little about how to listen and talk *to* people? He seems good at it.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

I suspect that for many people who are against same-sex marriage, it really comes down to the "yuck factor". In this culture, there's a lot of shaming and slurs around being queer, a lot of presenting it as something nasty. There is also a lot of shaming around body issues and gender issues that affect what sex acts many people do or do not find "yucky" (as a separate issue from orientation).

Consequently, any cogent arguments that side may attempt to make genearally are merely attempts to justify why they have a gut-level reaction of disgust when contemplating same-sex relationships. Yes, there is the religious angle, but I suspect that this angle has received the emphasis and endorsement of so many for so long (and not fallen away into neglect as other precepts have)due to the yuck factor.

I recently read an interesting article that I can't remember the location of -- I think it was in Salon, they were interviewing this guy who wrote a book about disgust, as an experience and a force in human societies. They noted that people who identify as socially "conservative" tend to let the gut-level reaction of disgust guide them in determining what they believe to be Morally Wrong. In contrast, they found that people who identified as socially "liberal" tended NOT to use this as their sole guide, but to step back from it at least in part and assess its moral rightness or wrongness based on other factors also. (And no, I don't remember where the citation for this study came from, but I believe Google would turn it up, it was pretty recent.)

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

Your summary sounds right to me, though in my experience as a Catholic, I don't even hear it explicated so clearly. It's just "Protection of the Family" to which I always wind up going "Huh?" and have to go do research to figure out what the heck the actual rationale is. Because I'm innately libertarian and it's hard for me to comprehend this kind of thing. :-/

Another argument I see is that without regard to religion or culture, throughout history, all societies have been built upon male/female reproductive family units. Human children need a stable family for proper upbringing, so it is beneficial to all of society to support such units as much as possible. Since same-sex couplings can never naturally produce children, and do not have the normally-expected combination of male and female influences, they are not an acceptable analogue.

And, the final argument I see (which is really the only one that persuades me) is like jadasc said, that if same-sex unions are legally declared to be equivalent to marriage, that churches with contrary beliefs will be forced to perform them. I have no idea what protestant churches would do if that came to pass, but I know the Catholic Church in the USA would have to shut down its parishes and go underground.

I know a group of seminarians in this country who honestly expect to live out at least part of their career as priests in prison. I think that's expecting an awful lot of change to happen very fast, but, such things have happened historically, elsewhere. Already in this country Catholic hospitals and charities have had to shut down due to legislation which would force them to do something contrary to Catholic teaching, if they had continued to operate.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

And, the final argument I see (which is really the only one that persuades me) is like jadasc said, that if same-sex unions are legally declared to be equivalent to marriage, that churches with contrary beliefs will be forced to perform them.

This is not actually true. Nor are Orthodox Jewish synagogues required to perform interfaith marriages, even though such marriages are legally recognized. If your church is only willing to perform marriages for fertile heterosexual white people with naturally red hair, the state will not interfere.

This is different from hospitals, because the need for a wedding is never an emergency. People have died because they were refused medical treatment for "moral reasons," so the state takes an interest.

What is dicey, by First Amendment standards, is legally defining marriage according to the standards of some religions while ignoring others. Why is the law set up to recognize all Catholic marriages, but not all Unitarian or Neopagan marriages?

[(Anonymous)]

Let's hope this anonymous comment thing works. I'm sorry it's so long. First I thought I didn't have time to write it all out, then I realized I had the time to write it all out but not to make it shorter. In fact, the comment I wrote at first is bigger than the maximum space allowed, so it'll have to appear in two parts. Here we go:

I'm lukewarm on gay marriage, but not because I think gay sex is an abomination. Far from it, I have gay friends I adore, who are married to each other and have children, and are some of the happiest most exemplary couples I know (not that they should have to model that behavior, but it just so happens they do).

It's not that I oppose gay marriage so much as I'm angry that it is a priority for either side. In my view gay marriage is mostly a stick the right wing has used to beat progressives into submission. Gay marriage is maybe number 3721 on my list of urgent problems facing society. In a perfect world I'd like for gay couples to have inheritance and visitation rights and all, I just see many more urgent problems in line ahead of that.

I admit that there's an element of political calculation here: I don't want to spend a nickel of political capital on gay marriage because I often find that gays couldn't care less about or actively oppose my own progressive priorities (I'm basically an old-fashioned tax-and-spend-and-regulate liberal).

TBC

[(Anonymous)]

Continuation (now with bold for people in a hurry):

I'll try hard to word this next part without offending, because I truly don't mean any disrespect. I'm more socially conservative than most of my friends, more as a matter of emphasis than of opposition to any given freedom. I'm disturbed by the way the language of rights has been co-opted to stand for what to me is just sexual consumerism. I'm disturbed by the anti-feminist backlash I've noticed lately in progressive circles. It's the whole Bill Maher ideology, which sounds to me like, "Hey baby, I fully respect your right to spread for me in whatever freaky style you deem wisest, and you're 100% free to have an abortion if you get knocked up. What's that? Equal pay? Oh, honey, I've got to go. Text me." To me, for the state to ratify gay relationships is like the state ratifying your right to choose the tattoo or designer sunglasses of your choice: nice, and certainly the right thing if I'm pressed to think about it, just trivial compared to burning issues of economic policy, education, and health care. I guess that means I'm OK with heteronormative policies for the time being. Sorry.

This probably makes me a bigot. I'm not sure I can beat that rap. But I swear it's only a matter of emphasis, of how I allocate my political time, not of actively going out of my way to oppress anyone.

All this said, the anti-gay-marriage initiatives in CA, AZ and FL were disgusting. That the right wing wasted everyone's time and energy on those things makes me sick.

[bluerosesgirl.livejournal.com]

Oft-commenting Shakesville troll "randplaty" actually spells out his anti-gay-marriage argument in detail here: http://www.randplaty.com/2008/11/02/prop-8-no-such-thing-as-neutrality/

Sum sentence:
"If gay marriage is legalized, children will grow up in an environment where their sexuality is a choice."

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'm passing along something here, and it's not something I believe myself, but I think it provides a rational secular argument that at least has the benefit of stating a well thought position:

Redefining "marriage" is like redefining "freedom." Both words appear in laws without any explanation of what they mean, and that's because their meaning was considered self-evident when those laws were written. If a word like "marriage" can be redefined to mean something so completely different from what it meant two centuries ago, that opens the door to redefinition of any other legal term when it becomes convenient. Soon words like "liberty" and "justice" could mean something very different too.

[My disagreement with this argument is that the efforts to extend the definition of marriage to include same sex partners doesn't in any way restrict the marriages of opposite sex partners. So no restrictive redefinition is happening.]

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"Freedom" and "justice" are constantly being redefined, in practice. I don't mean that cynically: sometimes they are redefined in ways of which I approve.

My 2 cents

[banshee99.livejournal.com]

I will briefly appear in this thread for the sake of adding another side to it.

I am against legalizing homosexual unions. If you want someone to have the right to pull the plug on you if you end up on life support, give them power of attorney ahead of time. If you want someone to inherit your stuff, make a will.

I am a Christian. I believe in the Bible. I believe homosexuality is a sin. It does not keep me from having gay friends. I, too, am a sinner. Does this mean I should not have friends? Or rather being friends with me does not mean condoning my sins, personal or public.

I am not a homophobe. I see nothing to fear.

Something is radically happening in Massachusetts which I do not wish to see in my state. Children are being taught, IN KINDERGARTEN, that homosexuality is normal/right/proper/acceptable. Obviously, I do not agree with this and fear my children getting confused by the mixed messages. An easy answer would be to either put my kids in private school or homeschool them, but those resources are not available (financially or otherwise) to all of the people who feel the same as I do. There was one case where a father was put in jail because he refused to leave the principal's office of his kindergartener's school because the principal told him he could not object to them teaching his son that homosexuality was acceptable. The school was refusing him any choice in the matter.

How would I explain to my children the hypocrisy of voting to allow same-sex unions and then turning around and telling them it's not okay?

Re: My 2 cents

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Thank you; I really appriciate you posting here.

In general, do you feel that what I wrote above makes sense?

[(Anonymous)]

I hesitated before commenting here, but so far there are few responses from people who do not support gay marriage themselves, and I respect xiphias's request for dialogue.

To me, it has nothing to do with Leviticus or religion. I am mostly nonobservant. I do not consider gay sex "icky" or an "abomination," and what people do in the privacy of their own homes is none of my (or the government's) business. I especially do not consider gay people icky. People are people, and engaging in taunts or violence against gay people is utterly unconscionable.

I am not in favor of gay marriage.

Marriage is a social institution with a long history. It is an institution which I revere and want to protect. Marriage, in Western tradition, has never meant a ceremonial union between two persons of the same sex. That's simply not what it means. You can call it a marriage, but you could also call a cucumber a marriage. That still doesn't make it one. To call a union between a same-sex couple a marriage confuses the concept of marriage, which is already under siege in this country. It stretches the definition enough to break it. That is why I believe that allowing gay couples to marry harms marriage as an institution in this society -- because it takes a concept that has always meant one thing and forces it to mean something else. While I strongly oppose the anti-gay hysteria of the religious right, I do know what they mean when they say they want to "defend" marriage.

Of course, many other things in today's society are harming marriage. Celebrity scandals, casual infidelity, abandonment of children, marriage or divorce entered into with no more thought than buying a new pair of shoes -- those things degrade marriage. The vast majority of things that harm marriage today are being done by straight people. Believe me, I'd stop those things, if I could. But even if I can't stop some kinds of harm, that doesn't mean that I want to let another kind of harm slip by.

So what about loving, monogamous gay couples who want to spend their lives together? Yes, I know some. They do not degrade marriage, and I'd rather see those couples married than the heterosexual celebrity couple who is going to divorce next week. I have heard first-hand accounts of the problems and legal hassles that gay couples face, and I am sympathetic. Although it would be a major change, it is probably time for this society to legalize civil unions. But marriage is something different. Marriage is sacred, and if people don't realize that, I am deeply uneasy about letting them marry. I have often felt deeply frustrated by the insistance of some gay people I know that anything less than a government-recognized marriage is not enough. If gay couples would accept something that gave all the legal rights of marriage but was called a civil union, a lot of people would be a lot less upset, and they'd have a far better chance of gaining their point. Heck, if civil unions were on the ballot, I'd vote for them with a clear conscience. But if gay marriage was on the ballot, I'd vote against it. Because that's not what marriage is.

There is one more argument that influences me. I'd like to think it's paranoid, but I can't convince myself of that. If the definition of marriage is expanded to allow gay couples, what comes next? I'm not among those who think there's a real danger of someone being allowed to marry a dog or a chair. But some of my friends who support gay marriage have frankly told me that they also support the idea of polyamorous marriages, which I would find significantly more unacceptable than a monogamous marriage between two men or two women. And the liberals who are my friends have an unnerving tendency to speak as if all forms of social behavior are equally okay. I'd like to, but I can't entirely dismiss the "slippery slope" argument as mere paranoia.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to say that's paranoid: I'm among the people who'd be happy to see polyamorous marriages recognized. So I understand your position.

Would it be fair to say that it's not a problem with the thing, but with the word?

Fundamentally, it sounds like you and people in favor of gay marriages are giving importance to exactly the same thing: the sacredness of marriage. It sounds like you are uncomfortable with a government expanding the definition of a set sacred term, and we are uncomfortable with a government restriction the definition of an expanding religious term.

I don't mean that as an argumentative point, by the way -- it's just something that struck me, that the arguments you're giving feel very familiar to me, like we're valuing the values -- but judging WHAT expresses those values very differently.

And thank you for posting this.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Since this conversation seems to have expanded beyond xiphias's original request, I may as well toss my two cents into the pot.

I'd really rather see the government get out of the marriage business completely. To me "marriage" is a religious matter. The government should have nothing to say about any religion's position on who may marry and who may not.

What the government does have a legitimate interest in, IMO, is in rights of inheritance, status for taxation, rights to make decisions for one another, and other such matters. These are matters covered quite nicely, so far as I can tell, within the context of civil unions. Therefore, I'd like to see the government establish clear laws regarding civil unions that apply to homosexual and heterosexual unions alike. If the government feels that it needs to limit the number of partners in such unions to two, for whatever reason, that can be done easily enough, so long as the limitation applies to everyone. (I can actually see one possible reason for such a limitation. If you're talking about who can make decisions on behalf of another, a civil union involving multiple partners of equal status could quickly lead to chaos unless all members were in agreement.) As far as rights between parent and child are concerned, that could be dealt with based on the birth certificate or adoption decree whether the parents were members of a civil union or not.

This would then leave marriage as an entirely religious matter, and religions free to make their own rules, according to their own beliefs. If one religion wants to permit marriage regardless of the gender of the partners, so be it. If another wants to limit marriage to members of the same sex, or to members of different sexes, so be it. If yet another marriage wants to allow marriage between multiple partners, that would be their business. This might intersect with a civil union law that limited civil unions to two parties by having the members of the poly-marriage select two partners to enter into a civil union if they so wished.

Under this system, people would be able to enter into the religious institution of marriage without also entering a civil union, or the reverse. In practice, I suspect most people who entered into marriage would also enter into civil union, but one commitment would not necessarily imply the other.

This is a fairly radical idea, but I think it could work if given a chance. At least it has the benefit of not providing a basis for forcing any religion to allow behavior of which it disapproves or for any religion forcing others to follow rules in which they do not believe.

[(Anonymous)]

Ever seen a French wedding? They do something in church, and then walk down the road to the town hall, or whatever, and the judge says his thing.
Duzzy

[(Anonymous)]

I can't speak from personal experience, but I have some relatives who are opposed to gay marriage. My impression is that there are a couple of factors besides the typical "gay marriages tarnish my marriage" philosophy. I'll try to explain them, as best as I can, but I want to emphasize that nothing written below is my own opinion.

Traditional societal roles put a lot of pressure on people: get a real job rather than pursuing a career as an actor or musician, settle down and marry at a young age rather than waiting for true love, have a couple of children immediately, etc. The conservative outlook is that these pressures may be unpleasant but are necessary for the good of society. If we were to relax the pressure, we'd end up with a lot of thirty- or forty-something unmarried slackers, who wouldn't be leading productive lives and wouldn't even end up happier with their choices. Anything that threatens traditional gender roles could undermine these pressures and lead to disaster. Many conservatives think we've already gone way too far in this direction, and gay marriage could be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Another belief, at least among some of my relatives, is that gay marriage is a deliberate provocation. They think nobody seriously cares about it: there aren't very many gay people anyway, most of them have no interest in marriage, and the few who do are getting married as a lark or as an insult to Christians. They are convinced that gay marriage is just a gambit in the culture wars, that the intended purpose is to change society's direction and damage traditional culture. So when someone talks about loving couples and the legal obstacles they face without marriage, some of my relatives basically think they are being lied to, to cover up the true reason.

[rosefox]

That was the gist of the most coherent part of the argument from the young men I chatted with on the train today. (I opened with a very friendly "I hear you two are talking politics; I'm from outside of California and I was hoping you could explain this whole Prop 8 vote to me".) One of them basically said that being gay was a choice, and he wasn't going to shout at people for making that choice, because that was wrong and unproductive, but he felt it was not the right choice, and he didn't think the law should condone something that was not right.

He also said that Prop 8 was supposed to legalize same-sex marriage, that legalized same-sex marriage would force pastors to marry same-sex couples even if they didn't want to, that it would lead to teaching children that sinful things were okay, that it's not discrimination if it's against a choice rather than something you can't help like being black or disabled, that a friend of his is gay and he's cool with it, that he told off another friend of his who's a gay-basher, and that within twenty years California would legalize same-sex marriage (a statement that didn't seem to bother him much). We chatted for most of two hours. On the whole, I left the conversation feeling rather optimistic.

EDIT: Oh, and there was a bit about how homosexuality was one of the signs of the End Times, and legally condoning it would hasten Armageddon.

[majes.livejournal.com]

homosexuality was one of the signs of the End Times, and legally condoning it would hasten Armageddon.

Natch; I'm not just hanging around here so you all have something sexy to look at. *looks at End of Time clock* Yep, annnnyyyy second now...

[tendyl.livejournal.com]

My mom is opposed to gay marriage. I've asked her to give me her thoughts on why she is opposed. She's working on it now...

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

I'm for same-sex marriage, but in the vein of understanding the other side...

So, I'm not Catholic, but this is how it appears to work.

*ALL* sex is inherently bad/disgusting/squikful/immoral/evil. Marriage is a sacrament with several functions, but one of the most important is that is makes sex moral within a *very* specific context. Outside of marriage, sex is a sin; inside of marriage sex is not only not a sin, but may be required (usually the commandment to be fruitful and multiply is sited for this).

So, one of the functions of marriage is that it changes the moral status of sex. This isn't a legal function, but a sacred, or moral, or religious function - one of several.

Some kinds of sex, however, are such terrible sins that they should never, under any circumstances, be considered moral. It would, therefore, be wrong to allow people who engage in these sexual activities to get married, since marriage would change the moral status of their sexual activities from immoral to moral.

Likewise, allowing them to be married would destroy marriage, since marriage would no longer be able to preform one of it's most important functions, that of determining when sex is moral.

Now me, I really don't like this definition of marriage; it essentially says, all sex outside of marriage is bad, all sex within marriage is OK, including rape and/or sexual abuse. However, in my observation of people's behavior, especially people's behavior in the past before rape and sexual abuse were recognized as traumatic experiences, it seems consistent with how marriage and sex were treated.

I think, in today's world, people are more visceral about it. They consider sex something private, which one doesn't talk about in polite company. And they are uncomfortable without a ritual which allows sexual activity, but also limits it to specific contexts and assures them it will stay private. And, they don't want that ritual to allow sexual acts that they find disgusting and believe everyone else should find disgusting.

Personally, I don't think they really care whether that ritual is called "marriage" or "civil union." I think most (not all) of the active support for civil unions is a compromise, and if no one was trying to get rules allowing same-sex marriage passed, most (not all) of that support would vanish.

On the other hand, I like felis_sidus's idea. Currently, we have a system that simultaneously creates two things; a legal marriage, defined by a marriage license, and a sacred marriage, defined by a wedding ceremony. If the people supporting civil unions were willing to change the words "civil union" to "legal marriage" and the word "marriage" to "sacred marriage" and support same-sex couples right to a "legal marriage" but not necessarily a "sacred marriage" I would have a lot more respect for their point of view; such a change would recognize the fact that the part of a marriage that exists as a legally binding contract is, in fact, only a "legal marriage" and would assure that in the eyes of the law all "legal marriages" were treated equally.

This would also mean that the pages and pages of legal code would not have to be rewritten to turn the word "marriage" into "civil union" something I'm not entirely sure is actually feasible. And that the sacred nature of the religious aspect of marriage would be made explicit.

Kiralee

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

*ALL* sex is inherently bad/disgusting/squikful/immoral/evil. Marriage is a sacrament with several functions, but one of the most important is that is makes sex moral within a *very* specific context. Outside of marriage, sex is a sin; inside of marriage sex is not only not a sin, but may be required (usually the commandment to be fruitful and multiply is sited for this).

Just to let you know, this is entirely, 100% incorrect. The Catholic Church does not believe this in any sense, and has never taught so.

Sex is considered an entirely good thing. The properly ordered use of it is for enjoyment, bonding, and procreation. Sex which is deliberately made to be unpleasant, not for permanent bonding, or not open to the idea of procreation is disordered, but not still not bad, immoral, evil, or any of those other negative adjectives.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Here in MA I have heard a number of people speak against gay marriage with their arguments essentially boiling down to ignorance. Arguments like "it's unnatural" or "I just don't get it" or "ew!", none of which I find particularly persuasive, or a good motivation to prevent gay marriages (just for the speaker to not have one themselves). One of my friends even said that if it came to a ballot measure to ban gay marriage here in Mass, that we'd probably pass it and ban gay marriage. I don't agree and hope it's not true, but even more I hope it never comes to a vote.

2 things

[(Anonymous)]

My own discomfort with homosexuality in general and gay marriage in particular was based on my finding homosexuality, on a very basic level, incomprehensible. I just didn't get it. I later realized (after several decades in a hetero marriage) that I didn't, on a very basic level, understand heterosexuality either. This led to an acceptance, if not an understanding, of whatever two, or more, folks got into. (Though I still think that more than two expands the opportunities for hurt feelings exponentially, but if one lives life trying too hard not to hurt, it gets boring.)
Oh yeah, the other thing. As was pointed out to me by an orthodox jewish lesbian, the bible only speaks about men lying with men, nothing in there about women lying with women. Which led to another conversation...
Duzzy