Query regarding Legalising Gay Marriage (NOT FOR OPPOSING ANY RIGHTS)

I think they legalized it because LGBT members wanted to feel validated by the state, not just by themselves. On the surface not much have changed, because they could live together, love each other, in certain states even adopt, so they didn't get a new option at all.

I see something strange as well. In this case marriage is stated as the ultimate highest form of relationships, and they didn't want to be left out from this. On the other hands marriage is looked down, as an ancient institution that chains people together, and only serves to make people miserable, as they can't live out their sexuality freely. If marriage is that bad, why do they want to marry?

Also adoption will be the next step, but it doesn't seem that people really understand the ramifications. Because if you let same sex couples adopt, you basically say that a mother and a father has no unique roles in raising children. They are interchangable. You say no need for a mother, no need for a father, it doesn't matter. This throws a hundred years of child psychology out of the window.

Also, families are the building blocks of society. Families are important because they produce the next generation, which is society. That is why traditional marriages were favored by the state. They provide stability. Redefining marriage is redefining the basic structure of society, and the question arises: where does it lead to in the long run?

I'll be very curious about another thing as well. Actually how many same sex couples want to marry, and I'll be very curious about the divorce rate. There are a lot of questions here, but only time will tell, if this was really a step forward or we kicked out one of the holding pillars of our own society.

 

I think you're going along with traditional gender roles far too much. Plenty of couples these days will consist of house dads/stay at home dads whilst the mother goes out to work. I don't see any reason why two married people of same gender can't take on either/or the roles of both 'traditional' parent.

But in terms of physical wellbeing, yes I have read in various places that same-sex sexual relationships are a lot more of a health-risk, so I don't know how to feel about the whole situation in that regard.

 

Yes indeed that is right, but the problem with laws like these is that they apply to everybody. Laws have an educative / informative aspect that people always dismiss but that matter a great deal. For instance it seems pretty obvious that legalizing contraceptives and abortion directly caused the sexual revolution (and the over sexualized culture we live in to this day). The people passing those laws were only looking to improve a relatively small issue (parents planning their families, or a relatively small [compared to number of abortions today] number desperate women seeking dangerous unsafe abortions) yet unleashed a huge destructive shift in culture. I am not saying they should have kept it illegal.... but clearly just legalizing and ignoring the consequences was far worse.

The problem for kids goes back to no fault divorce. The only reason for the state to care about marriage is that parents make a commitment to raise their kids. This was completely undermined when the commitment could be broken for no reason (e.g. no fault divore). Of course there were likely a few tragic cases where people who should have been able to divorce could not have. But the result of the law was that everybody hence forth considered marriage as something casual, and committing to raising their own kids together far less important.

Now with gay marriage the issue is that young men growing up today are correct to conclude that society does not care at all if they take responsibility for their offspring or not, they are 'optional'. In addition the state now recently has made it it's responsibility to provide contraception. Seriously why would you expect future men to care in the least about the consequences of their sexual actions?

Yep and what typically happens in countries where this has already been passed is an initial flurry of same sex marriages because of the newness of it and then it dwindles down as in truth there is little true interest or need for it.

It's not black and white, there are obviously kids who do fine raised by a single parent and there are kids with horrible fathers as well as kids who do poorly regardless of having seemingly great parents. Yet the statistics of how kids fare without fathers are pretty clear, as well as how kids fare without their biological parents. How many of those young men in the Baltimore riots had father figures in their lives would you guess?

 

I seriously have no idea how you came to this conclusion. How does gay marriage send a message to young men that they don't need to raise their own kids? Or that they are not important in their kids lives? There are different types of adoption and if a father or mother wants to be in a child's life they have that choice. They ALWAYS have and had that choice. There are very strict laws protecting the legal rights of biological parents so I am very confused by your conclusions. In fact if a father decides against an adoption after signing a child over they can get them back. The court is very much in favour of kids being raised by biological parents. I don't see this changing. Not to mention gay couples being biological parents themselves.

 

The state just decreed that gender does not matter in marriage. Which is identical to saying it does not matter if you do not have a mother or a father.

I'm not speaking of the courts taking children away. I am speaking of the message this sends to society at large, especially children and young adults as they grow up. We already have a general issue with fathers not taking responsibility for their children. Now at the highest level the laws of the land clearly say that fathers are optional in the family unit... You could argue things can't get much worse than they are in that respect and that no one really cares what the laws say. Let's hope so. But clearly laws as contraception, abortion, no fault divorce have had a huge impact on general society.

 

Good points @JackStrident . There is something else. Marriage has been between a man and a woman pretty much as long as humanity exists (and we have some archaeological evidence). How much time is that? 6.000 years? Now we are redefining something that has been present for 6.000 years. One would assume, that we don't do it carelessly. In fact we'd only do it because we'd have scientific consensus about it's possible ramifications, and we agree that it's not poses a danger to the structure and integrity of society as it is. If there was a study like this concluded, I sure haven't heard about it. People who pushed this agenda should have come up with plenty scientific and moral reasons why legalizing same sex marriage is either beneficial, or at the very least it doesn't causes harm, short term, and long term. I haven't heard any studies such as this. I tend to think that such a thing doesn't even exist, because if it would, and would have been in the favor of same sex marriage, the news would be all over it. This puzzles me to no end.

Because it seems like that we disregarded religious aspects (which are fundamental to our society, and I already stated that a movement like LGBT can only exist in a country that is Christian in origin, as no other religion, nor atheism is tolerant enough for them) and we also disregarded or just didn't care about scientific aspects.
After the vote all I could hear is "love wins" and "human rights prevailed", but these are slogans, not facts, and they say nothing about the consequences and effects on society. So for me it looks like that the majority of people accommodated the wishes of a minority, without knowing what's going to happen. That sounds pretty dangerous to me.

 

How is it saying this when there are laws in place protecting biological parents rights to their children? Gender does not matter in marriage means simply that two people of the same sex can get married. Laws are completely different when it comes to adoption. ALL gay parents will need to enter into an adoption agreement. The people making the decision to give up their rights are the biological parents themselves which is no different than if they were straight.

Does male gay marriage make mothers obsolete too? Are you saying that fathers do not take responsibility for their offspring because of laws? Laws are there to protect biological parental rights so this makes no sense. Fathers are CHOOSING to give up their rights. This is what needs to be addressed and your explanation doesn't make sense to me when laws protect dads rights. I actually know a male gay couple and the man was married beforehand and got divorced. He has two kids and is under the same arrangement as a regular divorce. The woman did not give up her rights to the children. An adoptive mother and father both have this right. Open adoptions are very common in gay marriages because they truly take child rearing very seriously, not to mention family services encouraging involvement of opposite sex parents.

Contraception, abortion and no fault divorce have helped people tremendously. I personally don't use BC but my husband got a vasectomy. Isn't that his choice to say how many children he wants to have? People should have agency over their own bodies and contraception and abortion has made this possible. People were ALWAYS having sex outside of committed marriages and men have never been held responsible for their offspring. Contraception means less illegitimate children. My mother was an illegitimate child and her childhood was a nightmare because if the stigma surrounding it. As for no fault divorce it just makes things much easier because it does not blame one party for the breakdown of the marriage. It blames both. So rather than a lengthy, expensive, possibly abusive endeavour, the no fault says the divorce was mutually decided. If anything it lessons the burden of a spouse of collecting evidence against and can keep things much more cordial.

 

Everything I have read says the divorce rate is lower for same sex couples. Could it be because they marry for love and not because it's what society tells them is correct or because there was an unwanted pregnancy?

 

I agree that was the intention of the law. Intentions of laws do not seem important once they are passed. I am thinking of the consequences of the law, laws are not just punitive, nor do they just give rights, the also educate and inform. So what constitutes an ideal family for raising children now? Because it is contrary to the law to say the ideal family for a child is a mother and a father. In fact it looks like in Canada stating such an opinion will soon even be hate speech. Mothers and fathers are now officially optional as far as children are concerned. It would be nice if this had no negative impact, but I kinda doubt it.

I am not that worried about the rights of adults, I think for them nothing much will change, but I'm very considered about the rights of children. Like the obvious natural and fundamental right that their parents commit and keep their commitment to raising them. Yes fathers are choosing to dump their kids ( as well as mothers but in lesser numbers). Will this happen more or less in a society that states at the fundamental level of the family unit that fathers and mothers are only optional?

optional, yes, of course, if two males are the same as a male and a female, then from a child rearing perspective obviously the female role is optional.

How did you reach that conclusion? The statics are overwhelmingly and completely contrary to that, and the reason for that is known as well: people have more and riskier sex because of the availability of contraception. I find this somewhat bizarre as well, until I think how skewed my own behavior was for so many years when chasing sex was my highest priority. I'm not saying that contraception should be illegal, I prefer a better solution than that.

I think that's true. But it's a matter of proportion. I would guess it was many orders of magnitude less in the past then it was now. For sure, from a biological perspective, it's hard to imagine we would have survived as a species if raising children, (rather than just having and abandoning them) was not the highest priority.

Right, it makes things much easier, easier to commit and break the commitment. Because even though the intention of the law was to help that small percentage the consequence was the meaning of commitment in marriage changed for everybody. And now instead of a small percentage of very difficult situations in marriages roughly half of them are a mess. And the mess is not borne by the adults but by the kids.

Love, at least romantic love, is not what it takes... it has a pretty short expiration date... from what I can tell it seems you are very fortunate in this respect, and that is awesome for your kids as well, but for the majority love only lasts a few years.

Wait... you think ppl still marry because of an unwanted pregnancies??? I'd like to meet a couple that had that level of commitment to their offspring.

 

I know one. A few years back, maybe 18 year olds...

 

So you are saying there is riskier sex because of contraception but MORE illegitimate children? Is the contraception not working properly?

You are just surmising here because according to the American Bar Association porn contributes to 56% of all divorces. A divorce like this might not have been granted before "no fault divorce" because it wasn't considered cheating.

Straight people absolutely marry more than gay people because of unwanted pregnancies. Makes sense right? And yes I do believe straight people who are "good" people would marry due to an unwanted pregnancy....and subsequently get divorced.

Anyway I think I disagree with nearly everything you are saying

 

More unintended pregnancies since contraception was introduced, absolutely, most of those end in abortion of course. To this day 50% of pregnancies are unintended. Are you thinking the sexual revolution never actually happened or didn't really change anything or something? I don't understand your incredulity.

I've heard that yet I've never seen data that shows divorce rates are getting higher. They went way up in the 1970's with no-fault divorce and have been sitting around 50% with a slight decline ever since.

Well no, first of all most end in abortion, then I'd expect another large group to fall in the unwed mother / cohabitation category.

 

I think divorce rates are closely related to sexual behavior if we talk about heterosexuals. People have sex without getting married, then they get married, because they had sex, and sex connected them on a physical and spiritual level. I mean they get addicted to the chemical overflow of their brains, much like PMO addiction, or an unwanted pregnancy occurs, and they get connected spiritually as well. So they don't get married because they know each other, committed to each other, and care for each other, but because they have nut busting history together. Of course the novelty of the partner will fade, they think "Oh, I don't """love""" my partner any more, he/she wasn't the one, time to move on." Then they get to the next partner and repeat the same process. No wonder the institution of marriage is in such a bad shape.

I'm not saying that this is the only factor, but it contributes to the problem. Stupid arrogant sentimentalism. Let's not care about anything, just be in love for the sake of love, let's have lots of sex for the sake of sex, and doesn't matter if the whole world burns around us, because it's in the "name of love". Ugh...makes me sick.

 

So in one instance you are saying there are more illegitimate children because of contraception but then those accidental pregnancies end in abortion, yet there are still more illegitimate children? The sexual revolution simply made it easier for women to have sex. Contraception allowed women to act in the risky ways that men have always been behaving. It coincided with feminism which told women to become just like men.

I said absolutely nothing about divorce rates going up or down. I simply said that according to ABA 56% of divorces end due to porn use. Something that woukd not be considered a reason for divorce before "no fault".

Feminism is also responsible for more divorce because women can now get rid of their shitty husbands (abuse, alcholism etc) whereas before they had to stay or get nothing.

 

Excuse me for sounding harsh but are we not here as addicts struggling with porn and/or masturbation addition or as the partner of an addict or even both! We have no right to judge the sexual orientation or rights of two consenting adults who want to be with each other, especially not their mortality.

 

@Limeaid
I think, to sum up, you see mostly the positive aspects of contraception, abortion and no fault divorce. I do believe all of these things came about from good intentions, to address real injustice, or undue burden. But somehow you believe that the availability of these technologies and changes in laws did not also have the unintended consequence of causing a substantial change in peoples beliefs and behaviors that has caused enormous misery on an unprecedented scale.

 

So not only no freedom of speech but no freedom of thought either? I'll take it under advisement.

 

I was only stating an opinion, I have no right to judge you either. I just think everyone deserves to be happy as long as we aren't hurting each other