Several months ago, Australians overwhelmingly voted to change the law regarding "same-sex marriage". I voted against this. I voted no for several reasons; some pragmatic, some philosophical. Some people like to deny statistics that show that lesbian couples have the highest rates of child abuse, that 1/3 of pedophiles are gay men despite making up 1% of the population, and that teaching kids in school about mental disorders like homosexuality and gender identity disorder as part of propaganda programs would become mandatory if same-sex marriage was brought into law. Those facts are important but are not the focus of this post.
If we dig down philosophically we will find that gay marriage can not exist and can never exist. To understand why there can't be gay marriage we need to know what marriage is. To understand what marriage is we need to know why marriage exists.
1- WHY DOES MARRIAGE EXIST
Marriage exists for two major reasons:
- To signify a relationship between a man and a woman
- To create the best environment for a child to be raised in
Why must marriage require a man and a woman? The relationship between a man and a woman is like no other in the history of mankind. A man and a woman can create life together. Two men cannot create life and two women cannot create life. The advocates of gay marriage suggest that love is all that matters. If love was all that mattered, why are two men incapable of creating new life? Relationships are not completely separated from biology.
Why are a mother and father most suited to raising a child? The biological connection between a child and their parents is not to be understated. A child has a different bond to its parents than it does to two unrelated adults. We have seen this through nature and through scientific research. We have also concluded that evolution was right and that the biological mother and father will provide the most stable environment for a child to be raised in. Any other form of parentage is worse for the child than biological parents, with single mothers and lesbians couples being the least stable and least safe.
2- WHAT IS MARRIAGE
Now that we know why there is marriage, we can determine what marriage is.
Is marriage a bond of love? I love my grandmother. That is not marriage.
Is marriage a bond of love with a commitment to make things better? You can love your nephew and be committed to making life better for them. That is not marriage.
Is marriage the bond of love between a man and a woman and a commitment to make things better? You can love your sister and be committed to making things better for her. This is not marriage.
Marriage is the "union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners".
The union involves the physical relationship and the emotional relationship.
Man and woman are specified because children are not men or women and because of the natural implications discussed in WHY DOES MARRIAGE EXIST.
3- MARRIAGE CANNOT BE REDEFINED
This is a contentious point. Many advocates of gay marriage believe they can simply change the definition of marriage. This is preposterous. If you redefine the word "bachelor" to mean something other than "an unmarried man" then "bachelor" will no longer mean what "bachelor" was supposed to mean. Marriage is the word used to describe the union of a man and a woman. It is a definitional truth and cannot be changed.
If the word marriage cannot be redefined or undefined, what can? The thing that the word marriage refers to. If you redefine what the union between a man and a woman is you could change the result of what marriage is. Of the definition of marriage, the only word that could be defined differently is "union". You cannot replace the word "woman" with "man" or "man" with "woman" because the meaning of marriage will cease to be. If redefining "union", what could the meaning become? Nothing that could preserve the current meaning of marriage. Extending the definition may make marriage too narrow and broadening the definition could result in platonic relationships becoming marriage. None of this is optimal.
It should be clearer now that gay marriage cannot exist. Marriage cannot be redefined/undefined and still be marriage. Marriage cannot be between gay couples and still be marriage. The philosophical purpose of marriage matches well with the evolutionary truths of men and women. The state may pretend that gay couples can be married, but this is nothing more than a farce for political points and an attempt to grab voters for the next election.
If you are intellectually honest with yourself, you cannot acknowledge that gay marriage exists. It cannot exist.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic with this reply but it seems a bit silly at this day in age to still be making these nonsense arguments. The world will ultimately move forward whether you choose to get on board or not. Your arguments are based on a biased egoistic opinion, not fact or even logic.
This is a major over generalization and has no basis in reality. There are millions of cases where parents are unsuited to raise their children as demonstrated by the many children's aid programs, orphanages...etc. There are bad foster parents and their are bad biological parents, so it doesn't make much sense to say that one is definitively better for a child over the other. If a parent abandons their child then adopted parents are probably going to be better suited to raise the child then the biological parents would have.
Your point on what marriage is doesn't really mean anything either. The definition or marriage is:
Maybe you are using a different definition but if you are, then that in itself suggests that there are multiple ways of viewing the concept.
Marriage is a social construct so to say that it cannot be re-define is nonsense. Words get re-defined all the time. As people use words in daily living they often take on new meanings. This is how language operates. Even Websters dictionary has to update itself periodically and change the definitions of words to suite the new reality. For instance, the word "retarded" used to be a scientific word that had a specific meaning and it was used to categorize certain individuals within society - but that words meaning has drastically changed over time and has now become a derogatory term that is rarely used. That is just one (of many) examples of words changing meaning within society.
Overtime society changes and our interpretation of reality changes. So the question is are you on the side of promoting love for all humans or on the side of promoting fear and hate? You don't have to answer that question for me but for yourself.
Marriage is the word we have used to describe a very particular form of relationship. If you try assign the word marriage to something else it can’t keep the original meaning.
Who recognises marriage does not change fundamentally what marriage is.
The word “retard” did not change meaning but the reaction to using it did. This is a symptom of political correctness, since “retard” was the politically correct umbrella term. There are some other words that have had the same treatment.
Though there are backwards cases where children are better off with other people than biological parents, there are specific factors leading to this and the overwhelming reality is that biological parents are far better.
Regarding marriage keeping its original meaning - it seems as though you are seeing the concept of marriage as a sort of absolute truth rather than what it is - a social construct. Any concept created by humans can also be changed by humans. At this point in time, it doesn't make sense to hold on to an outdated meaning if that meaning no longer applies to the current reality. It makes more sense for the meaning of words to evolve along with the reality of the world.
Who recognizes marriage actually does fundamentally change it. Words hold meaning only because humans give them meaning. Words in themselves are nothing more than a symbol which overtime, comes to represent a concept. Concepts are held in place by an agreeance of individuals. However, as the individuals who maintain the concept change their understanding of the concept, we see a general paradigm shift towards a new meaning. That is how science and philosophy and ultimately human society, operate.
As already stated words change meaning all the time:
"Gay" used to mean "happy," now it means "man who has sex with men."
"Sick" used to mean "ill," now it means something is "awesome."
"Cell" used to mean "jail" or "body component," now it means "phone."
"hook up" used to mean obtain a service, now is means to "have a sexual encounter with someone."
and so on and so on...
To say that words cannot change their meaning is nonsense really.
Definitional truths are absolute.
Your examples are not very good because the meaning is still there in most of them.
Gay still means happy, but has a homosexual connotation due to the fact that gay men are more openly whimsical and cheery.
Sick still means ill. There was a period where people used it to mean something completely different, and this is one of the few valid examples, which I will address later.
Cell means the same thing. A jail cell, a body cell and a cellular phone all use the word in the same fundamental way.
Hook up is in regards to communication, and so the sexual connotations are an implication of the communication.
The word sick was used differently in a particular type of culture. This did not alter the meaning of the word, but created a new meaning relevant to the specific culture. Altering the meaning of a word is not the same as applying the word to a different situation. You could create an additional definition for the word marriage but the fundamental relationship will not change.
The reason marriage cannot be redefined or undefined is because the word marriage, which doesn't need to be the word marriage and could be the word snurbleburp, refers to a very specific type of relationship. This relationship could be called anything but it remains the same thing. Whoever wants to recognise the relationship does not alter the relationship. You could use the word marriage to mean whatever, but you can't redefine the relationship.
The misunderstanding between us is that you were under the impression that I was referring to the word, not the meaning. I am referring to the meaning, not the word.
"lesbian couples have the highest rates of child abuse, that 1/3 of pedophiles are gay men despite making up 1% of the population"
[citation needed]
Psychological Reports, 1986, 58, pp. 327-37.
National Health Institute reports 1.8% of the population are gay with a .14 standard error. Gays are made up of roughly 60% men and 40% women. If we go with a conservative estimate, since young people inflate the numbers due to insecurity about themselves and split that into 60:40, we get almost exactly 1% of the population as gay men.
I can't find my source for this right now but I can get back to you on it. It was a table listing rates of child abuse in different types of parentage.
I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case but a citation would be nice.
we won, you lost.....BUILD A BRIDGE
That's not an argument.
What you have supported is not marriage and never can be. There's no consistent philosophical argument to support your position.
Marriage is a legal contract, it has nothing to do with sky god.
Why should a gay couple be given any advantages by the state when they can not make a new child?
I don't care,
Any cretin can make a baby, the state is only interested in how much you can contribute to society,
because I can and do work and contribute to my state's economy and culture then I'm more relevant to my state and have more value to the state, then some nobody that had a baby.
Where in my post did I mention any sort of God?
You are making an argument against something I did not say.
You literally have a tag of religion, so I'm sorry if you are actually coming from an atheist perspective, however I not too sure you are.
Your word salad of an argument has absolutely no references, all you have is:
you saying what you think, then talking about that, and that's it is just your opinion.
It's just your opinion...hanging out there....in the wind......looking sad.
Philosophical arguments do not need references.
Philosophical arguments are not opinions, they are logical deductions.
There is nothing logical in your deductions, there is a lot of logical fallacies.
Here I'll let you figure out the ones.
Anyway I'm done.
Hereby the reference @sapphic:
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13).
This is from the Bible. I can also quote from the holy Qur'an... it won't be differ.
@alzamma Hahahahahahahahahhahahhahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahaha.... Breath.... Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahabababahahahahahahahahahahahha.
💋
If you can not create a child you should not be given the advantages of those who can by the state
Other than the philosophical argument, there's the political argument you have brought up.
The only reason the state cares about marriage is to encourage population growth. Since gay marriage cannot contribute to population growth 100% of the time the state should not give them any benefits. There is a weak argument that some normal married couples don't have kids or can't have kids. But these are the exceptions to the rule and there is nothing preventing those who choose not to have kids to decide to have them the very next day.
Marriage as a recognised union is important for reasons outside of politics and philosophy. In business, especially finance and real estate, marital status can be a very important factor in whether or not money will be loaned, a house will be sold etc. When businesses hire women they will favour a woman that is already married and already has children because the chances they will take time off is significantly less than than that of a childless single woman.
The state cares about the population not necessarily population growth take china for example
Homosexuals can contrubute to the population but not with there partner.
artificial insemination is more risky and expensive
In case of artificial insemination or other similar procedure for homosexuals adds another financial burden for the child who is only going to have only your genetic information and not your partners
I personally feel that you should marry only because you want to have a child with your partner
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By the way, if a man and a woman cannot produce a child because either he or she is infertile. Can they still get married? Please don't side-step the point by saying that it is only a minority of people who can't produce children. They may be a minority but that's not the point.
haha good point :)
I'm guessing you wont get an answer to this though. How could someone rebut that? lol
Being in a category that is a very small percentage that it could be disregarded is not a strong argument. It’s not side stepping to be honest about that.
Infertile couples can partake in the actions of procreation and be unsuccessful. Regular couples can also have unsuccessful attempts. Being unsuccessful does not negate the purpose of marriage and in many infertility cases the likelihood of failure is not 100%.
If these infertile people do not contradict the definition because they are a minority can't homosexuals too not be considered to undermine the definition of marriage because they too are a minority?
Because a man and a woman can still partake in the act of procreation, despite failure. Two men cannot. Two women cannot.
"Two men cannot. Two women cannot."
Yes, but an infertile man and an infertile woman cannot produce a child either, right? If the possibility for procreation is absent due to infertility how can it still be considered an act of procreation? How can an act of procreation not involve procreation? I mean an act of procreation does need to involve a possibility for procreation, right? If so then if the possibility is absent then it cannot be regarded an act of procreation - and that seems to me to be the case in marriages where either or both partners are infertile.
If a man and woman engage in sexual relations and the woman does not get pregnant, that is a failure to successfully procreate while still performing all the necessary steps to get there. If we consider that infertility usually isn’t a 100% failure rate, the woman can have multiple still births and be considered infertile.
Eggs can be fertilised in an infertile woman but the pregnancy won’t go the whole way.
MARRIAGE CANNOT BE REDEFINED
To be fair many words have changed their meanings or have had more than one meaning at times... So I think this point should be 'MARRIAGE SHOULD NOT BE REDIFINED' imo. Language categories that is to say definitions act according to the concept of Family Resemblance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
Or in other words language has a tendency of veering towards categories of things with many similarities rather than one essential feature. By the way, the guy who came up with this concept was an autistic philosopher who wanted a precise language for everything but then gave up.
Personally, the problem that I have with all this is not the semantics per se but I don't think that the state ought to have the power to confer benefits to any pairing of people- be they man and woman or man and man or whatever.
I think the problem with the redefinition as you put it is that it elevates homosexual relationships to the level of heterosexual relationships when in your view (I still need to see some evidence for this) homosexual relationships are worse at raising children. To be honest I don't think this is a huge problem because even if homosexual relationships are worse at raising children they will always be a minority. Same-sex marriage is a Stalingrad imo. The real problem is the collapse of normal marriage- and in my opinion, a large part of that is due to state intervention in normal marriage providing an active incentive to break up marriage.
I am with you. LGBT is discourage in any of religion scriptures.