Rich, you're doing it again.
Age brings experience, and experience viewed though the lens of intellect leads to wisdom. But that does not mean that one who is merely 17 cannot have wisdom; it merely means that he has less experience from which to draw. But a man with years of experience and a clouded intellect may nave no wisdom at all.
Consider that a man with 17+1 rounds in his Glock, and who shoots it sideways, may hit the mark occasionally, but will probably score less than a guy with a six-shooter and the patience to have studied. Years are like cartridges. Having more of them doesn't mean you'll be on target more; it just means you've got more chances to get it right.
So let's leave the ad-hominem "you're too young to have an opinion, kid" rhetoric out of it, and consider what Winston says on its merits rather than in the light of your august years and his relatively brief life experience.
Now. To the question at hand:
the push for homosexual marriage is DRIVEN by the desire to get medical benefits (heretofor primarily reserved for married couples and their dependent children...) for AIDS stricken gay men by "marrying" (either legitmately, or as a sham a la "Desperate Housewives") to pay for those expensive "drug cocktails" that keep them alive.
Cite, please.
the push for less gun control is DRIVEN by the desire to get cheap automatic weapons (heretofor primarily reserved for police and military personnel...) for criminals by "buying" (either legitmately, or as a sham a la "Straw Purchases") to steal property to pay for those expensive "drug cocktails" that keep them high.
Yes, I can pontificate baselessly as well.
I happen to work one desk away from a gay person, and my favorite double cousin also happens to be gay.
Knowing these two people gives you the authority on what gay people want, then? Gosh. I know an
awful lot more black people than two. I suppose that qualifies me to speak at the next NAACP meeting.
While in school, did you EVER:
Yes? So? While in school, did you EVER have a 4-gigahertz computer sitting on your desk? And so what if you did or did not?
People learn from things besides school. In fact, the clever of wit use school to learn the mechanics of thought (reading, writing, mathematics) and learn
what to think from other sources.
The reasons that gay people wish to get married are, by and large, exactly the same reasons that straight people want to get married: They want to have their union legally recognised, they want the survivorship benefits, they want next-of-kin rights in situations where one partner is (for instance) in a hospital. All of this makes perfect sense. Currently it's possible for the family of a gay man to deny hospital access by the man's partner, because only "family" is allowed to decide who may and may not visit a patient. That's wrong right there, because it denies gay couples equal protection under law.
The primary objections to gay marriage come from one of three premises: religious/moral objections, "purpose of marriage" objections, and legal/financial objections.
The first come from the religious belief that homosexuality is wrong. And that's ok, up to a point. People have a
right to believe that homosexuality is wrong. And if they believe that, they ought not to engage in it, and then everyone would be happy. Unfortunately many groups aren't happy just following their own rules; they have a psychological need to make sure everyone
else is following their rules as well.
This brings me to the concept of "wrong". In legal terms, there are two sorts of crimes one can commit. One is called
malum in se ("bad in fact"). This sort of crime is one that is wrong because it demonstrably infringes upon the rights or property of others (murder, for instance). The other kind of crime is called
malum prohibitum ("bad because it's prohibited"). Most traffic-related violations are of this type: If you make an illegal U-turn, but don't cause an accident, you've commited a (minor) crime, but only because the law
says you have.
The people who object to gay marriage on moral grounds are confusing the issue of
malum in se and
malum prohibitum. They believe that homosexuality is, by its very nature, wrong, and they fail to understand that when two consenting adults choose to do something, it's not possible for
malum in se to apply. Because they're
consenting.
The second sort of objection is the "purpose of marriage" objection. It says that the purpose of marriage is to create children. This one falls apart if you consider four people: Jane, John, Mary, and Gary. All of them are gay. They've no interest in any kind of physical contact with anyone of the opposite sex. Under current law, it's legal for Jane and John to marry, and also for Mary and Gary. These would be legal unions, but there would be no children as a result. The outcome would be identical if Mary and Jane were to get married, and Gary and John were to get married, yet this situation is
not currently legal.
The "purpose" of marriage argument falls apart further when you consider that straight couples that are (for whatever reason) sterile (or even just choose not to have kids) are allowed to marry under current law. And the final logical progression of the "purpose of marriage" argument is that once a woman reaches menopause, there's no further purpose to her being married, so her legal status as a spouse should be revoked. There are examples and examples of why this argument is wrong, and these are just a few.
The last sort of objection to gay marriage is the legal/financial one, and these objections actually have a grain of merit behind them, until you look closer at them and realize that they're based on a false premise.
The argument goes like this: If we allow gays to marry, then companies will have to extend insurance benefits to gay partners as they currently do to the spouses of straight employees. Gay relationships are statistically more likely to be brief and casual, so this puts an undue burden on the insurance companies, since gay couples will likely get married just so one partner can share the other one's medical coverage. This will drive costs up for everyone else, and is therefore not fair to them.
The people who use this argument will point at companies who offer "domestic partner" coverage on their insurance, and will show how those companies have a higher cost of insurance than companies that do not offer these benefits.
The tricky part of this argument is that the premise is true: Statistically, a gay
relationship is more likely to be brief and temporary than a straight
marriage is. Fact. The deceiving part is that this is a comparison of apples and fishies. They're comparing
all gay relationships with
married straight relationships. Of
course the numbers are going to show a difference. If the comparison was between all gay couples and all straight couples (married or not), the numbers would come out more evenly, because there are straight couples getting together and breaking up all the time, just as there are gay couples doing the same.
And the part about insurance costs for "domestic partner" benefits is 100% accurate, too. Since domestic partnership does not carry any legal force, couples
do "shack up" so that one can share the benefits of the other. And since these benefits generally only apply to gay couples (straight couples can't get coverage unless they're married) there's a lower standard for who can get coverage, and straight couples end up having to pay more for insurance, which makes them upset, and rightly so.
The argument falls apart when you look at the fact that if gay marriage were legal, it would come with all of the legal hassles to get out of that straight marriage does; if gays could legally marry, and "domestic partner" benefits were removed (because now the gay partner would be covered under spousal coverage), the ability to "shack up" for bennies would no longer work; couples would not get together casually just so that one can share the coverage of the other, because they'd have to show a marriage certificate, and when one moved out, there'd have to be a legal divorce.
There's also the "slippery-slope" argument: if we allow
this form of "non-traditional" marriage, that opens the door to all manner of other sorts of "non-traditional" marriage: polygamy, polyamoury, and so on. If (for instance) a man can marry more than one other person, then all of those other people would legally be spouses, so they'd all have to be covered under insurance. This would allow people to build "insurance communes", where one person has insurance, and he or she marries a whole bunch of people, and all of them get coverage, and this unfairly burdens that one person's company and co-workers.
This argument is correct, as far as it goes; just by sheer numbers, if poly marriages are allowed and given coverage benefits as monogamous spouses are, it would wreck the insurance industry. But there's a simple solution to that as well: Re-write the insurance laws so that only
one person may be covered under spousal benefits. Done.
Churches get very, very upset when the government tries to tell them what they can and cannot do. They cry, "The church and the state must be separated!". But the moment anyone appears to be doing something that goes against their own doctrine (but which is not
malum in se), they want the government to pass laws based upon the definitions of right and wrong put forward in their own holy traditions.
The only possible solution that makes any sense is this: Remove the word "marriage" from the legal lexicon. The government shall no longer recognize "marriage" of any kind. Instead, the government shall recognise a legal "civil union", which is basically a corporation set up between consenting adults. The laws governing these unions, as far as next-of-kin and hospital visitation and so on, will be essentially the same as they are for legal marriage now. But the government shall make no determination of who may or may not for such a union, except that the people entering it must be consenting, and of legal age. The dissolution of such a union shall be just as legally rigorous as a divorce is under current law. This will prevent "casual" civil unions from becoming an undue burden on the insurance industry.
Once this is accomplished, churches may perform a religious sacrament of marriage for whomever they choose. If a church does not wish to allow gay couples to marry, it may refuse to marry them. If a church does not wish to allow
straight couples to marry, it may refuse to marry them. Either way, such a religious union shall have no legal force whatsoever, and may be dissolved at any time by whatever means the particular church deems appropriate.
Couples wishing to join one another both spiritually and legally must do two things: They must get married in whatever way their spiritual path indicates, and they must form a legal civil union.
Under this system, as now, a member of clergy shall be allowed to act as an officer of the court to ratify a legal civil union (as this is a matter more of licensing than of faith) just as a justice of the peace may. In this way, a couple wishing to marry and form a legal union many do so all in one ceremony, just as now. And just as now, a couple with no spiritual leanings may stand before a justice of the peace and become legally united. And just as now, a couple may make vows before their gods (and before their clergy if they so choose) committing to one another in a spiritual sense, but making no legal connection.
Nothing changes under the new system that I suggest, except that the government no longer as a religiously-based moral code for saying which consenting adults may join together for a lifetime.
Done. Next question?
-BP
