The Right to Marriage. [MATURE 18+ DISCUSSION]

[daysofgreen]

I was looking to come into some arguments and bigotry, but it mostly seems like everyone here agrees. bummer.

[Current]

You're disappointed because of a lack of bigotry?

[Tobias_Marco]

<Lack of bigotry is a sign of a civilized race.>
<However it is possible to have different view points and not be stupid about it.>
<What if half the people in the world said that blue is the best color in the world, a forth of us said that green is the best color in the world, 1/8 of us said that orange is the best color in the world and everyone else has a different color in mind, but we all still get along and just take it as it is?>
<On the other hand it is possible for large groups of people to be wrong. It was once believed that the Earth was a flat disk in the center of the universe and that the sun was pulled by a magic chariot and the stars were diamonds stuck to the night sky.>
<If everyone believed that except 10 people, who knew the truth, but these 10 people are hunted down and killed for their belief, then that is bigotry, and very, very wrong.>
<Sometimes the masses are wrong and the few are right.>
<In this case we are talking about the right to marry, some people have been married 5 or 6 times and still can't get it right!>
<I have read a few stories where anyone could get married if they took a class to do so.>
<Just think about it, what if you had to go to your government and take a two year long course (much like getting an associate degree) on how to be married, how to balance a budget, and how to take care of children. All before you were allowed to get married, and even then, only to someone else who has passed the same courses?>
<Would the world be better off?>
<What if you went to jail for having children for doing so outside of marriage?>
<In at least one story I can think of someone was put to death for having sex with someone they weren't married to.>
<The book made it sound like all the world's problems went away just because you needed an associate degree in marriage before you could get married, and then had to get another licence for each child you wanted to have, and anyone who broke these laws was thrown in jail or killed.>
<I think the government may have also made it more cost effective to live together if you were married, in part because you couldn't live with someone of a different gender who wasn't family.>

[Current]

If you need to take a two-year course to get married, most people will live together unmarried. Criminalising children out of wedlock, premarital sex, etc. would be pointless, political suicide, and also kinda tyrannical.

[The_Brigadier]

I disagree with so many points of those stories. Instead, I would suggest sterilization/no adoption rights for criminals and abusive parents, and a limit on how many children someone can have. P:

[nothlit191]

There are two forms of marriage - religious and civil. For most of this country's history, the definitions of those terms have lined up just fine, with notable exceptions including polygamy being okay in the Mormon church at one time. However, they don't have to. The government has no right to deny someone anything based on moral or religious sanctity. It has a duty to marry any two consenting adults, as this will not cause any danger to any other citizens' life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. The 'definition' of marriage from any source is irrelevant.

The idea of providing the same rights through civil unions is unconstitutional. Paraphrasing the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, having two separate institutions that claim to do the same thing makes them inherently unequal. If the government wants to start issuing civil unions, they should do it for everyone, not just members of the LGBTQ community, and the term 'legally married' should no longer be used.

Finally, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that gay marriage will have a negative effect on anyone, including children of that marriage.

[zoom kilian]

people should be free to live their lives any way they want so long as they aren't causing anyone undue harm.

[SorchaLiadan]

Given the ages of the majority of people here, is it really surprising that there is so much support for everyone to get married? It's usually (not always, but usually) the older generation that is anti-gay marriage.

[The_Brigadier]

Is anyone here against marriage rights of incestuous couples?

Awhile ago, I thought marriage should not be allowed to union parent/child couples, sibling couples, first, second or third cousins, aunts and uncles with their nieces and nephews, or grandparents with their grandkids. Now, I've changed my mind (though I still believe incest to be absolutely disgusting and would never commit such an horrendous atrocity myself).

Anyone here against incestuous couples having kids? I am totally confused about that one.

Sure, there is an increased chance of producing special-needs children, but there are also plenty of people who have those messed-up genes, too.

Blech. Damn incest. So complicated.

[Current]

One of the problems with some incestuous couples (say, parent/child or much older sibling/younger sibling) is an issue of consent, because often those kinds of relationship come from an imbalance of power. It's also a kind of power that's rarely found in other relationships, because a member of your close family who raised you can easily give you a warped view of sexuality. Would legalizing incestuous marriage make that worse? I don't know, but it seems possible.

The increased risk of manifesting some negative traits is real, but overplayed. There are such things as genetic screenings nowadays, and we do not in general ban people with negative genetic conditions from reproducing.

A lot of the problem with incest is the "ew" factor. For some reason or another (possibly to encourage genetic diversity? I don't know and I don't feel like looking it up), humans seem to have evolved a negative response towards incest (the taboo against incest is a human universal, not a cultural factor). But something being disgusting is no reason to make it illegal. No, the part that concerns me is the sexual abuse problem, not the ew or the genetics.

I'm not against incest per se. I'm against child sexual abuse, and as it happens, that often takes place within the family. Which is to say that, for example, two people who happen to be related and did not know it prior to meeting each other would have no such problems. (I know of such a case personally, second cousins who found out they were related long after they started dating). There are other obvious cases too, of course.