Subject: Hidden Premises
Scooper, your challenge contains a premise or two.
Your first premise is that a person can be a "homosexual." I agree completely that a person can engage in homosexual behavior. I agree that homosexual behavior stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and produces pleasurable sensations that gratify both physical and emotional deisires. I agree that feelings of sexual desire can be aroused by a person with my same gender. I agree that feelings of sexual desire can be supressed by a person of the opposite gender. Where I disagree is that homosexual behavior is inevitable in any particular human being. The only thing we must do is die; all else is discretionary. I know that this is pedantic, but until everyone admits that behavior is based on choice which is based on free will - however colored by circumstance and genetics - we cannot have a rational discussion on the topic.
Your second premise is that marriage is nothing more than a social contract: I agree to have an ongoing (monogamous) relationship in exchange for certain social benefits. The presence or absence of copulation, procreation, and its attendant consequences are irrellevant. The presence of absence of children is irrellevant. How children are raised is irrellevant. The diffuculties & nuances of heterosexual relationships are irrellevant. The example I set with my behaior is irrellevant. That all forms of sexual gratification are created equally (except - of course - polygamy, bestiality, statutory rape, and sexual assault / rape). We will leave fornication, adultery, and divorce for another post. If you define marriage as thus, again we have nothing else to discuss. Your question is rhetorical.
If you think that maybe, just maybe, marriage just might possibly affect someone other than the two participants, then you must ask the question, what is best for these other participants? Now, we can have a discussion. The first part of this discussion must split the issue into secular and sectarian marriage. Sectarian marriages by definition exist within the group of practicing believers and their orthodoxy. Within very broad constraints this must be respected or you will court civil war. The second part of this discussion then is left with civil unions. What should our society promote in terms of civil unions?
I argue that society should promote civil unions that promote the development of children into responsible contributing members of our society and that promote the maintenance adults as responsible contributing members of our society. We do not want to promote anything that encourages sloth, disease, lust, greed, gluttony, anger, psychoses, pride, selfishness, or any of the other social curses. To this end, I argue that monogameous heterosexual life-time civil unions provide the greatest benefit to the united couple, their progeny, and society at large. I also argue that society should not condescend to or patronize those who wish to set their sights lower or create a "separate but equal" social group. Next, to the Scooper's challenge, I argue making civil unions available to those who wish to publicly and proudly disply their predeliction for homosexual behavior makes it the equivalent of civil unons between those who engage in heterosexual behavior and thus encourages behavior that is not in society's best interests. It thus diminishes us all.
More to the true point of the challenge, I argue that discouraging homosexual behavior is not intrinsicly evil. This is no different than society discouraging my sinful behavior - however enjoyable and socially popular it might be (I will save my confessions for my priest). Two simple examples are divorce and alcholoism. No one who has survived a divorce would wish it on their worst enemy. No one who has survived alcholism would ask society to assent - much less consent or promote - its deleterious consequences. And any believer or group of believers that rejects sinners from their midsts because of their choice of favorite sin is simply engaging their own favorite sin - pride.
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This post was edited on 2008-06-17, 08:05 by