1. Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning. Last time I checked eyeglasses, polyester and air conditioning improved people's quality of life. Being gay doesn't help me see better, make me look good, or cool me down in the summer.
Being truthful about one's sexual orientation and being allowed to fully express that truth improves quality of life.
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall. Being tall is not a behavior that can be changed. Being gay is a behavior that can be changed. I know two people (one good friend and an aquaintence) who have gone from straight to gay just because it's easier to get sex. And they didn't get taller...
Homosexuality is both a pattern of behavior and an orientation. Behavior can be changed, you're right; orientation cannot.
Is Sexual Orientation a Choice? No, human beings cannot choose to be either gay or straight. For most people, sexual orientation emerges in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed.
http://www.apahelpcenter.org/articles/pdf.php?id=31
3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract. A dog, perhaps not. But why not polygamy? Why are they less important than gays? And why not let someone marry themself? They might love themself so much, and they shouldn't be denied the all the rights of married people. That would be discrimination...shame shame.
Why not polygamy? How does that hurt you? What does that even have to do with you, period?
Why not let a person marry him- or herself? The rights of married people (most of them, anyway, from what I remember) have to do with shared rights - visitation at hospitals, division of estate upon death, etc. What adverse consequences of letting a person marry himself are there?
4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal. All of those things were changed by society. If society wants to make gay marriage legal, so be it. But last I checked 13 states have banned it. So good luck...
Societies change, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. We'll see.
5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed. Doesn't make straight marriage any less meaningful. Just makes gay marriage a sham.
Care to explain this, in context?
6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children. Irrelevant. You don't get married for the sole purpose of making children.
It might not be the sole purpose, but can you think of any other reason the government has any business licensing and regulating interpersonal relationships than the creation of family units, which are proven to reduce instances of criminal behavior in children?
7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children. But those children would be more susceptable to being gay being that they're exposed to that BEHAVIOR all day long.
I realize you're just responding to the point in green, but both that point and yours kind of make me think, "so what?"
8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America. That's right - most religions are against it. And while we don't live in a theocracy, many of our laws are based on the Judeo-Christian principles of the Bible. Sorry.
More than just our laws; the norms and values of our society, from a macrosociological point of view, are based firmly on Judeo-Christian traditions (basically, all those prevailing "moral" attitudes that classify us as "the West"). However, it's important to note that the laws and our norms and values are all malleable; in this way, religious values may go in one direction and societal values may go in another, and laws are necessarily contingent upon societal values in this our secular world.
9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children. Children CAN succeed in a single family home, but studies show that having a male AND female role model at home significantly improves a child's chances of success in life.
In terms of general family models, two parents are better than one - both theoretically and in practice. Studies have shown that children raised in dual-parent households engage in criminal or otherwise sociopathic behavior less often than children raised in single-parent households.
That's not to say anything bad about single parents - most of the single parents I've known personally have been extremely dedicated to their children - but it is also an undeniable fact.
10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans. Again, you're comparing non-behaviors to a behavior. Doesn't work.
How about acknowledgement that blacks are human beings and not inherently less intelligent than whites? All kinds of behavior have become more acceptable as a result of that sort of thing - interracial relationships, black workers being higher in the corporate pecking order than white workers, etc. That latter one still isn't common, maybe, but it's
possible today, whereas the very suggestion of it one hundred fifty years ago would have been laughed at.
Look at how the Industrial Revolution altered the "foundation of society" - America went from being a collection of mostly gemeinschaft miniature socieities to groups of larger gesellschaft societies, which is what introduced the idea of social activism over personal or demagogic rebellion - the formation of special-interest groups like unions, temperance leagues, religious subsidiary groups, business assocations, all those little groups of like-minded people that are part of the great society of America but identify with each other on grounds that outsiders that are still Americans can't relate to.
