Gay Marriage

[Occhidiangela]

First off: eppie, bless you, but you need to catch up to the year 2004. :lol: "religion and state should not go together" is a few hundred years too late.

That togetherness is a matter of fact and record, more or less. The secular state grew out of a religious state, to include most of Europe. The tendrils reach far back. Secular statues in some countries provide for those who cannot fall back on a particular religion, or faith, to lay out the laws/rules/customs/taboos inherent in the socially regognized bonding of a man and woman. Marriage laws grew from marriage customs which grew from tribal and spiritual laws, rites, taboos, and customs.

Insofar as law goes, it is what people make up and agree upon. That process often includes debates such as this one, though hopefully at a higher intellecutal level than many of the posts in this thread. (*Frowns at unrealshadow13.* Raise the level of you offerings, friend, or begone from this place. Think more before you post. Weigh your words more carefully. Bring your self up to the Lurker Standard. Please. ;) )

In a representative government, the bulk of the people need to agree on the rightness of a law, at a visceral level, or its credibility and strength via acceptance and self enforcement will be minimal to nil. (I am sure goldfish will take the piss out of me on the points regarding law. *grins* Lay on MacDuff!)

As to the government arranging marriage, I'll pass. The government is bad enough at what it does already. Let's not add to the burden, and to the list of things going hopelessly wrong. I found my dearly beloved Mrs Occhi without the help of the government, (though I do have a marriage license from the State of Texas) and I hope my daughter finds a husband on her own, my son a wife on his own. Any prospective husband of my daughter will have to work past the Occhi barrier first anyway, and doing that will show me his mettle, I'll not give it my blessing otherwise. Pikers need not apply.

But back to THE TOPIC opening this silly thread.

This post refers to an oxymoron. Homosexual marriage -- not gay marriage -- is a term of nonsense. (I was feeling happy and gay the day I got married, and not a little tipsy, what with the sips of Glenmorangie my brother provided me with pre-altar). Marriage is a union between a man and a woman, or a man and many women. Some cultures apparently had one wife many men customs, I am not sure of the specifics. Pick your culture, but on the planet earth, one of the few cross boundary rites and ceremonies that is universal is that of marriage. The union and social fusing, or the older version of the accumulation of feminine/male chattel, "two flesh become one" (and use some KY, fella, yer lover had a jalapeno vindaloo curry chicken dinner last night) of two same genders folks is a rite that does not have a few thousand years of habit and almost universal currency around the globe, so it must have A different name.

Just don't call it marriage, since it is not one. Agree on it or don't, then give it a name.

A codification that earns the kind of universal norming that marriage now has may well evolve over time for the lesbians and fairiescumrump rangers (cynical terms used deliberately: I am tired of the hijacking of the word "gay" by the homosexual community, damnit). The decisions in the Netherlands may be a revolutionary step forward, or it may be a step in the hedonization of Western Society similar to the sabyritic practices of Ancient Rome. Who knows? Or, a third path may be shoveled through the avalanche of BS that surrounds the topic, and one that works.

One should note, when as a liberal one wants to extol Muslims for having contributed so much to modern culture (OK, thanks for the numbers, what have you done for me lately?) that in Arab and Muslim cultures, and in some Oriental cultures, homosexual marriage is not being promoted or pursued with vigor. That is not to say that homosexuality, and in particular pederasty, are not condoned -- it often is --but the activity is in no way confused with marriage and the creation of a family and blood legacy.

Let's talk just a bit about Pederasty in the Modern World, shall we? That's what is at the bottom of this. Lesbians have the best case to make, what with all of the women who lost husbands in wars who still raised their sons and daughters, since they can circumvent the biological problem of matched genitalia via either in vitro methods or use of a man purely for stud functions. (What man could resist the free mating moment? I imagine some could, but many a young and fertile "stud" teen could easily be enlisted or hired to suit)

In Afghanistan, and in many of the Arab states, something similar to the Roman practice of pederasty mentioned above, the buggering of boys, teens, or men by other men for sexual pleasure, is not infrequently practiced. I get two different reports from our culturally "in the know" folks out here, but at either 16 or 18, the shame line is drawn in re being on the receiving end of an afternoon's buggery. I think it is 18 here in Qatar, and in Iraq.

In Afghanistan a number of my colleagues serving in the Marines were puzzled, shocked, or otherwise bewildered by the rather noticeable stable of 'pretty boys' that some of the Warlords who they dealt with kept around them. Men in Afghanistan are some tough, fighting sunzabitches, the same Marines assured me. What struck them as odd, but which is explained somewhat by the cultural habits in re women as chattel and as brood mares, was these ferocious fighters being so fond of buggery as a hobby. A look into any American prison would probably have been instructive, I think.

Pederasty is also promoted for commercial purposes. See the "sex tourism" in Thailand and Philippines, and I suspect China: it is well known that young boys, or approximations thereof, as sex pleasure vessels are part of touristic advertising.

So, let's call a fag a fag, and not a cigarette. Should the fag marry? No, he can't, marriage is between a man and a woman.

Can society craft suitable codification for a legally sanctioned arrangement for two homosexuals, be they man or woman, so that they can go, in circumstances where such a will evolves, beyond the merely carnal and into the spiritual . . . with complete social sanction?

Sure, I suppose so. Society has to agree to do so first, and it takes someone to raise and defend the idea. It won't happen in Iraq or Saudi Arabia any time soon, but who cares? Just please, call it, whatever it is, somehting else, not marriage.

The Netherlands has made such a codification, Massachusettes and California have attempted to do so. Canada has done so.

Should it be done? *scratches head* My gut feel says No, it is not necessary, there are heterosexual couples arrangements that work without the marriage, so too homosexual couples can simply be a couple.

What is at stake is not a freedom to choose a life style, it is a freedom to choose AND to accrue the already agreed benifits that a society invests into marriages: benefits that were tailored to the institution of marriage, which is the union of a man and a woman, in the interest of promoting a stable society and procreation of its self. It may be for the good of society to do so for lesbians and homosexuals.

I admit to being imperfectly equipped with a functioning crystal ball that can show me the outcome of such a societal decision, as has been done in the Netherlands. It might have beneficial long term effects, it might not.

Ini any case, in this discussion let's stop, please, confusing the difference a lifestyle, one based on how one get's ones carnal pleasure, and on the combination of spiritual and legal bonds that have the full APPROVAL of society. Current marriage forms do. Polyandry does not, in America, though in other nations IT DOES. Bigamy is a valid approach in some places, but NOT HERE. Hence, homosexual marriage may be OK elsewhere, BUT NOT HERE. (at present)

I have said enough. Back to your usual conversation.

Occhi