So...

[ShadowHM]

You still have not explained why it is a bad thing for society for homosexuals to make a commitment in the form of marriage to one another.


Obviously, because homosexual acts are immoral.

Much better, and thank you for finally saying it. Moral codes are always internally consistent, so there is no way to discuss them other than to affirm or deny one's belief in them. In other words, 'nuff said.

Recognizing 2 men or 2 women as a legitimate family core through the institution of marriage would be one more strike against the already struggling concept of the nuclear family. In that regard, such marriages strike me as being as harmful to the institution and it's role in society as the oft-referenced Britney marriage.

Now here, perhaps, we have some room for discussion.

I quite agree that that the nuclear family is a struggling concept these days. I suspect that where we part company is on what it takes to mend it.


Frankly, the very concept of family has been under siege for well over a hundred years and the assaults have indeed weakened it to the point that I too worry about it.

Assaults from the likes of Britney's infamous attempt to seek publicity to rescue a flagging career are trivial compared to the more broad and insidious assaults from other influences.

First, I will agree firmly that a 'two blood parents, one mother/one father-who-love-and-respect-one-another' is a much better situation in which to be reared than any other of the usual combinations these days.

However, the very concept of the 'nuclear family' is a fairly new one, and I believe it to be a much weaker one than what it replaced. I see many of our societal woes stemming from the loss of that wider family group that most were reared within before that. We used to be nomadic hunter/gatherers who lived in extended family groups. We followed that with thousands of years of living within extended family groups in agricultural settings.

The catalyst for the eroding of the extended family as a mechanism for rearing children was the Industrial Revolution. One no longer made a job where one was reared - one went to where the job was and both spouses usually worked there. The grannies/aunties (and to a lesser extent, grandfathers and uncles) who reared the children while the mother and father worked in the fields as agricultural workers were left behind. Children no longer learned their crafts from their parents. Immigration patterns to North America (what you seem to be considering your benchmark) very often left the extended family behind completely, so the nuclear family seemed to be all there was.

Changing patterns of employment still make for assaults upon the family. The presence of women in the workplace is not new; but having women in the workplace who do not have family members to raise their children is new. Then we have the insistence of modern society that one follows the job, and re-locates when necessary, leaving behind any alternative support system that might have been generated.

Well-intentioned changes to marriage laws that made it easier to escape bad marriages further eroded the concept. If one lived within an extended family, there would be checks, balances, good examples and teaching to foster a marriage. Living in isolated ‘nuclear family’ groups made those absent. The churches were an adjunct to the extended family that tried to aid there to foster good marriages, but they lacked the strength of a family to do this.

To add to the mix, there is another influence that has been creeping into our society – to wit, a sense of ‘entitlement’. Good things are not earned by hard work, one is entitled to them. So many (most?) people do not seem to wish to work at a making a marriage functional, they ‘should not have to work for that, it should just come to them’. Quick fixes are always sought instead of the more difficult route of daily effort. (The pharmaceutical companies have been exploiting this to great profit – why work at being healthy when you can take a pill?)

I am sure there are more pieces to that puzzle. But the point I wanted to drive home is that the nuclear family never was a functional construct for our species. It has clearly faltered if not failed as a basic building block for society. Your post implied that you believe that allowing homosexuals to marry would be just one more blow to that foundation, but I believe that it was a weak foundation to start with. It is too late to go back to the extended family as a foundation.

Hence, I believe that if homosexuals wish to try to create their own nuclear families and have society recognize them as valid, it is better than allowing the other factors to continue to erode the fabric of society. The nuclear family is a weak building block, but it is better than having none. The presence of two committed, loving and respectful parents (albeit of the same sex) is preferable to not having any role model at all for how to get along with one another.

Of course, since I don’t believe that homosexuals are immoral it is much easier to have that opinion. ;)