Gay Marriage

I do not want to go on this topic in great detail.

Simply put, I believe homosexual people have the right to seek happiness in any form they want to as long as no harm is done directly acutely or chronically to anyone else.

Harm being defined as actual physical trauma or death or even the fundamentalist "destruction of society" angle. Certainly if something were to cause the destruction of society I think any moral person would act to stop that cause.

The fundamentalist and more religious in the United States posit the hypothesis that gay marriage will result in the destruction of the basic social unit of society, the family. With the destruction of the basic unit of society our society itself will be destroyed.

National Geographic published a small item called "Geo Quiz" and the topic is marriage. There are 18 questions - and the answers are also contained on the page. You read the question, attempt to answer it yourself and turn the magazine upside-down and read the answer.

Issue February 2005 - excerpt - National Geographic- page ???
6. What two countries were the first to legalize same-sex marriages?
Answer:
The Netherlands in 2001 and Belgium in 2003.

Now, we can simply test the hypothesis of the fundamentalist - that homosexual marriage will bring about the destruction of society.

Perhaps someone will be helpful out there and provide some solid statistical data to back or refute my assertion that Belgium and the Netherlands appear to be just as stable as they have ever been in modern times.

I certainly have not read any news reports declaring those countries hotbeds of anarchy and lawlessness.

So, approximately 4 years after making homosexual marriage legal in the Netherlands - they seemed to have survived.

And approximately after 2 years of homosexual marriage being legal in Belgium - society seems to be working nicely enough.

There is little information to indicate that allowing homosexual marriage is any more or less detrimental to society than allowing marriage between heterosexual partners.

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Added on 2005 02 23:
Here is an article about a book produced by the Pope. In his book and paraphrased in this article is the view that gay marriage is "an ideology of evil" ...
"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," he writes.

Funny, how in the face of direct evidence that gay marriage is niether evil nor detrimental to society the Pope, supposed benevolent representative of a benevolent god, advocates the suppression of an entire group of people and restriction of their rights.
And the reality is that people of religious bent are a mixed group - and there are segments that having this official advocacy of the restriction of rights of a small group of people - will take it that those people should not have rights. And in the extreme some will say that gay people should be removed from existence. (either physically or by re-education - depending on your point of view which one of those is worse).
In the same book, the Pope also makes it sound like abortion is similar to the extermination of the Jews during WWII. Funny how both abortion is legal and in a couple of countries gay marriage is legal - and there is no mass extermination of fetuses or massive failure of society.

People need to recognize when statements contain no validity - no matter how much authority the source claims.

CNN article is here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/02/23/pope.book.reut/index.html

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