It's a good sign of someone who has run out of valid arguments, that they resort to screeching, 'BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!'

The wellbeing of children is actually their last concern - what they're really doing is using children as whipping boys for their own bigotry.

Gay couples have children, regardless of gay marriage laws.

Prohibiting gay marriage is telling the children of these couples that their families are not considered legitimate by society. They are being told they are abnormal and that their parents are inadequate to raise them.

This is protecting the children? Or protecting conservative sensibilities?

David, take your ignorant fear elsewhere please. Those of us that really do put the rights and protection of the children before our prejudices will be better served to do so.

It's a good sign of someone who has run out of valid arguments, that they resort to screeching, that those who proclaim'BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!' are out of argument.

Sorry Clownfish.. Gay marriage and Gay adoption are immoral, degenerate and socially destructive. We will not survive such step into darkness and misery.

But HEY.... we know where you are coming from. Paragraph 1 of Marcuse "Repressive Tolerance"....

Of COURSE you want a 'tolerant' society...that's why you made your hideous remark about opponents 'screeching'.....

Here is your ideological foundation for that:

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm

The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for INtolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions WHICH ARE OUTLAWED or SUPRESSED. In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period--a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice.

Your version of 'tolerance' is the same as Marcuse's

'SUBVERSIVE'

TrashcanMan, writes

'Prohibiting gay marriage is telling the children of these couples that their families are not considered legitimate'

Prohibiting polygamy or incestual marriages is telling the children of these couples that their families are not considered legitimate.

Runner.

"Prohibiting polygamy or incestual marriages is telling the children of these couples that their families are not considered legitimate"

You are correct. Although I'm guessing you're not arguing to legitimise these types of relationships.

Your deep emulsion in Christian mythology and it's associated dogma would prevent you from considering polygomy as anything but the work of the 'devil'. Of course, while I wouldn't recommend it, polygomous relationships aren't necessarily any more harmful than any other heterosexual relationship, assuming all is consensual. The fact that they are illegal is purely a result of a socially constructed morality that has little to do with cause and effect which is what true morality should be based on.

As for incestual relationships: despite their rarity and therefore low significance in this debate which affects a much larger proportion of the population, there are obvious physiological impacts associated with this type of relationship which offer an ACTUAL REASON for preventing them from proceeding. Therefore this is an argument against such relationships which isn't based on fear and loathing.

ALGORE,

Existing policies, opinions and attitudes need to be challenged for society to continue to evolve and improve. Hence, the abolition of slavery, women and native Australians voting, corporal punishment, torture, burning witches, or any number progressive changes to legal, political or social norms in history.

Early Christians were subversive.

The suffrage movement was subversive.

The anti-slavery movement was subversive.

It's not a dirty word for those of us who welcome change.

David:”Homosexual relations do not give rise to children, so such relations are of no institutional importance to society.”
“Opposition to gay marriage is all about the child, and no parliament has the right to impose a motherless life on a little child.”

Gay couples for a long time have been able to foster children from 0 – 18 as a permanent placement.

Gay couples raising children is already happening.

I see marriage as a voluntary contract between two people, personally I don’t care what gender the two people are. Does religion have something to do with obtaining a marriage certificate?

I imagine legally, death of one or both of the parents it may be important for any children, other family, to have a legal document that clarifies their roles in law. I think NZ has a Civil Union certificate or agreement. Some ministers there will do a religious ceremony for them as a symbolic type thing.

“A motherless life”? Govt imposes that on children every day several times a day.