AJ,

Some men delight in getting many women pregnant, and in purposely avoiding all parenting and child support responsibility.
Such does not make for a reliable or preferable social structure.

Some women get pregnant to many men, but choose to raise their offspring mostly as single mothers.
Such does not make for a reliable or preferable social structure.

There are or have been patriarchal societies, matriarchal societies, polygamous societies, polyandrous societies and societies where child rearing is an extended-family or communal affair.
There is one common denominator however, and that is that child rearing involves direct input from both male and female members of said society. Both take, and share, this responsibility.

In the majority of modern societies, one other common denominator has also been adopted as a matter of social evolution for the well-being of both the constituents (the society at large) and the children of that society, and that has been monogamous marriage of one man to one woman - preferably as a life-long partnership.

Same-sex 'marriage' proposes to unravel both of these key common denominators of effective social structure.
For what beneficial purpose?
To make some constituents feel better about themselves?

We have seen cases of same-sex couples adopting for the purpose of child-exploitation.
How do you prevent this? By enabling 'gay marriage'? Or by viewing it with some hesitation?

Gay union, ok. Gay adoption, I have significant reservations.
Gay 'marriage' serves to undermine the very significant underlying objectives of traditional marriage - for better, for worse, etc, until death - as key aims for societal stability.
Whether there has been some deterioration in overall marital commitment in more recent times does not diminish the underlying objectives.
Some traditions have a genuine purpose, and need to be retained for the betterment of society as a whole. Traditional marriage is such.

Ojnab, just skip this one.

AJ Philips, I've explained myself sufficiently.
I won't bother with you any further.

Saltpetre (shakes head in dismay) "All this harping on about 'outbreeding depression' is just an excuse for your hatred of mixed marriages""

I don't "hate" anything.

I was simply pointing out to the person who falsely claimed there was no "rational" reason to oppose it, that there was indeed at least *one* valid reason.

A tiny percentage of mixing is not a prime concern to me.
It's the MILLIONS of unrelated/dissimilar people entering our country.

"'In-breeding' in humans is a far more dangerous practice"

No, too-distant strains are just as dangerous as too-close.

"Have you not heard of 'hybrid vigour'?"

Sigh.
Yes, and you don't get it from the most-distant strains.
You get it from not-too-close, not-too-distant mixing.

Dutch man + Dutch sister, too close.
Dutch man + any non-familial Germanic woman, groovy!
Dutch man + any non-Germanic European woman, promising.
Dutch man + non-European Caucasoid, uh-oh.
Dutch man + non-Caucasoid woman, Danger Will Robinson!

"Even the cross-breeding with Neanderthals you mentioned previously, and with some positive delight, was a case of inter-racial marriage."

And where are they now?
Didn't turn out too well for them, eh?

Does it occur to you that only the beneficial mixes survived, while all the hideous defective freaks died without offspring?

That's what I was saying before.
Each distinct race ("population") has had millennia to weed out the potential problems within their genetics.

But the mixing of populations, separate for millennia, is novel and untested.
You don't know what you'll get.

If you mix Zulus and Tibetans, you'll get "humans", but you won't get "Zulus" or "Tibetans", and if the survival of those peoples is important to you, you may not want to encourage that.

The survival of Australians (the White ethnic group) is important to me.

Saltpetre,

<<There is one common denominator however, and that is that child rearing involves direct input from both male and female members of said society. Both take, and share, this responsibility.>>

There’s a growing consensus among experts that children raised by same-sex couples are not disadvantaged in any way. None of the studies support such a suggestion. Do you rally against single women choosing IVF too? Sure, they may have members of the opposite sex in their lives (e.g. fathers, brothers), but so do same-sex couples.

Remember, too, that only a small percentage of people are gay. The vast majority will always be heterosexual, so an argument from society as a whole is largely irrelevant. Gay couples have already started adopting, or having kids of their own, for a while now and yet, despite this, society continues to get better all the time. The world has never been less violent than it is now (Pinker, 2011), and the overall crime rate in western societies has continued to decline since the ‘70s. The only crime bucking that trend in Australia is assault, yet even that is down from where it was 80 years ago (you can check these stats at http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics.html).

<<Same-sex 'marriage' proposes to unravel both of these key common denominators of effective social structure.>>

How will it do this, and how will it be detrimental to the structure of society? Your argument seems to amount to, “Because it’s different”. But that’s just an assumption and not very scientific. There have been many beliefs throughout history that seemed obvious, or like they were just commonsense, that turned out to be wrong, and there is probably no other field like sociology in which this is more obvious.

<<We have seen cases of same-sex couples adopting for the purpose of child-exploitation.>>

We saw one particular case of that (http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3794616.htm). Do you know of any others, or whether or not this happens more frequently with same-sex couples? Given that some think homosexuality is synonymous with paedophilia (e.g. runner), reporting on a same-sex couple doing this is obviously going to make better headlines.

Shocakdelic,

This is true if your objective was simply to present your point of view…

<<I've explained myself sufficiently.>>

But you are asserting that what you say is also the truth, so you haven’t explained yourself sufficiently. Let’s recap, and forget explaining yourself “sufficiently”, here’s a list of glaring omissions that you haven’t even answered:

1. I asked you what the relevance was of why Tibetans look different to Zulus, and you haven’t answered;

2. You haven’t explained why my example of outbreeding depression is detrimental;

3. You haven’t given an example of a case of outbreeding depression showing itself to be detrimental in humans, yet there are many for inbreeding;

4. You haven’t provided any evidence of why the less-than-1% is of greater concern than all the other untested combinations found within a community (of which there are many more);

5. You still haven’t provided any of this alleged research that you’ve done.

6. You haven’t explained why your analogy is still relevant even in light of the problems I recently pointed out.

I think your response to Saltpetre very much reveals where you're going wrong. First, you seem to think that because inbreeding is detrimental, then it’s opposite (outbreeding) must necessarily be just as bad. Second, you are confusing your personal belief (i.e. that a race being bred out is a detrimental thing) with the extent to which outbreeding depression is *biologically* detrimental.

<<I won't bother with you any further.>>

The reason you won’t bother with me anymore is because you have nothing left. You have resorted to repeating yourself and are now declaring how important this issue is to you, which, as Carl Sagan would point out, is your problem. Speaking of which…

LEGO,

If you’re still reading, did you notice that Shockadelic didn’t require that I state my position in order to “pin me into a corner”? He had enough confidence in his beliefs to not need to divert attention to any potential flaws in my specific beliefs. He probably understands that any problems with my beliefs do not necessarily make his right.

One of my relatives is homosexual - but he never considered himself as 'gay': he never took interest in the gay movement, never went to a demonstration or a gay-parade and never pleaded or showed any interest in gay-marriage or adoption rights.

Instead, he leads a respectable, professional and monogamous life and when the time was right he contacted a lesbian in a similar situation and together they brought two children to the world, in the exact same manner as heterosexual couples do, except that they had their respective partners by their side to arouse them.

So now my relative and his boy-friend of many years raise together two beautiful children, their mothers also visit often, so they practically have two loving and adoring fathers and two loving and adoring mothers.

Such cases are rarely reported by sensational media, but what more can you ask?

Shocker,

It was you who pointed out that the Neanderthal 'cross' provided something extra and beneficial to those European communities (and thence to their subsequent descendants) who were fortunate enough to have been able to undertake this 'cross' successfully.
Maybe some sterile hybrids were produced (as could reasonably be expected), who then died childless.
But others would have attained the hybrid vigour represented by the persistence of those parts of Neanderthal DNA now evident in current successful European communities.
The 'crosses' got stronger; the baseline Neanderthals became extinct - as well, it would seem, as the 'non-crossed' baseline Europeans.
'Cross-breeding' produces a stronger 'line', given time, per 'survival of the fittest'. That's how evolution works.
And, that's why zoo breeding-programs work to establish the widest possible gene 'pool'.
It's not rocket-science.

AJ,

You are right that child exploitation, abuse and neglect are much more prevalent in heterosexual partnerships, partly due to sheer numbers, but also because the human animal at large is subject to many imperfections.
Hence, human communities have had to strive for 'ideals' in an effort to minimize 'transgressions', and the impact of these on the society at large.
The pursuit of an 'ideal' has led to traditional marriage, in the interests of societal cohesion and beneficial functioning.
(This pursuit has also arguably produced 'religion', with similar underlying aims - though imperfectly in some 'constructs'.)
Traditional marriage is such an 'ideal', and ideals are not to be trifled with - at least not spuriously or inadvisedly.

Someone on this thread suggested abandoning 'marriage' altogether - thereby reducing all to the very lowest common denominator.
Is this what is best for society as a whole, to abandon ideals altogether? I certainly think not.

Marriage is a worthwhile ideal, as traditionally understood.
Gay Union is a reasonable counterpart for the tiny minority concerned, but cannot be considered as the equivalent of the 'ideal' which directly affects the much larger broader community.
That's what I'm saying. Similar, but not equivalent.