@Toni Lavis

"You consider this the pinnacle of human pefection?" Nope! Replace the words "pinnacle of human perfections" with the one word "normal". Homosexuals are "abnormal"

//Yes there is an objective benchmark and I have knowledge of it. You obviously don't. The benchmark is 46 chromosomes.//

18 hours ago you claimed that there is an objective benchmark for human perfection and that it is 46 chromosomes.

//"You consider this the pinnacle of human pefection?" Nope!//

1 hour ago you changed your mind and decided there was no objective benchmark for perfection after all.

Would you like to decide what your position actually is and then stick to it?

//Homosexuals are "abnormal"//

So are left-handed people. We should ban them from getting married. Also, all references King Edward III, Queen Victoria, Nikola Tesla, Emperor Tiberius, Jack the Ripper etc. should be dropped from school curricula because learning about left-handed people might encourage normal kids to adopt the left-handed lifestyle.

@Toni Lavis

If you wish to use the word "perfection" and "imperfection" then in my understanding of human biology, 46 chromosomes is perfection. Any other number of chromosomes is an anomaly.

You trying make an analogy with left and right handed people etc, is simply a red herring.

Toni Lavis:

Under what circumstances might it be reasonable to use the word normal?

Toni,

Left handed people are in their right mind.

//If you wish to use the word "perfection" and "imperfection" then in my understanding of human biology, 46 chromosomes is perfection//

And he's back-flipped again. Careful, you'll do yourself a mischief. I still don't buy that Reeves's muntjacs are perfect people. Would you like to reconsider your argument?

//You trying make an analogy with left and right handed people etc, is simply a red herring.//

So red herring fallacies are dodgy arguments:

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/151-red-herring

But appeal to nature fallacies are not?

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/37-appeal-to-nature

Surely all fallacies are dodgy arguments? Or are fallacies only dodgy arguments when your opponent is making them but not when you're making them?

For the record, I wasn't really advancing the argument that left-handed people be discriminated against. That was intended satirically, to highlight the absurdity of denying people marriage rights just because they're abnormal.

//Under what circumstances might it be reasonable to use the word normal?//

Lot's of different circumstances, phanto. It's a word with many meanings. From the context I have assumed that Roscop means normal in the sense of 'conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected'. In which case homosexuals, left-handers, gingers, type 1 diabetics, gun owners and a whole slew of other people all reasonably fit the definition of abnormal.

Why is it reasonable to disallow one group of abnormal people from getting married but not others? If normality is to be the metric by which we determine the right to get married, then if we are to be consistent we should be banning the diabetics and the southpaws et. al. from getting married. Otherwise we're just being hypocrites, and who wants to be a hypocrite?

//Left handed people are in their right mind.//

There's no reason to assume that this is the case, Is Mise. I've already mentioned Jack the Ripper as a historical lefty, and he's hardly a case study in mental health. Indeed it would seem that left-handedness is associated with a greater risk of developing a number of psychiatric disorders. For example, lefties make up only 10% of the population, but about 20% of people with schizophrenia are left-handed.