"You lot can think all you like."

Cheers Arjay. We will. I might suggest you join us sometime.

Or you could keep spewing forth paranoid, bigoted diatribes.

Your call.

Arjay. Not wanting to upset you, but marriage is a secular word.

It is a public committment of two people too each other.

Marriage is only about those two people only.

Even Levitcus ( who ever he was!) would have no argument on that.

BTW. Arjay are you married?

Arjay said:

"The Gays were once really happy not to be abused or bashed,now they want total power and have become like those who were once their oppressors."

So there you go, gay folk.. just think yourselves lucky you aren't getting smashed to pieces by thugs any more for having the temerity to love someone.

No need to be getting all uppity and wanting to be treated equally or anything like that.

By the way Arjay, not sure if your choice of the word "buggered" was deliberate or not but that was a nice touch ;)

Happy New Year Arjay.

I see you've lost none of your venom.

As a gay man in a relationship, I find it amusing how everybody seems so fixated on what label you'd apply to a same-sex relationship.

That's because whatever "common purpose" of a so-called gay marriage/union/relationship registry might be (examples: the hope of civility, acceptance, comfort, etc.), "the experience" I have of gay relationships is one of "striving together" through the daily grind. I've no doubt many straight couples can relate to having gained the same experience from a relationship.

In one of the books of The Bible - Ecclesiastes - comes my favorite Bible quote, which I do not believe I am taking out of context:

"Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up."

It seems the whole debate is focused on where gay relationships might be "rising" to, rather than focused on the basic dependency of one person being prevented from "falling" by the other.

In the case of my current gay relationship, my boyfriend has advanced diabetes. That's why we call the relationship "striving together".

So call it whatever you want. More important is whether or not you can relate in some way to the experience.

...From Justin

Damn, Arjay just uncovered our evil plan for world domination...

Back on planet Earth, I'd like to address this idea of marriage as being "traditional" and somehow "bringing balance" to the sexes.

In previous eras, marriage could consist of one man and several wives as is still the case in some areas of the Middle-East and Africa. Adult-child marriages were not unusual in Mediaeval and early modern Europe. King John and Richard II of England had children as wives. In Australia, these two traditions have been outlawed. Marriage has been fundamentally transformed. If marriage survived these changes, I hardly think same-sex marriage will make much difference. Besides, as we know, there are only a few gays so how can it possibly make a difference?

As for this "balance" the idea of uniting the masculine and the feminine worries me. Those two concepts can be extremely oppressive and used against men and women who don't exhibit "correct" ("politically correct"?) gender stereotypes. Men and women marry because they love each other and not to satisfy some ideologue's sense of "balance". Ditto gay men and lesbians.

Btw, is there anything wrong with being buggered? Maybe if you're not doing it right...