leoj,

I don't know what you're ranting on about.

I was merely responding to Josephus and his
comment that same-sex couples could not have
offspring or their genes passed on. I pointed
out that with the new technology currently
available this is not the case any longer in
today's world. I did not make any judgements
on the matter either one way or the other.
Simply stated the facts.

What is your problem?

NathanJ:

“If your relationship is sound, then you don’t need to get married.”

This is the crux of this issue. People get married for several reasons and most of them are aimed at staving off some insecurity they have about their relationship with each other or their relationship with society.

People marry in the hope that they can get someone to promise to stay in a relationship with them until ‘death do us part’. They forlornly hope that a mere promise is enough to protect them from being alone and anything less than death will save them. They conveniently ignore that such a promise is worthless since there are no penalties for breaking it and nearly half those who make that promise break it. You can make it as legal as you want but there is no ultimate protection from loneliness.

Of course they rationalise this insecurity by saying that they ‘love’ the person they want to marry and it logically follows that if you love someone a great deal then you marry them. There are millions of couples who love each other a great deal but do not marry.

Then there is the insecurity of their relationship with society, family and friends. They want their relationship recognised by them because it is a way of showing them that someone loves them enough to make that promise. It is a way of showing that they are loveable by at least one person. The question is why does it matter what all these others think of them? Why do they need the recognition and public affirmation of their lovableness? An emotionally secure person would not need this.

Homosexual people have their own particular insecurity. They want social recognition of their ‘homosexuality ‘. They think that being married will somehow help them to achieve this but no social recognition can ever compensate for a lack of personal insecurity. They may not have either of the other two insecurities but their own is enough to drive them towards a change in legislation and the pursuit of marriage.

AJ you seem to be unable to address the issue honestly. Dismissing something by referring to the slippery slope argument simply means you can't provide an argument against my point.
Firstly, it's not a slippery slope, there are movements around the world to legalise adult incest and polygamy, however, even if there wasn't, there are still adults from these groups who wish to marry. Many of them currently live together anyway.
As I stated earlier, if you actually support equality of marriage you have to support marriage for all consenting adults, regardless of the composition of the union.
Anything else is pure hypocrisy.

Sorry phanto, not true.

Marriage for me, & a large percentage of those I know is a commitment to a relationship. Sensible people don't make such commitments with out giving the idea some serious thought. I know many who have run away from this commitment once serious thought was applied to the thought of committing to it for life.

Personally I have no problem with being alone. I sailed for a number of years single handed, & you can't get much more alone than single handed in the far reaches of the Pacific. However I made the commitment to a relationship, & believe that commitment strengthened the relationship.

However unless it is a relationship that can naturally produce children, the commitment can not be the same, & marriage should never come into it.

AJ, I sometimes wonder if your misinterpretation of my comments is accidental or on purpose.
Nowhere did I refer to nature in regard SSM. My words were " normalise" which has nothing to do with nature and everything to do with common or majority custom or guidelines, as per the definition.
I suggest you look up the definition of " normal"

Not so, Big Nana,

<<Dismissing something by referring to the slippery slope argument simply means you can't provide an argument against my point.>>

I explained why your Slippery Slope argument was fallacious in our other discussion.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18869#336452

But I’m happy to say, for the sake of argument, that you are not committing the Slippery Slope fallacy, because it ultimately doesn’t matter to the issue of equality whether or not you are.

<<… there are movements around the world to legalise adult incest and polygamy, however, even if there wasn't, there are still adults from these groups who wish to marry.>>

So what? Just because there are movements pushing for State-recognition of harmful relationships, that doesn’t mean we should withhold State-recognition of non-harmful relationships.

Your logic is flawed.

<<As I stated earlier, if you actually support equality of marriage you have to support marriage for all consenting adults, regardless of the composition of the union.>>

And as I pointed out earlier: not if the relationships are harmful.

You continuously overlook this crucial factor to push your bogus and bigotry-driven argument.