Toni Lavis writes:
“Yep, and you can't go letting folk getting married if they can't produce issue.”

. . which is, of course, your common or garden variety straw man.

Your specious argument relies on the notion that procreation is mandatory where it is not.
I’m simply pointing out that SSM embodies the impossibility of procreation and deems procreation of no value.

You’re perfectly free to down play procreation, but that tortured reasoning seems rather at odds with your existence.

Goodness me all these arguments - about what marriage
is - it's about religion, it's
about procreation, it's against nature...

Marriage is not about religion. Marriage is a secular
contract presided over by government. Like taxes.
If marriage is about procreation then we should also
ban marriages that take place later in life, beyond a
couple's child-bearing year or we might also consider
banning marriage for heterosexual couples who don't
want children.

Marriage is against nature?
Homosexuality occurs quite often in nature. If you've
never seen a pair of male dolphins doing miraculous
things with their blowholes, you haven't been watching
enough SBS. There are actually some animals that
spontaneously change sex from male to female and vice
versa so relying on the "nature" of things is rather
a bit misleading.

Foxy writes:
“Homosexuality occurs quite often in nature. If you've
never seen a pair of male dolphins doing miraculous
things with their blowholes”

Exactly.
Support marriage equality for gay dolphins.

Toni Lavis writes:
“Yep, and you can't go letting folk getting married if they can't produce issue.”

. . which is, of course, your common or garden variety straw man.

Your specious argument relies on the notion that procreation is mandatory where it is not.
I’m simply pointing out that SSM embodies the impossibility of procreation and deems procreation of no value.

You’re perfectly free to down play procreation, but that tortured reasoning seems rather at odds with your existence.
Posted by Dustin, Sunday, 3 September 2017 10:55:06 AM

==>>Dustin has argued well...

For many centuries marriage has enjoyed an honoured position in society as it denotes respect for others, responsibility and the nurturing of children.

I think public respect will diminish if the word marriage is allowed to be used to describe a homosexual union. This will be simply because many view homosexual acts as weird, abnormal and dirty..

I hold my marriage on a high level and have no wish to see its reputation drop as a result of homosexuals being part of the institute. Homosexuals can find another word that means homosexual union.
Posted by Banjo, Saturday, 2 September 2017 11:22:36 AM
==>>

Basically, I agree with Banjo!

The alterations that family patterns are undergoing
can't be halted by laws or sermons, for they are
the products of much more encompassing social and
economic developments. The changes in the family are
perhaps even more extensive than is generally realised.

Not only is the family consisting of a husband
who works and a wife who stays home to care for their
children no longer the norm; it exists in fewer households.
One reason for the demise of that family is the sharp
increase in the number of women in the work force.The
two-paycheck, dual-career marriage is now typical.

There have been so many changes with marriage and family.
We have single-parent families, we have co-habitation,
we have people marrying more than once,
we have re-constructed families (divorce and re-marriage),
we have childless couples,
we have "open marriages," we have people choosing to remain
single. We have gay couples and Gay-Parent families.

The reality is that what we see today (as opposed to what
may have been the norm decades ago) is the existence of
alternative patterns - an increasing tolerance of a variety
of alternative family styles.

This is primarily due to the nature of post-industrial
societies whose hallmarks are economic and cultural diversity
combined with a highly developed sense of individualism.

In this environment people tend to make decisions about
marriage, divorce, abortion, child-rearing,
and the like in terms of what they, personally, want -
rather than in terms of traditional moralities,
obligations to kin, or the other impersonal pressures
that previous generations unquestioningly accepted.

Pursuing their own vision of self-fulfillment, or responding to
the social and economic predicament in which they find
themselves, many people are modifying the family system to suit
their individual needs.

Significantly enough, some of these variant family patterns
are becoming recognised, formally or informally, by such
official agencies as the Bureau of the Census, the State
and Federal courts, the Taxation Office, and Government
Welfare Departments.

It could be, that we are moving to a situation in which
variants of marriage and family patterns
will simply come to be taken for granted.