Then you contradict yourself and say “real parents nurture.” You had just written several paragraphs saying real parents are only parents who practice your own religion and live exactly like you want people to think you do (i.e., you are the only perfect parent, and you assert your right to “interfere” in everyone else’s family). Then you say that a “real parent” is simply someone who nurtures. So what you are really saying is that “nurturing” is feeding children your religious beliefs and, again, if they don’t, you think your religion gives you the right to “interfere” unless they start attending your church and pick the exact same set of Bible verses that you choose to exalt.

And, again, that is the core of the SSM debate. You, a coercive theocrat, are enraged that other people have other religious beliefs, and you want to use the coercive power of the State to “interfere” and force them to practice religion like you want people to think you do. You complain that “humanists” (i.e., everyone who does not attend your church) are “interfering” in other people’s lives. So what gives you the right to “interfere” but not them? When you think that you are the only person who’s right and who has the right to “interfere” in other people’s lives, it’s inevitable that other people are going to push back and tell you to leave them alone.

No, it’s the secular humanists who are interfering with people.

You’re welcome to live your life your way. But you’re not content with that. You have to make your beliefs the literal law of the land. You abort your own kids and then try to proselytize your beliefs to mine.

The reason gay marriage is wrong is not because gay sex is wrong, although it may or may not be. The problem with gay marriage is that it is a lie. The ways in which gays procreate are inherently parasitic – they can have no children unless a family is first broken up.

The truth is there are differences between men and women. It is sick and barbaric to force a child who has lost one or both parents to pretend there is no loss. A father is not the same as a mother. A stepparent is not the same thing as a real parent. And forcing a child to pretend that having a stepfather is “just as good” as knowing his real mother is child abuse.

Just because nature made you funny doesn’t give you the right to make your pain right by passing the buck to someone else.

Children aren’t here for you to use. Neither, for that matter, are families. Another unpleasant truth: family means kinship – it is not a “choice”. You cannot “choose” to make your child’s real parent not be a parent. Children are not for selling.. Adoption is only legitimate when it is about what is best for the child – and by child, I mean the one who is legally a minor, not the one who is emotionally needy and whines a lot.

Believe it or not, being gay does not have to mean being a drama queen user. There are lots of normal gay people who treat their kids right – and that includes treating their baby-mama or baby-daddy right, because all real parents know that the very act of trying to cut your child’s other parent out of that child’s life is hurtful – even hateful – to the child, and REAL parents aren’t about using and hurting and hating on their own children.

Real parents *NURTURE*.

* major loss of religious freedoms for any religion whose core beliefs interfere with humanist beliefs

Blake frames the issue with more exactitude that nearly anyone. He thinks he has an absolute and immutable right to “interfere” with everyone whose religious beliefs aren’t exactly the same as his. If you simply want to be left alone, or to think for yourself, or to attend a church that Blake does not attend, he think you have no such right. Not at all. To him, you are a “humanist” and he thinks he has a right to “interfere” with your beliefs and your life until you are exactly like him or – more likely – exactly like how he pretends to be in public.

This is the core of the SSM debate. Some coercive theocrats like Blake are enraged that someone else might not have the exact same religious beliefs and public manifestations thereof that their fellow coercive theocrats do. So they use the power of the State to “interfere,” on the flimsy argument that only “religion” (i.e., practitioners of Blake’s religion, i.e., Blake) has a right to “interfere” at will in anyone else’s life, but no one practicing any other religion (i.e., anyone other than Blake) has a right to “interfere” in other people’s (i.e., Blake’s) life, or to be simply left alone to pursue their own happiness.

Truth is of value to you, but only your version of the truth.

Men and women aren’t interchangeable.

If they were, there would be no reason why gays can’t just marry a nice member of the opposite sex.

You don’t have any argument in favor of why gay marriage is “harmless” that doesn’t cut your own argument down re: why gay marriage is “necessary”.

You can’t have something be a civil rights violation and be irrelevant.

Either relationships are valuable or they’re worthless. They’re not valuable for you but worthless for your kid.

Either rites and traditions are valuable or they’re worthless. You can’t have your wedding be so important that having to do it “second best” is a crime, but meanwhile we’re supposed to believe your kid won’t be harmed at all by sacrificing the chance to experience having a dad to walk her down the aisle and dance with her the first dance.

If you want to be a parent, you can’t be a manchild. You’ve got to grow up and accept that parenthood is about responsibility, it’s not just an experience you buy.

Love isn’t just what other people owe YOU.

Truth is of value to you, but only your version of the truth.

You argue that child who has two fathers is living a lie? How, pray tell if he takes no action to hide that he has two fathers?

He’s no0t living a lie anymore than someone who has a stepfather is living a lie.

Your version of truth is based quite simply on your subjective belief that you have some greater understanding of truth and values than I do.

Again, we’re simply going around and around, and you have yet to provide me any rational, factual argument that shows same-sex marriage to be detrimental to society or to the family unit.

All your arguments are based quite simply on the ick factor.

There’s no point in continuing because quite clearly we consider the other to be wrong and will not change our views on this matter.

The problem with your argument is that it relies on treating certain intangible things as inalienable rights – basic rights – for yourself, even as those same rights are irrelevant for others.

Is truth important? Do you have a right to “not live a lie”? Is that a fundamental premise of your entire argument – without which your entire argument collapses? Then don’t insist that it is harmless to force your child to pretend there is no difference between a stepfather vs. having a relationship with one’s own real mother.

You can’t say that honesty and truth are important qualities – basic civil rights – for you, but not for the guy who doesn’t want to participate in the little lies your fake wannbe-family relies on to pass itself off as a family. The truth is that family is defined by kinship bonds, and the exception – adoption – has rules, and those rules exist for a reason: to protect children from predators who want to use them in exactly this way. Children up for adoption are not a resource for you to exploit, and arguing that someone else got away with exploiting a child doesn’t mean we should change the categories around to grant you a basic right to exploit children.

And truth isn’t the only value. There’s also the right to equal access to things of value – where gays define “things of value” in terms of how much individuals and society value them. What right do you have to use that as an argument for why gays “need” marriage (to the point where marriage itself has to be altered so that they can experience marriage in a way identical to the way they expect others do) – but then are you not aware that society values mothers and fathers more than they value marriage? Your argument relies on the idea that relationships and institutions matter for you, but aren’t important for your child. Pick one or the other: either relationships are important, and institutions are important, and “being treated like a second class citizen” is horrible, and you can’t say something is worthless if society values it – or you can insist these things aren’t important, for you or for your kid. But the double standard reeks.

There are other examples – the entire gay rights argument is built out of narcissistic double standards: whether what you want is something as tangible as a legal right (like the right to be free from having other peoples’ values shoved into your life) or intangible (like “integrity”), it’s important for you, but somehow becomes irrelevant when you want to unto others exactly what you claim to fear them doing to you.

Honestly, I can’t think of any.

You manage to ignore twice now that there are married couples who CHOOSE NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN. What is their status if the only reason for marriage is procreation?

What’s more, you ignore again that there are actually same-sex couples who choose to have children – many of them through adoption, and that otherwise these children would never find a home and never have loving and caring parents.

You speak of ethics, but what is ethical about denying someone their right to have a family, to be in a committed relationship, to care for their children simply because of their sexual orientation?

Let me be as plain and clear as possible:

Couple 1 is a hetrosexual couple. They choose to get married. They choose not to have children.

Couple 2 is a same-sex couple. They choose to get married. They choose to adopt children and raise them as their own.

What detrimental real world consequences are there because of couple 2?

And what detrimental real world consequences are there because of couple 1?

And, finally, what’s the difference other than sexual orientation within the couples?

Yes, I have; just because you do not agree with my argument does not give you the right to say there isn’t an argument.

And by the way you have yet to provide a simple rational reason why two people of the same sex can’t simply split the benefits – life partner benefits with life partner, coparent benefits with coparent.

Is it that you just hate children? Or is it that your real motive is hatred of religious people, that you want to destroy intact families just because it annoys them?

Of course I’m just kidding: I know your real motives probably have to do with sincerely held beliefs about what’s right and what’s wrong.

It’s not absurd.

You keep making the mistake that because you do not see any difference between union X or union Y, that therefore there can’t be any difference, even if someone else does see a difference.

But the differences are real, and they have been recognized by high-ranking courts of law.

You can argue that the differences don’t matter – and they don’t, for you. But it’s a harder case saying they shouldn’t matter for anyone, because they are differences which bring real-world consequences and involve taking rights away from people.

As far as the infertile couple, yes, they may very well be infringing on the child’s rights too, and the evidence suggesting that IVF parenting is far more harmful than it was billed as is beginning to accumulate, as well as strong evidence that IVF children have feelings of resentment or other strong negative emotions about the way they’ve been treated, and the way their rights were casually tossed aside. There are some pretty good arguments building up that I have no doubt will limit their ability to buy babies.

For a better discussion on ethical issues see: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0155.htm or better yet: http://www.law2.byu.edu/organizations/marriage family/past conferences/may2010/drafts/CHILDREN%20RIGHTS.pdf

But the key to the infertile couple is infertile people can claim necessity, while gays cannot. (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/8659494/Meet-the-co-parents-friends-not-lovers.html)

For what it’s worth, I personally believe that we need to make a priority out of developing the technology to “fix” the domestic adoption problem by means of transferring the would-be-aborted child from the womb where it’s not wanted into the womb of the adoptive mother (or surrogate).

Your argument is basically a variant on “oh yeah? But they’re doing something wrong too” – you need to actually address the substance of the complaints, instead of merely arguing that somehow Joey doing something bad makes it okay for Susey to do something even less justifiable.

Again: just because you don’t want the difference to matter doesn’t mean you can equate these two things because there is a difference – and it is ethically significant.