The query is not about government. It is about the asserted moralism. You asserted what Blankenhorn has asserted: the equal dignity of homosexual love.

It is notable that you agree that this does entail an asserted moral equivalence of sexual behaviors.

The point I made about extramarital sexual behavior (of which adultery is a subset) was that noting increased familiarity with people who engage in that behavior is not a moral argument. You agree, it seems to me.

I am familiar with gay people and, as I said, most of us are familiar with people who have engaged in extramarital sexual behaviors. They are our brothers and sisters, of course, which is all the more to concern for sexual morality … rather than indifference.

Now you shifted to a claim that sexual behavior is immoral where there is betrayal of trust. I think you meant that betrayal of trust is immoral — whether or not it involves sexual behavior. I’d agree but your comment would be a dodge of the query. Perhaps you meant something else.

Is all sexual behavior moral where there is no trust for someone to betray (anonymous, or flings, or groups, open nonmonogamous arrangements, and so forth)? Or where all involved consent and do not consider it a betrayal? I would say, no and no. What say you? Is the lack of betrayal decisive in favor morality either way?

Look, soundly arguing a moral proposition is not easy and certainly not as easy as mere moralistic assertion. The query is about the proposed equivalence. It does not get resolved by skipping past it to SSM demands. That would just be more assertion rather than sound argumentation.

There is a huge chasm between the asserted pro-gay moralism and sound moral argumentation. And another huge chasm between that asserted moralism and the marriage idea.

The SSM campaign has proceeded by leaping with false assumptions about sexual morality. Also, given the lack of sound argumentation, the campaign has proceeded with a false pretense of moral neutrality; for when pressed, the SSM advocates assert moral approbation is the key to their demand for the imposition of SSM idea (the revisionist view with a gay emphasis) in place of the marriage idea (the conjugal view with no emphasis on identity politics).

Regarding Blankenhorn, I believe in my earlier post I may have mixed him up with Louis Marelli, another anti-equality activist who saw the light. Regardless, if you want to know what goes on in Blankenhorn’s head, you’d need to ask Blankenhorn.

“You have asserted a moral equivalence but no moral argumentation to back it up. This is just another form of arguing from familiarity. Hey, you say, familiarity with heterosexual love makes you familiar with homosexual love and, Presto!, you have moral argumentation that is sound.”

No, that was in answer to your question about diginity, not sound moral argumentation. The realization that what one has been led to believe about gay people is lies, that gay people are people like any other, and that there is no sound moral argumentation for denying marriage rights to them, is sound moral argumentation. The fact that you personally do not agree with it does not make it stop being so.

If you truly believe there is sound moral argumentation against equal rights for gay people, what is it? None of you ever say.

Probably most people know others who have engaged in premarital and extramarital sexual behaviors that were based on feelings of love, affection, romance, sexual attraction. Does that familiarity make the behaviors and that love morally sound? Nope. Likewise, most people know others who have engaged in adulterous behavior and adulterous love. Familiarity does not make that morally sound. What familiarity might do is make some of us morally numb or conflicted or even indifferent.

You have asserted a moral equivalence but no moral argumentation to back it up. This is just another form of arguing from familiarity. Hey, you say, familiarity with heterosexual love makes you familiar with homosexual love and, Presto!, you have moral argumentation that is sound.

Nope. It is mere assertion. It does not rise to the level of moral argumentation, much less sound moral argumentation. This does not depend on my admitting one way or another. It has to do with the content of your comment which lacks what you claimed to have already expressed repeatedly.

Look, if your premise is that all love is morally sound, then, state that clearly. If not, then, delimit your meaning.

Note that the equivalence asserted is that heterosexual love is the moral equivalent of homosexual love; that the dignity of heterosexual love is the moral equivalent of the dignity of homosexual love. What is this dignity’s content? What is this love — it must be a type that is different from all the other types of love with which you might claim a moral equivalence, or else why would you make the comparison vis-a-vis the homo-hetero dichotomy?

As for the diginity of homosexual love, the easiest way to explain it to someone like you might be for you to picture the diginity of heterosexual love, and flip the gender of one of the partners. Pretty simple.

And unreasoning obsinancy is not the dictionary definition of bigotry. I looked it up, and you’ve left one rather crucial element out.

Whether or not your assertion is correct depends on what you bring to back it up.

My opinion is that the marriage idea merits preferential status. Your opinion is that the SSM idea merits preferential status.

This is conflict of ideas, not mere opinons, however.

Boo, your quip regarding the dignity of homosexual love is not an answer to the challenge to provide the sound moral argumentation to back-up the assertion made by Blankenhorn.

Instead it is another assertion: there is no sound moral argumentation either way.

That stands as your concession that the moralism expressed by Blankenhorn lacks what I said it lacks.

Your quip is merely a childish “you too!” assertion. But even at that it depends on another moral assumption on your part: what is this “dignity of homosexual love” about which you speak? Perhaps break it down such that it is not mere opinion on your part.

Boo, your naive question regarding your niece is no distraction from the pro-gay bigotry in your own rhetoric and argumentation. David Nichol helped in this regard when he cited the dictionary definition of bigotry — at the center of which is unreasoning obstinancy. Apparently his fellow SSM advocates agreed with the definition. You, of course, are free to disagree with them and to propose your own gaycentric definition. Or one that encircles your niece’s complaint.

No, we just attack the idea that the government ought to legally enforce your opinions on “the marriage idea.”

“Second, he asserted that more important than marriage is the claimed “equal dignity of homosexual love”. That claim was merely asserted and has not been backed-up by Blankenhorn with the sound moral argument that supposedly had convinced him of this moral assumption.”

Kind of like your claim of the unequal dignity of homosexual love.

“Unreasoning obstinancy is bigotry.”

So when my niece complains about her bedtime she is being a bigot?

Blankenhorn understands that much. But he put that aside for two odd reasons. First, after trying to just 3 years he felt a failure because he did not persuade the pro-SSM elites that they were wrong about marriage. Yeh, just 3 years and the SSM advocates proved themselves to be (gasp!) unpersuaded by the pro-marriage arguments. Second, he asserted that more important than marriage is the claimed “equal dignity of homosexual love”. That claim was merely asserted and has not been backed-up by Blankenhorn with the sound moral argument that supposedly had convinced him of this moral assumption.

Apparently he thinks marriage supporters are more readily coaxed to abandon their principles and to abandon marriage. And, apparently, he has abandoned sound argumentation because the SSM side has shown that you can get your way by mere assertion and obstinancy.

Unreasoning obstinancy is bigotry. Blankenhorn came up against it with the pro-SSM elites. Now he exhibits it as the linchpin for acceptance of SSM and hoodwinking marriage supporters to do likewise.