Pixies Place Forums - View Single Post - Is a Constitutional Amendment necessary or what?

Personally, I find the "It's always been that way" approach to be rather irrational and pathetic. Any institution that can't be adequately "protected" by anything other than its status as an institution isn't worth "protecting".

Now, we have the idea before us that a marriage must be defined as a union between a man and a woman. One argument that has been put against it is that evergreen, the "slippery slope" - the idea that if we move down the ideological slope to the point of allowing homosexual marriage, we risk sliding further towards "more perverse" definitions of marriage. The problem with this is that we presume the current definition to be the top of the slope, when that is not necessarily so. As BlueSwede mentioned, there have been in the past anti-miscegenation laws. So, having made the definition of marriage more liberal than before, haven't we already begun the "slide"? Did the world collapse into chaos when we did? Because we did?

The "STD" argument is another that has me baffled, simply because the acts of "sodomy" practised by homosexuals as the primary means of sexual contact can all be performed by heterosexuals too - unless of course, you're in one of those wonderful states with anti-sodomy laws. Now, is there any medical basis for suggesting that a man is more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease from a man's anus than a woman's? Does it even matter? In a free society, can we - should we stop adults of able mind and will from choosing to engage in behaviour that might be risky? If STDs are really of concern, why isn't there a push for promiscuity laws? No, this argument, in my opinion, is all about the need to strike out at and restrict people not fearful of the lobbyists' god.

God - I could write a fair bit on this fellow, but I feel that this is the most important argument to deal with: "God says...". Since when, in a country puportedly permitting free practise of religion, should what god thinks be of any concern whatsoever to lawmakers? Not that I advocate open defiance of everything biblical, but here is a clear example of needless discrimination. To me, churches are an assault on what I see as an institution of rational thought, and infant baptisms an assault on freedom and free will, but I'm not trying to make them unconstitutional, because ultimately it doesn't change my personal experience unless I let it. So go ahead, don't recognize homosexual marriage as a "godly" union, call it invalid or whatever, but don't legislate that which clearly has no effect on you and serves only to marginalize a significant part of society whose defining behaviour is, at least check, legal.