As JazzSpazz has said, this is only about the 20 gazillionth time this issue has come up on this board. And while sometimes the players may change, the dance is usually mostly the same. The difference here seems to be that craig2112 is being particularly reticent in providing reasons for his position. I can understand the urge -- your beliefs can't be attacked if you simply keep your mouth shut. On the other hand, forums of this sort are all about discussion, and if you're not willing to lay out reasons for your opinions, then you're rightfully going to be ignored and/or chastised. No one likes someone who talks but refuses to listen... and this is effectively what a person who refuses to give reasons is doing. He closes the discussion because he allows no basis for argument. I submit that two people simply stating opinions at each other without giving any reasons is a farce.
Baring this in mind, I'm going to re-post something I wrote on this subject earlier, in response to Qman's assertion that he regarded homosexuality as "morally wrong." Like craig, he gave no actual reasons, just asserted that it was. In response, I myself provided some of the reasons I've most often heard, and my own refutations. Maybe this will help clarify things. I would be interested to hear responses to the ideas I lay out here, as I never got satisfactory responses in the other thread.
You say that homosexuality is wrong. Why? You give no criteria, you simply state that it is. Exactly *how* is accepting gay marriage "damaging to the morality of our society"?
Of course, I have heard responses to this question from those who oppose gay marriage, but I don't find any of them satisfactory.
1) There is first the notion that sanctioning homosexual relationships will cause/encourage others to become homosexuals. I think that, just perhaps, the true absurdity of this view is beginning to become apparent to Americans at large, although I do know people who believe this. The fact is that sexual orientation is never a conscious choice. That there is voluminous scientific evidence for this hardly matters, because there's a basic common-sense test which proves it, and that is the fact that if you really ask yourself whether you can *decide* who you are attracted to, you have to admit that such a choice is not possible. For instance, in the States we have an ideal body type that is very skinny (almost certainly too skinny from a strict health perspective), and yet many of us find ourselves hopelessly attracted to skinny people. We cannot arbitrarily choose to be attracted to very heavy people. How much harder to choose to be attracted to members of one's own sex? Of course, we can choose to *have sex* with anyone, regardless of whether we are attracted to the person or not. Rape in prisons is sufficient example. But men who rape other men in prison aren't gay... they're raping other men because they get off on dominance and violence. A homosexual orientation is quite different. The only manner in which the societal sanctioning of gay relationships will increase the gay population is in freeing people who are too afraid to admit their orientation to express who they really are. So yes, there will be more gays *apparently*, but only because more people are admitting it.
(And moreover, I should like to additionally point out -- since the point is not here laid out explicitly -- the idea that "saying being gay is okay means there will be more gays! Oh no!" is a patently circular argument. You can't show the immorality of something by asserting that the behavior will lead to more of the same. You're just ignoring the original question!)
2) There is the notion that sex must always be procreative. I take this to be patently silly. The fact is that many heterosexual couples engage in sex that is not procreative, sex that harms no one, and enhances their relationship. How exactly is sex between an infertile couple wrong? How about sex between a married man and a woman who is over 50 and can no longer have children? How about a BJ? Sex has many purposes; it is not always engaged in simply to produce children. In fact, I don't think I would be venturing out on a limb at all to say that most sex between even heterosexual married couples is not necessarily intended to produce children. The Catholic Church -- which is the Church I'm most familiar with, since my mother is Catholic -- itself sanctions "natural family planning." That alone is admission that sex need not always be procreative. And the fact is that procreation can never be the sole criteria for a morally correct sexual relationship... there are situations, for instance, when a woman may be forced to endure unwanted sexual advances by her husband. Procreation is, of course, a necessary part of human life -- but it need not be a decisive criteria for sexual morality. And the fact is that for most heterosexual couples, it already isn't.
3) Homosexual acts are somehow a crime against God. For this I must ask, what evidence do we have of this? There are, of course, six passages in the Bible which supposedly comment upon homosexual acts. But there are many, many reasons why these passages themselves and the position that the Church has taken regarding their moral authority is suspect. First, the fact is that with only six passages that are *maybe* discussing homosexuality, it clearly wasn't a big concern for the Biblical authors. If it was, there would be a lot more material. They were much more concerned with the proper place of women as below men, the immorality of divorce, codes of proper diet, etc. Secondly, the ancient Hebrews had no concept of homosexuality as an unchangeable psychological condition, a part of human identity. Such an identity is a modern discovery and a modern concept. The passages discussed refer only to the bare acts themselves, and not to a romantic inclination. Thirdly, and more specifically, five of the passages probably refer either to the rape of opposing soldiers after a victorious battle, or to male sexual fertility rituals performed in pagan temples, such as the worshippers of Ba'al. It is worth noting, however, that the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai, the two words now often translated as “homosexuals,” do not necessarily refer to homosexuality at all, but only to debauched people (in the general sense) and anal intercourse, which need not be with a man. And the most famous story, the Sodom and Gemorrah story, can only be seen as a parable against homosexuality on a very strained interpretation. While Sodom becomes a constant symbol of sinfulness in the Old Testament, Sodom's sin is *never* explicitly identified as homosexuality. In fact, it *is* identified explicitly in several places, most notably Ezekiel 16, that Sodom was morally and ethically lax, ignoring the poor and practicing the worst inhospitality. Further, none of the other passages traditionally understood as condemning homosexuality made any reference to the Sodom story. Fourthly, it has been widely noted that the Bible sanctions many practices which are ethically reprehensible nowadays, such as the selling of women and children into slavery, or in justly murdering your enemies. There are other Biblical sanctions which we would regard as totally ethically neutral, such as the wearing of polyester clothing. Fifthly and most simply, I myself and many others do not accept the Bible as authoritative. One may claim that revelation is infallible, but our *human judgment that some teaching or other is infallible* must always be suspect. The idea that a a collection of 66 books that is over a thousand years old, and written in a wildly different cultural context, has settled everything for all time, strikes me as very odd indeed. It may be very comforting to some people to believe that they need not think for themselves, but merely need to crack open a book for answers to all their questions, but life just isn't that simple. No book contains all the correct answers. If it did, presumably the world would be in a better state than it is now.
Those are the arguments I can think of at the moment. As I have stated, I find them all inadequate. The fact is, some people are gay. We still don't know exactly how or why homosexuality came to exist. But it does. And it seems very cruel to me, cruel and petty at the most basic level, to deny sexual closeness to anyone simply because it is not heterosexual sex. I can see no way in which there is any harm done to anyone by homosexual sex between consenting adults, but can see many ways in which the lives of both the partners themselves and the lives of those around them can be enriched by their devotion. If someone can tell me ways in which homosexual sex and homosexual relationships *are* harmful to other individuals or to society, I would like to hear them, because I certainly can't think of any.
Now, the one argument that I've seen craig bring up is that gay marriage impinges on religious rights by the government forcing clergy to perform marriages against their will. First, I am in agreement that this would be wrong. No one should be forced to perform a religious ceremony that goes against their convictions. We agree on that. But I am also in agreement with the other posters of this board that this is unlikely to happen. I have heard no stories of any minister being forced to marry gay couple against his will. If this has happened, I'm sure there are news stories of it somewhere. Please provide a link. But in any case, the ceremony itself isn't nearly as important as living amicably with gay couples -- for the former is a matter of a single day, and the latter a matter of a lifetime. But as I have outlined above, I have yet to see any compelling criteria by which gays can be seen to be "damaging the morality of our society."
