Quote from: Spike;303747Get the fuck off of my Earth, rather than 'stop overbreeding on my Earth', if you will.  The first is good for humanity, the second is good for me. I'm nothing if not an altruist.

Mind if I sig. this?

Quote from: Spike;303742If, by chance, David and I declare our hot sweaty manlove for one another and retire to the back bedroom for same... well that is our business as adults. If, by chance we want some sort of public recognition of our hot sweaty manlove... then things get stickier.  You can't force a private organization (a church) to recognize it using their internal ceremonies against their wishes. I use private here to seperate from public in the sense of government.  Churches have the right to declare their own membership standards and codes of conduct and, regardless of how David and I feel for one another, they have the right to say they don't like it... etc.

What do you mean "if"?. All those times you sweet talked me into playing Jane Goody meets Shilpa Shetty meant what...nothing?....bitch. I mean cunt.

But let's say after one too many bouts of Lasso Me Roughly, Spike and David R decide to take it to the next level. We both believe in separation of church and state and all that BS. We find a church that that has no problem marrying us and I'm talking about a legitimate church here - it has a history of sex abuse, Mafia connections and anti semitism. Suddenly the state says no. Doesn't matter if your church says it ok to marry, We don't. Who gives a fuck if you pay taxes. In fact we are going to attempt to make it a law that defines exactly what marriage is....and guess what you're not included. So much for the separation between church and state...

QuoteHow my musings tied to procreation is quite simple:  Sexual preference is just that, a preference.  I, though only a pika, am a strong believer in familial duty.  Gays, regardless of the sort, have a duty to their family and by extension the species (humanity in this case) to pass on those genes they've inherited as best they can.  In my favorite metaphor for sexuality, they need to eat the chocolate ice cream even though they prefer the strawberry.  Now, a hundred years ago they needed to get all sweaty, these days they have the option to go the nifty sciency route but there are two problems with that that I forsee:
First:  always comes the issue of the right of the donor genetic material to determine how the product of their genes are raised. This is far more important with regard to male homosexual couples, as they must rely not only on a genetic donor but ALSO a surrogate womb, who will frequently find the 9 months or so of womb duty somewhat more personal that simply spraying into a cup... obviously giving away ones rights is somewhat implied, but it will remain a sticky issue for a long time.

*shrug* Heterosexual couples who choose this route go through the same hassles. It's a complex legal issue which really has nothing to do with homosexuality or gay marriage.

QuoteSecondly:  Attraction is more than simply a statement of preference, as far as I can tell, but actually a genetic imperetive to find a compatable donor.  This can, and I assume will lead to sub-optimal pairings. As our culture continues to look at homosexual preference a binary state, despite the public adoption of the Kinsey scale, homosexual individuals will refuse, for cultural reasons, to consider looking for genetic donors that they might 'get jiggy with' if they hadn't opted for gayness.  

QuoteFuck your preference and breed motherfucker.
Full disclosure: as of about six or seven years ago I changed stances from the Neg Pop growth crowd to my current position of 'breed motherfuckers'. The reasons for my original and current positions did not fundamentally change, only my understanding of circumstance. I still contend that there are far too many of you hairless fuckers for one measley planet, but I had forgotten that population pressures drive expansion more than anything else. Get the fuck off of my Earth, rather than 'stop overbreeding on my Earth', if you will. THe first is good for humanity, the second is good for me. I'm nothing if not an altruist.

Why the hell would you care if sub optimals pairings occur if you just want people to breed themselves of this rock ? You should be happy the homos are breeding with willing females. The more snot nosed little fuckers running around, the sooner we will get of this shithole and live out our BSG fantasies.

Not that I think your whole breeding imperative makes sense or even that individuals have an obligation to breed.

Brother, I had to wade through a whole lot of BS...c'mon, if you don't like the homos getting hitched, just say so. I mean I don't like the Swiss.

Regards,
David R

Spike, like many Americans, confuses church and state.

There are unions which various religious groups approve of, and then there's the state-sanctioning under law of contracts, and the particular contract we call "marriage". These are different things, and rightly so.

If a Sunni man marries a Catholic woman in Saudi Arabia under a liberal imam who accepts the Catholic woman, Saudi Sunnis won't recognise that marriage, nor will the woman's Catholic priest grant her the sacrament of communion. If a backwards Mormon sect carries out a man's wedding to a third wife, neither she nor the second will be recognised as his wives by mainstream Mormons. My woman and I could go to 103 Uniting Churches through the country and have wedding ceremonies, these would not be recognised as valid by any Orthodox synagogue in the land. A Catholic woman is set aside by her husband, and he sleeps with other women, she doesn't see or speak with him for thirty years afterwards - according to the cardinal, she's still wedded to him.

The various religious groups, then, have many and varied views of things. The state stands above all this nonsense, as it must in a democratic society.

We could as a couple go to another 103 Uniting Churches to have weddings, but the state would not recognise that we are now married until we followed the various procedures laid down, put in the paperwork and so on. We could have a legitimate (in the legal sense) wedding at the registry office, and the local rabbi decide not to recognise that wedding, or the congregation shun us; if we later decided to divorce and split property, the court would be unimpressed by arguments that because some religious group did not recognise our wedding, we were never really married.

What is or isn't recognised by the state as a valid contract in a democracy has nothing to do with the views of any particular religious authority. If the Western Bank and Eastern Bank decide to merge, when looking at their contracts of merging, the state is indifferent to the opinions of some archbishop, rabbi, imam or guru, except insofar as those people are citizens of that state. Likewise, with marriage contracts.

Separation of church and state. That's what we have in democracies. Some people are less than comfortable in democracies, I realise; typically those people imagine that absent democracy, they would be part of the ruling elite. They confuse correct principle with their own personal wankfest of an ego.

This is a common source of confusion to many North Americans, because in many cases there a church wedding IS a legal registration of marriage, they happen in the same place.
And the "registration" is seen as a formality, but the church wedding is what would make it a "real" marriage to them. To the point that I was recently trying to argue with someone about how it could be that it wouldn't matter in Uruguay if two people got married only at the civil registry and not a church, and yes, that would be a full and real marriage, and no, no one would think it was a "fake" marriage because no religious ceremony was involved, and no the Uruguayan government required no such ceremony.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;303918Separation of church and state. That's what we have in democracies. Some people are less than comfortable in democracies, I realise; typically those people imagine that absent democracy, they would be part of the ruling elite. They confuse correct principle with their own personal wankfest of an ego.

So, so true.

On topic:
Spike: I understand that things can look a little confusing, what with being a wapanese rodent and all , but (and I hope I'm not taking a joke too seriously here) do you really, honestly believe that the solution to environmental and feeding problems should be solved by "getting off the planet"? Uh... weird.
And, dude, the fact that currently all things gay have got the spotlight doesn't mean that homosexuality has somehow spawned out of thin air during last century. It's been around for some time, you know. And my species has made quite fine for now.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jimmy me boyo.  

I understand completely, that's part of my issue with the current situation.  Likewise, the gay marriage activists, who are by far and away the loudest portion of the pro-gay-marriage debate have refused to accept the legal contract 'marriage' (Civil Unions) on no uncertain terms...

I don't feel the state should have a say in what is and is not a marriage, but should have the right to legally 'join' two people and shouldn't really care for the whys and wherefores, muchless the whos as I've said before.  

David: Shush you.  Actually I'm singularly unconcerned with the hitchiness. I feel there are a series of interconnected but nominaly seperate concerns that come up.   There is, I feel, a cultural war ongoing though only one side is not fighting fairly or honestly.  Not being particularly invested in the Status Quo, this would not overly concern me however I see the currently dominant side as bringing a broken culture (unsustainable) to the table.