I am struggling to understand the comparison, I fear. To clarify once again, I was expressing that empathy via trying to put oneself in the shoes of another person is not a bad argument.
I'm not sure how much clear that argument can be made. You said you don't understand how someone could try to prevent people who love each other from getting married. Thus, if two men love each other, in your view, they should be able to marry. Well if that's true, then, since I love my sister, I should be able to marry her, right? We love each other, we're not hurting anyone else, we would only be engaging in activities that others may deem inappropriate in the privacy of our own homes, and, more than anything, our attractions are not a choice. We can't help the fact that we are madly, romantically, deeply in love with each other. Aren't all those reasons the very ones you give for defending a homosexual couple's right to marry? Why, then, is homosexuality different?
If a hypothetical argument is needed, then I'll attempt one: if biological need maintained that homosexual pairing were the only ones that could produce children, and an interpretation of one of the world's major religions labelled heterosexual unions or attraction as being a sin, then I would then fight for heterosexual couples to be able to marry.
And if cows could fly, it would be much harder for us to get milk. But they don't, so it isn't. The fact is, heterosexual unions are the only ones that can produce life. Heterosexual unions are the natural, normative human sexual relationship, as is self-evident by the fact that, as you pointed out, only heterosexual sex can produce offspring and continue the species. If homosexual sex was the only way life could be produced in human relationship, then I would agree that heterosexual sex is frivolous and seemingly unnatural.
What it comes down to, I believe, is that when some people view same sex attractions as being 'unnatural', they then move on to comparing them to other attractions that are grouped in the same category. (Incest, polygamy, bestiality, pedophila, etc.)
Then question is, why are those other attractions considered "unnatural", and how is homosexuality different? No one I've spoken to has been able to point out much of a difference.
I no longer have the wish to struggle against such arguments, as they involve trying to explain to the other person how these things are different, and I'm starting to understand that there are a number of people that are unwilling to see how they are different.
I'm perfectly willing to listen to an explanation, I've just never been given one that is very satisfactory. I've heard that homosexuality is different than pedofilia because homosexuality involves consenting adults who love each other, which makes some sense, I can see where that explanation is coming from. But polygamy and incest also involve consentual adults who love each other. How is homosexuality different?
And, of course, that comparison rests on the presumption that homosexuality is a choice. (Which falls into the same 'people that are unwilling to see' futility of argument.)
While the attraction itself may not be a choice, acting on those impulses is a choice. Heterosexuals and homosexuals alike have a choice as to when and where to have sex (unless they're drugged or raped, which is obviously a different story). When I refer to a "homosexual", just to be clear, especially in a Biblical or Christian context, I refer to someone who is involved in a homosexual lifestyle, not simply someone who may struggle with homosexual urges or attractions. There are many former homosexuals who have left a gay lifestyle, and yet may still struggle with homosexual attractions. They make the choice not to have homosexual sex, just as a drug user has a choice to do drugs or not.
Again, I don't think I've any business here in this thread. In parting , as I've said before, it's no longer my church, and if people wish to interpret their particular gods will as being so cruel and unloving, then that's their business.
Again, I've addressed the love issue before. If you know that a particular lifestyle that a person is involved in is leading them down a path which could negatively affect their whole life, even their eternal state, then the loving thing to do is to point that out to them. Leaving them to rot in their own lifestyle which you know is wrong in the name of "tolerance" is not loving at all.
When they decide that their god or their interpretation of their religion has the right to tell other people what they can and can't do- especially when it's interfering with those people having the same rights as others- then it becomes my business, and there will be a reckoning
We tell people what they can and cannot do all the time in society. It's necesarry to maintain social order and stability. You can't drive 50 mph in a residential neighborhood. You can't do illegal drugs. Children cannot vote, or go to rated R movies by themselves. Homosexuals have the same rights in regards to marriage that heterosexuals do...they may marry a willing person of the opposite sex. Every adult has that right. No one, however, whether homosexual or heterosexual, may marry someone of the same sex.
FerventGodSeeker
