LDS and Prop 8

[no-body]

Not surprised at all that you have to quote some stuffed shirts from the early 60's for anything "meaningful"

"(H)omosexuality is indeed an illness. The homosexual is an emotionally disturbed individual who has not acquired the normal capacity to develop satisfying heterosexual relations.

It further noted:

(S)ome homosexuals have gone beyond the plane of defensiveness and now argue that deviancy is a desirable, noble, and preferable way of life"

Googling this led me to this Relativism and the Homosexual Agenda

Which states that gays can be "cured" So can you help me here, does the LDS really advocate "curing" homosexuals? Because this is the dangerous undertone I am reading in all these posts.

It always circles back around that if you give even a little to treating homosexuals like people (gay marriage, don't ask don't tell, etc) you will indeed have to treat them like people in all areas.

 

[Autodidact]

Okay let's start from the beginning. Is sexuality or for that matter any sexuality a cognitive behavior?

Define "cognitive behavior."

If it is then there are many scientific studies centered around how cognitive behaviors can be influenced, modified, changed and acquired - Pavlov and Skinner for example.

Some can, some can't. It does not follow, however, that any specific one IS.

I am simply stating for the record that I believe sexuality to be cognitive.

Why would we be interested in your beliefs?

My argument is that if it is not cognitive how would a homosexual know they are homosexual?

How do you know you're male? Is being male therefore cognitive? Is it therefore a cognitive behavior? You might want to rethink this.

If someone is certain that sexuality is not cognitive, please state your reason.

That statement is so broad as to be meaningless. It might help if you defined your terms.

Are you trying to assert that there is no inborn, genetic or physiological component to sexuality? Because if that were so, I don't think there'd be many of us around to discuss it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Why would we be interested in your beliefs? How do you know you're male? Is being male therefore cognitive? Is it therefore a cognitive behavior? You might want to rethink this.

I know I'm not rich and famous. I look forward to Zadok's cognitive therapy that will be able to correct this.

 

[AxisMundi]

The APA is not the best source one should go to for science supporting a position. In 1963 the New York Academy of Medicine charged its Committee on public Heath to report on homosexuality. The report noted:

"(H)omosexuality is indeed an illness. The homosexual is an emotionally disturbed individual who has not acquired the normal capacity to develop satisfying heterosexual relations.

It further noted:

(S)ome homosexuals have gone beyond the plane of defensiveness and now argue that deviancy is a desirable, noble, and preferable way of life"

These findings were in sync with the APA that held homosexuality as a pathology. Ten years later the APA struck down homosexuality from the officially approved list of psychiatric illnesses. There was no significant new data or evidence behind this change. The change occurred because of the political maneuvering of gay lobbyists within the APA. The APA coup makes for interesting history. APA gay advocates argued they were justified in their move because the APA represented "psychiatry as a social institution" rather than as a scientific body.

In 1973, the APA switched from a questionnaire style of gathering information on mental "illness", a questionnaire that merely asked the professional what their patients saw them about, and began using clinical research utilizing the Scientific Method.

This is why homosexuality was removed, along with dozens of other "illnesses", in 1973.

There was indeed "significant new data or evidence" proving the old assumption, based purely on the fact that gays have always faced active oppression and persecution in this country thank to "Christian Love", and sought out mental health professional often as a result.

BTW, to reply to the post above this one I replied to, there is nothing to indicate that the State has any "vested interest" in promoting family and children.

 

[AxisMundi]

Please do not insult anyone intelligence - especially your own. Down’s syndrome is not a mental disease or mental disorder. If you would make an effort to show some rational and restrain from making accusations that are obviously false - perhaps we could have an honest and open discussion concerning this matter. It is my opinion at this point that your judgment concerning the LDS on this matter has been made and is not open to any discussion. That Sir, is what I understand to be prejudice. The very evil thing you accuse us of.

Zadok

Speaing of, perhaps you should do a little research before commenting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome

See the list of disagnostic and treatment codes to the right under the picture of the young man putting together a bookcase? It starts with ICD-10?

Only diseases and disorders get those codes.

 

[AxisMundi]

Not surprised at all that you have to quote some stuffed shirts from the early 60's for anything "meaningful"

Googling this led me to this Relativism and the Homosexual Agenda

Which states that gays can be "cured" So can you help me here, does the LDS really advocate "curing" homosexuals? Because this is the dangerous undertone I am reading in all these posts.

It always circles back around that if you give even a little to treating homosexuals like people (gay marriage, don't ask don't tell, etc) you will indeed have to treat them like people in all areas.

The LDS does indeed operate a few "ex-gay ministries", along with several Evangelical organizations.

For some odd reason, they tend to merely smile and turn away when you bring up the fact that "ex-gays" and their "ministers" both state unequivocally that the "ex-gays" are still gay, only living as straights.

In other words, living in loveless, cold relationships harmful to all parities involved, including the children.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Question: you charge begging the question a few times in the last post. How are you using the term? Begging the question is a logical fallacy referring to circular reasoning. There is no circular reasoning on my part. What do you mean?

I'm sorry, I simply intended the colloquial meaning. Your comments "raise" these questions.... the very questions, I think, most of the people on this thread are concerned about.

The thread's author began with citing an article and a hope LDS attitudes toward gay marriage would change. My first post focused on things LDS in response. The views and positions of other faiths has not been a focus. The thread (or my part in it, or those that have engaged me) has moved more to a legal discussion.

Well, I see what you're saying, but OTOH you entwined "things LDS" with "a legal discussion" in your first post:

...the Church agreed with those who reject Judges attempting to invent rights and impose the same on the body politic. Rights claims should be the product of the Legislative Branch and therefore a reflection of and subject to the popular will. The overturn of the earlier Proposition 22 (that led to the Proposition 8 campaign) was an affront to the democratic process.
...
The LDS Church would agree with the larger notion the state can regulate sexual relations. This would also include what can or should be considered a marriage. Marriage is a state endorsement of a relationship where the state acts as the guarantor of the contract.

None of these positions are likely to change.

Note that by "these[LDS Church] positions" you were referring to positions which are explicitly legal. Furthermore, they are positions which, by shocking coincidence, converge with your anti-gay arguments based on a secular state. Furthermore, they are positions which happen to "demonize" (to use your term) those who "don't agree" (again using your terminology).

Natural law rights clams do typically require an appeal to a larger metaphysic. Using that mechanic in a secular society and/or in the arena of law is problematic.

Again I think you are talking about how laws are effected in practice, not how they are justified in principle.

To the missing the point charge: there have been posts in this very thread that have rejected majoritarianism. Moreover, judges inventing rights goes to the heart of the Prop. 8 Campaign. I have had a number of discussions on the subject of Prop. 8 (several on these boards). I have noted there are many whose loyalty to the issue of gay marriage trumps the way it comes about or loyalty to democratic process.

Fair enough, but I would say two things: (1) Probably everyone would oppose the democratic process under certain conditions. Martin Luther King, Jr. thought it was legitimate to violate unjust laws in order to establish justice, for example. I guess it comes down to the subjective judgment of how unjust is too unjust? (2) Your claim that judges were "inventing rights" is highly questionable. I don't agree judges were inventing rights in this case. Your claim raises the question (I won't say begs) of whether newly-recognized, and even unpopular, rights have to be "invented" or whether they can be discovered as the implications of existing law. The latter is precisely what happened in the case of Brown v Board of Education, a case you agree with.

My answer to your two questions:

1) No.
2) No.

Any plausible arguments in support of these positions? This is, after all, a debate forum.

I'm not sure I follow your point. Are you arguing that the state serving as licenser and guarantor of wedding contracts is unconstitutional? If so why?

My fault, I was scrambling two different points in response to two different things you said. My points were (and please forgive me for using numbered lists so repetitiously):

(1) "The state serving as licenser and gaurantor of wedding contracts", including the wedding contracts of other religions which "the LDS Church considers ... a sin" is not unconstitutional. And....

(2) You said: "I don't think the state need endorse or sanction sexual fetishes. I think the government should be neutral on such." I pointed out you don't want the government to be neutral, you want to favor heterosexual "fetishes". You replied: "However, the state has shown an interest. In rulings like Loving and other cases... [the state showed it has an interest in marriage]." But, the state could also show an interest in same-sex marriage, since the arbitrary legal discrimination against gays has very harmful effects on our society, especially families.

I don't think it is the purview of the court to determine if the state has a viable interest in establishing same sex contracts. It is the purview of the legislature. The court would then ensure the terms were properly enforced.

Curiously, you didn't feel compelled to raise the same objection when you brought up the court decisions which determined "if the state has a viable interest in establishing" contracts for the heterosexual fetish. You said "In rulings like Loving and other cases like the more recent Hernandez v. Robles the court indicated the state's interest was that marriage is the model for producing and evidently fostering new citizens: continuing society." Can I presume that you disagree with these rulings, since it was not within the court's purview to determine if the state has a viable interest in establishing mixed-sex contracts? You aren't saying it is the purview of the court to determine if the state has an interest in mixed-sex contracts, but it is not the purview of the court to determine if the state has an interest in same-sex contracts, are you? That would seem to be a case of special pleading.

Sorry I just realized I've been going way too heavy with the quotation marks, I don't intend it in an obnoxious way.

 

[McBell]

The APA is not the best source one should go to for science supporting a position. In 1963 the New York Academy of Medicine charged its Committee on public Heath to report on homosexuality. The report noted:

"(H)omosexuality is indeed an illness. The homosexual is an emotionally disturbed individual who has not acquired the normal capacity to develop satisfying heterosexual relations.

It further noted:

(S)ome homosexuals have gone beyond the plane of defensiveness and now argue that deviancy is a desirable, noble, and preferable way of life"

These findings were in sync with the APA that held homosexuality as a pathology. Ten years later the APA struck down homosexuality from the officially approved list of psychiatric illnesses. There was no significant new data or evidence behind this change. The change occurred because of the political maneuvering of gay lobbyists within the APA. The APA coup makes for interesting history. APA gay advocates argued they were justified in their move because the APA represented "psychiatry as a social institution" rather than as a scientific body.

:biglaugh:

 

[McBell]

In other words, living in loveless, cold relationships harmful to all parities involved, including the children.

So much for all the posturing they do over family being so important...

 

[Mr Spinkles]

What tribe are you thinking of? How is this point established given no Pre-Columbian North American tribes had writing systems. Is this a Mayan or Toltec practice? I'm suspicious.

I wasn't thinking of a tribe, I was thinking of a member of this forum who is native American herself who related this to me. So fair enough. Yet Google Scholar brought me the following in about four seconds:

We'wha was a key cultural and political leader in the Zuniv community in the late nineteenth century, at one point serving as an emissary from that southwestern Native American nation to Washington, D.C.1 He was the strongest, wisest, and most esteemed member of his community. And he was a berdache, a male who dressed in female garb. Such men were revered in Zuni circles for their supposed connection to the supernatural, the most gifted of them called lhamana, spiritual leader. We'wha was the most cele- brated Zuni lhamana of the nineteenth century. He was married to a man.

Ifeyinwa Olinke lived in the nineteenth century as well.2 She was a wealthy woman of the Igbo tribe, situated in what is now Eastern Nigeria. She was an industrious woman in a community where most of the entrepreneurial opportunities were seized by women, who thereby came to control much of the Igbo tribe's wealth. Ifeyinwa socially overshadowed her less prosperous male husband. As a sign of her prosperity and social standing, Ifeyinwa herself became a female husband to other women. Her epithet "Olinke" referred to the fact that she had nine wives.

~ William N. Eskridge, Jr. Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Visiting Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. A History of Same-Sex Marriage. Virginia Law Review, 1993.

The other notes on slavery, or civil rights etc. doesn't relate to my point which was simply that the meaning of the term: marriage has been cross gender. If one wants to expand the meaning to include other options, that is certainly possible, but in the civic arena, it is untoward to take a given concept X and simply assert that X now means X2. In legal terms such an action would require legislation.

In the legal arena, yes I agree with you. Unless, however, the definition violates some other more basic principle of law, and the definition must be changed to bring it into conformity with the rest of the law. This is the case with "marriage" in our law today. The idea that the government will only award certain contracts, between certain citizens, based on the LDS Church's beliefs about what is sinful but not the Episcopelian or Unitarian Church's beliefs, violates separation of church and state. It also violates privacy, since it puts the government in the embarrassing and absurd position of having to determine a person's gender. (What if a gay woman says she is really a man? What are you going to do, have some bureaucrat look under her skirt? And what about people who are mixed gender or mixed chromosome?) It also violates the federal Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

No, a Mormon engaged in homosexual acts is committing a sin. Further, any who become Mormon by doing so would then be recognizing homosexual behavior as sinful.

So why is it that you and/or the LDS Church do not oppose preaching against the LDS Church, since you would not want to "demonize those who disagree", and yet you oppose a same-sex Episcopelian, atheist, Wiccan, Unitarian, etc. couple getting married? If you do not see it as a sin, what is your reason for opposing it?

 

[AxisMundi]

So much for all the posturing they do over family being so important...

Apparently some people don't want to appear "less the Christian and/or Republican" in front of their neighbors.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

The notion homosexuality is inherent (or not a chosen behavior) has not been able to move beyond bald assertion.

It's quite easy to show subjects photos of the same sex or the opposite sex and monitor involuntary responses such as the dilation of the eyes, blood pressure, and other signs of arousal. No one "chooses" to dilate their pupil slightly when they see a sexually pleasing image. This is old news as far as experimental biological psychology is concerned, I took a course in college we learned all about it.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

By the way, I forgot to mention:

I'm opposed to gay marriage. I don't think the state need endorse or sanction sexual fetishes. I think the government should be neutral on such.

But, you don't want the state to be neutral.

I've made no comment on whether I want the state to be involved in marriage at all.

But if the state is going to be involved in marriage at all, you don't want it to be neutral. You oppose gay marriage and you were active in the Prop 8 campaign. Hardly neutral. The state of California was neutral before Prop 8 passed, when it left decisions about whom to marry to grown adults. Again, I'm seeing the curious logic that if other people are free to choose something you don't like, then they are imposing something on you.

 

[Orontes]

When you change the people who are allowed to participate, it does not change the content of the institution/status/contract.

Marriage predates the state. The meaning predates the state. The meaning of marriage has traditionally been cross-gender. When the state institutionalized marriage, it did not offer any new definition on this point. The definition of marriage as deemed by the state can change, but that change must occur via the democratic process to be justified. One cannot simply assert the term marriage now includes some new element ex nihilo.

You view is not law in the United States. You may advocate for it, but it's irrelevant to this discussion, which is based on U.S. law.

You asked me what is my view on Loving. I told you my view.

Limitation of a fundamental right triggers strict scrutiny. Again, it doesn't matter whether or not you like it, that's the law. It's also common sense, and I support the court's rulings in that respect.

It is not the role of the Court to invent rights.

Any notion marriage is a right, does not mean the label marriage applies to all marriage right claimants i.e. gay marriage, polygamous marriage, incestuous marriage etc. It applies to the meaning the state has adopted until the state changes the definition (via democratic means).

 

[Orontes]

I take that as a yes, you disagree with the Supreme Court. Well, good luck with that, and in some alternative universe you can use it as an argument against same-sex marriage. In this one, those rulings are law.

If various rulings are "law" that does not mean they are correct. Slavery was the law, even foundational law, that does not mean it was correct.

 

[Orontes]

Among other things, homosexuality has been observed in every mammalian species studies for it. Is that a result of cognitive conditioning?

Is the position here that every behavior mammals engage in is therefore justified for humans? If not, the point has no value.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Marriage predates the state. The meaning predates the state. The meaning of marriage has traditionally been cross-gender. When the state institutionalized marriage, it did not offer any new definition on this point. The definition of marriage as deemed by the state can change, but that change must occur via the democratic process to be justified. One cannot simply assert the term marriage now includes some new element ex nihilo.

How about the notion that marriage is a partnership of equals and not a property transaction? That element certainly wasn't in marriage initially and I don't recall it ever being changed by a vote.

It is not the role of the Court to invent rights.

And it would not be inventing a right to apply the pre-existing right of gender equality to the issue of marriage.

Any notion marriage is a right, does not mean the label marriage applies to all marriage right claimants i.e. gay marriage, polygamous marriage, incestuous marriage etc. It applies to the meaning the state has adopted until the state changes the definition (via democratic means).

Regardless of whether marriage is a right, equal protection under the law is most certainly a right; even if marriage is a privilege, it's a privilege that the government must dispense equitably.

 

[Orontes]

Your point shows that attitudes change
Homosexuality is no longer considerd to be a mental "disease"...

Attitudes can change. Change qua change is not necessarily justified. Scientific change should be based on science. Democratic change should be based on majoritarianism.

 

[Orontes]

That's not quite what I was getting at. I agree with the idea that a political majority would allow a bill legalizing same-sex marriage to be passed. My point was that your argument invokes the state of society as an arbiter of what is a right and what isn't. It stands to reason, then, that as society changes, then what is a right would change as well, even if the right doesn't have majority popular support. If same-sex marriage isn't a right simply because it hasn't been practiced long enough, then once it's been practiced long enough, it would automatically become a right... no?

I don't think the state is the arbiter of what is right. I do think the state is the arbiter of what is legal. What is legal should be the product of majoritarianism