I am starting to feel a little shame at starting this thread due to some of the less than respectful posts from those who seem to share my point of view. As the OP, I hope that those of you who disagree with my point of view on this will accept apologies and continue a polite discussion.
Regarding health insurance and other employee benefits, wouldn't the cost go down? As it stands, many employers are required to extend heterosexual spousal benefits to homosexual non-married partners because there is no marriage option available. In fact, many non-married heterosexual couples feel this is itself a form of discrimination against their choice not to marry. Allowing gay marriage would certainly clear this up - employers could define benefits for people other then their employees however they saw fit without worry of discrimination against sexual orientation.
As for the matter of non-procreative sexual contact, many states still have laws against such things still on the books - many such laws do not discriminate about whether said acts are done between heterosexual or homosexual partners. I don't know, nor do I want to know, the details of any of your sex lives. I don't think we want the government to know these details either. If we ban gay marriage due to the procreation argument, shouldn't many of these anti-non-procreative sex laws be more vigorously enforced? Or are certain acts somehow "different" if done between a man and a woman vs. two men or two women?
We have a reproductive system that functions in a particular manner, with an element of pleasure, which with the participation of a man and a woman produces offspring. So we do not die off and cease to exist. Within society than we have families, the individuals of which in turn interact with individuals of the opposite sex in other families, when men and women pair off and produce more offspring - families.
What about heterosexual married couples who choose not to have children? Should marriages be automatically annulled after so many years if no offspring are propagated? What about the widower and widow retirees falling in love and getting married to spend the last of their time with each other as close as they can? Or, for that matter, people unable to have children? Taken to it's logical end, your argument would deny these folks the opportunity of marriage. Do we really want the government saying that in order to be married the couple in question must generate offspring?
It might seem like a marriage amendment would be a religious amendment, but if we have no marriage amendment, and the feds force homosexual marriage on every State, then how is that keeping the feds out of religion? Either we do nothing and the feds trample our Christian values, or we amend the US Constitution to stop them.
This is one of the things that turned me away from Christianity - the desire of many Christians to impose their will on others instead of sharing their beliefs and letting others make their own choices. Is it not a greater act of worship to have the opportunity to choose wrong and do the right thing or to not have such an opportunity and choose to do the right thing? Did Jesus go to the Romans and ask them to make prostitution illegal or did he go to the prostitutes to convince them that they were doing wrong and to live righteously instead?
Does knowing your neighbor sins cause you to go out and commit that same sin? Legislating morality is a very slippery slope which our founding fathers recognized. Where do we stop? The Bible clearly states that taking the Lord's name in vain is one of the worst, most offensive sins - maybe we should jail people for that. The Bible also states that the appearance of sin is bad also - maybe we should stone women who go out in public with men other than their husbands because it looks like adultery.
Even then, let us say that we do legislate Christian morality. Do you think God would rather people avoid sin out of the fear of God or fear of the State? Isn't this close to what the Pharisees had going that Jesus so passionately railed against? As long as a sin does not cause harm to another, isn't it better to not legislate against that sin so that people can avoid the sin as an act of worship as opposed to mere obeisance to the State?
I don't really care about the marriage or union aspect of it. But I do think that any and all families that lack both a father and a mother are starting out deficient. Granted some single parent homes can rise above the challenge and still raise children, but it's not starting on the same footing as a complete home. The "authorities", religious, legal, whatever, can't do much to stop divorce, or stop children out of wedlock. But that doesn't mean they should activly condone "families" that start from the get go lacking a father and a mother.
It seems to me that homosexual couples overall might make better parents than heterosexual couples just by eliminating unplanned pregnancies. A homosexual couple would have to adopt a child or undergo some sort of artificial / surrogate pregnancy to have children. These processes all have a major PITA factor - after having made the decision to go through such an irritating process, it seems to me there is a greater likelihood of following through and making a good effort at doing things right than Johnny and Susie 9 months after prom night. Maybe it would cut down on child abuse if the government did actively prevent people from having children prior to demonstrating that they meet some standard of good parenting ability. I don't think any of us wants that to happen.
Allowing homosexual couples to marry and adopt children would help remove children from the foster care system and just might free up enough resources to prevent more child abuse. How is this a bad thing? Even if (and I do not agree, nor do I believe there is enough data to decide - you may be right though) it is true that a loving homosexual couple cannot do as good a job at raising a child as a loving heterosexual couple, surely the loving homosexual couple would be preferred to a foster home.
