Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

Hahaha this is actually my baseline opinion and why I think "marriage" should be secularized! Why should a household be defined as a married man and woman? That doesn't describe every household out there and there are certain living situations that make enough long-term sense that it seems odd to me that the people involved can't enter into some type of legal contract that would grant them the same legal status as a traditional married couple.

I think her point is more that there is a slippery slope for the government to validate gay marriage.

Gay activists often point out various same-sex unions that have outlasted many heterosexual ones. But I don't see why sexual relationships of any stripe, if they're not at least inherently procreative, should trump all others.

I'm surprised it even shows up on the screen, so quickly is it disappearing up its own ass.

or a man's relationship with a man, or a woman's relationship with a woman - if you want to be unbigoted about it. I hope you realize, don, as the essayist you link above apparently does not, that many gay couple decide to have children via adoption, IVF treatment or what have you.

your suggestion, of course, amounts to a very slippery, very short, slope towards taking away privileges from people who decide not to have children, which hardly seems fair.

A year and half later, still roffleicious!

Which privileges are eliminated from people who don't breed in my scenario?

The columnist's position rests on the assumption that gay marriages are "inherently non-procreative"; the increasingly large number of gay couples whose coupledom is reinforced and tested by the experience of raising children together looks an awful lot like any other marriage-with-kids to me. Why not grant it the same protections and benefits?

"It's a straight thing, you wouldn't understand"

I think what Cathy Seipp is saying is that if we allow gay marriage then what logic does the law hold against polygamy or Kate & Allie or a handful of broke college kids getting married to achieve the same privileges as two guys or two gals whose basis for this privilege is homosexuality. I think she's pointing out that marriage as a legal institution probably isn't going to ever leave the cages of government intervention, so we're better to be vigilant about trying to limit it less we face a slippery slope in the other direction.

MAYBE WE SHOULD STOP GAY MARRIAGE BECAUAES ONE DOESNT KNOW WHERE IT COULD LEAD

Under the old monogamous system, we didn't have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents -- Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck -- and need a program to keep track of the actors.

And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife's first husband's second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin's in-laws and Bruce's ex, Mark, and Mark's current partner, and I suppose we'll get used to it.

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.