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Showing results for tags 'freedom to love'.
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1. It is my aim that this post could, in keeping with the spirit of intellectual debate and sharing, contribute in furthering our understanding of why we think (or do not think) legalising same-sex marriage is the just thing to do. 2. I'd like to say that I support same-sex marriage. And my coming to this opinion is not just based on primitive emotions or a personal wish, but also on much research and study that I've done on the topic. And I believe many, many people, especially law professors and judges, have done a lot of work on and contributed invaluably to this topic, from improving our understanding of justice to doing the right things and implementing the right laws to uphold justice and equality. This intellectual debate on the topic may be of interest: 3. I came across a comment which I find thought provoking. It raises some issues worth thinking over—deeply. It's attached at the end of the post. (You can skip it if you can't follow him; I've provided explanations below.) 4. I have to say his points were not presented in a straight-forward, easily understandable way. So you, like me, may not be able to understand him fully when you first read it. 5. Therefore, I've re-constructed his arguments as follows. (a) He is basically against gay marriage but he is for gay civil union. This is because gays, he argues, are fundamentally different from straight people. Consider this, we do not have women and men in the same 100m running competition because men will always win. And so the fair thing to do is to segregate the two genders into two different competitions. (b) The oft-cited reason why straight siblings can't get married is that it would be harmful to their children, due to the high risk of illnesses and physically abnormalities caused by inbreeding. But this reason does not apply if the straight siblings cannot or will not have children. Therefore, we should allow infertile straight siblings who are romantically in love (and those fertile who vow not to inbreed) to get married too. So if you support the freedom to love, then you should support them getting married too. (c) The inbreeding-problem reason also does not apply to gay siblings, since they cannot have children with each other even if they are fertile. So if you support the freedom to love, then you should support gay siblings getting married too. (d) His next argument is against the inbreeding-problem reason. We allow people with genetic defects to have children, such as those with Down syndrome and those with a family history of cancers, even though there is a high risk of their children having Down syndrome or cancers. So allowing people with Down syndrome or cancers to get married but not a pair of loving straight siblings is discrimination and inequality, and also it shows a logical inconsistency. 6. On his argument (a), I'd say it doesn't matter whether we call gay marriage a marriage or a civil union. He supports "civil union with same rights like marriage" (hash tagged in his second comment, attached at the end of the post). But if the proposed civil union is exactly the same as marriage, then why give it a different name, right? The important thing is that the law governing gay marriage should not promote discrimination and hatred. I am all for recognising that there are differences between gays and straight people, so these two groups may have to be treated differently sometimes, but fairly. For example, we can have laws that protect gays from harassment and hate crimes, just like we have laws that protect other minority groups, the elderly and the handicap. But many people who are against gay marriage (but are for gay civil union) are demanding that gay couples have LESS rights, not equal rights and definitely not more rights. 7. As for his arguments (b)-(d), I currently have no firm position yet. What's your take on these? 8. Nonetheless, I'd say that there is no inconsistencies by allowing gay marriage but not incest and polygamy. This is because we are allowing monogamous marriage across all sexual orientations, and the ban on incest and polygamy is also applied across all sexual orientations. So he is already discriminating when he says unless we want to allow incest and polygamy, we should keep monogamous straight marriage and ban monogamous gay marriage. We are consistent as long as we apply what is allowed and what is banned similarly across all sexual orientations. So the consistent position would be either (1) we ban all marriages for all sexual orientations, or (2) we allow only monogamous marriages (2.1), or only incest (2.2), or only polygamy (2.3), or any two of the three items in (2.1) to (2.3), or allow all, regardless of sexual orientations. His first comment: "Also legalize incest and polygamy while you are at it, give me one argument why two men should be allowed to be married but not two brothers ? Their relationship will be homosexual, how could they potentially get a child which is harmed (assuming they don't use any technology etc). Now for the second part, straight sibling couples, first off all, they could either get sterilized or just adopt, they don't have to fuck to get a child, so where is your probably strongest argument about the harmed third party aka child now ? Secondly I could make the argument, are women allowed to smoke, drink, etc during pregnancy or people with gene defects, where to draw the line ? Oh it harms the child, it is legal, so why can't a sister fuck her brother and get a child with him, maybe it's less harmful ? If love is love and all that matters is consenting adults and you truly believe it, then incest is also love, disgusting ? I could say the same about homosexuality yet if I did that you would call me a homophobe, can't imagine yourself doing that ? I can't imagine myself fucking a guy either since I'm straight just like the majority of guys, yet some would call me a homophobe for saying that, be consistent with your logic guys, legalize this and you should legalize other forms of love/marriages who are you to be so selective about who can marry etc. How do some of you call it, ah I get it tolerance, be tolerant, we either legalize all kind of marriages or we keep it the way it is and just give them a civil union etc. If you want equal treatment for everyone then treat all forms of love equally, if that's your argument, if you think that different things should be treated differently then go the civil union, I don't know what route but be consistent." His second comment: "Youngsters pick Civil union with equal rights over gay marriage, different institutions for different kind of sexual orientations, I believe this kind of "equality" is more proper and logical, now someone might say: "Seperate but equal.", ahaha I wonder how you guys feel about women sports, paralympics, etc then, if you believe so much in equal treatment for everyone then force every child who is deaf to speak as good as one who can, force a child with one arm to do the same amount of work as a child with two arms but no we don't do that nor expect that because that would be ridiculous expecting that, that's why we treat them differently, same with women sports, it's proven and you can look at most world records in sports etc than men on average and at their peak through training perform better in most sport activities than women, forcing a woman to compete against a man is unfair and ridiculous, why should we treat different and unequal things equally, the equal thing to do would be to reat them differently, it might also appeal more to the "religious" harmony of Singapore #CivilUnionWithSameRightsLikeMarriage" Source of comments (see comments, posted 11 months ago by Lee Shingyu): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZDUNxCMMek
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- freedom to love
- gay marriage
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