NEWS: Massachusetts to Allow Gay Marriages

Originally posted by curme

True but odd, from a legal standpoint.
:
How is this different than the Dredd Scott case?

[Edited on 17-5-2004 by curme]

Well, I think the difference is that he is saying that unless your home state allows it, you can't get married in Mass. But if your home state allows 16 year olds to get married, then does Mass. recognize it...?? I dunno...it's too early in the day.

He's saying, the whole reciprocity thing won't start in Mass.

I see your point. I think Romney is doing whatever he can to save face, having suffered a poltical setback.

Originally posted by CommonSense
Unfortunately, this will precipitate the great decline in our land. There was an earlier post about past great cultures accepting homosexuality equally with being straight, mind telling us what happened with those cultures? No, this is a very sad day for us.

A few anthropology courses might clear this up for you. The fact is, that the "one-man, one woman" form of marriage is an aberration in human culture and only a recent development.

Most cultures practiced polygamy (one man with a harem) and many of those cultures (Islam) are around and thriving today. A few (Inuit, Inupiyat, among them) practiced polygyny where one woman has several husbands. They're still around and no wrathful deity whacked their culture or their civilization (this practice is more than a thousand years old.)

Older and more tolerant civilizations blended and merged with newer ones... the Greeks, if you'll note, are still around and Athens is still a city (as is Sparta.) The Japanese are still here, and the Polynesians (where bisexuality is a norm and not an aberration) seem to be doing just fine. Visit any of the Pacific rim nations and states if you need confirmation.

If you judge it from cultural longevity, the one-man/one-woman marriage states and nations haven't lasted as long as some of the other emprires.

Take Sparta, for instance (where it was an accepted cultural practice and almost every warrior had a younger male lover). Sparta was a major force from about the 6th century BC to around the first century AD:
www.phatnav.com... and lasted for another three centuries after that... so around 800 years.

Compare and contrast that with the Christian Merovingians (with fluctuating borders, lasted around 200 years) www.nationmaster.com...

Or any of the European colonial attempts on America (lasted much shorter time than the Native American cultures which DID accept homosexuality)
en.wikipedia.org...

...and so on and so forth. Take a little time to look at hisotry and all the ephemeral civilizations. You'll find that the practices varied so greatly that you can't finger one particular cultural practice as being "responsible" for bringing down a civilization.

...and you'll find that America has had a much shorter lifetime than many other nations and that even Christian nations fold and go away.

Originally posted by CommonSense
Rant, Don't confuse natural law with the fact that some people simply have low IQ's. You're missing the point.

So-called "natural law" would dictate that humans live only where it's warm, remain in constant fear of predators and succumb to some plague by the ripe old age of 30 something.

The fact is that you probably violate some "natural law" every day of your life as well as some obscure biblical reference first proliferated by the "spiritual" hygenists of the time like "these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten."

Sorry but if you're going to place "natural law" on some pedastal, then you shouldn't pick and choose from it's repurcussions like a cafeteria in order to justify your bigotry.

To argue from the extreme, we have the technology to never have any form of sex again and procreate...nay, FLOURISH. Perhaps someday without deformity or disease.

We've been to the moon and back my friend. There's nothing natural about us any more.

Originally posted by RANT
Sorry but if you're going to place "natural law" on some pedastal, then you shouldn't pick and choose from it's repurcussions like a cafeteria in order to justify your bigotry.

Calling one's acceptance of a natural law "bigotry" is really just a symptom of "politically correct" taken to an extreme

Originally posted by RANT
To argue from the extreme, we have the technology to never have any form of sex again and procreate...nay, FLOURISH. Perhaps someday without deformity or disease.

Interesting, you say it exists but then you say it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, then we don't have the technology.

Originally posted by RANT
We've been to the moon and back my friend. There's nothing natural about us any more.

I fail to see any nexus between gay "marriage" and landing on the moon.

As far as obscure references to the Bible, they are all there. Unfortunately, I'm at the office and don't have access. If this thread doesn't turn too far down the path to the mud pit, perhaps I'll post those this evening.

[Edited on 5/17/2004 by CommonSense]

[Edited on 5/17/2004 by CommonSense]

I meant straight sex doesn't always work. Deformities and disease happen. It was an argument from the extreme anyway.

And you can save your biblical passages about man laying down with man. I was pointing out some of the other silly laws and sins. If you want to keep it to a biblical sex debate, then look up "spilling your seed in the desert." Masterbation is sodomy and a supposed sin just like homosexuality...no more no less. If you want to make your natural law the law of the land, then outlaw that too. And condomns. And while you're at it, lock yourself up I'm sure. SODOMITE!!!

And if you don't see the connection between the technology man uses daily to overcome natural law and the absurdity and selectivity of your natural law arguments in this one area...then you just don't want to.

Byrd,
I appreciate your reply however, much of it is based on heterosexual behaviour which is not the point of the discussion. With reference to cultures accepting homosexual behaviour, how many have maintained the stature they once achieved and how many have not had to endure a great deal of suffering during their fall from greatness?
CS