If there’s anything that can put a brake or Rudy’s growing popularity it’s making the kind of points you’ve made in this post. Those issues are only decided if those who’ve opinions like yours don’t crow too much. And history is replete with reversals on these kinds of issue, once rage is awakened.

BTW, I don’t care if gays live together in families. All I care about is the brand dilution of the institution of marriage, and you have no guarantees to offer. Also, I’ve been pro-choice nearly all of my life. What may have changed my mind is that National Geographic special on “Multiples”. If “fetuses” play with one another cannily in the womb then killing them, at least at some point, has to be murder. The bubble has been burst.

These issues haven’t been decided, by a long shot. But they may have turned a corner, which is why folks are giving Giulliani some latitude. He can change his mind, just like the rest of us.

What about a heterosexual couple that knows it is infertile and are not desirous of having children? Are you willing to give them a pass?
Then why not give the same pass to a gay couple that wants to get married and adopt, or use a donor egg, or doesn’t want to have children?

If in fact homosexuality is not entirely normative, if it is some kind of a defect, like having six fingers or non-opposable thumbs, then it seems to me that marriage is a very reasonable way of dealing with this problem, of getting by and making do within the confines of the “handicap.”

And that should be allowed, especially since NO ONE can explain how gay marriage undermines the institution of the traditional family (heterosexual, with children) in any way. On the other hand, all sorts of things we tolerate — adultery, sex without marriage, divorce, children out of wedlock — obviously do so much to undermine those institutions.

I am against “gay marriage” for non-religious reasons, though not *absolutely* so, for reasons similar to some of Roger’s reasoning.

Virtually every society has some form of “marriage” between a man and a woman for the sake of raising families and transmitting culture as its foundation.
More specifically, it exists to easily define paternity, child support, and inheritance.

Couples who do not intend to have children [a pretty much modern aberration] may still have them anyway so it is proper that they can be “married.”

BLetting those who may turn out to be infertile but are desirous of children… well that is an exception which still supports the central importance of the institution.

Here is a commonsense observation I read somewhere online: straight couples have to resort to extraordinary measures to *not* have children whereas g/l couples have to resort extraordinary measn to *have* them.

In other words, wrt to the underlying social function of the institution, the stakes are not the same. Gay marriage smacks of “playing house.”

[I will grant the phenomenon of g/l couples with children, assisted by technology or adoption puts tension in this argument (leaving the wisdom of such progress to another argument -- as Roger says, it is largely a fait accompli).]

Given the existence of g/l families, I think some form of “civil union” to streamline various benefits is reasonable.

But the fact is many (most?) g/l advocates of gay marriage DO want to arrogate the M-word for the precise reason of seeking it as the ultimate stamp of social approval.

They want to redefine the meaning of the term.

One may as well redefine the concept of “driver’s license” so it does not exclude the blind because, hey, everyone has equal rights, right?

The larger problem I have with the typical liberal mindset with these issues is that it’s all or nothing. It’s ever enough that a particular behavior is now legal which used to be persecute din the past, now it must then be celebrated and actively indoctrinated as a “good” thing. Those with the temerity to still disapprove are guilty of thought-crime. It’s the old attitude “that which is not forbidden is compulsory.”

Too many conservatives think that something which is “bad” should be illegal rather than left to the private sphere (and social pressure against it).

But too many liberals want to act like because something is legal (or no longer illegal) that it is “good” and should be forced down people’s throats (e.g. gay marriage).

FWIW I consider myself a libertarian-conservative and NOT a member of the dreaded ‘religious right”.

P.S. I consider homosexuality to be a complex phenomena — how else to explain temporary prison homosexuality and college LUGs as well as the more obvious stereotypical queens and butches?

To me it is clear that many g/l people are “born” that way, that some homosexuality is congenital (whether from genetics or in utero brain chemistry), yet it is also clear to me that there are some, shall we say, “psychologial” homosexuals at the margin, for whom “choice” might be possible. [My social worker sister has worked with many otherwise troubled women who considered themselves lesbian who had also been sexually abused by a man when younger -- yes, that's purely anecdotal.]

All of that said, homosexuality (of the more innate kind) is clearly, objectively, a flaw, a glitch. In evolutionary terms it is behavioral sterility. And just because it (the truly congenital kind) is “natural”, even occurring in other animals, means nothing. Plenty that is natural is non-normal, or normative.
To return to an earlier analogy, take congenital blindness for example. It is a flaw — and we can say that without anyone suggesting that making the observation means we are somehow denigrating the worth of blind people, or ‘phobes or haters.

Which brings up the ethical problem of a possible cure some day for congenital homosexuality — what if it works but the treatment can only be performed in utero before certain brain wiring is locked in, or before other wiring is set during puberty, before the age of reaon, much less consent? Now that’s a thorny one for those who sought refuge in the “we canlt help it” defense.

All that said, i think Roger is partly on to something wrt Giuliani.

Why bother? If our politics here offends some people enough, they can emigrate to the workers’ paradise of their choice. The immigrants get the thing they asked for. The Scaninavians get people. We don’t have to listen to such nonsense anymore. Yeah, we all go home happy!

Maybe the Scandinavians should be subsidizing one-way moving expenses…

http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2007/03/hookingup.html#more

Harvard Dean of Freshmen Advertises “Scintillating and Sexy” Talk

[Travis Kavulla]

All Harvard College freshmen received the e-mail below yesterday, and a fair number thought it must be a prank.

It isn’t, as it happens. And this must be the first time a Harvard dean has used the dubious term “sexxxxxy” in a mass e-mail to his wards.

***SPECIAL EVENT***

Hooking Up: Hot Hints For Making Your Harvard (or Future) Sex Life Great

Thursday, March 1 7:00 PM Ticknor Lounge

Want to know more about how to access pleasure, how to communicate your desires and how to make sure that you’re getting what you want and need from your partner? Do you have questions about sex or sexuality that you’ve never had answered? You won’t want to miss this!

…

Then there’s Rutgers.

$40g/yr for this?????

Dunno. I was over there last spring.

Any country where it makes sense to drive for an hour to cross a border to buy groceries is a little bit messed up.

And a government that will take away your driver’s license if you get caught with any alcohol in your system while driving- not ‘enough alcohol to impair you’, I mean any alcohol at all- is a government that doesn’t trust it’s citizens to be responsible adults.

I don’t want to live in a country like that.

As far as fettering capitalism, here’s an idea.