This Site's View on Same-Sex Marriage

[Bogart]

There has been some discussion on the topic in general regarding various proposed amendments. Where does this site stand?

[Bogart]

Please define full and partial civil unions.

Full civil unions would be just like marriage only not be called marriage. Partial civil unions would bestow some of the benefits of marriage like hospital visitation and inheritance, but might preclude things like tax benefits and Social Security.

[Bogart]

I say if gay people want to get married then move to canada

Fine, but one could suggest that you move if you don't like it.

[Bogart]

I voted for same-sex marriage. Civil unions, in reality, are unequal, because they make an illegitimate classification based on sexual orientation.

It's not unequal- if it was unequal they wouldn't get the same rights (except for adoption). The problem is, marriage means the union between a man and a woman, so it's senseless to call the union between two people of the same sex "marriage", as it's contrary to the definition. Plus, gay couples who adopt end up causing psychological damage to the child. Therefore, it's only appropriate that a new definition especially for homosexuals is made- civil unions. This is not like the civil rights movement, where blacks and whites are really the same. A heterosexual and homosexual couple are NOT the same; just like men and women are not the same.

Yeah, where's your proof? I'm not aware of any clinical proof to back this up.

[Bogart]

"Fine But one could suggest you move if you don't like it."

Well if Missouri is any example than 60-70% of America doesn't want gay marriage.

I don't see how this is necessarily relevant. I'd like to know why it's any of their business and how they would be victimized by allowing it. Any religious argument can be discounted out of hand.

[Bogart]

I voted Neither because I'm straight.  Please don't make fun of me as I was born that way and I can't help it.  If I was gay, however, I think I'd want to be able to marry the man I love.  Today makes two months of heterosexual marriage for me.  And in two months I still haven't felt the sense that my marriage is somehow weakened by nontraditional marriages.  

It seems like an appropriate time to mention that my wife is expecting.  I hadn't mentioned it before because in both our families it is customary to wait until marriage before impregnating one's significant other.  But what the hell, these things happen, and we were already planning on getting married anyway, and we're both very excited, and scared, about having a baby.  It's getting harder to hide, what with the basketball-under-the-blouse look my wife has attained.  I actually raised the question to my wife about what if our child is gay.  Her answer is that of course he won't be, so it's not something we should worry about.  "I'm not a coward, I've just never been tested.  I like to think that if I was I would pass" is how that Mighty Mighty Bosstones song goes.  I hope that big test of openmindedness is a test I'm never required to take.  But if it comes down that way, I hope my wife and I both live in a society wherein our child won't be the subject of discrimination and hate.  Ours is the greatest nation in the world.  We will make it even greater when we can accept all people for what they are.

Well said.

[Bogart]

I'm not in "favor" of any of these options. we will either have marriage or civil unions, unions are better. The only reason gays want to be married is to force society as a whole to accept thier actions, making them feel better about themselves.

So, the various benefits bestowed by marriage, like being able to go into the hospital emergency room in the event of such an emergency, has no bearing on the issue whatsoever?

I said civil unions were acceptable. As long as we give them a civil union that includes all of the benefits of marriage, then the argument will be voided. After that then the only argument they can make is that it's discriminatory to not give them marriage, and they will lose on that front every time because the American people don't buy that crap.

Personally, I think ALL government recognized marriage should be civil unions, since in reality that is what they really are. I can see no logical reason to have a seperate term for same-sex relationships.

Exactly, the governmental function of any marriage is primarily that of a civil union.  The government should get out of validating a religious point of view.

[Bogart]

I'm not in "favor" of any of these options. we will either have marriage or civil unions, unions are better. The only reason gays want to be married is to force society as a whole to accept thier actions, making them feel better about themselves.

So, the various benefits bestowed by marriage, like being able to go into the hospital emergency room in the event of such an emergency, has no bearing on the issue whatsoever?

I can't go see my best friend in the hospital emergency room, and me and him are like brothers... But you don't see me trying to change the law so it will fit how I like it.

But, imagine it was your girlfriend and the state said you can't ever get married. You would never be allowed in unless she made you medical power of attorney.

[Bogart]

I was hoping that the opponents of same-sex marriage would be able to offer something more than religious arguments against it. Even the statistics that were cited are really, as someone pointed out, hardly "problems."  Being opposed to same-sex marriage by saying, "I think it's wrong," " God says it's wrong," "Those people are sick," etc is really saying, "I am prepared to deprive a group of people of a liberty that others have based upon my personal view." There is nothing wrong with one's personal point of view, but it's a weak argument. The biggest moron can stand up and cross his arms and say, "Well, that's my view and I'm not budging."

I also wanted to say that, while my state is blue, this is primarily for fiscal reasons. As for many social issues, such as this one, I don't agree with Republican policy. I think that the party has allowed a minority to dominate on these types of issues for far too long. We are losing a lot of support to the Democrats as a result. There are many, many conservative Democrats who love the fiscal angle but can't stand the religious extremism that permeates the GOP as well as many moderate Republicans. These views are keeping the GOP from winning a lot more elections.

[Bogart]

First, gay relationships look very much like straight ones.

40-60% of gay men, and 45-80% of lesbians are in a steady relationship
J Harry-1983 Contemporary Families and Alternative Lifestyles, ed by Macklin, Sage Publ.
K Jay-1977 Gay Repor t, Summit Books
L Peplau-1981, Journal of Homosexuality 6(3):1-19
J Spada- 1979, The Spada Report, New American Library Publ

Studies of older homosexual people show that gay relationships lasting over 20 years are not uncommon
D McWhirter-1984, The Male Couple, Prentice-Hall
S Raphael-1980, Alternative Lifestyles 3:207-230, "The Older Lesbian"
C Silverstein- 1981, Man to Man: Gay Couples in America, William Morrow Publ.

In a large sample of couples followed for 18 months the following "break up" statistics were observed: lesbians=22%, gay=16%, cohabiting heterosexuals=17%, married heterosexuals=4% Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) American Couples: Money, Work, Sex; Morrow Publ.

Homosexual and heterosexual couples matched on age, etc, tend not to differ in levels of love and satisfaction, nor in their scores on other standardized scales
M Cardell-1981, Psychology of Women Quarterly 5:488-94
D Dailey-1979, Journal of Sex Research 15:143-57
S Duffy- 1986, Journal of Homosexuality 12(2):1-24
L Kurdek-1986, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51:711-720
L Peplau-1982, Journal of Homosexuality 8(2):23-35
(see L Peplau-1991, Homosexuality: Research Implications for Public Policy, ed by J Gonsiorek).

Second, children are not adversely affected through being raised by gay parents.

Gay/lesbian parents report no greater stress than heterosexuals, and children are not adversely affected by being raised by homosexual families
K McNiell-1998, Psychological Reports 82:59-62
A Brewaeys-1997, Human Reproduction 12:1349-59
A Brewaeys-1997, J of Psychosomatic Obs and Gyn 18:1-16
C Pattersm-1992, Child Development 63:1025-42
S Golombok-1983, J of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 24:551-572
K Lewis-1980, Social Work 25:198-203
R Green 1986, Archives of Sexual Behavior 15:167-184
R Green-1982, Bulletin of the Am Acad of Psychiatry and Law 10:7-15
M Alien-1996, J of Homosexuality, 32(2):19-35
J Miller-1981, J of Homosexuality, 7(1):49-56
M Kirkpatrick- 1981, Am J of Orthopsychiatry 51:545-551
M Kirkpatrick- 1987, J of Homosexuality 14:201-11
F Tasker-1995, Am J of Orthopsychiatry 65:203-15
D Kleber-1986, Bulletin of the Am Acad of Psychiatry and Law 14(1):81-87
B Hoeffer-1981, Am J of Orthopsychiatry 51:536-44

Thirdly, gays are not more promiscuous that non-gays as studies like the famous Bell/Weinberg study suggest.


One study which appears to support the idea that homosexuals are highly promiscuous was published by Bell and Weinberg, and is often cited by the Christian Right, and even some secular sources. However, their data is highly suspicious, and cannot be generalized to the entire homosexual population. Because of their methodology, their data is valuable only as a case study for the sample they studied, but it is not by any means representative of the general gay population. for my specific critique of this study, and why their statistics on gay promiscuity are so bizarrely high. Bell and Weinberg. Homosexualities : A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women. New York, 1978 a. The sampling of the homosexuals in the study was not random, and they admit as much. The heterosexual sample was random, using census data and land tracts to ensure a random sample, and going to exhaustive lengths to make sure those samples were truly random. While they did go to great lengths to get a large sample group of homosexuals, and I don't doubt that their data is representative of the sample they were testing, their data is absolutely not generalizable due to the clear fact that their sample was not a random sample. b. Another reason why their data is not generalizable is that they while they did a survey of heterosexuals as well as homosexuals, for some reason they didn't include the heterosexual data. For example, while they claim that one homosexual respondent claims to have had.sex with over 10,000 people, and a large percentage of their sample claim to have had sex with over 500 people, they do not give correlative data on the heterosexual sample. For all we know the heterosexual sample may have had a greater number of sexual partners than the homosexual sample. Without this control group, we cannot generalize their sample to the population at large, because we do not know that their population represents national norms since we have no heterosexual control group. It is possible that the heterosexual statistics were equally high, and could have shown that the data does not represent promiscuity specifically among gays, but of the sexually active single person in San Francisco in the 1970's. c. A third problem, still relating to the heterosexual sample, is that it did not represent a true control group. Apart from the fact that the homosexual sample was not random and the heterosexual sample was, the homosexual samples were taken from the following places: singles bars (22%), gay baths (9%), public places (=guys hanging out in parks to find sex partners; 6%), private bars (=sex clubs; 5%), personal contacts (people that the bar people, public place people, bath house people, etc, knew personally and referred; 23%), public advertising + organizations + mailing lists (29%).The heterosexual sample, on the other hand, were people in residential areas, admittedly including married people. These two samples are not parallel, and even if they had included the heterosexual data, they would not be comparable. In order for this data to have been generalizable, they would have had to go to heterosexual singles bars, sex clubs, bookstores, etc, to get their population. d. They used Kinsey 2-6 for their inclusion of homosexual population. Their sample does not represent only homosexual persons, but also includes bisexual persons.

In a study of sexual behavior in homosexuals and heterosexuals, the researchers found that of gay men, 35.9°/ had one male partner in their lifetime, 45.8% had 2-4 male partners, 7.9% had 5-9 male partners, and 10.3% had 10 or more sexual partners. The mean of this is 4.2 partners. (The statistics I did by myself using the data presented, which is presented as a percentage of total males interviewed, both gay and straight (p. 345)--they can be verified yourself by looking at the numbers given in the paper)(Fay; n=77 gay males of 1450 males total). In a parallel study, a random sample of primarily straight men (n=3111 males who had had vaginal intercourse; of the total sale of n-3224 males, 2.33% had indicated having had sex with both men and women), the mean number of sexual partners was 7.3, with 28.2% having 1-3 partners, and 23.3% having greater than 19 partners (Billy). This data indicates that gay men have had a significantly lower number of sexual partners than heterosexuals.
J Billy-1993: Family Planning Perspectives 25:52-60 R Fay-1989, Science 243:338-348

In another set of studies, the first (n=2664) showed that gay men had an average of 6.5 sexual partners in the past 5 years. In fact, the authors of this paper report that "homosexual and bisexual men are much more likely than heterosexual men to be celibate" given the data in the table below, which compares their data to a second, parallel study of only heterosexual men (n=1235, age=18-4.9 yrs). The table indicates the percentage of men having the given number of sexual partners in the previous year [top row: Binson; bottom row: Dolcini]: Orientation
 no partners
 1 partner
 2+ partners
 
gay
 24 %
 41 °/a
 35
 
straight
 8 %
 80 %
 12
 
D Binson-1995: Journal of Sex Research 32: 245-54. M Dolcini-1993: Family Planning Perspectives 25: 208-14.

Fourth, gays are not more likely to molest children.


In a random sample of 175 child sex offenders 76% report having exclusive adult heterosexual behavior, and 24% report having adult bisexual behavior. The sexual attraction towards children is a pathology unrelated to sexual orientation.
A Groth-1978, Archives of Sexual Behavior 7(3): 175-181

In a second study of 1206 convictions for child molesters in New Jersey, 80.7% were heterosexual acts and 19.3% were homosexual acts.
E Revitch-1962, Diseases of the Nervous System 23:73-78

In a third study, 47% of males convicted of sexual abuse against male children were in an heterosexual marriage.
P Gebhard-1965, Sex Offenders, New York: Harper and Row

In a fourth study in Great Britain, in a review of 200 sexual assaults on boys, only 32 of the perpetrators were homosexuals.
J McGeorge-1964, Medicine, Science and the Law 4!245-53

In a fifth study of 148 offenders who sexually assaulted under-age persons in Massachusetts, 71 (51%) selected only female children, 42 (28%) selected male children, and 31 (21%) assaulted both male and female children. Moreover, the authors report that "offenders attracted to boy victims typically report that they are uninterested in or revulsed by adult homosexual relationships and find the young boy's feminine characteristics ... appealing" (p. 20). They found that of those pedophiles that were attracted to both children and adults (51%), 83% were exclusively heterosexuals, and 17% were bisexual. A Groth-1978, LAE Journal (Lambda Alpha Epsilon American Criminal Justice Association) 41 (1): 17-22 1. In yet another study at the Children's Hospital in San Diego, of the 140 boys presenting with sexual abuse, only 4% of the assaults were by homosexuals.
M Spencer-1986, Pediatrics 78 (1):133-138

[Bogart]

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Whichever side of the debate you are on, it is possible to find statistical information to back it up. Bottom line, nothing has been definitively stated by the scientific community on these issues.

Aside from this, I still don't believe that many of the "problems" associated with children being raised by same-sex couples can be considered bona fide problems.  I don't see that girls raised by a lesbian couple showing an increased disposition to be interested in sports and away from traditionally female activities to be a problem, for example.

Whatever one's feelings about the APA, I have a hard time discounting their removal of homosexuality as a pathology. They are, after all, the "best and brightest," so to speak. While I'm sure that the current position is by no means unanimous, it has remained so for over 30 years now.

One other salient point regarding adoption by same-sex couples is that the children are wanted. Same-sex couples tend to be better educated and tend to be more affluent. With respect to these factors, the children are being put into a better situation than they might be elsewhere.

Last, this has been a great debate.