luutzu I am interested in this thesis of non societal normal boundary collapse. Where does it end ? All for recognition of prejudice in society and to whose standard do we apply? The current way of thinking is to allow this "marriage" to cohabitant with the straight community and we should tolerate it whether we want to or not.
Maybe our next discussion would be do we allow Downs syndrome people to marry and bear the right to child?
In no way am I comparing the same rights to either party ,, I am more interested are you an advocate of free speech because this is a minority vote or is it ideals you truly believe in? Or both?
Down syndrome people do not have the right to marry or bear children? I didn't know that. I would understand if the Down Syndrome person is to be married to a non-Down person - you can argue abuse or what not. Anyway, I don't know what Down Syndrome really is so won't be debating that.
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Are you asking if I'm just for the underdog and no matter the issue I'd go for the "victim", the minority?
I'd like to think that I go for what is right and fair, what is reasonable. But ey, I also think I look like Pierce Brosnan James Bond too - so yea, I'm fair and balance.
Free speech is all good. No But about it. And as Galymay have summed up, if you do not like gay marriage, do not like gay getting married and have it recognised, don't marry gay people or turn gay.
You can speak your disapproval, you can quote the Bible or some aunt or uncle or parents teaching you right and wrong way back when... You have that right. Just don't impose that right against other people's right.
So minority or majority plays no part here. It's a matter of what is fair and reasonable - about justice (not of the legal kind).
As others here have said... How does a gay couple getting married harm you or harm heterosexual people and marriage? It doesn't.
Does society lose anything by gay being married? They're already living together, already being allowed to legally married elsewhere in the world, already can adopt children and raise families... Going a bit further and formalise it will somehow cause moral decay or something?
But to ban or treat homosexual as second class citizens... to deny fellow citizens and human beings of the equal rights we all enjoy... that does a heck of a lot of harm. Harm you can quantify by counting the verbal and physical and mental abuses they suffer; harm by the inequality they are facing before the law.. .and harm to our sense of social justice and equality for all and all that fluff.
As Han Fei Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, once wrote: to change or not to change does not matter; what matter is whether change is necessary, whether change is crucial to the issue at hand.
Is change to the current marriage institution necessary?
Well it already discriminate a percentage of our population, and will continue to discriminate future generations if kept as is. So yea, if you want a more equal society, want progress in civil rights... change is necessary.
You don't have to agree with it, don't have to like it, don't have to convert and be gay - So it's not the tyranny of the vocal minority against the oppressed majority - which if you look at opinion polls aren't the view of the majority anyway...
So yea, do what's right I'd say. If not for yourself, then for your children or grandchildren... because as VC and others have said, one of them might be gay and you can't control that. But you can control whether society would treat them the same or not.