Thread: Gay Marriage
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Old 12-04-2003, 08:20 AM   #322
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
How does one know what's "normal" behavior. It's because the culture tells us, educates us how to talk and dress and stuff. If does that partly by having big ol' rites of passage and schools and official events and laws and stuff.

The culture frowns on heteros who sleep around. To inform them of what the culture defines as "normal", it developed a whole set of rituals, language, laws, etc. that tell people what to do.

The culture has not dealt with homosexuality because it is more rare. There are few cultural thingies to tell gays how to behave. There is no marriage to encourage them to create long-term relationships. No rings to symbolize such a relationship, no historical connection, not even soap operas on TV to show how relationships might operate and what the positive and negative repercussions might be.

Some parts of gay culture have created their own set of cultural thingies, and some parts have adopted the hetero cultural thingies. A gay couple I know has been together for 15 years. At one of their anniversaries, they had an official ceremony at a swanky downtown place and had a celebration in front of all their friends to acknowledge their relationship. This is the equivalent of a wedding and they wear rings on the ring finger of their right hands Their relationship is stronger than almost every hetero relationship I have ever seen.

The only way it is NOT stronger is that it is not officially accepted. So, would gay marriage weaken hetero marriage? I say no, I say it would strengthen it and give it MORE meaning if people who can't possibly procreate can get married. If marriage is only for creating kids it will eventually weaken and die. That is my opinion and I'm stickin' to it.
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