Anti gay-marriage atheist??

[Redbeard The Pink]

My husband left for a trip and I'm bored. Meaning It's one of those evenings where I look for any excuse to post lol. 

I was browsing my facebook news feed today and came across this article called The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage, posted by an acquaintance on my friend's list. I thought it was very out of character and was curious to hear you guys' opinions/comments/counter arguments on the points being made. Fire away!! 
  

I am an atheist, and have no religious reasons for denying gays the right to be married; but, I have very secular reasons. 

1. The primary evolutionary purpose of a man and a woman is to propagate the species and raising children. 

2. Homosexual men are more than twice as likely to spread HIV and other STDs than straight men, which applies to lesbian woman too. 

3. Homosexual men and lesbians are much more likely to have serious substance abuse problems. 

4. Gays are not the proper role models to raise children. Children need a real female mom and a real male dad, one of each. All recent studies prove that children are best raised by a man and a woman. New Research on Children of Same-Sex Parents Suggests Differences Matter. 

Some argue that the link between marriage and procreation is not as strong as it once was, and they are correct. Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation. In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment.

As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. 

Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation. The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage.

If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis can it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction than love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-there...024CEDB973

Let's see...

1. Various species exhibit homosexual behavior, and in general it doesn't harm the survival rate of the species as a whole because it's not common enough. Humanity has witnessed many extinctions, and not once have we documented an animal "gaying" its way onto the endangered species list.

2. First off, no, lesbians are not as likely as homosexual men to spread AIDS. The reason gay men are so prone to it is that anal sex is still the primary culprit for transmission. Second, the (primarily christian-fueled) social stigma surrounding homosexuality was part of the reason for the AIDS spread; it's just about always harder to safely engage in a practice when it's been stigmatized and in some cases made illegal.

3. This is a bigoted lie, not to mention a non-argument. Even if gays were more prone to drug use (citation?), how would the legal status of gay marriage have any impact on that whatsoever?

4. There's a lot of debate as to whether being raised in a gay household negatively affects children, but even if it does, it's not evidence of causation. It's possible that the disadvantages of being raised in a gay house stem from the stigma and societal treatment of such children, not to mention that gays are themselves a culturally disadvantaged group (children of societal fringe tend to suffer just for being in their demographic; this is not an inherently gay problem). Basically, even if children raised by gay parents do suffer for it, it might be because society treats them like shit and not because their parents did a poor job raising them.

The assertion about marriage and procreation is just wrong. Historically, marriage has been more about wealth-sharing and interpersonal dynamics than it has ever been about children. The shift toward a procreation-based value of marriage is the phenomenon that's actually more recent.

Divorce, while usually painful and probably in need of reform in America, does not always represent failure or destruction. In fact, it's often a positive thing for one or both parties involved, depending on the situation. Religious and non-religious people have roughly equivalent rates of divorce and infidelity in most Western countries. The countries with the lowest divorce rates tend to actually be the countries with high religiosity, arranged marriages, and practically no gender equality to speak of; divorce is not a product of anything but freedom and choice, in a broad sense.

As for whole thing about the state hurting itself by supporting "sterile" relationships, that's a crock. Lots of gay people can and do have biological children, and lots of heterosexual couples can't. The simple fact is that if sterile heterosexual couples can get state benefits for being married, then homosexuals should get those benefits, too. Period. There is no logical reasoning to the contrary.

The polygamy thing is kind of a slippery slope argument, and I'm honestly surprised this dude didn't throw pedophilia in there as well. It sounds like someone from a right-wing, religious upbringing that's an atheist but still hasn't shaken a lot of the hang-ups that come with being taught bigotry against certain groups from a young age. He thinks it's icky, so he spouts a bunch of fallacy and emotional arguing because he can't just admit he thinks it's icky.