Religion and LGBT people

[Esquilax]

Let me see if I have this right ...

Somehow, I doubt that you will.

I'm a hateful person and that's why I disagree with gay people being allowed to get married.

Well, isn't that hateful? Best case scenario it makes you a thoughtless and bigoted person. That's not much better.

I should support the right of gays, and incestuous couples to marry each other, and where applicable, produce children - is this right?

Nobody's asking you to support anything. At best, we're asking you to remember that your personal opinions, based on an ancient holy book, should have no bearing on the equal rights status of an entire class of people. Not everyone is christian, sir.

You keep making this false equivocation about incest, as though the two things are even vaguely related. They aren't, and I'm gonna lay a little knowledge on ya, but first I'd remind you that most people here have already made their position on that clear. Having them say it again wouldn't weaken their position.

But here's the crazy thing: Even if we all said no, we don't support incestuous marriages, that wouldn't make us hypocrites. Because, and this is really important so pay attention, one of these things is a choice, and one of them isn't. I'm not going to get into a debate about this: being gay is not a choice, just as being straight is not a choice. Take it from a bisexual, this ain't something that can just be turned off.

So on the one hand you have a group of people who have no choice in their attractions; they'll never be able to be with someone it's currently "acceptable" to marry, because some innate part of them just doesn't swing that way. And on the other hand, you have the incestuous couple; if they broke up, what would happen? Well, they'd be able to find partners they weren't related to, because having the capacity to be attracted to one's relatives doesn't preclude one from being attracted to anyone else (I wish I could remember the psychological term for this, I knew it at one time.)

We don't restrict people's rights based on things about themselves we can't change. Historically, doing that hasn't worked out so well, it's created a lot of old shames for us as a culture. We can and do, however, restrict the rights of people based on their choices, especially when there's a less harmful choice available to them. That's just common sense.

There is no double standard here, sir. This isn't a weakness in our position, because the two things aren't equal. For the record I'm in the "if it's consensual then let it happen" camp, but even if I wasn't, my position would still be valid.

Oh, and if you think not being married is stopping gays or relatives from having children, you really are living in dreamland...

And you think I sound stupid??

Yes. I think you sound very stupid right now. Or disingenuous. So which are you? An idiot or a liar?

Frankly, I don't even believe what I've said here will so much as ding your conscious mind.