Here's a propaganda vid from the yes on 8 folks which is aimed at tipping the hetero fence sitters over to their side.

http://www.youtube.com/v/6zbpDe_QhS0

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Thanks for the link. I'm trying to understand where these people are coming from, and what their real concerns are.

Some of the what-ifs that they bring up are pretty spurious, and from what I understand, domestic partners do not actually have the same legal rights as married couples. But it's also nice to see someone at least trying to make a reasonable argument.

It seems to me that much of this boils down to people who believe that gay people are simply choosing to be gay.

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It's a religious issue for many; their god and holy book tell them this is bad and wrong, so they've got to resist it.

(The whys of memetically virulent religions is a topic I can go on about at length.)

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I believe it's one part privilege (oh no they used our special m word), to one part all American distrust of the government, to eight parts screaming unbased paranoid (public schools will teach your kids somehow to be GAY! And you'll pay EXORBITANT TAXES FOR IT! Never mind that right now the schools have barely enough funding to teach things like, you know, mathematics).

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In trying to see it from their perspective, I can understand why they don't want it taught in schools. It's a POV based on ignorance, but no less vehement for that.

I think what they're worried will be taught in schools is, "It's better to be in a gay family than a straight family," or, "When you grow up, you can be gay too!" But the message I believe schools are actually trying to convey is, "Sometimes adults fall in love with members of the opposite sex, and sometimes with members of the same sex. They call all be good families."

The bottom line here is that some of the kids sitting in that classroom have parents who are in same-sex partnerships. I think those kids have every right to have their families understood, and hopefully it will alleviate some of the bullying that goes on toward kids in those families.

Teaching kids about same-sex couples is a method of combating ignorance. Conservative parents want to keep their kids' heads buried in the sand. It's like they think that if they don't tell their kids that these families exist, they'll never find out about them. But kids can be far smarter and more astute than adults give them credit for. They'll figure it out one way or another. And they'll be more likely to demonstrate bigotry if they haven't been properly educated about it.

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I think they are worried about their religious institutions losing their tax-exempt status

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Oh, those poor, poor megachurches! Won't someone think of the pastors who might have to give up the new Mercedes they buy every year in order to pay taxes?

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Yeah I have no pity on those types, but I think it could apply to any church or religious group or organization, no matter what size. Of course, there are ways to work around such worries, such as passing laws specifically to protect/exempt certain entities.

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I don't really understand it either.

I get about as far as looking at those who are conservative and religious having an issue with gay marriage because they think it makes gay people seem so much more normal and therefore, look like a normal option for their children when it goes against their belief system to be homosexual.

There is some baseline assumption that people choose to be gay, and this outrageous proposal that there is an Official Gay Agenda to convert young boys into gay boy toys, via such bizarre and rare organisations such as NAMBLA. There is this odd association with all gay men as being pedophiles (scientifically proven to be FALSE; most pedophiles are straight males) who want young ass -- I don't know where this idea started, other than Stranger Danger propaganda films in the 1950's and old stories about the Ancient Greeks.

Of course, less is said about women wanting to marry each other, somehow... But perhaps the conservative and religious men are cool with that because secretly, their wedding night is their own sexual fantasy.

No, I really don't understand it either.

Straight people can and do marry, and will continue to. Gay people already get married in different countries and different states, right alongside the straight ones, and somehow, their marriages manage to last and survive and end in divorce at the same rate as they did before gay marriage was legal in their area.

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I think it really does boils down to the ridiculous assumption that gays just wake up one day and decide to be gay.

I don't know a lot of people who think like this, but I always wonder what would happen if I met one and asked them about it. "So, when you were deciding whether to be gay or straight, was it a difficult decision for you?"

I think that some people tell themselves it's a decision that one would make only for the purpose of being morally reprehensible, and those people are logically impaired. I also think that the a lot of 'em are bisexual to some degree. If you're really and truly heterosexual or homosexual, then it doesn't make sense to think that sexuality is a choice. However, if you have a natural attraction to both genders, then the idea of choosing one or the other has at least some logic behind it.

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Losing? The ability to say their morality is the only valid morality, which is an intrinsic part of some christian sects. The ones that hinge the believer's own salvation on saving others is especially terrible, since it takes it from the human desire to be right and into the human fear of being wrong at the same time.

Basically, it erodes their cachet to be sanctimonious asshats, to which privileged much of their ego is attached,

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Yeah, the only thing I could think of to that end is their smug sense of moral superiority. But I think that you're right in that solipsism plays a big part in it. It's another sad byproduct of a world that teaches us that we're the protagonist, our family are supporting actors, and everyone else in the world are extras.

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I think that perlandria and hopeforyou have most of it.

I once read a George Will column where he basically said that marriage as it stands today must be maintained as heterosexual and monogamous, because its strength as social infrastructure depends upon its monopoly as the one legally recognized way to organize a family.

One thing that's important to remember when dealing with these folks is that most of them don't have a hidden agenda. They're being honest when they say that they believe that homosexuality is inherently harmful, regardless of the intentions of the individual. They're taking this as axiomatic.

It's not a dodge or a disguise for a power grab. It's an honest difference of opinion. Start with that as a first premise, and ther rest is logical. Usually.

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I concur that they really and truly believe this. I think one of the reasons that it's do hard for me to understand is that I was raised without any religious dogma of any kind. My parents celebrated the Jewish and Catholic holidays with me and told me what these celebrations represented, but they never took me to any kind of church ceremony unless I'd expressed interest in going. It's hard for me to understand being part of a community in which you're told how to think and what to believe, and doubly hard to understand why people would consent to being told to discriminate against others.

It's not their sincerity that I question. It's that they don't seem to question their own beliefs. And I'm of the opinion that unexamined belief is not really belief at all.

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It is possible that some of them have examined their beliefs, and still hold them.

I am often frustrated with folks who, upon finding that I'm Pagan, ask me if I've ever read the Bible. They're astonished when I tell them I've read it cover to cover, twice.

This is a common mistake folks fall into. Their beliefs are so strong and so obvious to them that of course all the other side has to do is listen with an open mind and be converted.

Sad thing is, it doesn't work for our side, either.

We gain nothing by assuming that our opponents are fools. We'll make ground much faster if we accept that some of them at least are honest, intelligent people with whom we happen to disagree.

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It is possible that some of them have examined their beliefs, and still hold them.

You're right, and I didn't mean to convey that I believe that none of them have really examined their own beliefs. I know a lot of them have, and retain their opinions. But I'd have to say that more people cling to their church-sanctioned homophobia based on fear of hell (or fear of reprisal from their churches, congregations and pastors) than due to conclusions formed after long, soul-searching thought. I've worked with a lot of these people and interacted with them on a day-to-day basis, and the sad truth is that there are an awful lot of people out there who believe what their pastor tells them to believe, and interperet the Bible the way their pastor tells them to interperet it, and those people vote.

We gain nothing by assuming that our opponents are fools. We'll make ground much faster if we accept that some of them at least are honest, intelligent people with whom we happen to disagree.

Of course there are highly intelligent people on both sides of the debate! I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I've had many intelligent and informed convetrsations with these folks in which we agreed to disagree but both walked away knowing more than we knew before. And usually I'm the one defending right-wing Christians and other religious conservatives for holding views that are repugnant to me. They have the right to believe what they believe, and I'll defend that right to the death. But just as my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins, I feel that my right to be bigoted should end where your civil liberties begin.

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erm....

juju?

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