[ScottBurson]

> If you are someone who believes gay people should be allowed to form civil unions, but are offended [emphasis added] by the idea that those unions be called marriages

... then you still see gay people as fundamentally different from and less than straight people.

There's no way out of this.

EDITED to add: Also, what's happening to Eich isn't happening just because he made that donation.

As furious as I was about Prop. 8, I could understand someone supporting it in 2008 just because gay marriage was a new and strange issue to them at that time. What I have more of a problem with is someone who has spent the intervening 5+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with gay people in an atmosphere in which acceptance of them was espoused and apparently practiced, and in a world in which gay marriage was being debated vigorously and often, and yet has not reconsidered his beliefs. That, I think, really says something about who they are.

All that said, I don't really feel I have standing to object to his being CEO of Mozilla. I think what this comes down to is that many Mozilla employees felt they couldn't work for him.

[gfodor]

> There's no way out of this.

Sure there is. Many people who oppose gay marriage not because of their feelings towards gay people but because they believe or were taught that the Bible says that God says that marriage is between a man and a woman, and regardless of their personal views they defer to the Bible as the word of god.

Is this a fucking stupid belief? I think so, yes. Is it the same belief as thinking that gay people are subhuman? No.

Seeing the difference is what makes it possible to get through to people who feel this way in order to persuade them their beliefs should be reconsidered. Calling them bigots and shutting them out as being intolerant and evil (and getting them fired from their jobs) is a sure fire way to ensure they become entrenched and feel it's an "us vs. them" environment.

[shakethemonkey]

Well, in that case: marriage is absolutely a polygamous institution; if a virgin is raped she must marry her rapist; a husband owns his wife's property; a wife may not assume any sort of authority over her husband, etc.

[serge2k]

No no, it's the words of god that we choose to accept.

That's why the rules can change whenever the church feels like it.

[ScottBurson]

If you ask one of these people you're talking about how they would feel if their daughter or son turned out to be gay, how many of them do you think would say, "I would love them just as much, but I don't think they should be allowed to get married"? I think a much more likely response is denial of the very possibility, combined with anger that you would suggest it. Doesn't that seem a more likely response to you? And what do you think that denial and anger would be rooted in? Does it really make sense that it's just about the definition of "marriage"?

I certainly have not mastered the art of getting through to gay marriage opponents. Have you actually had any success at it? (Not, I assume, by calling their beliefs "fucking stupid" :-)

[cookiecaper]

>... then you still see gay people as fundamentally different from and less than straight people.

/s/gay people/homosexual behavior/g

/s/straight people/heterosexual behavior/g

Societies have a right to regulate the private behaviors of their citizens, including (and in fact especially) sexual behaviors. Societies also have the right to determine which sexual and interpersonal unions they will bless and which they will not.

Public homosexuality is a behavior, not a biological trait. People aren't administered a test to check for a "gay gene". It only comes up when a person engages in homosexual behavior.

Under your argument, it is not possible to make anything legal or illegal, and we must simply say, "You see thieves as somehow less than non-thieves, and that makes you a bigot. Thieves can't help it, there is a biological imperative that they engage in theft."

You may state that you believe theft is more damaging than private sexual behavior, and others may disagree with you. A dialog could be had if one side wasn't so busy trying to bully the other into submission with name calling like "Well, if you don't agree with me, you're automatically a bigot".

The point is that behavior is being regulated here. People are being punished or rewarded based on their behaviors, not unchangeable biological traits like sex or race, and not private philosophy or the exposition thereof like religion. There is nothing wrong with laws precluding certain sexual behaviors or laws refusing to solemnize and acknowledge certain sexual unions.

[smsm42]

Societies can not have rights, as society is nothing but many people. People have rights, but I don't see how many people can have the right to regulate somebody's private behavior. Where would such right come from? Why do you think I have the right to tell you what you can and can not do, even if it doesn't concern me at the least? Why do you make special emphasis on sex - why do you think I have the right to say how you can have sex? Sex is one of the most private affairs in our culture - why do you think it is especially appropriate for me to intervene in it when you engage in it without my participation?

[cookiecaper]

>Societies can not have rights, as society is nothing but many people

This is pedantry. The many people that comprise a society hold in aggregate the ability to enforce rules that ensure their survival and prosperity. This is the basis of all governance.

>Where would such right come from?

Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, regardless of the institution that governs. The right comes from the unified concurrence that some behaviors are dangerous to social survival, and the unified strength to enforce that concurrence.

>Why do you think I have the right to tell you what you can and can not do, even if it doesn't concern me at the least?

See above. The government has the right to forbid behavior insofar as the people believe that behavior to be detrimental to their survival.

>Why do you make special emphasis on sex - why do you think I have the right to say how you can have sex? Sex is one of the most private affairs in our culture - why do you think it is especially appropriate for me to intervene in it when you engage in it without my participation?

I put special emphasis on sex because sex carries very unique properties. Sex is the only mechanism by which a child can be conceived, which roots it directly in the core of a society's concern -- their perpetuation, their survival is directly impacted by sexual practices.

Furthermore, most people have very strong sexual instincts and impulses that are evolutionary necessities, but are threatening to social survival if they are not checked by the aggregate behavioral standards of the populace. Some people have powerful violent impulses, but not most people. Some people have powerful psychotic impulses, but not most people. Sex is special because almost everyone has overpowering instinctual responses to sex, and sexual behaviors or displays therefore demand special control and attention from the governing authority.

Sex is super great and everything, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's dangerous as well as necessary and pleasant. Rules must be established to ensure that the dangerous side of the coin sees minimal face time.

[dnr]

I'm not sure why I'm replying to this, but to point out some very basic things:

Are you aware that sexual orientation is set and can't be changed by puberty? It may or may not be entirely controlled by genetics, there may be an environmental component as well. But one has about as much control over it as one's height.

[camus2]

Societies have a right to regulate the private behaviors of their citizens

Societies are not set in stone.