Gay Relationships

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Ok, I'm totally not against it. I support people in doing anything that doesn't force their worldviews on anyone else. By this I mean such, I feel anyone should be able to have access to the same basic benefits of a system, no matter who they are or what their orientations are. Beyond that? Just like I have a problem with some religious folk shoving their beliefs in people's faces, atheists having a hissy fit when someone mentions God in a conversation or says Merry Christmas or something along that line, I also feel that if one is gay you don't need to hammer the point home in company of folk who may be uncomfortable. It just feels wrong when anyone of any worldview does it. Go, get married and be happy if you can find that... or be miserable.
I have no problem with rational people wanting reasonable things and its pretty damn well rational that not everyone is going to be straight in a world of 7+ billion ape-cousins.
*shrug* I don't expect everyone in the world to be rational or comfortable with it, I don't know why others really expect that either. Best we can do is tolerate ignorance as a character flaw and do our best to distance ourselves from those who're just narrow-minded.
For all the ways we as humans can be different from each other, recognize too we all have a lot of similarities in our differences too. I guess it helps me that I grew up in a varied population of orientations and mindsets and even there it wasn't universally accepted... but then I don't think anything is anywhere.

 

[cryogeist]

As long as they don't get in my face about it and expect me to treat them any differently than anyone else, let them do what they want
... Pretty much how I feel about most social issues

 

[Vault101]

i am fully in support of civil unions, but i'm more or less neutral on the marriage side of things, since i regard that particular debate as nothing more than a slap fight over a word (although i am more on the side of full marriage).
.

I don't see how "straight people can get married in the eyes of the law, gay people can't" is a slap fight over words

Just like I have a problem with some religious folk shoving their beliefs in people's faces, atheists having a hissy fit when someone mentions God in a conversation or says Merry Christmas or something along that line, I also feel that if one is gay you don't need to hammer the point home in company of folk who may be uncomfortable.

except merely "existing" is enough to make people uncomfortable, these things bleed into real life in ways straight people take for granted

if a woman mentioning her girlfriend or a guy mentioning his husband is too much for some people then really they're the ones with the problem

 

[FPLOON]

I support it in a cheerleader kind of way... I mean, as long as the relationship is mutual, then I see no point to impede on something that doesn't effect you in a negative way... Then again, I've never been in a [romantic] relationship (gay, straight, or otherwise), so there's that...

Overall, I'm for gay relationships in general...

 

[Spider RedNight]

I really don't care. Do what you want. I'm asexual and aromantic so really any concept is gonna be 'different' to me but whatever floats your proverbial boat.

Just don't get in my face about it. I treat everyone the same; I know as many nice gays as jerk gays but it's not because of sexuality, it's just them being jerks.

I REALLY don't get why everyone's so obsessed with sex, anyway. That's like the least amount of anyone's business who isn't sleeping with said person(s)

 

[FirstNameLastName]

i am fully in support of civil unions, but i'm more or less neutral on the marriage side of things, since i regard that particular debate as nothing more than a slap fight over a word (although i am more on the side of full marriage).
.

I don't see how "straight people can get married in the eyes of the law, gay people can't" is a slap fight over words

Because when I say civil union, I'm referring to one that is identical to marriage in everything but name, so they have exactly the same legal rights as any married couple. For all intents and purposes they would be interchangeable, just with a different name.

I regard it as a petty slap fight because it's basically the gay side saying "we don't want it to be called a civil union, we want control of the word marriage." And the other side saying, "we don't want the word to be changed, we want control of the word marriage."

Either way i side more with the gay marriage side since two separate but identical legal categories could easily diverge over time; i could easily imagine there being systemic discrimination against civil unions in the future. But i just don't feel all that strongly about whether gays can get "married" or "civil-union'd."

 

[cathou]

i am fully in support of civil unions, but i'm more or less neutral on the marriage side of things, since i regard that particular debate as nothing more than a slap fight over a word (although i am more on the side of full marriage).
.

I don't see how "straight people can get married in the eyes of the law, gay people can't" is a slap fight over words

Because when I say civil union, I'm referring to one that is identical to marriage in everything but name, so they have exactly the same legal rights as any married couple. For all intents and purposes they would be interchangeable, just with a different name.

I regard it as a petty slap fight because it's basically the gay side saying "we don't want it to be called a civil union, we want control of the word marriage." And the other side saying, "we don't want the word to be changed, we want control of the word marriage."

Either way i side more with the gay marriage side since two separate but identical legal categories could easily diverge over time; i could easily imagine there being systemic discrimination against civil unions in the future. But i just don't feel all that strongly about whether gays can get "married" or "civil-union'd."

i think it's more that neither side can have the control of the word marriage. a marriage can be either religious, or civil. they are both marriage, which is a legal contract toward the state the marriage is issued in. what make it civil or religious is the ceremony that goes around it. in a religious marriage, the rules of who can be married or not are determined by the Church the marriage took place in. the civil marriage is mostly help up in court in front of a judge, and the rules are set by the state.

So, it's perfectly ok that a Church say, ok, we dont want to marry gays. and it's very wrong that a state say : we dont want to marry gays.

it's doesnt matter if a civil marriage is between two men, two women or a man and a woman. it's not a gay marriage, it's just a marriage that doesnt involve God...

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Straight white male here. Shocking, I know.

On this subject? Absolutely no qualms, whatsoever. As a universal rule, I think people are 'allowed' to do whatever they please, so long as it doesn't harm someone else and, well, love is love, so? Go for it.

Gay marriage? No problem. Full on supporter.

But then... I don't really care what people do with their personal lives in general. It's none of my business and, frankly, if it'll make your time on earth marginally less miserable, I'm behind it. Hobby, relationship, job, what have you.


I will say this though; being completely honest with you folks:

Two dudes kissing in front of me still makes me a bit uncomfortable.

If it's a romantic thing, I can totally see how it is and it'll even get a little "aw" out of me, but there's still that little initial 'shock.'

Two women? Not the least bit of a wiggle in my subconscious.

I can't really help it, which has prompted more than a few inner discussions about whether or not I'm truly supportive of male homosexual relationships or not...but I do, quite fervently, believe I don't have a problem outside of the aforementioned bit of discomfort.

Perhaps it's just a matter of volume of exposure.

And even if I did have a problem? Doesn't matter one bit. People's lives and, by extension, their relationships are their own.

 

[Ieyke]

I could go deeply into how I think and why, but essentially, yea, I'm all for gay relationships.
I'm essentially just straight, and my tolerance for baseless hatred and malice and discord is just gone.
As far as I'm concerned, if it makes people happy, good.
If YOUR opinion about something that only makes people happy and hurts no one is hostile, or adverse, YOU are an asshole.

I value few things as much or more than love.

I'm not a shipper....like ever...but somehow I happened to find myself being basically the biggest Korrasami supporter around.
Starting in Book 3 it snuck up on me and I embraced the hell out of it. Their relationship throughout the show just developed so elegantly and naturally that the only ending that made sense for those two characters was for them to end up together....but I didn't think it'd happen....and then it did.
The ending to The Legend Of Korra made me ABSURDLY happy.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Anyone of age can have a mutually consenting relationship with anybody.

Boring answer but that about sums it up for most of us.

 

[Sampler]

So we're pretty much all fine and dandy with homosexuality, but what about polygamy? How do people feel about someone's ability to have more than one true love and how would they feel if their significant other proposed the idea?

It can have many benefits - if you're to the point where you're all living together then house bills becomes easier to split and there's someone else to argue with about who's turn it is to do the dishes (I see it as decreasing volume of 'chore' tasks as there's more people to pick them up), plus specialities, more chance to get folk who have different skills in the house so you don't have to buy in (I know these are more fringe but hey).

Working late, partner's not stuck at home bored, not in the mood, maybe someone else is - the more I think about it the more 'coupling' seems odd, I'm on the third partner I've lived with for over a year (sixth seriousish relationship) so I've evidently got the capacity to love multiple people, I've left one for another (with about a month overlap that only one half was aware of) so evidently I don't have a problem with concurrency either, I'd've suggested this to either at the time if I thought it'd've worked.

There's some place around the world where this is the norm - though tends to be guys with many wives, I wouldn't mind other blokes being in on this, so long as we got along, I've not found a man sexual attractive before so I don't think I'd sleep with them, but if we all liked them I'd have no problem with the lady folk enjoying another man or three.

Sounds a bit hippy commune, but I can't see why it's not normal, or at least a bit wider than it is, everyone seems to be stuck on the one true love, even though we all know that's ridicuolus (as Tim Minchin sings "if I didn't have you, I'd probably find someone else").

How do Escapians feel?

 

[Vault101]

So we're pretty much all fine and dandy with homosexuality, but what about polygamy? How do people feel about someone's ability to have more than one true love and how would they feel if their significant other proposed the idea?

humans being humans there is so much room for hurt, jealousy and exploitation. Particularly when you look at it from a "man with many wives" point of view

but really if you've got the right people and it works then that's great, no reason monogamy has to be the standard as long as these things are done ethically and not [I/]"hey why don't we have an open relationship so I can sleep around and..whhaaa why are you sleeping with other men?? no fair I changed my mind"[/I]

ultimately I have no issue the with concept, just peoples abilities to be able to pull it off

EDIT: and weather or not its biologically or socially driven is...an interesting questions

 

[Objectable]

Well, I'm a gay man.
So I'm kind of biased on this.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

So we're pretty much all fine and dandy with homosexuality, but what about polygamy? How do people feel about someone's ability to have more than one true love and how would they feel if their significant other proposed the idea?

I'm perfectly fine with polygamy from a moral perspective, but i don't really care for communal-marriage as a legal construct. My objections are purely from a practical stand point. Going from heterosexual to homosexual isn't much of a big leap, it's the same 1-1 relationship as before, just with the same genders. And considering society is moving towards a place of gender-neutral laws anyway, this isn't all that significant.

I'm mainly against polygamy as a legal construct because marriage laws are already a massive cluster-fuck of strange laws and corner cases as it is, polygamy laws would be nightmarish complex. As virtually any mathematician, programmer or anyone who has to create any kind of systems for a living will tell you; a 1-1 relationship is easy, a 1-m relationship is a little more complex but still manageable, but a n-m relationship is the stuff of nightmares. With things like property laws, custody of children and pets and other legal issues it would just be too much of a burden to sort out.

If someone could come to me and prove that they could solve the legal side of it with a solution generalized for any arbitrary number of people, then i would be in full support of it. Until then, I will just passively support it as an unofficial construction.


Back onto the topic of gay marriage, it seems we are virtually all in agreement with each other, so this thread is pretty much an echo chamber at this point. I just know it's only a matter of time before someone shows up with a dissenting opinion to finally turn this echo chamber into an incinerator.

 

[Dizchu]

So we're pretty much all fine and dandy with homosexuality, but what about polygamy? How do people feel about someone's ability to have more than one true love and how would they feel if their significant other proposed the idea?

I think there's a lot of unnecessary stigma towards polyamory/polygamy or even just open relationships. This doesn't only come from your typical heteronormative types, LGBT people can be strongly against it too. What's even worse is that anti-gay arguments usually bring up poly-relationships in slippery slope fallacies, where saying that those relationships are fine would "morally undermine" the pro-gay's argument.

I think the cause of this is the idolisation of monogamy. It's seen as the only true relationship and beyond that, it's even seen as a "life goal".

I've been in love with multiple girls at once, I informed everyone involved about it and they were all fine. I see absolutely no issue with what I did and the only guilt I felt was due to the pressure from society's overbearing enforcement of monogamy as the standard. I see love as something to be shared, not something to be rented out to someone for a certain period of time (I am not saying this is what monogamy's about, I think this is what culturally-enforced monogamy seems like to me).

Just my take on it, people are free to disagree. My advice: Just don't be a dick to people that are in consensual non-monogamous relationships and we'll be fine.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

it's doesnt matter if a civil marriage is between two men, two women or a man and a woman. it's not a gay marriage, it's just a marriage that doesnt involve God...

I'm probably being overly semantic here, but I don't think a marriage that isn't performed or blessed by a religious institution is missing a spiritual component. The spiritual aspect (or lack thereof) can be whatever the couple in question wishes it to be. I doubt that two gay Catholics would consider their marriage less blessed or, at worst, null and void because the Vatican thinks that they own the only correctly interpreted message of God, and thus refused the couple a church wedding.

One of my core beliefs is that deity in all of its forms isn't anything that we can fully understand in these human bodies, yet it exists everywhere.

And sorry if I AM being overly semantic - I'm not trying to get preachy. I'm just an agnostic (not to be confused with atheist) lesbian who believes that love is stronger than human blindness or willful ignorance.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

So we're pretty much all fine and dandy with homosexuality, but what about polygamy? How do people feel about someone's ability to have more than one true love and how would they feel if their significant other proposed the idea?

Don't mind it at all.

Again, love is love. If all parties are cool with it, why not? ...Aside from the legal nightmare @FirstNameLastName brought up.

On principle, it's fine and dandy with me. In actual practical practice, it sounds like a quagmire.

 

[cleric of the order]

On a person note, no I'm Canadian and not Albertan.
I am pretty okay with gay guys, on that I've got a number of friends that are gay.
And while I'm silently mad at one of them for being a how could i say, coward(likewise he is angry at me for beings brute). that's more of his personality trait then anything else.
And that's about it.
Up here it doesn't matter.

peoples issue with gay people seems to be that they sometimes bend our ideas of gender roles

Well what do i see here, it's going to be one of those threads... great i do so love them gets me prepped for my LAT courses that are coming up, merry belated christmas or holidays or whatever.
Okay then, I would not be sure about that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_%28gay_culture%29
I'm fairly certain this is what Hellenistic homosexuals looked like
not sure what to make of it but, lots of homosexual acts were not unheard of in early civilization, even the romans that generally disliked it, (guess where minion comes from) allowed it pretty evenly.
it's more seems more religious, specifically abrahamic anything else.
Perhaps it's bends the limp wrist Britannia ideals, but to paraphrase a gay guy i know, it takes a real man to take it in the ass.
If anything, I assume it's more in line with a collection of issues, a interlocking weave of the, so far that and drawing from so much that chaos theory takes over.

and how men/woman should dress/act...people don't like that. I heard once interesting theory that the homophobia from straight men is often Bourne from misogyny

it's existed for good reason, and for no good reason at all, a lovely walking contradiction, a spiraling creation layered from thousands of years of instinct, cultural cross population, technological advancement and human nature. Everyone's a useful idiot, to quote the real rizzile drizzile. Gender roles, until this point in technological and medical advancement were increasingly useful and will remain so as long as there is a possibility where we could recede technologically. what we have at this point is more or less a tail bone or appendix but more integral. But i take a more neutral position on the nature verse nurture debate, tabula rasa is a load of crap, sexual dimorphism is a thing, while i don't know how far it goes.
And david Riemer is confusing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
....misogyny... hon(honhonhon), I would have hoped i was able to take a swing at that before in a different thread but, the distrust or dislike of women for being women is exceedingly rare, even in traditionalist cultures.
also that theory sounds like a load of bull, i can say with a straight face the Romans hated the feminine with every ounce of their being and even they tolerated gays more then we did, they were a true patriarchy, the likes of which the world has never seen again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome
If anything it's more rooted in the Cinaedus, which I'll admit lend credence to the possibility that this is based in sexual and gender aberrance but I think it's more symbolic in that anal penetration was a sign of defeat of submission.
Which falls in line with roman pretty well.

and then there's the whole Bi thing...I kind of *get* on some level (but do not condone) the stigma of being "bi" there's that insecurity they'll have their fun then leave for "normal" [b/]completely unfounded yes[/b] but in our society its there,

there's stigmata for being bi? Damn Canada is seeming saner and saner.

and if you're a bi guy...well you don't exist

I assume it's more on the level of a need to know basis, normally people don't need to know how i swing and will make assumptions, if any by the amorous company i keep, it should come up, a lot of our culture is based in the anglo saxon, Victorian prudishness.

interestingly we had a discussion with my sister (30's married 1 year old child) about gay people a guy in our small town turned out to be gay and at one point...probably a few years ago my cousin threatened to kill him...over a few beers no doubt. Her fiancé is apparently kind of homophobic in that "bro-ish" way men often are

the first part is scare.
The second part you are going to have to slow down, and explain to me how you mean by "Bro-ish"

the thing is...aside from religion I don't think there's a lot of thought put into it, its like a kneejerk reaction

as far as i see it yes and no.
it is a cultural thing but there might be way to many points of reference to really pin down, on a psychological level, I am more of an enthusiast more the anything, i shouldn't try to say something on it.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

it's doesnt matter if a civil marriage is between two men, two women or a man and a woman. it's not a gay marriage, it's just a marriage that doesnt involve God...

I'm probably being overly semantic here, but I don't think a marriage that isn't performed or blessed by a religious institution is missing a spiritual component. The spiritual aspect (or lack thereof) can be whatever the couple in question wishes it to be. I doubt that two gay Catholics would consider their marriage less blessed or, at worst, null and void because the Vatican thinks that they own the only correctly interpreted message of God, and thus refused the couple a church wedding.

No offence to any gay Catholics that may be reading this, but i find the concept to be rather silly.
As much as i dislike religious fundamentalists preaching their hate for the LGBT community, and as much as i do like seeing the church embrace a more progressive stance, i can't really vouch for the rationality behind these sorts of middle ground religious beliefs. The Bible is rather clear in this regard, and while various contradictions about this issue do exist (just as with virtually everything else in the bible) there really isn't enough ambiguity to interpret it any other way.
Unless people are going to follow the religion but just completely disregard everything written in scripture then i don't really see how gay Catholics can be anything more than people with a bad case of cognitive dissonance who refuse to commit one way or another.

As someone who doesn't practice any religion myself i do get the idea of not wanting to be restrained by religious rules, but i honestly find religious fundamentalists to be more philosophically grounded than people who believe that their actions will condemn them to hell yet do them anyway, or people who believe in the divine word of a scripture yet discard any aspects they dislike.

One of my core beliefs is that deity in all of its forms isn't anything that we can fully understand in these human bodies, yet it exists everywhere.

While i agree with that notion, revealed theology is inherently a declaration of understanding, at least to a certain level. That's basically the entire point of scripture.