You sort of missed the point. What you propose IS equality legislation, and the lack of equal rights for everyone is what makes it necessary. No matter if you call it marriage, civil union or the Big Mac Companionship, the denial of equal rights and legal protection for same-sex couples is denying civil rights, plain and simple.

No, it's not. Marriage is not a right. The laws about real marriage (man/woman) are filled with arbitrary requirements (age, relatedness, etc). What the state grants is a license. A State cannot grant a "right," a right you have in the absence of the government. States can only take away rights, not grant them. In the US you are not granted free speech, the government is DISALLOWED to interfere with your free speech. Huge difference.

A gay man has the exact same rights WRT marriage as I do. I could (and did) marry a woman, and a gay guy can marry a woman, too. He can't marry a man, but neither could I. No discrimination. No civil rights violated since marriage is not a civil right. The legal benefits can be had for any couple as a contract, they simply have to pay a lawyer to draw it up. The only down side is it costs more than a marriage license (we had friends that were not going to get married, but it was easier than drawing up the contracts to be married in all but reality, so they got married instead).

That's why a law needs to be passed to allow them a civil union. A law must be passed because it is a statutory issue, not a rights issue. Any claim of rights violation pretty much requires using the word "love," which presents a huge can of worms (a court decision that marriage would be a right would HAVE to say that the problem is that a gay man cannot marry who he LOVES, since he has the exact same "rights" to marry as any other man. Add in that "love" in a court ruling, and it begs the question why any "love" can be abridged (why not marry 10 people, or your sister? If the real right is to "marry who you love."). Better to treat it as the non-right it is, and pass a LAW instead of trying to legislate in court which will certainly have unintended consequences.

Fair enough.Why not?

If the "irrational bigotry" you're referring to merely is using traditional terms such as "mother" and "father", than again, why not?Disagreement and opposition isn't necessarily hate, either.If by "value" you mean generically human life, I would agree with you. If by "value" you mean one's abilities to perform functions, either by biological imperative or one's ideological leanings, such values SHOULD be questioned.

Not doing so is along the same lines as allowing people with horrible eyesight to fly airplanes in the name of civil rights, which makes no sense.

Civil rights are indeed important, but they shouldn't fly in the face of pragmatic sensibilities nor preclude discussion of an individual's fitness regarding the ability to engage in society's most important functions. And, being a member of a larger subgroup does, in some ways, define the individual. If those particular definitions are seen as detrimental to certain functions, engagement in those functions should be examined.

The family (mother, father, children) is under expliciut special protection by the state - so it is ruled black on white in the German constitgution. It is intentionally given a special status, due to the importance of it for the communal wellbeing and future survival.

If now the term family gets watered down and desribes non-families as well, relations that do not have the capoability to contribute to the communal interest by producing new kids and future tax payers paying for the old, then this can be achieved by two ways: the special legal status of families gets destzroiyed, or it gets relativiised by lifting other couple rerlations of homosexual natuzre to the same legal status . Both is what is being done. Which is a breaking of the constitution, in case you have not noted it, becasaue the constitution rules, for good and sane and vital reasons, that families are not to be seen as equal as other social relations, both as being of higher importance. This additionally is also due to the keeping of the interest of the weakest, the children.

Giving homosexuals the same legal status and tax privileges like families, and claiming they are of the same value for the community, is discrimination of singles, colleagues and social friendships. If homosexuals now are treated the same way as hetereosexual couples, although they do not controibute anything more to the community than twio individual persons ´not reproduzcing and not raising a family, then I demand the same legal status and the same tax privileges for people like me: singles.

Which still would be a breaking of the constitution.

You can argue that men and women are not equal as long as women have no penisses and men have no breasts, and you can cry wolf over black snot being white and whites not being black, and that it is not erquality as long as they all are not light brown. But it is absurd. It is as absurd as claiming that it is a thing of euqlaity that hetereo and homo couples must be treated the same, and are of the same benefit for the community. They are not, and it does nothing for a community whether or not to homsexual people live together or not. Couples reproducing and educating chiuldren in our shrinkling and over-aging Wetsenr societies - that is what it is about. And youz cannot argue around the basic design nature has decided for ther bluieprio9nt of the human species. Homosexcualisity is a reality, but it is not the norm, and it is not the way survival mof the species was meant to be acchived by. And in this understanding, homosexuality is not "norm al", and never will be. A homosexual population of any sypecies - dies within two generations. Period. Is that fair or unfair? Honestely said, nature doesn'T ask you for your ideas of fairness. Man is a heterosexual species. That's
how he is meant to be, to live, to survive as a species. Live with it.

A homosexual couple is of no more value to the community than is the single living. So why should the one be given the same special status like families, and the other not? Why should any of the two be given the same status like families/hetero couples, when none of the two do contributes as much to the community, as families do, invests as much in timer and money, and securess the future survival of the community by producing and educating kids??

I am against singles like me being given the same tax status and benfits and the same legal status, like families. And for the same reasons I am strictly against giving homosexual couples these benefits and rewards. I qwould contraqdict myself if I will it for the one, and exlcude it for the other. So I rule it out for both - for the sake of families still being recognised as something special that is more important than singles, and homosexual relations.

Have you somehow been asleep for the last seventy years?

While admittedly giving singles the same tax status as couples is daft, gay couples can procreate if willing to go over a few hurdles.

Oh, I dunno, you're actually on-topic now. It's a start.

So if you have a tomboy or an especially feminime man, they shouldn't be allowed to marry because mommy isn't being a real mommy if she works full-time and takes her kid on motorcycle rides? You have to "serve a role model" to rear a kid now? Poppycock.

Disgusting. My aunt and uncle cannot reproduce either, yet they contribute to our society just fine, and my beloved 10-year old cousin would very well still be in an orphanage in China if it wasn't for them. Please think before you post:nope:.

Then neither are other people who are unable or unwilling to reproduce. We would have to terminate the marriages of a ton of sterile cancer patients if marriages were only to serve as a baby factories for "the tribe". Even then, there's such a thing as artificial insemination and adoption, thus homosexual/lesbian couples can, and do, raise couples together just like straight couples.

Or maybe I just don't understand what on earth it should have to do with gay marriage.

50 years ago, all white people were free to marry other white people, and black people were free to marry black people.

"Indeed. If we're to let white people marry Negroes, what's next? People will be marrying cows, and children, and sheep! It's a slippery slope, I'm telling you!"

Buzzz. Wrong. Singles, collegues and people in "social relationships" can marry each others just like gays can.

Again, sterile couples do not reproduce either, yet they're allowed to marry just fine. Heck, sex offenders, spouse-beaters, poverty-stricken, and terminally ill people are allowed to marry. Reproduction or the ability to raise children in an optimal environment has never been a requirement of marriage.

Appeal to nature. Logical fallacy.

Bollocks. Homosexuals can have sex with the otrher gender and reproduce just like we straight people can. Period.

Appeal to common practice.

*Hustgucknochmalnachwerfamilienministerinisthust* ;)

*warstdreisekundenschnellerwieich*

:D

Hu, seems Mrs. Schröder has left a huge impression on me :D But the initiative for that policy chnage derives to Leyen'S time as minister, as far as I know. It had not been stated that clearly before her.

Trekchu, Safe-Keeper,

when you are determined to intentionally misunderstand the point I am after, and twist what I say into absurd distractions, then no argument is able to adress that, no matter what argument it is.

And you two know better anyway what I said and meant, don't you. ;)

Try to paraphrase your position in big friendly letters so what we might all better understand, because what your wrote was understood in the same way by me as it was by trek and Safe-Keeper.

But they don't have the natural drive to do so, which is what propagates a species. Period.


...well, maybe not "period", of course if you're suggesting that homosexuality is a choice rather than instinct...

Indeed it has. But, quite frankly, it would be unnatural and would redefine what it is to be human should the species rely solely or dominately on such methods.

No. When I say I don't understand what you mean, I mean it. Try to be a little less verbose and a bit more clear. Quality over quantity, my friend.

But since we're not looking at a future in which everyone will rely on this method, this is irrelevant to the discussion. It's rather like being against the use of trucks because "there would be nothing but traffic jams if every vehicle on the road was a truck".

Of course. But bear in mind that Homosexuals of either gender with a will to have kids are a minority. The scaremongering that some are doing in regards to 'traditional marriage' makes it sound like it's the other way around.