An Excerpt from a Debate on Gay Marriage
The guy I was debating with left as soon as I wrote this post, but I feel the need to have others see this. Basically, if you believe gay marriage should be outlawed based on “moral’ reasons, please read this:
“The founders were not clearly Christian, in fact many were deists. Regardless, that’s not the point. For the sake of argument I’ll grant you your premise and assume that all the founding fathers were devout Christians hell bent on making the U.S. a Christian nation. What does that matter? We are debating what the law should be now, not what the law was meant to be. They thought slavery was okay, and that women weren’t supposed to vote. We changed that.
I am not arguing that laws on marriage are the same as sharia law. I am arguing that the justification for banning homosexual marriage on religious grounds is as valid as the justification for implementing sharia law on religious grounds. Basically, neither works. You cannot justifiably use religious beliefs as a basis for law because freedom of religion is defined by the freedom to not have other religious beliefs determine the laws you live by.
Therefore, to outlaw homosexual marriage, you have to find a different basis for condemning it. And the fact is, you can’t. Gay people won’t reproduce on their own regardless of whether or not you call them civil unions or married. There are no victims, therefore it should not be outlawed.
Any objections?”
