Hahahaha, once again you are being ridicilous. First of all, it is all in my opinion. If someone is gay, I will accept but I won't agree with it. As I said, if a state legalizes gay marriage, will I care? Nope. It happened. No problem with me. I am personally not for gay marriage.

Again, my personal belief. That is all.

America doesn't give a **** about your "personal belief". What is so bad about loving the same sex? How about if you love someone who is trans?

In the most respectful and polite manner possible, can I ask you if you think this is justifiable grounds for objecting to the way other people live their lives?

And my last questions are here if you want to look at those too.

Okay, now try and continue this discussion like grown fucking adults. Anymore personal insults will result in infractions.

But why? What are the moral implications for being gay? What negative effects will it have on the individual and/or society? I'm asking for specifics here.

You've pretty much skirted around the actual answe we've been looking for, Franco. We know you feel homosexuality is wrong (but that you're okay with gay people) but we want to know why in your opinion do you find it wrong?

He's earned the insults by avoiding parts of the discussion that he seems unwilling to talk about (i.e. specific reasons why he feels homosexuality is wrong). If he wants to act like a troll, then he should be treated like a troll.

I don't care, this isn't the lounge, we have standards in this subforum that are quite clearly stated and if you don't feel like following them then don't post here.

Am I attacking him? I still think it's a lame rule that protects morons and doesn't really protect intelligent discussion. Trolls are trolls and deserve what they get.

This for me is our real problem. We've yet to see any clear moral reason for it being wrong. And it seems to me that this is unreasonable to oppose gay marriage from just a personal conviction that it's wrong.

Sorry, but rules against flaming and personal attacks are beneficial to intelligent discussion because it forces people to focus on their actual arguments instead of resorting to childish name calling. Franco may have an opinion people disagree with but he is still a regular contributing member and the rules regarding personal attacks apply to him, too.

That's not to say you can't disagree with him or even insult his position on a particular topic but resorting to personal attacks won't be tolerated.

That's really what I'm arguing for. I think that the people here are insulting his position, which in this instance, can't really help but insult him at the same time.

I think its definitely possible to argue against or show dissaproval of a person's position without resorting to insulting them personally. We've noticed some personal attacks in here and I personally can observe that they were unnessecery to get the point across.

This is all very well, but Franco has hardly made any real attempt to indulge himself in intelligent debate and neither has he made any real attempt to explain his position. He just takes the inflammatary posture of this is wrong, that is wrong, but I'm ok with it, even though I don't like it, but it makes no difference as its never going to happen anyway etc. If ever a troll wanted to get up people's noses he certainly knows how to do it. He's yet to try and actually explain his position, if he's going to post such controversial opinions, he at least owes this forum some kind of explanation.

I think what I'd like to see is some kind of justification from him that his convictions of homosexuality being morally wrong are valid enough to MERIT homosexual marriage from being prohibited.
We'd mind less if he was just honest and said he was uncomfortable with it, but what I'd like to see is an explanation as to where exactly these convictions are founded.

Separating emotion from logic is something that comes with time and practice. It may be that Franco hasn't had a lot of experience with debates of this nature. Continuing to berate him is not going to change his opinion, or make him support it if he's operating on emotion. I personally have just as difficult a time separating my feelings from reason in some topics of an ethical or legal nature, and it took me many arguments to learn how to keep out of a discussion if I don't have a valid point or am prone to becoming frustrated with it.

Based on the lack of intelligent debate that he has put across to support his viewpoint so far, I doubt that he's going to be able to justify his position based on liberal values of freedom of choice, or even on more conservative values in that its morally wrong. He will do what most trolls do when cornered and consistently play the card of "Its my opinion and I'm entitled to it etc" Whilst still continuing to trigger the debate.

I will say really why I am not for gay marriage

1) I feel that a marriage is meant to between a man and a woman. I can't really imagine same sex really being able to produce children on their own. They will always need surrogant mothers to get children.

2) Another reason is that it will not solve the issue of hatred of gay people. In fact, I fear that they will be a major civil war between pro-gay marriage people and anti-gay marriage people and that they will be so much conflict that people will die. I know this because at my school, this issue never has a good debate instead fighting. Their will be more of that if gay marriage is legalized. Believe me, that will be the case.

Conan, thanks again for your respect. I respect you man. Thanks for defending though you disagree with you. Like I said, I am nice to everyone. I will always welcome the gays with me. No problem.

Point one has some reasoning behind it and foceses on man's mission to reproduce, but if everybody married and reproduced that would create huge global problems worldwide.

Point two though is complete and utter nonsense that we are now accustomed to on here and what are you on about with civil wars and people dying if gay marriage is legalized!!!

BTW there is no need to thank one of the mods at the end of your post, in some attempt to justify your trolling, you're actually fooling no one.

OK, you deserve credit here for trying.
The only way of having offspring is by either a surrogate parent or adoption. However, do all marriages have to produce children?
I know a lot of people who don't want children at all, so I don't quite think this works out all the time.
I personally don't buy that for a second.
So far, out of the hundreds of people who post on this forum every day, only a few of us are arguing strongly over this issue. This reflects on a small scale what is true for the whole population: not enough people are concerned enough either way to possibly start something to a scale as great as you suggest. Also, the will of those prepared to defend gay rights far outweighs the hatred in the opposite direction: gay pride marches attract thousands, whilst there are hardly ever any anti-gay protest marches. People who disagree are often happy to just stay out of other people's lives.

If your welcoming of the gays, it seems a very natural step to accept the fact they want to be in a marriage union. They want the rights you are afforded plain and simple.

Now that just ain't natural:yikes:

Another great point. Marriage is the one of a long string of civil liberties everyone is entitled to - allowing it for some but not others is not only unfair but also inconsistent.

Why? Why is it meant to be between a man and a woman? If it's just because of your "feeling" and has no logical basis, then you should stop polluting logical discussions, because gut "feelings" have no place in them. Give us actual logical reasons why you think homosexuality is wrong (i.e. I don't want to hear about your "feelings") or just admit that you have no idea what you're talking about.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XhU7ha3UzB...00/duh-duh.jpg

I am going to make this really simple for everyone posting in this thread. This discussion is boiling down to two possibilities:

1) Posters are harassing a member of this forum, which will result in moderator action.
2) A user of this forum is trolling threads, and posters are motivating them to do so.

In either outcome, the conversation is going to end the same way. Here is a suggestion to circumvent all of the frustration possibilities 1 & 2 have to offer:

• Stop responding to the inflammatory posts.

Mods have been in and out of this thread, and if it gets out of hand one more time, there will be consequences.



Thanks folks!

Fine. There's nothing to be gained from this discussion anyway. But this is exactly what I was talking about, if he isn't a troll, he still brought this on himself and deserves what he gets. Other people shouldn't be punished for his crap.

Be the bigger man here.

I am. The rule still bugs me though, but I know it's not gonna change and I don't feel like banging my head against the wall. So, it is what it is I guess.

It's pretty simple really. You try debating with someone. If they turn out to be a blabbering retard don't bother doing it again.

The more people do this the more ignored they'll get and they'll either do 3 things.

1. Wise up & stop Trolling
2. Get bored and leave because nobody's biting.
3. Ramp up the trolling to the point where us mods can categorically say OK he's trolling time to go.

It's simple really. He'll I've seen No 3 happen in a matter of less than a couple of weeks before.

So what's being said here, is if we don't play Franco's silly game, he'll just get bored and find something more interesting to do in Minnesota. And hopefully, a more intelligent debater will take up his slack.

This sounds good, so Franco me old china, do the decent thing and bugger off!:p:

Look, I am not for gay marriage but that does not mean I am a homophobe for that. I already said I accept gay civil union, gays being able to serve the army openly, and gays having health benefits. Anyone should be for that and I am for that. I believe in traditional marriage and that is my belief.

Everyone is different. Name calling does not anything. As I said, most Americans agree with me. Allwise why then only nine states have gay marriage and the other 41 states do not. Because most Americans do not accept Gay Marriage. That is truth. Most of the states who have gay marriage was because the government did their selves.

I do not wish Gay pepole any ill. Anyone can disagree with me. Fine, you have to do so. But let me make it clear, I am not a bigot or a homophobe. I respect everyone's lifestyles even if I don't agree with it. I am a nice guy and understands that everyone has their views.

lol

What do you mean in the line I bolded?

Secondly, Its not about "agreement" its a civil right. Its illegal not to have ay marriage.

Big 3, I think he means it was done through judicial activism.

Neap, man, I was laying to ground work for exposing hypocrisy. I knew what he meant - now I'm going to have to rig up this framework all over again...

Well, FPK, I guess I'll just have to hope you're honest when i ask you these.

If people elect officials to represent them in government, and the government did this "their selves" then how isn't this people choosing to have gay marriage?

Hey everybody! Something great happened!

That's fantastic that you were part of it all - I'm proud that we have someone out there fighting for civil rights here on this forum!

(Hopefully things will go uphill from here).

Maryland Senate passes same-sex marriage bill - The Washington Post

You're not the only ones, Californians.

I read that this morning, yayayayay!

You just know somebody somewhere is now referring to it as "Marry Land".

I laughed pretty hard when I saw how the votes broke down:

LINK

So, out of the 25 supporters, only 1 was a Republican. If you break down state senators by Geography, you get; 2 from Prince George’s 5 were from Baltimore county, 6 from Baltimore itself, 8 from Montgomery, and the remainder elsewhere. Meaning, of course, that the supporters are incredibly concentrated geographically.

As compared to:

Whereas, for opponents, 10(!) of the 22 were Democrats. If you break down state senators by Geography, you get; 4 from Anne Arundel, 3 from Prince George’s, and 2 from Harford - meaning opponents represent a wider geographical area.

It certainly seems there will be interesting primaries for all the Democrats, especially for those state senators of St. George's island, since they're all five of them are Democrats, but 3 went against and 2 went for.