I think something we can all agree on is that video games are a hell of a lot of fun, and that GOG's as good a place as any to buy them.

People throw around the word "homophobia" because it sounds good and it assigns a disease-like mental state for someone who disagrees with the "non-homophobe?" as to the extent of rights and privileges given to homosexuals.

And perhaps rightfully so.

But I think the real issue in the gay marriage discussion has little to do with what is being said. Most Christians would define marriage as a binding agreement between a man, a woman and God for lifelong accountability, care and love. Most current atheists/secularists would define marriage a binding agreement between two(?) humans for lifelong accountability, care and love.

The problem starts with the definition of the 2 words that are used. They both sound like "marriage" but they are quite different. Do most Christians believe that two homosexuals in a free world should have the right to have a lifelong pact for accountability, care and love? I doubt it.

Do Christians believe that two homosexuals can make a binding agreement with God in the same way? Absolutely* not.

*some do, particularly more liberal denominations

The issue has nothing to do with a person's fear or love of a homosexual. It has everything to do with the way they see the foundations of marriage working.

Also, pastors have a bigger fear of the government than they do of gays and lesbians. They are afraid that the government will force them to marry* people that they do not agree should be married. (*remember that for the pastor, "marry" means between man, woman and God)

Instead of hurling "homophobe!" at people, people should start with the realization that

1) People are all trying to do their best
2) People start where they start. If you want them to see your point of view, you have to get them to another place.
3) People generally only hate when they are hated. Breaking down the barriers starts with love.

In my eyes, the government should have no dealings in marriage in the U.S. (I understand this is global, but I can only speak for my own country). The church should be over Christians and whoever the gays and lesbians and atheists and secularists prefer can officiate their weddings.

Well, then, I'm a homophobe: I'm against marriage, hence also against gay marriage (obviously).

I find it interesting that you - who are obviously not against marriage, otherwise you wouldn't see it as homophobia because it includes the special case gay marriage - are so quick to label it homophobia. You disagree, fine, but because gays are (also) involved, you're jumping straight to the conclusion that it must be about gays. It's much the same with racism - if people don't agree with arguments unrelated to sexuality/race, they automatically counter them by crying homophobe/racist, rather than discuss the actual arguments. It reminds me of how doctors etc in the USA in he 60's (or something) tried labeling anyone wanting universal healthcare as bolsjeviks and what not.

This auto-labeling makes me more than a bit worried when it comes to adoption. No, I'm not against adoption, at least not the way it's usually handled in most western countries I know (I'm against buying children, just like I'm against all human trade). The most important point is that potential adopters are evaluated on an individual basis, e.g. as humans, not as members of this or that "group of people" - categorizing only makes sense when you are unable to evaluate on an individual basis; it's dilluted, second-grade information.

What worries me is that because the only way for gay people to have children is to either be one single parent living with another person of the same sex (who may also be a parent, though unrelated) - as a married couple, if they're into that - or to adopt a child. Some people therefore tend to compare gay adoption to two heterosexuals conceiving a child, based on that "everyone should be able to have children". With that way of thinking, gay adoption is no longer the same as "hetero adoption", and even worse, turning down a gay adoption (and adopters are being turned down all the time) is suddenly a hate crime or at least expressed homophobia.

Marriage and adoption aside, people should be more careful with assigning labels to others. The labels themselves are usually less real than the fear most people have of being slapped with one. That can often lead to irrational behaviour which in turn makes things even worse. Conversely, it's not uncommon for people to "embrace" a label to its fullest extent if they find out they can't "shake it off" anyway. You wouldn't want me to start beating up gays, just because I'm against marriage regardless of sexual preferences now would you?

pH7
- homophobe and totally ok with it

As long as special, legal rights are conferred, no one gets to make this debate primarily about religious views, I'm sorry. Marriage is a legal construct way more than it is some sort of religious construct, and has been that way for a long ass time.

Being against gay marriage is little different than being for Jim Crowe-ism, you're basically arguing that only the group with which you identify gets access to special privileges. That's really about it.

Homophobia is different, though often comorbid, and often does mean just what it sounds like it means, "an irrational fear about being exposed to the gheys."

FWIW, if you hope to sway people, you're absolutely right, starting out by name calling and other forms of denigration is not really the smart play. But, for some, we're beyond that now, this is telling people, "Shut the fuck up, no one agrees with your poor rationalizations you throw up to disguise your bigotry." And honestly, I cannot blame folks for that, the bigotry in this instance is being slowly marginalized, as it should be.

When the bigotry is gone, we can have a short, rational debate about whether limiting marriage to the traditional Judaic concept is worthwhile, it will almost certainly be rejected as archaic and we'll move on, no tears shed. But right now, that debate isn't possible, because for every halfway rational person who wants to make a point about "traditional" marriage there's a 50 more actual homophobes spouting bigotry and hatred.
Ninjaed, apparently.

Unless I'm missing something, you just made the opposite argument of what you intended to make.

The idea of races hasn't been that they were significantly different for as long as I can remember. It's that they had a set of genes associated with them and that has proven to not be the case. If that's the case nobody has managed to find them and at this point that idea looks likely to never besupported.

Yeah, in the relative distant past or amongst racists, that view has been held, but for modern folks, the notion that there's this significant set of differences was never very well supported. Humans just didn't branch out long enough ago to see much genetic drift.

Sorry, but your initial argument makes no sense at all. You are not homophobic, you are anti-marriage, it seems (or maybe not as much as anti, but you didn't make your opinion clear enough to define that). And yes, that comes from the very simple fact that you say to be against marriage whether straight or gay. You basically took what I said and applied it in a completely different direction than was intended - and which was made very clear by the context, of people being against gay marriage/adoption in particular.

Really, if every time I want to say a simple argument I have to say every single conceivable exception to it, as well as special cases that may be in a gray area, and also a global view on the whole subject, proceeding to every argument pro and against and neither, I might as well skip internet forums altogether and work on a master's thesis that at least might bring me something more useful.

As with my views on marriage, I don't share the usual view of it as others do, but since many people want it, then I can just let them have it, no problems.

I agree with many of your latter points, though. With a few exceptions. Turning down a gay adoption is homophobia if the only reason they turned it down was the adopters being gay. See: http://www.explosm.net/comics/2935/

Also, labels exist for a reason. It's true that they are not a complete way to see human thoughts, reactions and opinions, but we rely on simplification to deal with complex subjects. It's a mistake to take labels to such extremes, yes, but unfortunately all too common. If the only way to fight it is to only make arguments as I described in my little rant above, then I'm out.

We actually did, we just fuck everyone we can and are pretty mobile, so any drift gets moved on in such a short time to everyone else that no significant drift happens, or rather, we all drift together:)

I wonder how Democrats felt 30 years after filibustering the Civil Rights Act for two months. I've engaged in debates (I use this term with abandon) with you previously and you are the definition of a lazy-minded liberal. You base your view points on shallow, naive perceptions and an extreme lack of knowledge of politics, history, economics - and in general - the real world. You care enough to voice your opinons with conviction but can't be bothered to put a fraction of that effort toward learning about the subjects you discuss.

Even less-than-informed people can understand that cultures and traditions evolve over time. Gay marriage was taboo not more than a generation ago so to act so pretentious about your particular belief is beyond ignorant. Right or wrong this particular topic is one that challenges beliefs and traditions some people have held for all of their lives. The right to marry whomever you want in a free society is so common sense to some of us but to others it's a radical departure from their established values.

The 13th, 15th, and 19th constitutional amendments are all very similar evolutions of American culture and government. Not to mention the CRA and a whole bundle of legislative activity over the past two centuries. Cultures grow and regardless people have a right to believe what they want to believe. Remember that it isn't always as simple as right and wrong. That is intellectually lazy and the hallmark of liberal discourse.

For the record, I'm a libertarian who is voting republican in November (I wish every American could agree on that) who supports the right of people to marry whoever the hell they want.

I'm well aware of this fact, and it's a piece of shame for the Democrats (of which I am not one). I see we're on the name calling and slandering bandwagon, now, so I'll just leave it at that.
Okay, one more point:

I COULD GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEIR VALUES WHEN THEY ARE OPPRESSIVE.

Seriously, would you make this same argument about wife beating? Some shit is simply not defensible and I don't give a flying fuck how you grew up or what you were taught. Pull your head out of your ass or I'm happy to say your a hillbilly moron.

Seriously the same people making the argument you just made would be the FIRST to jump all over Islamic tradition they found hateful (some of it rightfully hateful, btw).

I'm not sure I follow you. My point was about the percentages being thrown around - regardless of any "genetic tells", this kind of "information" is completely useless, and in the case of DS, unfair. I don't know nearly enough about genetics to even want to speculate in whether or not it's even possible to deduce one's "race" from one's DNA, but throwing around numbers like that would to most people indicate that there is.

It's like saying "today Barrack Obama did not kill any innocent bystanders on his way to work" - I don't really know if he's ever done that but I guess not, however, most people would read that as he's being doing that "a lot" and that we don't know about it only because it's been covered up (add more conspiracy theories if you like). Not a good example, but it's mostly the same "mechanism".

Come to think of it, a couple of years ago I heard something about drugs being more effective on people of certain "races" than others, meaning that the international pharmaceutical companies had to make different drugs for different regions in some cases. Personally, I'd think this would be because of environmental/cultural(food) differences as every drug interacts with what's "already there", and that is largely caused by one's diet.

Anyway, I'm open to the possibility (after all I don't know worth shit either way) that genetic combinations may exist that could be used as a "racial differentiator", but that wouldn't change anything - humans are humans. Likewise, there may be a "genteic tell" that tells if one's left or right handed; but unless it has any medical application, it's nothing more than interesting trivia.

I'm highly (har har) interested in this research, where is it?

I see. I said that the two can coincide to show that they are not mutually exclusive positions. Hence they can't be the opposite ends in a range of ideas. As an example the more militant feminists must ring a bell.

You actually blend two different, but related, questions and this is where your reasoning becomes muddled. One is "can a man be feminist?" and it has its own range of answers. The second one is "should a man be?" and it has another range of answers.

This is why I said that they are not wildly different ideas of what feminism is. An individual can believe both are true at the same time. That you could reach a conclusion by combining them is actually proof of that, but you did throw it like an accusation. I'm just pointing an error in reasoning.

Exactly - I'm not homophibic (at least not in this respect). Yet that's what I'd be called if it wasn't so obvious that my reason for disagreeing with gay marriages (as well) doesn't have anything to with sexual preferences. However, if it was more complex than that - as it usually is - would people take the time to actually go through my arguments/line of reasoning and see if I'm actually a homophobe? In most cases no. Most people think "I don't buy your arguments, hence you're a homophobe, which means I'm not going to waste time listening to your drivel".

Normally I'd say it would be on me to make it clearer what I was talking about, but I wanted to make the point above. Sorry for "leading you on" (if that's the right expression) there. Of course, it's usually a good idea to at least indicate that one's aware that there are exceptions, if not actually try to list all of them - it's pretty crucial in logic to know if there are exceptions or not.

One exception I added but removed as the post was getting long enough as it was, was that yes, sometimes what's looking like homophobia at a cursorary glance is homophobia, like adoptinos turned down because one/both is gay (given that they're allowed to adopt if gay, of course - the world's a big place with different laws). Luckily, wherever there is individual evaluation according to a given set of guidelines, homophobia/racism/sexism can be identified as such (within reasons). It's a lot tougher when it's only based on groups, like with legislation etc.

My main gripe with labels (any label) - necessary as they are - is that they do tend to reinforce what got you labeled with it in the first place. That's something one should be careful with, weighing the pros and cons every time. There's also a huge difference in saying "that's a moronic statement" versus "you're a moron".

Am I getting side-tracked here? I'd like to think I'm not. Making people agree isn't just about making people feel the same way about something (give or take) - two people can be arguing for hours even though they essentially mean the same, yet thrown off by a lot "debate debris" caused by inaccuracies and communication with negative side-effects.
It was a tv documentary thingie about making drugs to fight certain wide-spread diseases I think. I'll try to dig around and see if I can find anything. I wouldn't be too surprised if it was just "sloppy journalism" (perhaps with an agenda for all I know) as I've seen enough "documentaries" about things I actually know more about than those presenting it. Which is why I didn't present it as "fact".

Edit:
I don't even know what to search for but I've found this: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2003/pr19/en/index.html which is pretty inconclusive (old study, small sample, don't have any theories why at that point etc), but it'd probably be "enough fact checking" for most tv journalists to present as "fact".

Well, now you're making sense. I don't have much more to comment on the matter, then, as I just agree with all the rest. In the end, it all boils down to "people make a lot of mistakes, they should put more thought into their actions and opinions". World-changing, wouldn't that be?

Meanwhile, I should make a keyboard macro with the text "Exceptions may apply." Perhaps put it in my signature in forums that do have them.

Bare in mind that we're still like 99% ape DNA walking around, I'm not really sure it's that much drift. And some other species will see more genetic difference than that within the same species.

But yes, the relative closeness of population and the mobile sexings via trade route prostitution probably did keep that somewhat down. Hmm, I wonder if anybody has ever studied the link between prostitution and decreased genetic diversity over long distances.