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Let's do religion, because that's easy to point out. There's:

HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER

What does any of what you just said have to do with gay marriage? I apologize for not understanding your point, but could you possibly be more specific as to how what you said and the topic at hand correlate?

DMLD96, on 24 May 2011 - 10:12 PM, said:

Have you read the original hebrew text and interpreted it based on current information about the time said text was originally written or otherwise produced?
Your argument is invalid unless you have proof that what the English translation seems to imply is the original meaning.

That, and Christianity technically isn't bound by the Jewish law.

Edit: So Meowth's art is alcohol discussion and Gay Marriage is Religious flamewars.
I think I'll just quit now. G'night.

I think Meleeman is claiming he was molested by gay people, ...

Also, a few pages back Comedy was worried that if gay marriage were legal, churches could be prosecuted under hate laws if they refused to perform marriage ceremonies that ran against their religion. He also mentioned how it was against the Bible, and we had a lovely debate about the merits of trying to convince people to do what God says and the details of love in Christian theology.

Here's a flowchart:

Gay Marriage Not Allowed
It's Because People Wanting To Control Others
One Of The Main Controllers of Controlling
An Example Of Religion and Society Trying To Control Via Talking About A Ten Commandment (commandment being another term of controlling since someone is giving a command and trying to make the other person do it which is obvious control) and And Crooked Cops

1) But religious flamewars are awesome! 2) There's nothing better than debating with someone too stubborn to be convinced; 3) that way they can't ruin your fun by agreeing with you.

Borg Lord, on 24 May 2011 - 10:18 PM, said:

As I'm sure you have all already established, that is not a valid point. The fact he was molested (whether it was true or not) is not substantial; this is because assuming all gay people are like that is a gross generalization that also happens to be false.

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Yes, because if gay marriages were legal, not allowing them would be considered a hate crime. The punishment would be just. Of course, if people have such an issue with it, they could make a law that, instead of banning gay marriages, gives the power to wed couples by choice. This could be given to establishments and individuals.

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I thought you were against gay marriage. This sounds pro-gay marriage.

its a logical theory, while it is attacking Darwinism and the big bang theory, it still makes a valid point that Intelligent design is not a mythical legend, but the idea is so prejudiced by the scientific community because all they know is Darwinism and the big bang theory, and intelligent design is veiwed as a religion, not a theory. have you seen all of expelled?

In the interest of centralizing the debate, I'm bringing a piece of my debate with Meleeman that wound up in another thread over here, since the "your views on" thread does not seem like the place to clog up with this.

To whoever said:
"Wait, what?
Intelligent design NEEDS a god. You can't believe in one without believing in the other, there has to be some form of deity that has created life. That's where the term "Creationism" comes from.
You may not believe in the christian god, but you must believe in some sort of god if you're a evolution denier creationist."

Intelligent design? Basically it's a group of people trying to have control of one another. We as humans always try to be better than one another, if you think about it. But back to the point, God pretty much sounds like bullshit and the bible is just another way of controlling one another. Though, it sometimes has good ideas, like love on another, it does pass off some bullshit things.

Blazenarm, on 24 May 2011 - 07:22 PM, said:

*suits up in armor* Alright, who to kill beat with logic first? (This is just a joke.)

In the interest of centralizing the debate, I'm bringing a piece of my debate with Meleeman that wound up in another thread over here, since the "your views on" thread does not seem like the place to clog up with this.

Meleeman, on 24 May 2011 - 04:53 AM, said:

As I mentioned above, although it was after you said this, I'm only watching the parts you link. I'm making the assumption that since these pieces are supposed to support your claims, you are showing me the more compelling parts of it, implying that I can safely conclude that there isn't anything resembling a properly-structure argument in the rest of it either. I don't care to take the time to go through the whole thing analyzing all the mistakes; I spent an hour on the piece I dissected most recently, and unless you ask really nicely I'm not going to randomly invest another eight hours into picking apart the rest of it.

And let us assume for a moment that Expelled is telling the truth in the parts I've seen. Let us assume that life actually does require the correct 250 proteins to spontaneously form and collect together for it to arise of its own accord. Let us further assume that the question of how the first life arose is a vital cornerstone of evolutionary theory, rather than being peripheral and irrelevant. If we can sustain this hypothetical universe against all the contradictions that are bound to pop up when we base it on such drastic lies, we see that evolution remains a better theory than intelligent design. Both are entirely successful at predicting that life exists in a variety of forms, which brings us to Occam's Razor: which theory is simpler? Our twisted version of evolution requires the aforementioned 250 proteins, which I agree does sound a little unlikely (maybe even not a near-certain bet given up to a billion years for life to arise). Intelligent design requires God or some equivalent unnamed yet suspiciously godlike being to spontaneously arise for no apparent reason in a form allowing the creation of life. I don't know precisely how many proteins it takes to make a human, but it's certainly more than 250, and this designer would presumably be more complex since humans, you may note, are not born with the ability to genetically engineer life from scratch. Or perhaps the official story is that this designer was also intelligently designed, and so on and so forth, and intelligent design theorists spend their free time practicing their immaturity to make sure they are willing to keep on answering the same thing over and over until you get fed up with asking and storm off and they declare that means they won the argument. Although probably the most probable theory is that it's simply a double standard: evolution is required to explain how the first life arose, but the origin of the designer is irrelevant to intelligent design, because they said so and because if we don't agree they'll throw a tantrum about how it's not fair that evolution gets all the respect just because it has evidence to back it up.

I don't think that was his point. Whatever may have happened to a hypothetical deity in the last however long, if such a deity created life then such a deity must have existed. And then we get into questions like "where did such a deity come from?" and "is it really necessary to theorize such a deity which has never been observed?" and all the other standard questions about theism. I'm assuming that was something more like DMLD96's point. Rebutting arguments nobody made (I guess you're imagining one of us said "if there's a God, why is the world the way it is?") does not actually contribute to your case.

Just to check, when you say "Charles Dawkins" you mean "Richard Dawkins," right? Not Charles Darwin?

Meleeman, on 24 May 2011 - 04:10 AM, said:

2) You're absolutely right. I am extremely prejudiced against idiots and bigots. I guess you caught me.
3) I'll get back to this one; I figure I owe it to you to watch that video so I can better explain why you're wrong, it's wrong, and how gullible you must have been to believe it. I'd like to get through the other points first though.
4) I suppose you must have had trouble reading through my sarcasm, or I misjudged yours. So I'll lay out two scenarios of what's been said so far, nice and straightforward:
You said "if you judge by what hurts people, killing criminals is right" by which you meant "killing is wrong, so utilitarianism (sorry but big words mean less redundant typing; look it up if you must) is wrong." I responded "killing criminals hurts them. Problem solved." You responded "killing criminals hurts their families. Why do you want to kill them?" I now respond "were you even listening?"
or
You said "if you judge by what hurts people, killing criminals is wrong" by which you meant "killing criminals is okay, so utilitarianism is wrong." I still responded "killing criminals hurts them. Problem solved." You then said (actually in this scenario I have no idea what you were trying to say just now). I now respond "your morals are seriously messed up; seek help."
5) I could bring up the fact that some life, including for example tardigrades which are multicellular, can survive in space, or that you don't need nearly so much complexity to have something capable of replicating itself, but it seems like a waste of time to elaborate on those ideas unless you give me some reason to believe you have even the slightest idea what you are talking about here, or at least that you have the slightest idea what point you are even responding to.

Oh, and while I'm watching that video, you can get to work on explaining the story with human sacrifice. I remember it's in Genesis somewhere. You know, the guy who has to be general against some invading group and sacrifices his daughter in gratitude for God having him win the battle. If you know the Bible so well I'm sure you remember his name, so I don't have to go to the trouble of looking it up.

Alright, watched those ten minutes. I hope you are linking the most important parts, by the way, since I'm probably not going to bother searching through the whole thing without any indications of what to focus on rebutting, and of course if I don't know in what ways you're wrong I can't even try to help you become less wrong.

So, anyway, a clip of a fortune-teller with a crystal ball. That's quite a convincing rebuttal of life forming on crystals. I may just have to change my mind right now. Okay, fine, that is the most egregious example, but simply saying "Ha, that's ridiculous!" does not constitute a proper counterargument. And if it does, I'm going to say right now, "Intelligent design? Ha, that's ridiculous!" And just like that you are convinced.

And let's see, the points put forward . . . first of all, we've got the statement that evolution is less mathematically rigorous than physics. Congratulations, you've just figured out that biology is as hard a science as physics! As the six billionth currently living person to do so, you win the fabulous prize of a slow clap, absolutely free! Now what do I win for noticing the lack of precise math in the origin of life as we know it being "a wizard did it"?

And next, we come to the willingness of scientists to admit when they don't know something. I'm glad that the video is balanced enough to point out the scientist's virtues. I think I can count myself with them, too; I don't know how such stupid ideas originate and will freely admit this, but still am happy to believe empirical evidence that you exist. Now tell me, where did the intelligent designer originate from?

Unfortunately, this now brings us to the blatant lies. Such as that Miller's experiments were a failure; quite the opposite in fact. He successfully created organic molecules, some quite complex, just by putting a little lightning through our best guess of the early Earth's atmosphere. Anybody who was expecting life to spring out of it clearly doesn't understand the difference between a bottle over the course of days and a planet over the course of millions of years (give or take; it is a little hard to determine precisely when the first life evolved since single cells seldom leave fossils, so as much as a billion years for the first successful cell to happen to form is not out of the question). I would think the difference would be obvious, but then again I'm not very good at estimating the extent of human stupidity. Or that life requires 250 proteins; fatty acids like the ones that make up modern cell membranes will naturally form spherical structures in water, and will destabilize and divide in two when they get too big from incorporating molecules picked up from their surroundings. A strand of RNA will tend to replicate a mirror copy of itself assuming there are individual bases floating around, and we've figured out how such bases would spontaneously form from smaller organic molecules. Put that RNA strand inside a pocket of fatty acids, and put it in a solution holding various raw organic molecules, such as say any pool of water on the primordial Earth, and you've got yourself a very simple example of life, and all for the low low cost of zero proteins. Sure, it can't control its motion, interaction with its surroundings, or how often it replicates in any way, but it can replicate and that's all it needs to be able to evolve. Evolution has plenty of time to provide everything else we're used to seeing in cells today.

And finally, I am a bit dubious about the credentials of those scientists, since it was only mentioned that they had them. Even if we are kind enough to just assume they all have PhDs in something related in some way to biology, thus making two unwarranted assumptions, we still run into the problem that you can always find people who got an extensive education, then subsequently suffered brain damage as long as you spend enough time looking. If you take the time to pick out the correct biased sample, you can get any consensus you like. By the way, I do not support a double standard. I have no credentials you know of; I make my arguments from memory mostly and never bother to cite my sources. I offer no proof beyond my stated allegiance to truth that I'm not making everything I say up. I do this because I don't actually care about convincing you; I doubt I could, you struck me immediately as being extremely set in your views. I just like having someone I can be sarcastic at without having to worry about thus blunting the effectiveness of my actual arguments.

And for your next trick, I suggest you bring up eyes. Eyes are quite possibly my favorite anti-evolution argument to rebut.

Just to check, when you say "Charles Dawkins" you mean "Richard Dawkins," right? Not Charles Darwin?

But, yes, Dawkins does not deny that we cannot rule out aliens intervening to create life at some stage and just making it look like it had evolved up to that point. If they did a good job, by definition it would be indistinguishable; it would be pretty sad if Dawkins let himself be caught in such an obvious lie by claiming he can absolutely rule that possibility out.

Stop arguing about intelligent design or evolution, this is about GAY MARRIAGE. There is a beliefs thread where you can spout all your dumb nonsense. Go there. It's irrelevant here.

4. let me clarify. Killing is wrong. no matter how you slice it. but it is necessary at times for self-preservation. making an analogy out of this, homosexual acts, are wrong, if you belive in the bible, thinking about it is also wrong, but since we of course aren't perfect they do it anyway. (grammaticly it doesn't make sense but i'm saying no one is perfect) it's the reason why we still kill whether on accident or whether we belive we have nothing to lose. another argument to this is that smoking is wrong yet we see people do it anyway, and people teach us not to do drugs because they will hurt you. while being gay may not hurt them, it may hurt other people such as their family, and some of you might say "Why do you care" my argument is that i'm bored and that statement shows how self-centered you are like me. christians will tell you that they live for a bigger purpose, basically to change the world. not by handing bibles in peoples hands but simply trying to instigate projects that help society. and advertise their religion. christians are not trying to be a hindrance, they're just trying to help. although some have the wrong idea.

I don't think that was his point. Whatever may have happened to a hypothetical deity in the last however long, if such a deity created life then such a deity must have existed. And then we get into questions like "where did such a deity come from?" and "is it really necessary to theorize such a deity which has never been observed?" and all the other standard questions about theism. I'm assuming that was something more like DMLD96's point. Rebutting arguments nobody made (I guess you're imagining one of us said "if there's a God, why is the world the way it is?") does not actually contribute to your case.

Borg Lord, on 25 May 2011 - 01:58 AM, said:

*fell asleep for about ten hours* Okay, it's going to sound like more religious babble, but it does have a point. My religion, basically, doesn't know if there is a god or God that exists, maybe in another universe, but we don't know. We believe if there's a heaven or hell you should go to based on whether you were good or not, not on sexuality or who you worship. We don't care if you worship some spaghetti monster or Zeus or whatever. We want people to have equal rights, and be treated on whether they are good people or not. That being said, Borg, we don't know who created the universe, we don't know why it was created, or anything like that. We believe that humans are humans, and gay marriage is a right for everyone. (Why do I keep saying "we" when it's my own self-made religion? We also believe that you shouldn't force religion on to things. Religion is a lot like a penis: it's fine to have one, it's good to be proud of it, but don't whip it out in public and don't shove it down people's throats (unless they want it).) Hold on, I'll type more but I'm late so see ya.

Well on an individual basis, yes, the government has no business dealing in such matters, but it's a different matter to prosecute the church as opposed to the preacher. An establishment denying that would be committing a hate crime since basically it would be like refusing to marry a white or black couple for race issues. Although I can plainly see your stand point, I think we have to agree to disagree on the matter.

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Actually, I'm pretty sure that churches do indeed have the right not to marry interracial couples; they can choose who they marry.

Honestly the entire idea of hate crimes is just moronic. It is NOT a hate crime anyway.

You can get a legal marriage without a religious one, and if your religion doesn't recognize your marriage, tough; you cannot force them to do so, and frankly, it would be wrong to. Why are you a member of a religion that disapproves of your life choices in the first place? Seriously folks, maybe you should find a nicer religion, eh?

Actually, I'm pretty sure that churches do indeed have the right not to marry interracial couples; they can choose who they marry.

Honestly the entire idea of hate crimes is just moronic. It is NOT a hate crime anyway.

You can get a legal marriage without a religious one, and if your religion doesn't recognize your marriage, tough; you cannot force them to do so, and frankly, it would be wrong to. Why are you a member of a religion that disapproves of your life choices in the first place? Seriously folks, maybe you should find a nicer religion, eh?

Titanium Dragon, on 25 May 2011 - 05:59 PM, said:

If you had read my previous posts, not far back at all; actually just a few posts ago, you would know that I was speaking of a hypothetical where gay marriages were universally legal. Let me explain what I mean by universally. I don't mean each individual state voting to allow gay marriage, thus making it 'universally legal' as result. What I mean is the Supreme Court deciding to add sexual orientation as suspect class to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (although it would probably happen anyway if every state were to legalize gay marriage individually). This would then make it a hate crime to deny gay marriages. For now though, you're right, they do have the right to deny it.

And saying the consideration of it being a hate crime is moronic is clearly an exaggeration. It's actually quite the debatable matter, as you can plainly see. Allow me to provide a little proof as to why it is not 'moronic.'

"In crime and law, hate crimes (also known as bias-motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, social status or political affiliation."

Stotzer, R.: "Comparison of Hate Crime Rates Across Protected and Unprotected Groups
", Williams Institute, 2007–06. Retrieved on 2007-08-09. "A hate crime or bias motivated crime occurs when the perpetrator of the crime intentionally selects the victim because of his or her membership in a certain group."

"While the courts have applied rational-basis scrutiny to classifications based on sexual orientation, it has been argued that discrimination based on sex should be interpreted to include discrimination based on sexual orientation, in which case intermediate scrutiny could apply to gay rights cases."

See Koppelman, Andrew (1994). "Why Discrimination against Lesbians and Gay Men is Sex Discrimination". New York University Law Review 69: 197. ISSN 00287881
. ; see also Fricke v. Lynch, 491 F.Supp. 381, 388, fn. 6 (1980), vacated 627 F.2d 1088 [case decided on First Amendment free-speech grounds, but "This case can also be profitably analyzed under the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment. In preventing Aaron Fricke from attending the senior reception, the school has afforded disparate treatment to a certain class of students those wishing to attend the reception with companions of the same sex."]

While I will choose not to respond in detail to your comments on religion, I will say it's appalling you would oversimplify things to grossly.

hahaha. but plug. thats kinda funny.

PS. Darkfox I'm pretty sure you'll still get all the same benefits any other army vet would get. I think.

*Salute*

I'll just put my two cents into this little debate. This topic is one of the few things I have a personal and strong opinion on but there are enough people here arguing both sides that I don't think I need to add to this.

Gay marriage should be legalized. It's been slowly happening in internationally and within a few of the US states. We should judge people by if they love someone rather than who they love. It's not something you just chose to be one day. Nobody chooses to accept this harassment and discrimination.

I am soldier in the US Army and I'm not straight like my fellow soldiers. My only hope is that when I'm done serving my country that I can be given the same rights as the soldier next to me.

The Social Disease: Homosexuality

It is in my honest fact that all gay people are poison. They eat sin and regurgitate their sick, anti-Christian love upon the chests of other Baphomet-inspired submonstrosities. Homosexuality does nothing more than decay the moral fiber of America, desanctify the beauty of the legal marriage, and encourage others to engage in the atrocious sacrilege against Lord Jesus Christ. If we do not stand together as a collection of strong, God-fearing, right-wing communities, I fear that homosexuals will have a critical hand in obliterating our rapidly progressing (digressing?) society.

The first issue with homosexuality -- and possibly the biggest cause for concern – is the affect it is having on society. We cannot allow homosexuality to tear apart our families and communities. I dream of a life where my children can go to a safe school that teaches safe subjects; only to have them come home, complete their studies, maybe throw around the pigskin; all before reading the bible and then settling down to an early night’s rest. If we allow homosexuality to run rampant, or encourage it as our Liberal “brethren” seem to do, we can kiss this dream goodbye (especially if it is the same gender as we are). The FCC will be consumed by the red-cheeked sinners and will begin to let corrupt television shows pass by, until eventually anal sex and guy-on-guy is being played on the Disney Channel. Steadily, churches will be replaced with alters to sacrifice animals to the pagan God, Satan. In this dangerously unstable world, the line known as sexuality will become blurred. We will have pansexuals, bisexuals, omnisexuals; and in the end, it will all mean the same thing. In short, the world will devolve to chaos.

The next - and possibly the biggest cause for concern – is that homosexuality desecrates the beauty of marriage. There was a time that you could get a legal, natural marriage, and be confident that you had done something beautiful. It was like two rose buds coming together, their stems intertwined, both blossoming simultaneously. Homosexuals poison this act – like they do to everything. They make it worthless, shameful, and even embarrassing. What was once an act of love between a normal couple is now a tribute to Satan. I, for one, do not plan on standing by while homosexuals destroy the beauty of this sacred act!

The last issue with homosexuality that will be mentioned here -- and possibly the biggest cause for concern – is what I call the “gay-way drug” affect. It is similar to how Marijuana leaves the blasphemous escapist more prone to the addicting effects of more dangerous drugs. An influx in homosexuality will only increase homosexuality, for homosexuality among teens has been Republicanly proven to increase not geometrically, not algebraically, but exponentially. This means that each homosexual relationship will spawn off and create more homosexual relationship, thus stimulating the problems discussed earlier in this thesis. Unless we strive to stop this, the increase will continue, until we are overrun with these immoral children of Belphegor.

I hope now all of my readers, whether conservative or liberal, whether Republican or Democrat, whether superior or inferior, are now up to speed with the dangers of the decadent, satanic ways of homosexuals. If you often find yourself promoting the worship of Pagan Gods (specifically the supreme Pagan God, Satan), then by all means, become a homosexual. If you do not mind the decaying social structure, the death of beauty in all things once sacred, and the disease which spreads through this culture via the concealing mask of a “trend;” then please, go, announce your homosexuality to the world. You’ll just be easier to target. To quote the late, great Adolf Hitler: “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty.”