Comments on: The Case for Marriage

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:48:48 +0000

Dan,
the classical world didn’t recognize ‘being gay’ as an identity exactly, but they were much more tolerant of homosexual behavior and they seem to have gotten a lot of it. Whether this was because of imprinting or because of the role of women in their society is hard to say.
The rise of Greek/Roman interest in and acceptance of grown men taking boy lovers seems to coincide with or even precede their demographic collapse, especially in the Roman case, but whether the relationship is causal is impossible to say.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:56:48 +0000

Bookslinger,

“I would like to see the media pundits explore the likely or possible unintended consequences of SSM. What effects will it have on the _next_ generation? Those who spend their entire formative years under the new system.”

You think anyone knows? There’s not a blueprint for this stuff. This is all uncharted territory. However, if history is any guide, (Romans and Greeks, for example, which were very tolerant of such a lifestyle), your concerns about the future are probably not going to come to pass.

By: Jeremiah J.

Jeremiah J. — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 06:19:13 +0000

“But it will not change any minds.”
My sense is different. Political movements that rely so heavily on a sense of historical inevitability often have problems closing the sale with the naive questioner who hasn’t been told which way the wind is blowing (or even with the one who has). Minds are coming of age, and dying off, every day. I worry more for constitutional law and whether a major party finds it in their interest to support old marriage than I do for people’s minds.

I don’t often read and more rarely agree with National Review, and I find myself agreeing with everything they write in this piece. I haven’t exactly changed my mind, but I have had plenty of inducements to think differently than I do. Perhaps I was destined to be as I am, but perhaps the reasons people gave made a difference.

By: Bookslinger

Bookslinger — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:53:14 +0000

I would like to see the media pundits explore the likely or possible unintended consequences of SSM. What effects will it have on the _next_ generation? Those who spend their entire formative years under the new system.

Will SSM remove the last societal taboo against homosexuality? And if so, how will that first cohort raised therein (without any such taboos) view homosexual acts?

My belief is that as that age group reaches the age of sexual exploration, the explorers, the boundary-pushers, and those whose sexuality is not strongly encoded within them will sexually experiment with homosexuality. And that they, and especially the age group just after them (+4 years) will then see homosexual activity as just another option included in the smorgasboard of sex that the media dishes up every day.

Heaven help those who choose to experiment with homosexuality as their first sexual experience, as one’s first experience has a profound imprinting effect on that person’s future sexual development and identity.

By: agellius

agellius — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:23:44 +0000

Most people don’t know how to think any more. Modernism has pulled the rug out from under logic.

By: Vader

Vader — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:05:23 +0000

Excellent.

But it will not change any minds. The lure of the cliff is too great for this generation of lemmings.