Note to moderation team: A friendly, calm, and respectful discussion about the origins of the so called gay rights with a special focus on marriage. The thread is void of any reference to hate speech.
I'd just like to know where these so called gay rights stem from. It's not human rights. It does not follow that a man should be free from harassment (a human right) and also have a right to marry whomever he wants. This is the essential doctrine of gay rights (in my opinion). It seems to go from everyone's right to be free of harm to everyone's right to marry - a strange leap of faith. There is no such legal right to marry. It's a privilege with attached conditions and necessary exclusions.
So what's the justification for allowing same-sex marriage? Equality doesn't cut it because there is no such thing as absolute, unqualified legal equality. The law is full of exceptions that are essentially discrimminatory. In the USA, a man can be refused employment as a dressing room minitor at a female clothing store. A black man can be denied casting as a historically white character in a movie production.
You know I did some searching on the origins of marraige and could not find a single common denominator. Throughout history, cultures have attached different conditions and different meanings to the union. Well, except one thing that was universal, namely marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Marriage may have changed but who married did not. That should say something about marriage between a man and a woman as a self-evident truth.
Does this not mean that same-sex marriage is purely a political ideology? As such it can only be defensible under a relativist/social constructivist perspective.
Please keep responses respectful.