I'm not even sure if void is still here or not, but I generally enter topics late so I thought I'd throw my two cents in anyway.
I say fooling around because I dont like to word dating, having a boyfriend, couple... its fun to explore...there are a lot of allowances for younger people to have some fun, after you grow up you should start a normal family.
Personally these sentiments to me speak of what is often referred to as being "bi-curious". While some of those that go through this period of experimentation do eventually express a gay or bisexual orientation, the vast majority are straight and simply out for experiences. That being said I certainly do not feel there is anything wrong with this..until it is used in the way you have here telling people with a same-sex orientation that they need to "grow up" and start a "normal" family, as if they are merely not over a stage of juvenile exploration.
As far as normalcy. I find nothing more abnormal than to deny who you are for the sake of society, family or friends. The highest level truth in my life is being true to who I am. Nothing to me causes greater pain than self denial and incongruency of who you are.
Where I live people believe that being gay is wrong and that Japanese people in general are not gay.
Of course people in general are not gay. Even if we were to go with Kinsey's 10% which is widely regarded as being too high an estimate (other ranges placing the number around 3-5% or 5-7%) that would still mean that in general people are not gay. Let me put it another way. People in general are not left handed. I certainly would not deign to argue that being left handed is wrong, different does not mean wrong and being in the majority does not mean you are right.
In general I think gay people themselves dont really care, but this subject is a test on how "open minded" people people who profess to be "open mined" are, kind of like the circular arguements the WT but forward.
I know of gay people that don't care, and I know of some that burn with a passion to be able to marry the people they dearly love. I happen to know several such couples that cried with joy when here, in Canada, they were finally told that they could legally show their commitment to each other. Is the gay marriage debate a litmus test for the general acceptance of homosexuality in society as a whole? Yes it is. Was it pioneered solely for this reason? No it was not. It is just another way of seeing how gay people and being gay in general is perceived, and in some ways giving people a chance to talk about and reason on a subject that had been a societal taboo in the past. I certainly would not call it circular logic and comparing a civil rights struggle to the flagrant disregard for individual wellbeing that is daily manifested by the WT, I find to be somewhat distasteful.
How would you honestly feel if your child was gay?
If my child told me that he or she was gay I would feel nothing but love and support for him or her. I recognize the struggles involved in being gay and I would be determined to be their for them and their partner as much as possible. I would want him or her to set goals the same as I would a straight child and I would take pride in the fact that I know one day they would have a family that was just as valid and happy as anyone else's.
If they brough back a partner that was 10 years older than them?
I'm not sure exactly what you feel is wrong with someone being partnered with a person that is 10 years older than them. One of my aunts is married to someone that is 12 years older than her, they are straight. Does that concept bother you? Or how about in medieval times when girls that were 11 or 12 were married off to older men that were in their 30's? These were straight relationships. I find the argument in the problems of age, particularly as regards to exploitation to be superfluous to the argument of whether gay relationships are legitimate.
Who was into SM in a big way?
I fail to see how the consensual practices of 2 adults is anyone's business but theirs. Frankly I would be a bit disturbed if anyone felt the need to proclaim their kinky sexual practices to me. However, I find no fault in SM in and of itself as long as it is practiced consensually and safely. Are you even aware of the sheer number of couples that engage in some form of SM? Most of them are straight.
Openly camp?
What if my child was dating someone that was openly athletic? Really nerdy? Sophisticated or cultured? Just because someone possesses maneurisms that makes you uncomfortable doesn't make them any less legitimate as a person and certainly does not make a case for why the law should not allow them the same freedoms of everyone else, or why I should somehow be in opposition to them having a loving and committed relationship.
Are you open minded enough to have a gay guy say its wrong for gay people to marry?
Yes I am. What I will not accept is their right to dictate to gays that do what to be able to marry what they can or cannot do with their lives. I don't feel that anyone has this right, gay or straight.
As for points that have been made in this thread regarding children. I know a lesbian couple here that are in their mid to late 20's. Let's call them K and S. K had a couple children while in her teens and her partner left her as a single mom to raise these kids on her own. She was a very loving mother to them an did the best that she could, despite the fact that her own mother hatefully tried to have her children taken away from her, citing religious objections. K happened to meet her current partner, S, while she was back in school building a better life for her and her children. They ended up moving in together and the two of them have been raising the two little girls. The girls are 6 and 8 years old and when asked if they wanted S to move in with them cited how much they loved her and very much wanted that to happen. K and S have both been extremely involved in the lives of their kids and gone to parent teacher nights together etc. I see absolutely nothing in their family life to indicate that these girls are somehow suffering as a result of having two lesbian parents. If anything they are thriving from the love and attention they are receiving.
The question I find imperative is whether it is necessary to have a male and female in order to provide a happy stable relationship for children. Or rather if the importance is for children have a role model in how a happy and successful relationship based on love is to be. Certainly if you are going to argue a male and a female is required this brings into question all kinds of issues of restricting partnerships with people that do not follow the stereotypical values of what is meant to be male or female. Is the posession of a certain set of genitalia, regardless of cultural or social aspects, all that important.
I guess people can only draw on there own life experiences, mine had a mom and dad. I remember distinctly what I loved about my Father, the stubble on his face when he came home from a days work - his manly stance and way about him…..my Mother baking in the kitchen, the contrast and softness of my mom... her gentle caring way.What about the mother that is working her way up the corporate ladder. She works long hours and has no time to listen to her children when they come home. Her idea of a home cooked meal comes out of the freezer and into the microwave. She has no tolerance for softness and raises her kids to be strong, independent, resonsible and unbendingly devoted to their goals. The children's father has a typical clerk job in the local insurance office. He picks the kids up from school, still wearing his suit and tie. He takes them home and asks them about their day, helping his youngest make cupcakes for the school bakesale the next day. He reads them their favorite story and tucks them into bed, long before their mother even finishes up at the office. Could happen? I'm sure it does. In the same way you cannot label all gay relationships in a similarly objective or stereotypical fashion. Certainly your scenario paints a very warm picture of childhood but I find that no grounds to devalue same-sex families.
I feel strongly that you should let the children grown up without wondering about their sexuality all the time
I'm also fairly certain, from dialog that I have had with many of my straight friends, that they certainly did not go through a big agonizing struggle over whether they were gay or straight. They very clearly knew who they were attracted to, these feelings were natural for them. What many gay people want to see happen is for the same to be there for gay children. For them to recognize their feelings, identify them, accept them, and live out a happy life. But as a result of the society these kids have grown up in they go through a very painful struggle to figure out who they are and they are told they are perverse and unnatural. Many struggle with internal conflicts for a long time. This is not somehow caused by gay rights groups putting their message out their, in fact the efforts of these groups are directly providing a counter. It is letting gay kids realize that there is nothing wrong with them, not convincing them that they are gay.
I do believe that this may have been true at one time, but, now I think that the gay community have overdone their job of getting everyone to accept them. It seems to me that kids these days are offered ‘alternative lifestyle choices’ ie. You can be gay or you can choose to be straight - the choice is yours.
However, from my own experiences being gay is certainly not being presented as a legitimate polar choice between two equally attractive options. If this were so I purport that there would not be a bunch of scared gay kids running around trying to pretend they were straight and terrified that someone would out them. I didn't have a choice, I had very much an uphill struggle against a choice that had already been made for me. I find the apparent choice to be a very illusionary one, of the type that my mother often presented to me as "conscience matters". The bottom line being, yes you can choose between these two things, but you certainly better not make the wrong choice. That being said I find that gay people in general dealt with an inward struggle and realization that they were different, it was not something that they chose.
A book series that I found instrumental in overcoming some of my own feelings of guilt, pain and struggle is the Magic series by Mercedes Lackey. A good fantasy read featuring a gay protagonist from a family that is very unaccepting of who he is. There is one passage in the book that was especially meaningful to me when the protagonist was told in no uncertain terms that there was no shame in being himself.
Background: Shay'a'chern here referrs to someone who is attracted to the same sex, the plural gods is used because in this society the religious often worship a plural pantheon (although some profess faith in only a single god), and the word Shay'kreth'ashke is taken to mean partner, life partner, significant other, etc. The words are spoken by a character named Moondance and the specific book in the series is "Magic's Pawn"
This is the thing I wish to tell you; in all the world, there are more creatures than just man tha tmake lifetime matings. Among them, some of the noblest - wolves, swans, geese, the great raptors - all creatures that man could do worse than emulate, in many many ways. And with all of them, ALL, there are those pairings from time to time within the same gender. Not often, but not unheard of eaither. The shay'a'chern pairings occur in nature. How then 'unnatural'? Usual, no; and not desirable for the species, else it would die out for lack of offspring - but not unnatural. The beasts of the fields are innocent as man can never be, who has the knowledge of good and evil and the choice between, and they do not cast out of their ranks the shay'a'chern. There is between you and your shay'kreth'ashke much love - only love. There is no shame in loving. Where there is love, the form does not matter, and the gods are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the gods did not approve, it would not be there.