Because some people are brought up to privilege certain teachings, which for sub-some people include certain asshole propositions, above reason, of course. But yer right, yer right.

Gay marriage will be like Obamacare, just a lot of glitchy, bumpy, ugly beginnings in its rollout until people will look back years from now after most of the kinks are straightened out. They will then see that it was for the better anyhow.

What's wrong with us is the bible.

No, I don't buy that. The Bible and other forms of dogma are only symptoms of the problem.

Even in a "civilized" nation like ours when religious authorities don't have the power to punish non-believers, people still have a deep irrational hatred of LGBTs.

Even people who believe nothing else in the Bible and people who are otherwise perfectly logical in every other regard seem to think they have the right to deny certain people their rights.

Something is wrong with humanity.

Saying it's humanity is also bullshit. Animals do not have a homophobic instinct. If humans do, that would separate us more from the rest of the animal kingdom than abstract metacognition.

Our culture fucking blows, this shit is taught and not punished for being taught.

Blaming the Bible and blaming humanity are both wrong.

First, there are a great many civilizations that were not informed by the Bible, yet few societies have normalized homosexuality, and to the best of my knowledge, none have ever embraced the idea of making gay partnerships coequal to heterosexual ones, not even the Greeks, who were famous for their love of buggery.

As for the claim that "animals do not have a homophobic instinct", this is also wrong. Most animal species that are capable of having sex for fun, have been periodically observed to engage in homosexual behavior. Animals like being gay! However, this is not the same as saying that animals are "tolerant" or "open to gay relationships". For most animal species, social concepts like "tolerance" or "homophobia" (I really hate that word- EH), are meaningless, as said animals do not have social perspectives into which to frame such ideas. And amongst those species who DO have developed social structures, we find that homosexuality is only ever incidental; it never seems to develop into a long-term monogamous pairing similar to those observed in cisgendered versions of said animal. There are no "gay marriages" in the animal world, or if they are, they are exceedingly rare.

If we are to "blame" anything for traditional attitudes towards non-standard marriages (and really, I think "blame" is a bit too judgmental and pejorative a term to be used here), it should be socio-biology. There are very real, predictive reasons for why social animals will favor monogamous, heterosexual pairings between two genetically distant adults, and why these animals will strongly discourage any deviance within the group. Now, that's not to say that these reasons should be treated as gospel law - one of the great benefits of being a rational, scientifically minded species is that we can examine our underlying assumptions and make adjustments to our behavior if the reasoning seems sound. We are not slaves to natural law! But at the same time, it's silly to discount traditional marriage taboos as ignorant, arbitrary, or detestable, because they are not. Unnecessary, maybe, but neither ignorant nor arbitrary.


Finally, @ meme. I know I've harped on this before, but "punish"? Really? You think people should be *punished* for having social opinions different from your own?

What's wrong with us is the bible.