Why is gay marriage not legal in more places?

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Personally, I think gay marriage should be legal or at least gay couples should otherwise have the same rights. I hear it said many times that gay marriage is illegal because of all of the religious people discriminating against gays. In that case, why are there many countries where almost nobody is religious, but gay marriage is still illegal? China, Japan, Australia, North Korea, South Korea, and Czech Republic to name a few. If the only thing that influences it is religious belief it seems like countries where people don't think religion is important would all have legal gay marriage.

Personally I think legal marriage should be abolished ideally.

Relationships aren't the business of the state.

You make a good point though. I think becuase homophobia runs deeper than religion and is also cultural.

You know what I found weird when I moved to the Midwest. There are plenty of non-religious people here that give credence to a young earth theory and/or are against gay marriage. I found that rather strange. People that would adhere to those beliefs, even though they are not religious. But, the culture around here was formed by generations of bible belt beliefs. So while these people are not religious anymore, their beliefs are still influenced by the culture they grew up in, which was founded on bible belt beliefs.

It is called hedging their bets. They don't really want go to church, but don't want let go of it.

Wait 20 years for the anti's to die off, then you'll be able to call that expensive piece of worthless diamond on your hand a wedding ring,

Last edited by Stannis on 31 Aug 2014, 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are many reasons people are against it. Here are some broad notions that aren't always applicable:

To the religious, they believe that marriage is a holy thing between man and woman, as God intended. The often heard phrase is, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

For the non-religious, it's a legal hangover of a religious union and still carries much of its import. Also, they often cite that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, and that gay marriage doesn't fit that definition. It's a silly argument really, but people do cling to it.

As for the non-religious nations (and Australia isn't one of them), it's often still a hangover from religious history of the past, and carried forward with notions of mental aberrations, corruptions or sickness. The stigma runs deep in many non-religious cultures. Just look at Putin's Russia.

But as Stannis says, and like a lot of the old taboos, this legal barrier too will one day fall.

The thing that I find the hardest to fathom is not so much the legal bent against gay marriage is how differently gay men and gay women are treated. Many people are reviled by gay men, yet find gay women acceptable. I must admit, I used to feel a little that way myself, in my younger, less tolerant days. Perhaps it's the flamboyance and exaggerated 'femme' of some gay men. Perhaps it's the idea of anal sex. It could also have something to do with men enjoying the idea of seeing two women together. I'm also told that in older times, lesbianism was mostly ignored - especially in religious circles where some even denied its existence.

But as Seinfeld and Co used to say, 'Not that there's anything wrong with that.'

Prejudice. Pure and simple. Even in countries where religion has released its grip, the cultural heritage from the religious era is one of homophobia.

^ or put another way, gay marriage is an issue because some religious people (who have far too much influence on governments) are complete and utter fuckwits. Unfortunately we have some of these despicable bigots on WP.

On a brighter note. I was thoroughly entertained by a very extrovert and happy queen on Friday. Adam Lambert when he is not singing pop via his nasal cavities ( My theory on this is so many awful but pretty "singers" have been manufactured with the aid of the Auto-Tune, good singers have been forced to sing as if they have a peg on their nose). Lambert when freed of his "peg" has an incredible voice and when matched with the music and lyrics of Queen, he gave an outstanding performance.

I for one believe our world is enriched almost beyond measure by our homosexuals, and I am backed up in this by the mathematics of Evolutionary Stable Strategies. So please, religious bigots, would you be so kind as to f**k off, and let these people live their lives in the manner they choose and get it into your thick heads that forms of marriage existed BEFORE the advent of your abrahamic religions.

It might predate religion. In the far past, living in harsh conditions with limited resources, tribes shunning individuals who wouldn?t reproduce probably were more successful than those who didn?t. If a situation persists long enough in which it is advantageous to discriminate against some people, this prejudice becomes entrenched in culture by virtue of memetic selection. Given enough time, since individuals with more of a natural tendency to have this prejudice will fare better than those who have to learn it, it?ll become instinctual.

Something similar probably happened with racism, as those who focused more on propagating their own genes and exterminating others were more likely to perpetuate them than those who didn?t try so hard, and they must have also propagated their culture in the process. Ditto for patriarchy, classism and, in general, anything that kept everyone in their place?a tribe allowing its members to contest their traditional rôles would spend too much time arguing and not get things done. It?d inevitably starve or be conquered by others with mindests more appropriate for survival in those circumstances.

Note I don?t advocate continuing any of this. Now we?ve had a lot of time to think about these topics, a luxury our remote ancestors couldn?t afford, and technological development is what enables social changes. As much as all these ideas are natural in origin, so is our drive to progress, and thus it?s also natural for us not to find life in the past very appealing. I mean in the actual past, not in the good old days Let?s keep progress going.

+1

Government was not involved in deciding who could marry for a very long time. Once they started attaching "benefits" from the state, the state felt it was its job to decide who could and could not marry. This then became a political view because some groups felt some definitions of "marriage" were improper based on beliefs and customs.

The problem remains largely political today because once the state recognizes something, certain legal issues are created, and groups with opposing agendas want to use the state as a club to bludgeon others with opposing views to stand down. The state gets drawn into ideological fights where the state really has no business taking a side. Let each observe as they believe and let the status of a couple convey no special rights beyond the general civil rights all couples would receive.

This is the whole issue with "activist judges/courts." There is a prescribed way to change laws in the USA. People who know they don't have enough people backing them to get the laws changed to support their views seek other ways to impose change. They seek out courts/judges who agree with their views and will do what they can to interpret the law(s) to their advantage.

Needless to say, this goes on way too much and people have good reason to fear activist courts and judges. The law is not supposed to cater to the vocal minority, but that's happening more and more, and perhaps what is worse is that the courts are rarely content to say, "You may do this, but respect others who believe differently." Those courts often impose their new interpretation on everyone and use the law to punish those who choose to believe differently...an abomination to what a free society is supposed to stand for.

There is a growing scientific literature finding that high disgust sensitivity (when a person is easily disgusted) may be a more powerful predictor of anti-gay attitudes than specific political and religious affiliation.

For instance, in a large recent study, Koleva et al. (2012) found that disgust sensitivity (measured by a purity scale) was a better predictor of anti-gay attitudes than both political ideology and religious attendance. Purity was in fact the best predictor of all included variables when explaining attitudes towards both abortion and same-sex relations.

Source:
Koleva, S. P., Graham, J., Iyer, R., Ditto, P. H., & Haidt, J. (2012). Tracing the threads: How five moral concerns (especially Purity) help explain culture war attitudes. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(2), 184-194.
https://webfiles.uci.edu/phditto/peterd ... iq=-5wjp1m (see table 3 on page 5)

And as the authors point out:

(References omitted from quote, my emphasis added)

Well it's easy to understand why cultures around the world frown on same sex marriages. It is because, traditionally, you need a man and a woman to create the next generation and saying okay to same sex marriage, at a point in history, would mean a decrease in population so the entire society did what they could to promote men and women creating as many babies together as possible. That was the ultimate goal of any culture in antiquity. So they did everything in their power to encourage men and women to reproduce.

"Marriage" is traditionally seen as needed to raise large amounts of children and they were needed to work and run society so the old culture frowned on all illegitimacy, divorce and remarriage.

Nowadays, you can get by with producing as little as one child and one does not require as much as even a small a number as three children. If a woman has access to a good job, she can easily raise one child on her own, so can a man, even though finding a good job hasn't traditionally been a male issue. This is why I think it is good to have only 1-2 children per woman or man.

It is very difficult for either a man or woman to raise more than one child on their own so it becomes problematic and marriage is encouraged because of this fact. So if you have the traditional family of 10+ kids you pretty much gotta stay married to your partner forever just to raise them and it takes at least two incomes to take care of them all.

At one point, children were raised in harems so it hasn't always been a issue of same sex marriage. There was a time when children barely saw their fathers and sometimes saw their moms if they came from the wealthy of upper classes. They spent most of their times with slaves or nannies. Only recently has their been such a tumult about how you fail without a good family. In the past wallowing in self perceived victimization wasn't accepted and folks just got on with their lives regardless.

There was a time things were much, much worse than now. Fathers and mothers both succumbed to far more death by natural causes than they do today, or they worked twice as long and most children had it far rougher than the majority living in the US do now yet people will bellyache and make all kinds of excuses for their lack of individual self control. Children had far more reason to complain then, too, because most of them were severely impoverished and some of them never got to see their moms or dads ever because separation was not considered to be as bad a thing as it is today. They spent long hours toiling on farms or in dark factories. Nowadays, The biggest excuse people have for wrecking their own lives is they think they didn't come from a good enough family. That excuse wouldn't have flown back then.

Anyway, nowadays it's pretty much accepted that same sex couples can raise children same as one man, one woman, the culture just hasn't let go of this old fashioned stereotype.

Actually South Korea is one of the most Christian countries in Asia, or at least has a very high Christian population.

As for why it's not legal yet in a lot of countries well it's because the movement is still in an early age. SSM legalization did not begin until the turn of this century so it's gonna be a while before we see some actual progress. More states within the US are striking down the laws though so that's a start,

Yup we have several Korean churches where I live.

In Japan, most people practice Buddhism and/or Shintoism, though I am not very familiar with either religion, so I don't know what their stance is on homosexuality. The Czech Republic is mostly Catholic, but, as in much of Europe, many are only nominally practicing. I don't know what the religious breakdown is in Australia, but I am guessing the Christians there are mostly nominally practicing, as in Europe.