Same-sex marriage

The central issue in the same-sex marriage debate is whether society needs to maintain a heterosexual definition of marriage. People against same-sex marriages have cast it as a debate about the moral, legal and social acceptability of homosexuality and homosexual relationships. And while they admit that homosexual people and their relationships are entitled to respect, including in law, they propose that this should not give gays and lesbians the right to claim access to marriage.

Same-sex marriage proponents argue that marriage is first and foremost about two adults making a commitment to each other. To establish that it is discriminatory to exclude same-sex partners from marriage, gays and lesbians claim that the nature of the commitment between the partners of any same-sex marriage and those of any opposite-sex marriage is identical.

Significant is that the arguments put forward by the same-sex marriage lobby are primarily adult-centred: not surprisingly, the issue of children is of no consequence to them since same-sex unions are, by nature, always barren.

Discrimination...

It's interesting how developing human beings in wombs are referred to as "foetuses" if they are destined for some abortion mill, but are referred to as "babies" when they are wanted. The big Dutch insurer ING, too, is happy to refer to babies: "insuring babies" sounds much better and much more personal than "insuring foetuses".

I would love it if ING were to announce that it would immediately withdraw its investments in cluster munitions, those infernal devices that keep killing and maiming children in Lebanon and elsewhere because they are invariably scattered indiscriminately over wide areas where civilians live and move.