for me, when it comes to "normal" behavior, i would tend to look at what the natural way is: egg and sperm, woman and man, gives a baby, a family.
so far, you still need a man and a woman to have a family, and to have a family is the basis for marriage. this means that gay marriage does not make sense, since they cannot, physicaly, produce a family on its own, therefore it is not self sufficient, and cannot be called marriage, since you cannot have a family without assitance in the natural process of pre-creation. this is a reason why i believe that gay marriage is a moot question, and that it would not benefit a gay couple anymore than it benefits a hetero couple today. to have gay marriage you would need abolishment of marriage, and not an amendement to it.
this, i believe, is not normal, seeing as marriage has been a consistent part of every culture, and its infringement often meant death.
you bring up pleasure, and that all intercourse without leading to procreation to be "abnormal" unless you consider pleasure. however, marriage in the sexual sense, is meant to promote the union and bond of the couple, to provide a loving and caring environment for their eventual offspring. the pleasure involved is so much to procreate as it is to bond the couple together. these 2 things come in a pair.
but if you consider pleasure in a gay couple, it may promote the bond between the people, but in the end it is a selfish pelasure: you cannot make the other person pregnant, so your bond is superficial, your commitement has an escape route. some people have a great deal of pleasure abusing, raping and killing other people, but i would hardly think that their behavior is "normal" and justifiable due to their pleasure.
then there is adoption for a gay couple. but then we need to have some kind of study on how having 2 same sex parents affects the growth of the child. is the socialy handicapped? when he finds out how babies are made, what will his/her reaction be? will they understand? what are the adverse side affects of growing up under a same sex marriage? are same sex marriages stable enough in their bond so as to be the "normal loving caring and cherishing relationship thus far normal for the growth and prosperity of the child?
if this is not the case, then i don't believe that gay couples should be allowed to adopt.
and in the case of in vetro fertilization or carrying mothers for the couples, when does it become "abnormal"? the child becomes a "thing" from one of his/her 2 parents and, depending, from 1 or 2 other women donors/carriers, or from a sperm bank and one mom. who gets the ownership of the child? who is the parent on the birth certificate? whose genetic material is involved? there are a great many things that are not the "normal" procedure of childbearing, and in the end, is not just a selfish deisre on the behalf of couples wo cannot naturaly have kids to pertain to having any and to be able to raise the child in proper growth conditions? nevermind that most of the gay couples married in SF have split up since their marriage.
i believe there is a "normal" in this domain of child bearing and creating, and i think its pretty irrefutable there is. when it comes to killing people, is there a "normal"? can one say that his pleasure in killing was justifiable material for his deed? i don't think so either.
as Joel said too, if one does believe in the "evolution" of man in the sense that gay people are born with this predisposition, then it makes little sense to accept it as it does not benefit or survival in the least. this is of course assumeing that humans are not special and that we don't hold up to moral standard at all. but we do. there is a normal, and an abnormal, you know this. while in theory there is no normal anything, all is subjective, in the real world there is a normal slate of conduct. if i were to walk up to a 7 year old girl, rape her and then put her on a stake and parade around with her corpse on the stick, no one would deem that normal. maybe i was born with a gene making me predisposed to insanity, but no one would think that is normal.
kids with pregoria are born with a gene that makes their cells age at 5 times the normal rate, and they mostly die at 13. they are predisposed for it, that does not make such an ailement "normal", right? i do not agree that "normal" is that subjective.
i hope that made sense...
patty.
- Patty
*NS Skateboarders* Vas y il l'a cassé!
religion without science is lame, science without religion is blind - Albert Einstein
