The Debate on Same Sex Marriages.
This one is probably going to be dated and probably get me some nasty
e-mail (thats why we have mail filters) but the point is worth it.
Im really sick of this whole thing. Its a waste of resources
just to make some religious fanatics think theyre being heard.
Science should hold sway over public policy where science is applicable and
in this case it is.
The most basic issue in this mess is gender or sex. What is it?
How is it defined and should we even try to define it? I can tell
you right now that its not just the difference between having
breasts or a penis or whether your chromosomes are XX or XY. It goes
much farther than that.
Genes can recombine, when sperm meet egg, in many unexpected ways.
Two examples are Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and Klinefelterss
Syndrom. In the complete form of AIS, or CAIS, for example you end up
with a person who has all the external genitalia of a woman but has a
set of XY chromosomes. Such people are classically treated as women,
i.e. they use the ladies room not the mens etc., and they get married
as if they were women and have been doing so for centuries. The same is true
for those who have Klinefelters and they have XXY chromosomes.
There are other ways in which unexpected results can occur as well.
One has to do with the fact that only a relatively small portion of
one of the chromosomes in the pair that controls gender has to do with
actually determining gender.
So now there are those who want to legally define marriage as a union
between a man and a woman in the law and even in State and Federal Consitutions
in the U.S.A. Well given that we have a major problem defining gender
in the medical world as shown above, I don't see how it can be done in the law
at all. And defining men and women based on certain physical attributes
doesn't work because of the gentics involved. It would be very much
like writing a Consitutional ammendment or passing laws that say some people have to
sit at the back of a bus because of skin color and we know how rediculous
that is.
So Im just bloody sick of the whole argument and was about three
seconds after it began. With all the other legitimate problems needing
solutions, that resourses should be wasted on this is rediculous.
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