Elisabeth, just to clarify: when I posited a choice with celibacy as one option, I wasn't offering it as the only alternative to
marriage, but to what Terry was suggesting: that people attracted to each other have a choice of whether to act on that attraction or not. The alternative to celibacy in my argument there isn't marriage; it's a relationship with someone else. So, for example, say I'm attracted to Bob and Bill at the same time. Bill is married, so for reasons of... well, common decency as well as common sense I decide to ask Bob out. In other words, I have an alternative which means I can still have a loving relationship.
Using Terry's argument that a gay person can choose not to act on attraction, then if I'm attracted to Barb I can choose not to act on it - but if I'm also
not attracted to Bob or Bill or anyone else of the opposite gender
ever then I'm left alone, when I might really, really want to share my life with someone. It's simplistic, of course, but that was my point - not that I was ruling out sex outside marriage. Does that make sense?
And Kathy has answered the point about why people in same-sex relationships may want to be married exactly as, if not much better than, I would have.
Wendy
