This is the transcript of my video response to a Christian on the subject of gay marriage.

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Hi, Apologetics. In my two years here, I have not made many video responses to lovely young ladies. Maybe it’s a demographic thing, given my usual subject matter. Maybe it’s because I look strange. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s rather shameful and a bit ironic that I will be responding to you, of all people and on this rare occasion, on the subject of gay marriage. This also sucks from my perspective, because, your ideas notwithstanding, you’re kind of cute. Fortunately, you seem to be a good decade or more behind me on the age curve, so I suppose I can berate you with a clear conscience, though I will make every effort to do so politely. I can’t promise to be nice, but I will be civil.

Before I get into your video, I have just a quick comment about your user name. When I think of apologetics, gay-bashing is not the first thing that comes to mind, usually. Most people who call themselves apologists at least try to be evidential, philosophical and/or scientific, with varying degrees of success. Maybe you’re a self-appointed apologist for the anti-homosexual crowd. That’s entirely possible. I could just be reading something into your user name that isn’t there. It’s just that your arguments are so bad, that I’m actually looking forward to hearing you address something that I actually consider apologetic, like the various arguments for the existence of God, attempts to establish an ontology for God, evolution, cosmology, that sort of thing. You mention “evolution/creation” on your main channel page, so maybe things will get interesting eventually. I’ll check back on occasion, because I think that might be extremely entertaining.

Okay, your video. This shouldn’t take long.

You deal with two main points: design and requirements. For design, you claim that marriage was “designed for a man and a woman.” You never identify who did the designing. You never make an argument as to why it should be this way and this way only. You try to make an analogy with a scenario wherein a girl is allowed into the Boy Scouts because she prefers it over the Girl Scouts, and you claim that this would devalue the Boy Scouts, therefore homosexuals getting married will devalue marriage. That’s silly for a number of reasons.

1. Let’s change the analogy so it more accurately reflects the state of society. Let’s say a girl wants to join the Boy Scouts and is allowed to do so, because there are no Girl Scouts. She has nowhere to go except the Boy Scouts, and all she wants is access to the same activities that her male peers have. I think that changes the landscape significantly.

2. Value is subjective. There is no objective devaluing of marriage that will result from homosexuals getting married. It might devalue marriage in general to you, due your preexisting moral disposition toward homosexual, but I don’t share that preexisting moral disposition. A lot of people don’t. Even if we grant that homosexuals might devalue marriage in some sense, you don’t make any argument as to why that should preclude them from marriage. I suppose you just assume that it should. I can just as easily assume that it should not.

3. As noted by Sarahon06 in his response to you, the girl does not choose to be a girl. You would do well to keep that in mind.

Now for your second point, requirements for marriage. Basically, here you engage in what we call argumentum ad baculum, an appeal to force. You talk about legal requirements, man-made, institutionalized rules that are imposed. You mention driving requirements, loan requirements, and even the requirement that you must divorce a current spouse before marrying again. From this point, you refer back to your previous “design” argument – which you never defended, by the way – and claim that gays do not meet the requirements for marriage, because the requirement you have laid down is your design argument. So this point about requirements fails, because it is based on your previous point, which failed. It amounts to saying something is wrong because some people say it is wrong, and they will fuck up anyone who disagrees.

You then rattle off this list of shit about choices – people choose to get into relationships, people choose to get married, etc., etc. Then you say, regardless of whether people are born a certain way or develop in a certain way due to childhood environment, you don’t care because all of these things are ultimately choices, and attempts to circumvent this status quo amount to asking for “extra rights.”

Being born a certain way or growing up in a certain environment – if we assume either or both are pertinent to homosexuality for argument’s sake, as they very well might be, then no. These things are not choices. So what you’re saying, in effect, is that people should be legally, forcibly denied choice based on factors that they have little to no say in whatsoever. Does that not bother you? At the beginning of the video, you congratulated yourself for being called a right-wing bigot, so maybe it doesn’t.

Your “exit only” argument is ridiculous. Homosexuality is like stopping at the gas station and putting the nozzle in the exhaust pipe. That is so juvenile, and I think it shows your age. Or maybe it’s a sad statement about whomever put these ideas into your head in the first place. Heterosexuals engage in oral and anal sexual activity. You may not want to hear that, but it happens. I’m sorry. Is it your position that heterosexuals – even married heterosexuals – engaging in anything other than standard sexual intercourse are morally wrong?

I would say “God bless” in return, but I don’t believe in any gods, so I’ll settle for, “Have a nice day,” and I hope you do.