Yes, I watched every minute of this, and I could not stop thinking what a complete waste of time it is.

Brown seems to be audibly smacking his hand on the table in frustration at 01:03:26 when Savage says "same sex marriage does no harm."

Also, I love that Brown wants to move toward a society where divorce is incredibly difficult and people are penalized for it. You want to destroy marriage overnight in this country, tell folks that it's going to be near-impossible to get out of it. Suddenly lifelong cohabitation becomes the new normal.

It's because Brown didn't understand the specifics of the conjecture. It was like he thought what was in question here was what specifically he believed according to his religion, prejudice: whatever. He spent very little time talking about why any of that should effect other americans through public policy.

i mean his final argument at the end was ' same sex marriage shouldnt be illegal because if its not people will make fun of me and that isn't fair.'

er *should be illegal

Doesn't matter. The moderator isn't there to point out flaws in someone's argument. He's there to keep track of time, prevent things from spilling over and to hush people when they get upset. He's not suppose to be the official Jew in the room.

Brown kept watering down his time with personal conjecture. No one is arguing about what this guy believes or what Catholic doctrine is. The moderator was trying to relate his ranting to the issue and facilitate an understanding of what actually being argued and why. He had to get pretty heavy handed, but I'd say that's because Brown didnt understand what they were debating on a fundamental level.

Dan Savage's point was what was okay from the Old Testament and was not okay seemed arbitrary. Brian Brown talked about the meeting at Jerusalem deciding what was okay, and what was not. The moderator, I can't forget his name, jumps in to say that as a Jew, he can't understand WHY they decided what was okay, and what was not. He sided with Dan Savage on a pretty key point by interjecting with his statement.

Brian Brown thought that this holy meeting was critical in deciding morality, particularly homosexuality. Saying that homosexuality is still wrong by statements in the New Testament is a big speaking point for conservative Christians. He was making that point.

Dan Savage did a great job in his defense, but he did let the arbitrary decisions of the Jerusalem go by and the moderator decided to interject. If Brian Brown wanted to go on about Batman and My Little Pony to defend traditional marriage, he's free to do so. And yes, Brian Brown was grasping for straws towards the last half, and what the moderator said was a good and logical point. But it's still not the job of the moderator to temper the arguments of the debaters. It's up to the opposing side to see the flaws and run with them. Poor moderation will only make it look like poor Brian Brown is being ganged up on by the sodomite and Jew liberals.

Ill agree that Openjewmier's interjection about The Council of Nicea or whatever could be interpreted as partial, but it could also be interpreted as an effort to clarify a point savage had already made that hadn't penetrated Brown's cloud of talking points and was preventing the discourse from moving forward. Brown insisted on diverting the focus of the debate away from the issue of public policy.

But really, other than that one comment Openhiemer did nothing more than force Brown to phrase his arguments without fluffing them up with bromides and jingoism, which I'd say, given his evasion of the prompt was pretty much his job as moderator. Yes, Brown handled this poorly and sounded confused and irrational, but that's his own fault for bringing nothing but personal feelings to a debate about public policy.

Also this was a pretty informal debate so who cares?

What mistebuns said.

My main disagreement with you is that "civil unions" really are marriages. If certain religious types are going to get all pissy and say that God only recognizes heterosexual marriages, I'm going to point out to them that there's nearly no justification for that. I'm also going to point out that when the Bible talks about God loving marriage or marriage being sacred, what is being said is that when God sees a marriage, heterosexual or same-sex, God finds it pleasing in His sight.

I won't get behind separate but equal categories of marriage just to appease some bigots.

Actually I would say that defining marriage from a religious point of view is tricky and out of the scope of this discussion. I would even say that Christian churches have a right to refuse same sex marriage ceremonies. To call same-sex marriage "civil union" (or something) would contain the discussion in the right sphere (marriage as policy, not religious ritual).