There must also be a governement interest in not paying taxes too, since the people would gladly not pay taxes if the government didn’t compel them.
You’re essentially saying that since A is B, C must be orange zebras.
In other words, your arguments are becoming incoherent.
It’s transparently obvious that you designed scenario A to look suspicious and Scenario B to look legitimate. I don’t know why you need me to tell you that.
The question wasn’t about whether I need help in framing questions. For the purposes of the question, you’re supposed to assume it’s true.
So, should I take your answer is, yes, a court would look more favorably on couple B as being vaildly married, but would look somewhat more harshly at A as possibly being fraudulently married, yes?
Or would you care to explain further why you disagree?
(Sigh,) why can’t people so convinced they are right give straightforward answers? Doesn’t everyone know that straightforward answers are so much more credible than oens given after dodging and hemming and hawing and (distracting?
(you know, you can design hypotheticals which illistrate your point too. I’ll assume the necessary facts as true without quibbling. it’s what a meritorious debater does)
Now (sigh) can you answer for C and D too? Straightforwardly, please, if it’s not too much to ask?
or you could concede that my hypothetical illistrates the point precisely, and that I am right.
**Bryan Ekers **actually surprised me. he went pages and pages and pages round and round but in the end grudgingly conceded.
let’s avoid more, please, adn get to the answers now if you have them.
And further, it should be apparent that if you are correct then you should be able to dispel that my theory is wrong, even despite devising a scenario that is obviously legit in one area and obviously not in the other.
Or feel free to devise your own hypothetical. Keep in mind I may not know a lot fo details about immigration law.
My hypo might even be bad under a detail of immigration law I don’t know.
I don’t remember jack from any such kind of lecture.
Given that you haven’t actually advanced a theory, I have no idea what I’m supposed to dispel.
Please. I stipulated to a point that was of no importance.
OK. Provided nothing major is wrong. I do hope you’d agree that one of the parents being in the closest may well lead to something major being wrong however.
This would appear to be (based purely on the numbers) more of an argument against divorce than against SSM. One might also argue that in the ideal world this closeting wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
What if instead of single mother and infertile man I was to propose gay widow with children (having previously been closeted) and new partner?
Should they be prevented from marrying (and providing a more stable home)?Should the widow be encouraged to enter another closeted relationship? Or should she stay a single mother?
Two of these are apparently better for the children, and I think we could reasonably argue that only one of those is best of the mother’s ongoing happiness.
I’m suggesting that the family unit should be looked at pragmatically. Couples are going to break up for any number of possible reasons (including one of the parties being closeted), and including one of the parties dying, and it seems reasonable (if we agree that marriage is a more stable environment for child raising) that society should support the care-givers getting into a new stable family unit – which would then include the possibility of same sex-marriage.
I notice you are not answering the questions.
The theory is well advanced, and cited, that the overwhelming majority of courts including the U.S. Supreme Court see the right to marriage as closely associated with the right to procreate.
Which you already obviously know by your refusal to answer the questions.
Shall I assume from your failure to answer that you agree my hypotheticals illutrate that what I say is true?
Or would you like to devise a closer hypothetical, if mine is somehow unfair?
Yes, and you also failed, now that you admit it, to cite to an authority that what you say is true, that the purpose or source of the right or the meaning of marriage is irrelevant.
You know the gay activists all say it’s only purpose is animus. How should you tie my hands from showing, no, we really had something else on our minds by now saying it’s irrelevant?
is the point that “it’s all pure hatred” also irrelevant?
There is potential for something to go majorly wrong. But I am assuming that some closeted homosexuals behave themselves quite well and are decent parents, and simply hide their wistful longings for the same sex and have not much more problem, other than some sense of not fulfilling ones’ self.
It is more against divorce than SSM per se. Which should help anyone see less animus and more concern over families. But will there be a net gain or loss of reasonable families?
In general, two, regardless of sexual orientation, are probably better than one, assuming either would decently raise the children.
there is the argument that the opposite sex parents may have the edge since it’s 97% more likely the child will be heterosexual–they may more likely succeed in a heterosexual relationship by seeing one work in front of them. It certainly has a tendency in logic. In my opinion, we haven’t studied SSM closely enough on a large scale yet, or for a long enough time to be sure what gays claim is true, that there will be no harm. it’s not the kind of question you can answer easily or quickly.
And, if the 9th circuit is correct, once it is granted we cannot go back, short of a federal constitutional amendment.
Now here is where i have serious meat chewing, when you begin to suggest that the mother’s ongoing happiness is the most important thing.
When one becomes a parent, the relationship automatically produces a conflict in rights. The child has a right to be cared for appropriately in the best possible way that can be ascerained. the adult, in entering into parenthood, necessarily waives any rights that conflict with that by choosing parenthood.
For instance, a single person has the right to go party all night every night. But most parents have to stay home and keep their kids safe instead. being firmly on the side of the kids, I take their rights more seriously anytime their parents rights might conflict. So, yes, the lesbian mother might be more happy, but I have little sympathy for her unhappiness if it means the kid is less advantaged as a result.
I consider the possibility and have stated before that I am glad we at least have it in some states so we can better see what happens. It’s one thing that’s great about America–we do not have to jump in head first and can experiment a little by watching the results from the states that try it.
If Holland is any indication, it might not be worth it.
I think you’ve lost track of this conversation.
You see, my original post about green card marriages was not aimed at you. It was in response to a completely different poster, who claimed there “love” was not a requirement for a marriage–a claim that was mostly true, but incorrect in a corner case.
You immediately started inventing hypothetical cases that had nothing to do with everything, and that were obviously constructed to lead the reader to a particular conclusion.
I had been staying out of this thread because, frankly, I wanted nothing to do with you or the trainwreck you’ve made of this argument. But I find the position you represent both unconscionable and unsupportable. You handed me a gift on a silver platter: a marriage that was obviously constructed to look suspicious, but which was also a marriage whose sole purpose was to produce children. This was, in effect, a tacit admission on your part that you didn’t actually think that children justify marriage. I couldn’t resist calling you out on it, so I did.
You response was to 1) ask me about the other scenarios in your post (even though my opinion of them was completely irrelevant) and 2) ask me about my legal knowledge of green-card marriages (even though you originally asked me what* looked suspicious*, not what would be legally prosecuted).
Now, you’re asking me if I agree with your hypotheticals proving that marriage is about procreation–but you haven’t given me the slightest inclination why that would be the case. You are also asking me to provide hypotheticals to prove my theory; I don’t have a theory, I just think that green card marriages are an interesting case that bears further discussion.
And finally, you can multi-quote. Please stop posting five posts in a row to respond to five different posters–or worse, to the same poster five times.
So you’re conceding your point was of no relevance?
I have proven it’s irrelevant - you acknowledged such when you conceded that reproduction is not a mandatory part of marriage. You’re free to wax on indefinitely about the “purpose or source” or “meaning”, but that won’t magically translate to legal significance.
Are you trying to prevaricate on the word “purpose”, here? The thing whose purpose is hatred is not marriage, but the efforts to block same-sex marriage. Your attempts thus far to find a legalistic justification for these efforts have not been impressive, and your sociological claims of potential dangers are groundless, at best.
Well you are talking to me now and you cannot answer the question. You think you have a smoking gun, but you do not. So, you’re another one who wishes to say my point is wrong but you yourself have no alternative.
Just answer the questions already, or if you can’t handle hypotheticals in a debate, just go back to lurking.
I will post in any style I like.
Finally, it is not me making a train wreck of this thread. It is people like you who drag out general contrariness of being unable to answer one post into ten posts that have no value except to show you cannot answer the question. blaming me for a trainwreck does not change this.
I did not answer your post with a “yes” alone. Stop with the manipulative bullshit, at least use an elipsis to show that you have removed part of my answer. All you are doing is demonstrating ove rnad over how contrary you can be about something you don’t like but can’t cite any information about.
You did no such thing. you have yet to cite to an authority that can explain why ALL the courts who consider gay marriage start talking about the purpose of marriage. So, I should take it you’re the real authority here, and none of these courts know what they are talking about? It is relevant, you just don’t like the answer.
Marriage defined as a man and a woman is the predominant form marriage has taken, especially in modern times. To suggest we have been doing it all along, combined with your claims that nothing else matters except the legal requirements, makes the purpose of marriage to keep the poor homosexuals down.
It has never been the case. We did it that way because of procreation.
Cite to the “groundless” nature of potential harms. There is a complete rational basis to consider that allowing gay marriage might cause the breakup of a heterosexual family where one partner thinks they would prefer a gay marriage.
Objection! 
I have suggested no such thing, well, certainly not that the mother’s happiness is the most important thing. I’ve suggested that getting remarried is in the best interests of the child, and that secondary to that, if the choice is between SSM and living a lie (again), the former is more likely good for the mother.
If I accept this point, and further agree with you when you said:
Would we not then reach the logical conclusion that the gay widow of the scenario should enter into an SSM with a suitably responsible partner as soon as possible? (And by extension, that it is in society’s and the government’s best interests to support this?)
Sorry, no you didn’t say that, and I am not saying necessarily you did. But you have to admit this issue tends to how wrong it is to not let gays fulfill themselves with little discussion of how it impacts children. IMO the views of any children should always be first and foremost.
I’m not sure about the “as soon as possible” part. As one good parent is better than one good parent and one abusive parent, she certainly should not rush.
If all other things are equal since its most likely that the kid will be hetero, i think that it makes more sense to give the kid the role modeling that will be more useful. We can’t really look at any hard evidence until we see how well children of gays raised in gay homes themselves manage relationships.
For instance, I think it is less likely that a low-key gay couple who is silent about the political issues will cause a child to have a better perspective on hetero realtionships than a couple of activists who like to talk all the time about how good gay is and how dysfunctional heterosexual families are. Of course not all gay couples are ideology freaks, and some may be thoughtful of this and be careful to not paint an inflammatory picture of heterosexuality. Kids should not be taught that heterosexuality and those who think it is more important to the nation is motivated by hate and hate alone. it is entirely responsible to show the kid an example of hate, like Westboro church, but it needs to be made very clear that Westboro is universally condemned by pro-hetero and pro-homo people alike. The Phelps should not be shown as an example of the mainstream.
This is a thorny issue and one that has no easy answer and also is likely to do someone harm in some direction no matter which direction it goes. the key in my view is to balance it, which may well mean denial of SSM. if my views evolve in the direction of further support for gay issues, it will be because of increasingly persuasive data. The rhetoric that takes the place of data in these threads doesn’t do anything to sway me.
The world, to the best of my knowledge, has never tried gay families with children on a large scale. I want a better idea of what happens. Please do not forget, if the 9th circuit is correct, and they may be, that once you grant it you cannot take it back, extreme caution is warranted before we change anything. I think because of the irrevocable nature of the change, that waiting a generation or two, with an eye on Massachusetts and other gay mariage states allowing it is the best course of action. It takes the question of gay marriage seriously yet allows for caution before we jump head first into a pool that might not be as safe as some claim.
But before I am going to go too far, I want some responsibility from the gay activists about their peaches and cream images of gays and piles of crap images about straights. No-one is perfect,a nd no group of people is perfect, and I am not either taking too seriously the claims of one side who apparently claim to be perfect. Concessions from the gay activists of the drawbacks of gay families is a point in their favor in my view, and attempts to deny that gay or gay families might have drawbacks in my view just means I cannot trust what gay activists say. If they really want to be taken seriously, the hate rhetoric needs to be dropped and only applied to the egregious examples like the Phelps.
I don’t hate gays but I do not like the idea of downgrading the importance of natural nuclear families in order to achieve their aims, nor do I liek the attempt at reverse stigmatization of being labeled “haters” because I do not happen to agree that natural nuclear families have little importance to us.
but you have been quite reasonable, Apollyon, rather than twisting everything I say into a strawman and then moving the goalpsots in an effort to show that nothing I say should ever be taken seriously, and I appreciate your actually discussing the issue. it’s a dialogue this nation needs but that is prevented by the back-and-forth rhetoric.
That sort of truncation of a quote may be funny during a verbal exchange, but in this case you are using it to reverse his actual statement and comes far too close to changing quotations.
Stick to your actual discussion and knock it off with the rhetorical tricks.
[ /Moderating ]
Until I see some effort to suppress the malevolent discussions among straight parents regarding gays, this paragraph is pretty irrelevant to the discussion.
You appear to be saying that we have to be concerned about one form of parental speech–but only in regard to gay parents. Bland words that Phelps should not be an example are meaningless in a world where the difference between Phelps and a lot of other people is his willingness to go public with his hatred. Sean Harris is not an anomaly.
Not persuasive.
Why? Seriously, explain this to me.
You asked a series of hypotheticals that you yourself admitted were written transparently. You know what the “correct” answer to your hypotheticals are, and you know what my answers to them will be; you intentionally wrote some of the examples to look suspicious and other to look not suspicious.
Moreover, as soon as I answered one part of your questions, you immediately moved the goal posts. You asked me what looks suspicious; when I answered, you started grilling me about what legal precedent made me conclude the marriages were fraudulent.
And finally, you have declared that your hypothetical prove your theory, but haven’t given me the slightest hint why that is. I have no idea how some situations being suspicious and others not is intended to support anything you believe about same sex marriage.
So what possible obligation do I have–either as a rational debater, or as a human Straight Dope Poster–to delve further into your hypotheticals?