[quote=“mswas, post:512, topic:497645”]
Your arguments are poorly constructed.
This can only end in tears.
I have to admit, this is devolving more than usual. Hopefully mswas either recovers his equilibrium enough to engage in real debate or fully disengages, or this thread is going to have a continuing lifespan numbering in minutes.
(Of course if mswas departs we might find ourselves with a bit of a shortage on the opposition side, but at least the thread death would be graceful.)
The debate is over. I have answered every single question except the one about specific statistics that Bryan Ekers asked. I answered every one of them at least a dozen times and no new question has been asked in the past half a dozen pages or so. There is nothing here to debate, the debate is concluded.
Yes, but haranguing people out of the echo chamber was the entire point of the thread to begin with. 
I knew that going in.
At least it ends like it began. Without a single rational argument against SSM that isn’t rooted in prejudice.
You are your own echo chamber. 
I strongly doubt that, and you’re one of the last people whose word I’d take as evidence.
In which case, why did you even bother coming in?
They’re like those Japanese soldiers stuck on islands for 20 years still thinking World War II was still going on. When their hero, Ronald Reagan, was the first divorced President, it was a done deal.
The old sexual revolution, I’m sorry to say, was pretty much exclusively heterosexual.
Well, my opinion of them is irrelevant (even assuming for the sake of argument that your assessment of that opinion is correct) but in any case:
What form will this harm to their way of life take? Will these people suffer higher rates of suicide? Divorce? Unemployment? What signs should we be looking for?
You just demonstrated the hollowness of the opposition, that’s all. that when it comes right down to it, they have nothing worthwhile to say.
To the extent there is an “echo chamber”, it’s because only one side has any merit.
Are you aware that Christian belief was invoked in a major way to support slavery, segregation, and anti-miscegenation laws? that it was invoked in a major was to oppose sexual equality? Teaching that certain interpretations of Christian belief (even interpretations that historically were the majority) are evil would not be a major shift at all.
It’d be incredibly bizarre if it didn’t: it’d mean that people believed in an objective morality and were deliberately flouting it. OF COURSE folks believe they are acting in accordance with objective morality. Nothing convenient about it at all.
Your claim that there’s a literal harm to a traditional culture is also absurd, I think. Culture exists as a shorthand for talking about the way that a bunch of people do things. It’s best understood as a verb, not a noun. It changes constantly. A change to a culture is not a harm, it’s just what culture does. Was the invention of the refrigerator a literal harm? The spread of sanitation in hospitals must have been a literal harm, since it changed the cultural norm of expecting many children and women to die during childbirth.
Many changes happen to culture all the time. Some changes have negative impacts on human beings (the war on drugs, for example). Some changes have positive impacts on human beings (allowing SSM, for example). The harm to the culture is a fiction: it’s only the harm to human beings that we need to consider.
When a gay married couple exchanges presents in front of a decorated pine tree, you’ll know the War on Christianity has merged with the War on Christmas.
Nonsense - I just recently asked you for alternative explanations for the mysterious premonition of doom. Debate is ongoing, among those willing and able to engage in it.
Now, if you mean that you now, before, and forever are in the state of “got nothin’” on this topic, well, that’s another matter. But you can’t fault us for asking, can you?
That ain’t why I’m here.
But if you want to play the martyr…
And LHoD? When mswas has been saying “culture”, it is shorthand for “Traditional Christian culture”, and means “the state of the Christians having things in accordance with their religious beliefs”. I’m fairly sure the reason for the use of the word culture for this is because there is no constitutional separation of culture and state.
Well, whatever–I certainly admit that there are a lot of people who will be, at least temporarily, upset by it. Certainly when white people were allowed to marry black people, a lot of folks were upset by it also. I even think those folks’ opinions should be considered. Just not very much. And acting as though this (or any other) aggregate opinion is sanctified under the term “culture” is just so much postermodern PC gobbledygook in my opinion: nothing about the term “culture,” whether you’re talking about Muslims who don’t want Valentine’s Day celebrated or Christians who don’t want SSM celebrated, is any more interesting than any other opinion held by a buncha folks.
Not quite; only a particular subset of Christians count; specifically those “traditional Christians”, which in turn are defined as “those Christians who oppose SSM”.
Wrong. You can’t conclude that harm is done to others simply because a separate group has a different morality and behaves differently. Nobody is asking those who believe homosexuality is a sin to participate and do something they believe is immoral. Nobody is forcing them to change their beliefs. What’s being asked is that they allow others to have different beliefs and equal rights. What’s being asked is that they extend to others the same freedoms they claim for themselves.
If a religion believed it was moral and serving God to sacrifice children on the alter every Sunday would it be doing real harm to stop them? Again, the harm is all in their perception, and not real harm at all. Nothing is impeding their ability to believe and worship as they choose by refusing to let them use their beliefs to harm others.
Completely false.
It is, however, your fault that you cannot be bothered to avoid direct insults to other posters.
This is a Warning to stop this behavior.
[ /Moderating ]
The lie isn’t subjective morality. Nobody is demanding anyone abandon their belief about what is moral. The lie is that tradition and our culture of some Christian doctrine is objectively factual, which leads to the lie that SSM will somehow lead to the degradation of society, which in turns leads to an opposition of equal rights for fellow human beings. The idea that their morality is objectively correct and therefore takes precedence over concepts of morality that disagree is the** lie**.
It’s not the supporters of SSM that are denying the rights of the opposition to believe as they will and live accordingly. It’s those who oppose it who are trying to impose thier morality as fact and thereby deny the rights of others.
I’m not invoking moral objectivity. I’m invoking the rights of all people to find there own subjective morality without harming others, and to free from others trying to impose a false objective morality on them. There is real harm being done, but not by supporting SSM. By those opposing it.
Especially because if doing so is sufficient justification for laws forbidding whatever that group finds offensive - you’ve basically come up with a justification to outlaw everything. There’s very little if anything in the world that someone, somewhere isn’t offended by it. Clearly, we need a better standard than “it offends me !”; the one that comes to mind as most practical is objective harm. Which is why those attempts to say “if you can outlaw murder, why can’t you outlaw SSM ?!” don’t work. Murder ? There’s a dead body. Thievery ? My money is gone. SSM ? No objective harm.
The objective harm here is on the part of those who are interfering with the freedom of others to marry as they choose.
But then again, the very concept of legalizing SSM may have just given mswas a coronary.
So that’s objectively harmful.
Get well soon mswas!
Euphonious Polemic, you might want to be careful about dancing too gleefully around the “corpse” in Great Debates.