No dancing; no corpse. mswas is a strong debater - he just gets a little too upset at times.
Apparenlty this argumetn is being picked up by more people. I’m frankly, getting tired of seeing it. WHAT are the negative consequences that will happen? WHAT ARE THEY? DO people really believe that another group will simply accept that they can not do something, just because some other group keeps arguing something ba MIGHT happen, but doesn’t even know what it might be?
That isn’t even an argument. If you can;t enumerate or describe what this bad thing is, then there is no point in saying anything atbout this future horrible “doom”. It doesn’t exist and neither does this sort of “talking point”.
And not only that, but even if there is some absolutely identifiable negative consequences, at most I’d say it would have to be looked at to see how it stacked up against the (easily identifiable and currently known) benefits.
There may not be any action we can take as a group that doesn’t cause some harm somewhere. But it would have to be something fairly serious for me to say it was worth losing SSM.
Lacunae Quell, what kind of “negative consequences” would it take for you to say “we better get rid of interracial marriages”?
I can’t even imagine what it would take. Same for SSM. So when you start talking about possible negative consequences, you better have something more (much, much, MUCH more) than hurt feelings or minor changes to the dictionary in mind, or as SteveG1 says, that is no argument at all.
There are people who find that contemporary language is to coarse and wish to censor it. They also wish to censor television so that there are no references to sex or body parts. Another group believes that women should wear skirts to their ankles and never cut their hair or wear makeup.
Why should we not also cater to their beliefs and censor language and television, wear much more traditional clothing, and ban makeup? It would take a little getting used to, but it would be respectful of other people’s beliefs and it would be more in keeping with the traditions upon which this country was founded.
That’s really what I hear you advocating with your logic, magellan.
Or do you not care about other people’s feelings until they want to change something that YOU don’t like?
I know of no definition of “traditional Christians” that specifies that they are those who oppose same sex marriage. I myself know of a Baptist minister who is herself a Lesbian who supports SSM. You really use these terms indiscriminately.
I was saying that’s how mswas is defining “traditional Christians”. Apparently your Baptist minister doesn’t count.
I guess that the Baptist minister is “no true Christian”.
And she should be banned since she harms “traditional” Christian values.
There were also those who disappproved of drinking and got Prohibition passed during the 1920s. There are those who want to control what we eat (for our own good yeah right). There are those who have wanted to control what music we listen to. There were people who wanted to control whether a person is right handed or left handed. There are different people and different groups who each want to control something in someone else’s life.
Let’s just control every aspect of peoples lives. Let’s drop the pretenses about freedom of choice, or even the freedom to make our own mistakes and learn from it.
Land of the free? It sometimes looks more like people want something more like “free for me but You better do what you’re told”. There’s nothing wrong with tradition in and of itself. Some traditions stay because they still serve a useful purpose. But “because it’s always been that way” doesn’t wash.
Seconding that this isn’t really Der Trihs’s bad - it is a response to the argument by mswas wherein “culture” was being explicity defined as something that would be “damaged” by the introduction of SSM. Necessarily for this to be true, only people who resist SSM are contributing to the definition of this “culture” of his, and at one point used the phrase “Traditional Christian culture” (capitals his) to refer to it. I picked up this term from him, and Der Trihs picked up from me - so for what is possibly the first time in recorded history, it is not the atheists’ fault.
Unless that religious belief is the only rationale being offered to continuously withold a particular course of action (gay marriage). In which case, it is certainly germane to discuss the religious belief that spawns these nutjob positions.
LOL, dropping a debate to go play video games is kind of far from a coronary. 
Heck, dropping a debate to go play video games is a supremely logical and rational course of action.
At 6pm Mountain Time, I’m going bye-bye.
That would be a good reason to stop a debate.
But you weren’t really debating, right? Have you come up with a single argument against SSM that isn’t rooted in prejudice? I’d like to hear one.
I’ll even take one that just shows negative effects it will have for society. I mean so far in this thread we have Denying Millions of Americans a Basic Right on the one side of the scale and ? on the other.
Is Pissed Off Evangelical Christians all you got put put on the other side of the scale?
I participated in the 26 page marathon trainwreck of a thread that was this thread’s predecessor, and I swore I’d not bother to participate in this one. Just read, is what I resolved. Done pretty good so far!
But… can’t… stop… myself… any… longer…
Based upon the totality of these and some additional similar threads, in direct response to the question above, the answer is
yes
No, there are also a whole pile of other flimsy and/or fallacious arguments that are offered up as well; some were listed in post 457, (and I added a succint rebuttal of them in post 475, which was never itself rebutted).
Suffice to say, for the anti-SSM side the debating approach is one of quantity over quality.
I did mean arguments that can’t be dismissed on their face as stupidity. 
Which I suppose would include the sobbing evangelicals argument.
One of the reasons these things are so frustrating for me is that I approach things in a less analytical form and a more empathetic form. I think of people like a writer or an actor thinks of them. “What is their motivation?”. For you guys that’s simple, “bigotry”, case closed. It’s an unsatisfying answer for me. Anything I say is going to be handwaved away so it doesn’t really matter. And at this point it doesn’t matter at all because the Pro-SSM is winning and will win ultimately, I see that as inevitable. But for the other side that represents a loss of something, something intangible, something that you have no sympathy for, but to them it’s something real, something shared and something that they can feel communally. It’s not easily quantifiable, which is why arguments from statistics are red herrings. It’s as I said, a cultural thing. The culture that they see is slipping away from them, which of course is always the angst of the cultural conservative, because at every time and in every era progress moves our society, the way things were slips away into the way things will be. I never said this is a sufficient justification to deny SSM, obviously I do not think it is, as I am pro-SSM myself. But, on the other hand I can and do have sympathy for the other side.
Lobohan You wanted an answer so bad? You’re right, it’s because they are bigots, they base their entire worldview on irrationally hating other people, and have no reason for being other than to hate people who are not like them. They only believe what they believe specifically because they are trying to piss YOU off. It’s personal, they hate you, that’s what it’s all about. They’d be lost without someone to hate.
Is that better? You’ve been trying so desperately to cajole me into saying what you want to hear. Does that satisfy you? Now that I am cowering in fear at your mighty wielding of the word ‘coward’? I have succumbed to your virility. You have attained mastery over me and I have had no choice but to answer lest what shred of my manhood that is left be stomped into the dust.
I bow before thee and humbly beseech thee to forgive your now humble and faithful servant for every trying to be broad-minded and have sympathy for people who disagree with him.
No. I want to hear the actual argument. And again you deflect. :dubious:
Picky, aren’t you? On this issue that might be construed as unfairly limiting debate. 
To be entirely fair, there is really only one problem (okay, possibly two* or three**, depending) with the ‘sobbing evangelicals’ argument - that we live in a country that has legally enshrined equal rights. Absent that, it would be entirely legal for the majority to crush the minority - which is the basis upon which the ‘culture’ argument is tacitly arguing, because the ‘culture harm’ would not be worth mentioning if it was not perceived as overriding the pro-SSM arguments.
- Well, that and that we also have legally enshrined the separation of church and state - an objection that I believe was tacitly acnowledged by trying to disguise the argument as a “culture” rather than religion issue.
** And of course, things start to get really dicey if the ‘evangelicals’ are in the minority. Less so in countries that don’t have a democratic rule, mind you.
Okay, this does read like a rather eviscerating critique, but there are places where this argument does work. Theocracies, for example. Especially dictatorial ones (which removes the ‘majority’ problem). It’s merely poor luck that makes America one of the places the argument doesn’t happen to work.