The real point – which I guess nobody’s technically spelled out in this thread, but nobody should have to – is that some changes away from how-it-used-to-be are for the better, and some are for the worse, and so whether it’s a custom is irrelevant. Some customs are awesome and should be kept. Some customs are awful and should be discarded.
The question isn’t whether it’s a custom, but whether it’s a good custom or a bad one, compared to the merits of the proposed alternative.
Ask: if we scrap this custom, why not also scrap the one against murder? Lo and behold, people will tell you what’s praiseworthy about an anti-murder custom; they won’t just stammer awkwardly and say well, it’s a custom, and therefore must be great.
That it’s a custom is trivia; that it’s a good custom is worth mentioning.
So if I ask someone why marriage should be limited to members of the opposite sex, and their only answer is “custom” – well, look, that’s irrelevant trivia; is it one of the good customs, or one of the bad ones? Don’t just tell me that it would be “a” change; some changes would be improvements. Is this one of them?
Well, if one doesn’t want to provide flowers, bake a wedding cake, or photograph the ceremony, participating in SSM may very well be forced upon one. The bullying pendulum has now swung both ways, and liberty dies, to thundrous applause.
That said, Melchoir is not helping. Maybe Balthazar and Gaspar can chime in.
Melchior, do you honestly expect semantics and wordplay to convince homosexuals that they shouldn’t be allowed to marry the people they love? How do you see that working, in your mind? Do you expect them to say, “Well, I *thought *I wanted to marry my partner… but since homosexual marriage is a logical impossibility, I guess we’ll just have to be satisfied with living in sin for the rest of ours lives”?
In this thread of nearly 150 posts, there have been maybe 10 or 20 that actually address the OP.
When is the last time we had a thread about same-sex marriage that Melchior didn’t hijack? I’m guessing sometime before February of this year. If we ignore him, he might not go away, but at least we can continue to have discussions about SSM that go beyond “does it exist or not?”
On topic:
So anti-SSM people in Utah are trying to distance themselves from the toxic study, but they don’t actually have another study to support their position that “SSM is bad for families?” So this seems like desperate damage control. I can’t imagine it’s going to go well for the anti-SSM folks. Has a decision been rendered by the 10th Circuit Court or are the proceedings still in progress?
Ah, discrimination and bigotry. Two values the Christian faith was built on.
Does your photographer refuse to photograph second/third weddings? Are the baby pictures only of children born of a Christian marriage? Is a priest and minister available for Confession so all subjects are free of sin?
Maybe if this is done, the photographer might have a legitimate point.
You open a business to the public, you serve the public.
Melchior has already admitted that his best possible argument is simply sticking his fingers in his ears and pretending SSM doesn’t exist because he doesn’t want it to. This is so far from any kind of logical argument that a rebuttal is pointless. And he’s not going to come up with anything else no matter how much we prod him. The anti-SSM folks are tilting at windmills with their arguments against it, but we’re doing the same thing trying to have a logical debate with someone who is so obviously not interested in a good-faith argument.
Seriously, he doesn’t understand why it is valid to question if a custom is good? Even more astounding, he doesn’t understand who would ever do such a thing?
I’ll be sure to let my wife know that she is now my property, has no rights other than those I see fit to grant, and that her parents owe me a dowry. After all, we can’t go around redefining marriage.
I’m sure she’ll take the news well when I point out that it’s supported by 40,000 years of human history (and hopefully she won’t point out that recorded history only goes back about 6,000 years.)