Yes, and we seem to value the principle of equal treatment under the law more than you do.
So argue it, with actual facts, if you can. At this point, your position is pure truthiness - it seems to your gut that a premise should be true, so it is, regardless of evidence.
Oh, I doubt it’ll move you. Actual scientific facts haven’t (I see you conveniently ignored everything I said about the current state of reproductive technology), so why would hypothetical ones? By 2040, the real game-changer will be that Americans who are anti-SSM will have largely died off, replaced by Americans for whom it’s no big deal.
Your rule is an obvious rationalization, and you’re selectively applying it anyway. Straight couples who are sterile? No problem. Gay couples? No, because they’re sterile! It’s a thin attempt at a rational argument, akin to someone in the 1950s claiming to know of scientific evidence that blacks were unsuited for higher education.
But don’t you all understand the difference between incidental and absolute!!! IT’S SUCH AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE… WE’RE ALL DOOMED JUST LIKE THE ROMANS!!!
You must be thinking about someone else’s proposal. Mine is rooted in the idea that there be one set of laws. Sorry. One set of laws that two groups access equally. In order to get all the privileges contained in Set of Statutes X, a a couple qualifies by being a member of one of two groups: A) couples joined in marriage or B) couples joined in a civil union.
One set of laws, accessed by two groups. This is my idea. Please direct any further discussion of two sets of laws to those posters who might have offered up plans based on that.
One again, you are not describing my idea. I’m setting up one system—one set of privileges and benefits. To tap into them, you must be a member of one of two groups. This really isn’t difficult to comprehend.
Say what?! You’re going parsecs too far now. For that one criteria they are clearly lacking. Regardless of one’s stance on SS marriage, to claim that SSM has been a cornerstone of our society is so factually incorrect as to be incoherent. Nonsensical. It was completely non-existent in the world until a decade or two ago. From that fact alone, it doesn’t qualify for cornerstone status, or even part-of-cornerstone status. This is true even if SSM is the best development in society since indoor plumbing.
Good or bad: open to debate. Cornerstone status: HUH?
It’s factual. One, it simply is not a cornerstone of society or even part of a cornerstone. Two, it dilutes the word to have marriage be less synonymous with that cornerstone status. Again, this is true even if SSM is super-duper fantastic. If that is the case and the laws change, it may come to be seen as, a couple hundred years from now, being a cornerstone of society. But to say that it is now is absurd.
And I have a dream, too. My dream is that you argue against my actual position. I hold no position that puts forth “two sets of laws”, so maybe you meant to direct this comment to some other poster that has proposed such a system. Because it ain’t me. The idea I have put forth mandates there there be one set of laws. Again, this shouldn’t be that hard to digest. You might as well be arguing that my ides shouldn’t require each married couple to own a polkadot spaceship.
They are factually different. Now you may thing that the difference is unimportant, but I don’t. But to say there is no difference is absurd. Or to say that pointing out the difference is insulting. To say that a Ritz cracker is not a yummy sandwich cookie does not disparage Ritz crackers.
Being able to talk to someone and say “I’m married.” is a privilege I have as a heterosexual. How will your proposal extend that privilege to a homosexual?
It only works that way some of the time, when the couple desires the bond. Fairly often the sex is just sex and has nothing to do with any emotional bond. Sometimes married couples have children to try and forge and bond and fail.
NOTHING occurs in the hearts and minds of OS couples that doesn’t occur in SS couples.
Being myself opposed to civil unions or any other SSM, I still don’t get all the flack that **magellan **gets.
Civil unions may be separate but equal (and much more equal than SbE education), his proposal is equal except in name and it’s us anti SSM people who are always accused of “fixated on a word”. but certainly they beat separate and unequal. If you get enough Marriage + Civil Union guys on the boat (and many anti SSM have little problem with CU) the road to SSM would be much easier.
Purity is more important than results apparently (which is good for me)
When you are defining a status, the name has a meaning, and that meaning is significant.
If someone looks at you and you are married, they name conveys a status and that status conveys the concept. If you are not “married” you are not accorded the status of married by society.
Frankly, if it were not so, there would not be opposition to sharing the word. The fact that there is opposition to sharing the word is a strong indication that the word does have meaning and importance.
How is separate-but-equal, a concept with a history in the US, still considered valid by some? From a ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court on a proposed civil-unions bill, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall writing:
Sorry, dude. The pro-SSM crowd can’t have it both ways. You (in general) can’t at the same time say “don’t fixate on the meaning of the word marriage” and then say “the meaning is significant”.
Also, the whole “not accorded the status of married” sounds 18th century. Don’t you knows scads of people who live together and have kids and everything and are afforded, in all but name, the status of married by society?
News to me… actually that is wrong, while living together does give a boyfriend or girlfriend many rights, they do not have “all but in name” the status of married given by society.
Can you find someone who says “don’t fixate on the meaning of the word marriage”?
If you try, I think you’ll find something: nobody says that. You might find someone who says something kind of close, and you might be tempted to say, “That’s clearly what they meant.”
But nobody means that. And if, before you say, “That’s what they meant,” you take a moment to reread what they actually said, to think that maybe they actually meant what they actually said, you might find a subtle but key difference between what they said and what you thought they said. And that difference might help us move the discussion forward.
A person can say anything he wants. I’m assuming your a guy, but you can say you are a girl. You can also say you’re are a four star general, a member of The San Francisco 49ers, Superman, the reincarnation of Moses, or the smartest human to have ever lived. You’re confusing legal benefits and privileges with privileges like Joe handsome being able to claim, “Damn, I’m handsome.”
Do you agree that this whole system must be enshrined in a set of laws? That is, somewhere in the law books must be sentences along the lines of, “In order to get all the privileges contained in Set of Statutes X, a a couple qualifies by being a member of one of two groups: A) couples joined in marriage or B) couples joined in a civil union”?
If so, can we called those sentences Set of Statutes Y?
What if a man and a man want to access the privilege contained in Set of Statutes Y, specifically, the privilege of being a couple joined in marriage?
Please. I gets tons of flak for placing value on the word. I want all the legal benefits and privileges extended to committed gay couples, but have been called a homophobe and bigot just because I want to protect that word. So, Ají de Gallina’s criticism is right on and your attempt to handwave it, lacking in the extreme.
I wouldn’t. There are no benefits and privileges being described. You’re merely talking about indicating who qualifies to be covered under the one set of laws that would follow.
Out of curiosity, what do *you *think is the reason you have not been able to convince a single person of the rightness of your position after all these years? :dubious:
Do you indicate who qualifies to be covered:
a) on a McDonald’s menu?
b) through whispered gossip amongst county clerks?
c) via a set of laws?
d) nanobots?