This is nothing more than “We did not do it before.”
You invented the notion of “dilution” but never adequately explained how the notion of two people committing to each other for life is “diluted” by allowing more people to make the identical commitment. You did some dancing and hand-waving and some speculation that heterosexual couples might not see it as “special,” (without ever explaining how or why), but you never actually explained how your scenario would work in the real world.
As a close analogy: there are a number of people who believe that marriage is a purely religious institution. Their odd (and a-historical) belief, however, does not seem to have made a very large number of atheists avoid actually marrying each other. Despite the associations of some people between religion and marriage, atheists tend to go out and get married at about the same rate as religious people. At the same time, religious people, seeing atheists get married at the court house, do not seem to be avoiding marriage as having been “diluted” by civil ceremonies. In fact, a large number of religious people actually use the civil ceremony, themselves. Why should we accept your speculation about how special heterosexual marriage might be when you have failed to bring a single bit of evidence to your argument, relying solely on speculation?
So, with no actual evidence for your odd “dilution” claim, your argument boils down to “that is not how we used to do it.”
For that matter, large numbers of people are begetting and raising children while not even bothering to get married, today–and that is a trend that started forty years prior to the first public discussion of SSM. With that background, your efforts result in nothing more than further reducing the number of people who choose to marry. If you are intent on promoting marriage, widening the pool of eligible candidates makes more sense than slamming the door on one more opportunity.
Analogy doesn’t work, for lack of SBE problem via one set of statutes.
The real world? Are you kidding me? Until this recent politically correct nonsense sprouted can you point to and western civilization that considered marriage to include SS couples?
Reality here again: were or were not all those examples comprised of opposite sex pairings?
Reality her yet again. Look to history. Look to nature. Look to those nurturing couplings that raise their offspring, do they more resemble traditional married couples or SS couples?
This is a defense that misunderstands and misstates the objection. I don’t think anyone is of the mind that SSM will diminish their current marriage. It dilutes, and therefore diminishes, the concept of marriage, making it a less attractive thing for OS couples to enter into in the future.
True.
Debatable. While I am in favor of gay couples being able to adopt, all other things remaining equal, the ideal situation is for the child to be raised by his or her parents. Next is a man in a woman in a happy an healthy relationship.
This is truly from Bizarro World. We already have a word that describes the way world has operated for centuries. Why should that which has already been engrained be destroyed and some other term created. Why not let those who advocate for this new relationship come up with their own term. I must say, I find that it reflects badly on those who advocate gay pride that they don’t want a word that might flag that they are a gay couple. Hell, we have the word “gay”. They don’t shrink from it. Why not embrace another, similar, term? Why seek to hide the status by clawing onto the coattails of the already established institution that has been a cornerstone of our society, and diluting the word int he process.
Who here is arguing from a religious standpoint? Or did you just mean generally?
Okay, if I can’t convince you that what you’re proposing is actually a two law system, perhaps I can show you that what you’re proposing is, at least, functionally identical to a two law system.
Let’s go back to 281. We’ll call your proposal “Magellan’s Law.”
And there’s my breakdown of your idea, which you insist is a completely different animal. Okay. So, let’s treat it like one.
Now, let’s say that both Not Magellan’s Laws get passed in 2020. In 2030, Senator Homophobe proposes his own law:
Oh noes! Marriages and civil unions are no longer equal! Quick, to the time machine! We go back to 2020, and we pass Magellan’s Law instead. Ten years later, along comes Senator Homophobe, who passes his law… and exactly the same thing happens that it did when we had Not Magellan’s Law. Having both Civil Unions and Marriage mentioned in one piece of legislation is functionally identical to having them mentioned in separate pieces of legislation.
Now, I say that this is because you’ve actually created two sets of statutes. Even if I can’t get you to see that, can you at least see that your proposal doesn’t offer any advantages over two separate laws?
As I’ve said before, Senator Homophobe can do his work either way.
It does. With two sets of statutes someone could come in and weaken or eliminate a statute for gay couples from that set. Or add some good stuff to the set of statutes that apply to straight couples. THAT is why I propose the ONE set of statutes that describe all the benefits and privileges. Do you NOW see why my idea is different from the one that you conjured up that you have rudely insisted must necessarily be mine?
she made a poor choice there, since there really aren’t any rational arguments against gay marriage - other than that I could see how it would be rational for gays to not want to buy into the institution of marriage since it is part of the bigotry against them, but that’s putting things entirely on its head of course.
I am not confusing what I like with anything. No cogent argument has been presented and the less-than-persuasive arguments that have been presented simply use more words to boil down to the three I noted.
If we simply accept same sex marriage, we don’t have to change any laws. Hundreds of years of legislation and case law remain unaltered and the word marriage covers them all.
There is a characteristic of Law that when legislators use two words to identify an action, the words will have separate meanings. The very fact that your proposal uses separate words for the same action guarantees that the courts will be called upon to identify them as different and then the courts and future legislative bodies will set up separate actions, rules, rights, and privileges. Even the fact that you want (for no discernible reason) to call for the law to treat them equally will result in quibbling over what constitutes “equal.”
Your arguments, such as they are, getting constantly shot down here does not mean a lack of interest in discussion. It only means a refusal on your part to grasp *that *they’re getting shot down, and why.
Protect it from what?
And how are you “protecting” it in the English language when it has already expanded in meaning in other English speaking lands as well as states in the U.S.?
You have obviously never paid any attention to courts or legislatures.
You too? I’m so glad that proclaiming your victory over an, apparently, idiotic bigot makes you happy.
Before the rest of the circle jerk comes around, high fivin’ with the free hand, I say “yup, yup, completely shot down, wow, incredible, I’m surprised, you’re so good, mighty defenders of truth and stuff, A-OK, good for you”, so you can sleep well tonight.
Don’t know if this will help the college student and his/her essay, but the dumbest-assed argument I’ve heard against gay marriage utilizes what I can only describe as: “American Entitled Selfishness”.
A boss of mine, who is a nimrod, so naturally loves to share his political/religious viewpoint, engaged me in this discussion. When I told him that if 2 people are in love, they should be able to get married if they want. I have no stake in whatever they do. He asked me: “But what would I tell my kids?” (He dosen’t have kids.)
So the issue, for him, comes down to: If I don’t know what to say about it, it must be banned. What a proud, selfish, entitled American.
Can we stop picking on magellan for the “two sets of laws” thing, when that’s not even why he’s wrong? I’m willing to argue on the basis that in his proposal, marriage and civil unions mean exactly the same thing for the parites involved, legally speaking. I don’t believe it would work out that way if any attempt were made to implement it in the U.S., but here in Theory, where the weather is always lovely and the cows are always spherical, I’ll accept that it can be implemented in order to focus on the reasons it shouldn’t be.
So I’ll grant that while normal couples can be joined as husband and wife in a marriage when Sam Smith and Pat Thompson have to settle for being fusband and pife in their narriage, “marriage” and “narriage” really are legally treated as the same thing. What about private organizations? Do Sam and Pat have to sue? Why do they deserve or require to be put to the extra difficulty? And on a more philosophical level, if “marriage” and “narriage” are the exact same thing – by magellan’s own arguments – why do they have different names?
Moving on:
That’s an argument in opposition to same-sex marriage, but not uniquely so, and I question the sincerity of anyone who uses it as an argument against marriage equality, which is what we’re really talking about here. If the state stops maintaining a register of relationships entirely, that is equality.
In what way?
In what way?
In what way?
I assume we’re not catering to the tiny minority of m-f couples composed of people so ridiculous and so homophobic that they will refuse to get married because same-sex couples can.
Maybe he’s referring to closeted gays no longer feeling forced to enter loveless, lying marriages with opposite-sex partners just to appear “normal” to people like, well, him. Maybe he thinks those marriages are sacred and need defending, while the ones between loving, committed same-sex partners “dilute the traditional meaning” of the former kind.
