Couching an offensive assertion as a “belief” does not make it any less offensive.
We’re not talking about religious sacraments we’re talking about civil contracts. You don’t have a right to deny civil contracts to other people based on your personal religious interpretation of those contracts…and since when do you get to decide who does or does not “deserve” to be married?
Cite?
Once again you’re polluting a question of civil rights with personal religious beliefs. It’s completely irrelevant what your church says about homosexuality. Your church does not get to control the civil rights of others. You need to come up with a justification for a discriminatory law which has no reference to religion. This is a secular country, not a theocracy. The Bible has no legal authority here.
What does that mean? Do you think God would want you to reject a gay child? What kind of a God is that?
If you really want to love God, might I suggest that you take a look at Matthew 25:40.
If you really hate gay people enough to reject your own child, don’t hide behind “God.” Take responsibility for your own mind.
Ther is no religious side. There is only a legal side to this, and if you’re admitting that you have no legal argument then why are you wasting our time in this thread?
Cite that sex is “central” to marriage? Cite that having kids is the purpose of marriage. Should infertile or elderly people be denied the right to marry? What if a fertile married couple simply doesn’t want kids? Do they still have a right to be married?
I’m perfectly willing to expose your ideas as crap. Thanks for the invitation.
Nobody has said anything about polygamy so I wish you would stop waving that around. It’s a red herring. It’s bullshit.
Fine with me. What matters is that the government can’t treat its citizens differently.
Factually incorrect on all counts.
How does gay marriage “fuck up society?” How did no fault dicvorce fuck up marriage? Do you think that people who don’t want to be married should be forced to stay married by the state? Should they be forced to live together?
Abortion is subject to the same regulations and controls as any other surgery. What the fuck are you talking about?
You don’t seem to get it that your personal “morality” has no relevance to the conversation. No one gives a shit what you think is '“immoral.” Please stick to pertinent legal arguments or shut the fuck up.
So you would vote in favor of same-sex civil unions similar to what Vermont did? is it just the semantic of the word “marriage” that bugs you?
How the hell did you get that out of anything I said? No, I would not favor any legalization of the rape of children. I have spoken only of consenting adults. And before you ask, yes, I think adults have the civil right to commit incest if they want to. I might think it’s gross but I don’t think the government has the right to tell them not to do it. I also don’t think it’s going to become a huge fad.
Read above.
Try not to choke on all that straw. Your civil rights end where someone else’s start. As long as another person’s actions are not hurting anyone else or violating anyone else’s rights you have no right to restrict them. Same-sex relationships do not infringe on anyone else’s rights. That’s what you would have to show in order to make them illegal. An arbirary “moral” designation is neither here nor there.
I really don’t care about polygamous marriage. I was just pointing out that legalizing same-sex marriage does not necessarily open any more doors. I was calling you on a fallacy not objecting to polygamy.
I guess it depends on how you define “morality.” I have an ethos. I believe that individuals have rights and that there must be a compelling reason to restict the behavior of those individual. To me, the only “immorality” is hurting other people.
For the last time, religious objections have zero legal weight. There is no point even bringing them up.
You haven’t enumerated any secular reasons other than tautologically trying to argue that gay people can’t get married because marriage is for heteros.
I’m an agnostic, not an atheist…and I’m not a Libertarian. I don’t know what what you mean when you call me “dogmatic.” The reason the government has a right to regulate hiring practices is that businesses operate in a public arena and affect the economy for everyone. The government has a compelling interest in promoting a meritocracy. Businesses which wish to profit from the public must operate within the ethical standard of that public.
Not that it has anything to do with the legalization of same-sex unions. The government is bound by equal protection. Whatever rights it provides to heterosexuals must also be provided to homosexuals. It’s in the Constitution.
It’s a tautological argument. You are defining marriage a priori as “a man and a woman” and then using your a priori definition to argue that it can’t be extended to anyone else. Essentially you’re saying, “marriage is between a man and a woman because marriage is between a man and a woman.”
My (real or imagined) inability to explain and defend my ideas has been more than matched by your collective inability to read through my posts.
So for the last time
I brought the religious marriage thing only to make the difference between the two and to show i wasn’t mixing one with the other.
I plead 100% to the tautology charges if you plead guilty of the same. You accept gay marriage because your own personal definition of, say, “two people living in a committed realtionship” accepts it. We can go forever on this “definiton war”, without going into the depths of the merits. Cite that marriage is the same regardless of the sexes?
Who gets to control morality? Not me. Is it you? Why do your moral views get to be imposed, in this or any other topic better than mine? We bring our views to the arena and hope they win.
God doesn’t reject anyone; gay, straight, murderer. I wouldn’t reject my kid if he had same-sex attractions. i wouldn’t like his inclinations, but I’d still love him. Just as a bad comparison, I’d still love my kid if he were a murderer, but that doesn’t mean I’d approve what he did (please, I’m not comparing gays to murderers).
As to my “real” marriage, I didn’t mean to say that my civil wedding was phony, only that I place more importance to the religious one and that I would still be married if I had no civil wedding.
You are totally unable to accept your own biases, unlike me who have fully acknowledge them. I come with my full package of concepts and they colour my actions in the same way it does with yours. Who said the my civil right end where the other guy’s start (quote, and reference as to why it is an absolute truth)? Who said that hurting is bad? Who said rape was bad? For example, Diog’s ethos makes him believe sex with minors is wrong and apparently would try to make it continue to e illegal. Isn’t he imposing HIS OWN morality on the people, like the NAMBLA guys, who want to do it? You think the debate is impose or not impose when the debate is who imposes what on whom.
i don’t know if there’s much point in responding but let me say that:
1.) Protecting the civil rights of children is not the same as imposing morality on their would-be molesters. I’m not sure why you aren’t grasping this but my position is that people are free to do as they wish as long as they don’t harm others. “Morality” is beside the point. There are many kinds of behavior which I find distasteful but which I have no desire to legislate against.
2.) it’s not a tautology to assert that you must show a rational justification for discrimination based on sexual orientation. If the government is going to recognize a certain kind of legal contract and extend benefits then the government must extend those benefits to all citizens equally. It can’t make arbitrary exceptions based on sex or sexual orientation.
Do you deny that your opposition to allowing civil marriage for gays is not ultimatly based on your religious beliefs?
No, I support gay marriage because there are no good reasons to oppose it, and because legalizing it would vastly improve the lives of many people without hurting the lives of anyone else. That’s not a tautology: I’m not arguing that marriage is between two people of any gender. That is clearly not the case. I am arguing that it should be between two people of any gender, and then I have reasons why it should be that way. You oppose gay marriage because only straight people should be married. You don’t have any other reasons. That’s a tautology. It’s a meaningless argument.
How does allowing gays to marry impose on you in any way?
Actually, you are comparing gays to murderers. You are saying that being gay, and being a murderer, are both bad things, and things you would love your son “in spite of.” This makes you a bigot.
Great, you’ve acknowledged your biases. Now try to overcome them. See, biases are bad. When we discover a bias within ourselves, we should try to remove them, not use them as an excuse to hurt other people.
You’ve got a religious bias against homosexuals. Fine. That’s between you and your god. But when looking at the issue of civil law, you need to disregard those biases, because they should have no bearing on what is legal. And without your religious biases, you have no legitimate reasons to oppose gay marriage. Unless you think your religious beliefs should be enshrined in law. But then, why stop at gay marriage? Why not make it illegal not to go to confession on Sundays? Federally mandate communion? Make the Pope President for life? Assuming you believe that people should be free to worship as they wish, your opposition to gay marriage makes you a hypocrite. And, also, a bigot.
I know you’re done. I think that’s best. I’m sure you wouldn’t believe it, but I respect your right to your religious beliefs. Even though I disagree strongly with them, they are yours. I’ve thought about this a lot. If we were insisting that gay marriage had to take place in your Catholic Church, you would have every right to protest it and protect your customs and what you think is G-d’s law.
Legal marriage is a completely different matter. It should never have been perceived as something that represents anything even remotely tied with religious beliefs. That’s what your church ceremony is for. The government sanctioned part of marriage should only be the legal aspect. It should be equally accessible to all couples. It should be devoid of any moral judgments and simply be a legally binding contract that not only protects both people, but endows them with the same human rights as any other couple.
I know you think allowing gays to marry legally in the traditional way that you were allowed to, is a mistake. The mistake was made in our country many years ago, in allowing a legal marriage to have any connection, real or perceived to religion or moral judgments. That’s not a government function. Allowing gays to marry is righting a wrong, not committing one. The sanctity of your marriage is contained in yourself and your religion. It is not at cityhall or whatever government office issues your license. No one wants to take away what you have and actually no one can have what you have.
Marriage isn’t the same for any two people. Marriage is about love, committment and protection, which except for the last has nothing to do with the function of a government either. For many it has nothing to do with having children and whatever sex life they have or don’t have, is private.
Diogenes is right about morality. It has to be based first on doing no harm to anyone else. Of course we don’t all agree with what that means. I will always be opposed and disgusted by abortion, but my feelings can’t count against the many that don’t agree with me. Our laws are supposed to cover and protect everyone equally, but they’re not perfect and sometimes we need to try and right the injustice of them. Something that has always been isn’t proof that it’s as it should be.
I’m sure I’m repeating myself, so I’ll stop. Tell your mom I’ll see her, same time next week. Okay, now I’m done too.
No shit. If there was any doubt before about what sort of homophobic pillar Dumbya is building his campaign on, that doubt disappeared last night. And it seems to be the current trend to blame all of the immorality of gayness not on gays, but on judges and courts ignoring the will of the people.
Evil, evil judges. Ignoring what the people want and instead acting on their own initiative no matter how bizarre and obtuse. Hey, if these judges want to be such cowboys, maybe they should just run for president.
On a rather different track - isn’t this whole Bush agenda thang preposterous on the grounds that economic crises (such as losing one’s job because the corporation decides to move the work overseas) are a real and known cause for failed marriages? Gay or straight, rich or poor, moral or immoral; when people’s lives fall all to hell, so do their marriages.
Even if it wasn’t a poorly disguised attack on the gay community, even if he was speaking only to willing followers of a particular religion, his proposal would still be ridiculous.
And while we’re at it, if civil marriage isn’t real, why do you care how they define it at all?
Really, I couldn’t care less about what happens in your church; I don’t mean to be married in it. I intend to be married according to the customs of my faith, which celebrates same-sex marriage, which makes the whole process much more efficient not to mention more fabulous.
Seeing that you just can’t live without, I’ve decided not to deprive you of my presence.
Many still ask me for my non-moronic answer. I failed to give one that would convince you. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong, only that I’ve been unable to convince.
Of course asking for a “non-moronic” response is pretty much poisoning the well, the way the question is asked it is easy to see there is very little chance for an acceptable answer. It’s like asking “Can you give me a reason why we shouldn’t kill all those fucking Jews (or Catholics or Gays or Boston Red Sox)?”. There ain’t no answer to that question that would satisfy the asker.
Still I failed. Of course it took almost half the SDMB to do deafeat me, sort of.
Nisobar another one bites the dust……
Brave words for a lurker.
Diogenes
The point I am trying to make and you’re avoiding is this. Why is protecting the civil rights of kids OBJECTIVELY right, as opposed to just your own personal preference? If it IS objectively right, I’d like to see or know about the source of objective truth you take it from. If it is only your own personal preference (your ethos), please explain why your ethos should be paid more attention that others’. I hope you don’t base yourself on majorities, since you told me a couple of days ago you told you didn’t believe in the people.
Why is it more discriminatory than not allowing minors marry? Cite please an objective source of truth. Why can’t the government make differences?
If it gives money to improve, say, inner-city sewers, is it discriminating against the suburbs? If it favours research on AIDS is it discriminating against Cancer or TB. Why SHOULD it include gays? Cite, please, an objective source of truth.
Miller
Of course my religious beliefs are the base of many or most of my beliefs in general.
My definition: A man and a woman. Your definition: Should be between two people of any gender (I fail too see your distinction between IS and SHOULD)
Why is your definition OBJECTIVELY better? You think there are no good reasons, I think there are, who’s to say who’s right. In a democratic society it is the people who decide.
No, being gay. i.e. having same-sex attractions, is not evil (although it is disordered). Acting on these attractions is evil. If I am sexually drawn to 5-year-old girls and do nothing, there is no sin. telling lies is evil so liar are, in the sense they are sinners like murderers.
Do you claim to be 100% objective? Do you approach every situation like a new sheet of paper, with no pre-conceptions or not leaning, at least initially, to any side; with no passion? when you started reading and participating in this thread, did you not start with some ideas or did you say “I’ll read and make my mind from what I read”? If the answer is YES to all, then, man, you’re the first guy in history to pull it of.
Please read a previous post of mine regarding things like forcing people to go to Mass.
IWLN
I totally believe that you respect my convictions, of course without sharing them.
Why should marriage be devoid of moral judgement? Would you say the same about slavery? Discrimination? Why should amorality be the judge? It is your thought that it is righting a wrong, that’s your belief, why is it better than mine? Who’s the judge of that? Cityhall passes moral judgement every day, why should marriage be the exception?
Why is morality based on not harming? Who decided that? Why is he/she right? and what exactly is harming? Is abortion harming? IS drug use harming? Is prostitution harming? Is pornography harming? Is divorce harming? I have my answers, you have yours, how do you know you’re “righter” than I? Where is that source of objective morality?
My mum asked me to tell you not to forget to bring the blue hat, she said you’d understand. Naughty girls.
Tsar
Can’t the constitution be changed?
Should 4 Massachusetts judges re-define marriage?
The American revolution (as well as my country’s independence) were illegal acts. It was the will of the people not 4 judges. At least Bush, however wrong or bigotted, had 50 million people vote for him. It doesn’t give him carte blanche, but his “carte” is “blancher” than that of a couple of unelcted judges.
TDN
What’s your position on judges following the will of the people?
fessie
Don’t rich guys get divorced, abuse and have crappy marriages at similar rates than poor guys?
[Minor hijack]Which particular religion are you referring to? Christianity as a whole? Some Christian approve of gay marriage, some don’t. Why can’t Bush play to his possible voters like all candidates in the world?[/minor hijack]
matt
read my answer to Otto
If you want to get married according to your faith, more power to you, just don’t get your religious beliefs into civil marriage.
I do. Although, I’d prefer you kept them out of our government.
The real question you’re asking here is why should marriage be devoid of your moral judgment. I think the question answers itself. Because it’s yours, not everybody’s. You think gay marriage is wrong because of your religious morals. You have no other valid reason that I can recall. If you do, remind me. Basing a secular law on religious values is a blatant misuse of our system. Whether your morals are right or wrong, doesn’t matter. They just have no place in our law-making process.
Slavery and discrimination are infringements of human rights and are against the law. They are not based on religious values. They are based on our right to equality.
I’m not sure that I would say that amorality should be the judge. It is certainly immoral to deny human rights. But whatever concept of “morals” we collectively decide to consider when administering laws, has to apply to all. My belief that it is “righting a wrong” is based on equal protection under the law. I’m not the judge of that and neither should you be. There is no conceivable legal reason that I should be allowed to marry my partner and Mr Visible cannot. We are both paying taxes, contributing to society, doing all the same things, except I have more legal rights than he does. Hell, I even like men and so does he. We are not very different at all and I don’t deserve to have anything that he doesn’t.
What better value should it be based on. Not harming someone is one of G-d’s directives too, which is incidental, but makes it more puzzling that you would not see the importance of it. Well harming physically is an obvious concept, but there is also harm to the spirit and mind, when prejudice is allowed to thrive. Denying someone their rights and causing them to suffer ecomonic harm is another way. If a law is unequally enforced, it is harmful.
I probably agree with you on most of these issues, although I would have been happier if you’d left pornography out. I do enjoy an occasional dirty movie and I like that magazine with the big d…uh, nevermind. Ask your mom. She knows what I like. There are laws governing all of these things. I don’t agree with all of the laws. The only one’s I feel it is my right to dispute are the ones that don’t provide equal protection or punishment without discrimination.
Ooh goody. Dress up sex again. Tell her I can’t wait.
Of course I DO believe harming is wrong. My point is who decided that and why should we pay attention to that person.
For you and I slavery is wrong, it is a no-brainer.
For me, gay marriage is wrong, for you it isn’t. You have your views and i mine. You said you’d prefer I kept my convictions out of government, ditto for you. Why are your convictions more suitable for government than mine? Is it only becuase I base my conviction on religion? why are the philosophical or sociological reasons others have more valid?
As to the hat, for what my mum says, there won’t be much “dressing up” happening:
Gay marriage doesn’t affect you one whit. It does me, at least potentially and theoritically sigh. So why should your opinion on the matter count more than mine in matters that affect me but not you?
Listen, friend, if there is gay marriage, the Catholic Church or whoever can still follow its rules over who gets to get married. They don’t have to marry anyone they don’t want. My country and yours already allow divorced people to marry, but the Catholic Church doesn’t have to marry them if they don’t want.
The difference between my beliefs and yours is that with your model of marriage, I can’t marry according to my faith; with my model of marriage, you can.
I just want to be able to get married, my own self; I don’t care whom anyone else marries. You, on the other hand, seem to want to presume to decide who can or cannot get married for others.
Because convictions based on religion violate the separation of church and state, which is part of our Constitution. Because convictions based on religion are personal and subjective matters of faith, open to myriad interpretations. Because convictions based on religion necessarily pit one set of religious tenets against another, with neither side truly able to call upon a final arbitor; one’s own religion is assumed superior to that of another, merely because of tradition (or a greater number of followers). Because convictions based on religion use old books written by human beings as if those writings had a divine intention, when really the people who wrote them were as human and subject to pushing their own agenda as the rest of us.
Because convictions based on religion have and continue to perpetuate wars and discord among people all over the planet, with no means of resolving conflict beyond violence.
Philosophers and sociologists may not always agree, they may not present an unchanging view of humanity or the comfort of a presumed-infallible authority figure; however, they almost never hit each other with sticks or fasten bombs to schoolbuses.
This is not about paying attention to some person’s opinion. This is about illogically and unfairly denying a group of people a personal freedom. That is harmful. You are free to disaprove. You are free to think they are sinner’s. Judge them in any way you like. They won’t care, as long as your opinions aren’t literally harming them.
This is not about a personal view. Yes I do have personal reasons that make it more compelling. But it is strictly a legal issue. It is not philosophical or sociological, but a legality issue. On a purely personal level, I could believe it’s the grossest thing ever conceived(I don’t), but that can’t have any bearing on you having a personal freedom that other’s can’t take advantage of. If our government was religious based, you could make the laws according to religion. It is secular, which forbids you to do so. I don’t know how to get it across any other way than your sexual preference shouldn’t get you special treatment in a government that is based on all men being created equal. You think slavery is a no brainer, but think about what slavery is. It’s taking away personal freedom and denying a person’s right to equality. It’s denying them the choices that you feel are your right. Sound familar?
Tell her to explain to you what a dumbass you are.
No, he won’t. He will allude to it on occasion, just often enough to keep his troops in line, without alienating the rational right (Yes, Virginia, there is a rational right…). Frankly, I’m surprised he brought it up during the SOTU Adress, but I look for it to have about as much impact as his campaign against steroids.
His fondest hope is indignant demonstrations by raging queens and “Queers for Kerry” posters on CNN.
You fail to see the distinction between “should” and “is”? :smack: Okay, try this:
Al Gore should be president of the United States of America.
George Bush is president of the United States of America.
See the difference?
Because my definition doesn’t deprive people of legal, economic, or emotional security. My definition doesn’t hurt anyone, it doesn’t force anyone to do anything they are not willing to do, and it doesn’t force anyone to give up anything they do not want to give up. Your definition does all of these things. Unless you want to argue that it is okay to do these things to other people, then you have to admit that my defintion is objectivly better than yours, or be a hypocrite.
We’re talking about homosexuality. Pedophilia is an entirely unrelated subject. Leave it out of the debate, please.
Now, explain how acting on a same-sex attraction is “evil.” If your answer is, “Because God says it is,” please explain why God says it is evil.
No, I’m not 100% objective. I have biases of which I am not aware. When I recognize I have a bias, I attempt to adjust my behavior/philosophy to correct for it. I do not use it as an excuse for irrationality, illogic, or ignorance. I am, contrary to what you believe, 100% open-minded on this issue. I’m absolutely responsive to a good reason to oppose gay marriage. It’s just that no one has been able to provide one. You’ve got two arguments: religious, and traditional. If you want to make a religious argument for banning gay marriage, you will first have to convince me of the exsistence of God. As for tradition, I won’t accept “that’s the way we’ve always done it” as an argument. If tradition alone were sufficient reason to stiffle change, we’d all be living in caves.
It’s a long thread. Refresh my memory.
And I, too, believe that harming people is wrong. And that’s all the rationale either of us need to not harm people. You want to take it a step further and say, “because God said not to,” fine, but I don’t need any further explanation. Harming people is wrong. We both agree on this. Now, show how legalizing gay marriage harms anyone, and you have an argument against gay marriage that is non-moronic.
Yes, but we can actually defend out views. You can’t. That makes them objectively less valid.
Yes, they are unacceptable only because you base them on religion. And you want to know why they have no place in government? Because of self interest. Your own. You’re a Catholic. That makes you a minority in this predominently Protestent country. Do you want people like this guy putting his beliefs into law? Doesn’t seem likely now, but it wasn’t too long ago that those views were mainstream. A lot of pundits thought Kennedy would be unelectable because no one would vote a Papist into the White House. When you lobby to get your oppressive religious beliefs made into law, you’re opening the door for everyone else’s oppressive beliefs to become law, too. And sooner or later, it’ll be you under the heel.
And once again, allowing gays to marry is not an imposition of any one else’s beliefs on you. That shit is not going to fly. When you lobby for legal bans on homosexual marriage, you are imposing your beliefs on gays by preventing them from getting married. When we lobby against legal bans on homosexual marriage, we are imposing on you by preventing you from doing… what, exactly? If you want to argue that we’re imposing our beliefs on you, you’re going to have to show where our beliefs are somehow an imposition.
Rodrigo, it’s very simple. Slavery, child abuse, etc. violate the rights of other people. same-sex marriage does not. It’s not an arbitrary difference. It’s a practical distinction not a “moral” one.
Okay, now I’m done too.
