Define "sanctity", dammit!

We’re constantly being told that this or that is “sacred” and thus not to be touched. We’ve been getting an earful of the “sanctity” of marriage, but we also get incidents like Native American groups protesting development or other activities at certain locales because they’re “sacred”. The implication seems to be that sanctity means a thing is infused with some sort of supernatural significance. And disturbing sanctity sets off serious reverberations in the spiritual realm. Is that it?

But how do we as a society go about determining what is and is not sacred? Is there some objective way of testing for sanctity or do we simply accept at face value the claim of any culture that there’s this magic spell? Seeing as how we’re about to base a constitutional amendment on sanctity, it’s kinda important.

IMO, “sacredness” is clearly a religious concept, which the gov’t should not be encoding into any law, let alone the Constitution.

Quite agreed, Revtim, but the concept is having an influence on policy in a number of ways, so the question is, who here can justify it?

SAnctity means that something has a religious meaning for someone. It is not about interupting a spell or some kind of spiritual reverberation. It is a simple matter of respecting others rights to worship and to respect their sensibilities.
If I start using a crucifix to clean out drain holes, God isn’t going to lightning bolt my neighborhood, but many in my neighborhood would light me up for disrespecting something they consider “special”. It is no different than the emotional outrage someone might get from seeing someone burn a flag or burning a copy of the constitution.
It isn’t about magic and religious zealotry. It is about respecting others like you would have them respect you.

Technically, a sacred thing is something dedicated to a god, or imbued with holiness. (Moses having to take off his shoes when he sees the burning bush, because he’s on sacred ground) It’s also used in a secular context to refer to something, usually a concept or principle, that an individual or group considers the protection of to be the utmost importance, so that the importance of it shouldn’t even be questioned. (In America, we consider the right to disagree with the government sacred)

Axiomatic as: protecting a system which facilitates disagreement at all costs.
It also allows the govt. the converse right to disagree with it’s population.

Just circular reasoning to validate the exersize of inequity.

“sanctity of marriage” in a secular sense is “the right to form a public contract of exclusive use of another person”

So, again, we have a system axiomated upon the premise that we must protect the ability to be exclusively accessed, which again, is a premise of defending inequity at all cost.

It sends out a very loud and clear message as to what the purpose of living in America is – to protect inequity with your life, even if it’s the only thing that can possibly cost you your life.

I don’t think I agree with your post, but I might be misunderstanding it. How does getting married cost you your life?

Quint Essence:

Ok. So its simply another form of political correctness, like when minorities get upset by anything that alludes to a stereotype.

That doesn’t apply very well to the gay marriage issue, where respect is definitely a one-way street.

Cap’n, I think it’s more a case of us cherishing our rights as though they were sacred. Maybe that’s what “sacrosanct” means.

I doubt that theologians across the religious spectrum would concur that sanctity is exactly the same thing as Americans’ reverence for our flag and our political rights, these being purely secular symbols and concepts. (During the flag burning debate, a religious figure stated, “You can’t desecrate that which is not sacred”.) Many cultures consider sacred sites–especialy but not limited to graves–to contain spirits. So does “spirituality” interact with sanctity? That word sure gets thrown around a lot.

What I don’t want is for there to be any number of “senses” of the term and never knowing in what sense the speaker means when he refers to the “sanctity” of this or that.

“[The right to disagree with the govt. is sacred in America]”

What this is ultimately stating is that a consensus must never be approached. We must, in America, use all of our ethic and energy to preserve a lack of consensus so that we may protect this ‘right’ – this ‘correct state of being’.

In terms of the private access of this right, one can see the problem of people having “no” actually mean “yes”, or “yes” actually meaning “no”.

Parents do this all the time in fact with children. Authority figures do this all the time with the population. “Helpers” do this all the time with addicts. The fact that a constant “no” coupled with violent resistance can end up being an “yes” after some coercive conditioning, is what causes the private access problem to be of such concern to a being who is trying to discern how to allow ACCESS to a state where consent is not circumventing or violating intent.

As noted by the example just above, it’s ambiguous. To a being who’s trying to use their intent to continue securing their ability to have an intent (survival to an intentional being); the only thing they have to measure this against, is no violation of consent – or rather – access to a model that correctly maps to an un-bypassed intent. Evidence that intent itself doesn’t have an incompleteness that suggests uncertainty about its purpose for responding to any stimuli – evidence that the belief you have an intent isn’t self refuting.

The problems with private access and how it allows consensus to be uncertain and ambiguous is a problem, that if intractable, stands as evidence to an intentional being that they don’t have a purpose for responding to stimuli, or even believing that they are an intentional being – which is suicide to an intentional being if the premise is accepted; death if it’s absolute.

It’s self contradictory to use “the right to disagree” as, the purpose for acting with intent, the thing to secure at all cost. What this does is turns around and attacks the survival of the very intent being used, by securing the ambiguity that bypasses the intentional state of the being.

I don’t think I need to tell you (even though I am!) that exclusive access to individual people, particularly with respect to sex, is one of the highest regarded commodities on earth. Some even consider that most, if not all, other commodities are secondary - including all forms of spirituality (fraud to get in someone’s pants or ‘trick’’ them into exclusive access). Other commodities are personality access - like whether someone likes you or not - whether someone laughs at your joke - how they respond to you uttering the same phrase with the same muscles exerted for expression and same intonation as others.

These are all commodities that in personal absence allow for the incompleteness of consensus.
It’s really in the same ballpark of protecting disagreement, or considering disagreement to the ethical right of all ethical rights. Intentional beings gauge their own survival through the opposite phenomenon – agreement. That there is an objective absolute truth with a capital T, that allows for the purpose to respond to stimuli within the scope of intentional states of being.

Why does marriage have this same problem? It’s part of the private access problem; disagreeing with every other being except the one selected, for the process of that selection, by actualizing that selection. By actualizing that selection, without being able to translate that private access to all beings that could possibly disagree, in return, to their exclusion, is effectively accepting untranslated wealth – which is the act of using your intent for secure the thing that bypasses your intent; suicide to an intentional being. It’s accepting proof without evidence, assenting to incompleteness of your intent with your intent.

As I noted earlier though, people, who currently marry, for example, are not evidence of intentional beings. This is the part of the human population that uses linguistic tokens to simulate a state of intentional being. Their survival is always self-contradictory, assent to incompleteness by accepting private access – but they don’t have a self, so it’s not exactly self-contradictory. They parrot linguistic tokens of, “I have a self”, but are effectively the human version of ants and other non-intentional beings. Securing this right will kill them, but they are not programmed to survive, to preserve the state of intention within themselves. To non intentional beings inequity is proof of success. To intentional beings, it is proof that there is no purpose for doing anything, if inequity is intractable – it is for them, proof that an intentional state of being does not exist, is a delusion. It is the ultimate loss of hope. To non intentional beings, words like “hope” are linguistic tokens used to secure inequity, and these circular reasons for accepting inequitable distribution simply because access is available; to accept private access.

justhink about that passage for a few minutes.

*pretty much any passage would have worked for my purpose.

Hea-vee! :cool: