Well, strictly speaking in US terms, rights and privileges which have not historically attached to marriage (such as health insurance) are irrelevant - there being no constitutional guarantee or fundamental right to same, unfortunately - so it doesn’t matter if marriage was the same then as now.
On the contrary, I’d say “Marriage now is different from marriage in the past” is a pretty solid rebuttal to “We’ve never had SSM before.”
Logically, yes.
Gods and religions for some, tiny flags for others.
Well, there you have it. The guys at the other table started the fight by intruding into a conversation that did not concern them. The fact that they took the first punches merely underscores their stupidity and incompetence. The only injustice is that they failed to tuck their penii between their legs and go home at that point.
In what other situations do you think violence is the answer, then?
Penii? Do you have a penius, then? :dubious:
God forbid anybody say any word that sounds funny but isn’t PERFECTLY CORRECT! GRAAAGHGHGH!!!
That’s “GRAARGHGHGH!”
Speaking not for Magellan and certainly not for myself, isn’t the usual line that metaphysically speaking, there simply is no such thing as gay marriage, and the only kind of marriage there is (straight marriage) is, legally speaking, perfectly open to all?
-Kris
Oh, they HAD guns. Luckily they were missing weapons 
Penes is just as funny and is correct. Or penises. Tallywhackers. Whatever, just not penii.
Well said. When all the posturing is done, it’s still just a bunch of drunken assholes fighting in a parking lot. When I worked as a volunteer cop, we didn’t even intercede. Our philosophy was: when the fight is over, arrest the winners for assault and call the ambulance for the disabled.
This is inevitably the end result of ordering milk at a bar.
It’s worth adding that magellan also feels that allowing gays to marry may, at some unspecified point in the future, lead to some unspecified harm to the fabric of society, because straight people will gradually stop marrying each other once the word “marriage” is no longer special just for them. I think that a position which holds that gays have some characteristic which, under identical circumstances to a straight person, could cause the downfall of society can be reasonably classified as “homophobic.” On the other hand, if you take his views on gay rights as a whole, magellan is pretty well to the left of the country as a whole, so it’s not really fair to rake him over the coals for this one shortcoming.
Isn’t it fair? What if I think Black people are really great at sports, and good cooks, and have great rhythm, but they’re not *quite *as smart as white people, so maybe we should reserve more academic scholarships for whites? Is that just a little shortcoming?
Huh. I’m not sure what this means.
It seems to me that the positions on gay rights available in the mainstream are:
People should be allowed to marry people of the same sex.
People should not be allowed to marry people of the same sex, but they should be allowed to have sex with each other.
I am not aware of a mainstream view other than the above two. What am I missing?
There is of course the view that people shouldn’t have sex with people of the same gender. That’s probably still the majority view in the country. But it’s not the same as saying people shouldn’t be allowed (i.e. by the government) to have sex with others of the same gender. I’m really surprised if there can be found that many people who actually think that.
Or worse, saying “what are ya… yella?” in a sushi bar.
That is often the argument but it seems (to me at least) to sidestep the issue. For a time there wasn’t any such thing as “non Church sanctioned marriage”, but we dealt with that too. I know you’re not holding that up as a standard, but it’s part of why I don’t find the Argument From Linguistic Purity to be convincing either.
That seems… odd. I can’t imagine anybody who wanted to get married not doing so because someone else who they didn’t identify with also got married. Besides, I’d think that a monogamous gay couple would be much more within the norms of marriage than, say, swingers. But that’s just me.
I’m still curious to see what Mag’s thoughts are on this subject. It’s clear that I’ve missed out (wrong phrase, by far) on the debates on this subject, but it’s just one of those that I’ve never really considered all that debatable; everybody gets the right to a legal union with the partner of their choice as long as they’re consenting adults. I am curious to see why the analogy with miscegenation fails in his view though, seems pretty tight to me once irrelevancies such as race or sexual orientation are discarded.
Now that’s funny :D.
Oh who gives a shit ya dildo. It’s not like Steve MB is submitting his post to academic press for publication. Penii is funny to me (way funnier than the dumb things you said), and that’s all that really matters.