No, you are not that person. Society is speaking for that (hypothetical) person, and as a member of society you may be presumed to have a right to be heard in the abortion debate. Still not analogous to SSM.
Those are not arguments for why other people would be expected to have a voice in the abortion debate. And are also, not analogous to SSM, either.
Nor are these analogous to SSM. Marriages are contracts between two people. None of these are. You’re foundering here, trying to justify a poorly-supported analogy. Seek another.
Because, as mentioned, it involves the recognition of a new right to SSM. New rights are not decided by Supreme Court decisions. This is forbidden by the Tenth Amendment.
See here for an overview of marriages around the world in many forms, including one man/one woman, one man/many women, many men/one woman, many men/many women, one man/one man, and one woman/one woman.
In Africa, male Azande warriors took on boy-wives who were their warrior’s apprentice. They even paid a bride-price for the boys. This practice ceased in the 20th century (wonder why?) Also the Thonga ethnic group practiced homosexual marriage.
Native Americans called gays Two-Spirits and they generally married people of their same biological gender. There was accepted and open homosexuality among the pre-Colombia Mezoamerican tribes as well.
But we do know that a wheel is round, or round enough to roll. It was. It is. If you have a thing incapable of rolling, it is not a wheel.
So, there is nothing you can point to. Okay. Now we can dispense with that particular argument. After all, we are also unaware of the times SSM might have been tried and was deemed to have extremely negative consequences and soon eliminated.
As far as “Boston Marriage”, you do realize it was an expression, a term thrown out to describe an unusual arrangement. Do you really think that the couple so labeled would have thought of themselves as “married”? Or that they enjoyed the any rights that would come with actual recognition of them being actually married?
Nonsense. Flight is what it is. I’m arguing that some idiot can’t strap wings of feathers to his arms, flap them about wherever he goes and claim he is flying.
And you’re free to have that opinion. And I’m free to have the opinion that anyone who demonizes another member of that society for voicing an opinion, especially one held by the majority of the populace is a complete asshole—I’m talking base, vile, rotten, irredeemable piece of festering, worthless shit strain of asshole.
You choose to ignore some of the arguments because it suits you, fine. Knock yourself out. You may want to look up the word “analogous”. It doesn’t mean “exactly the same as”. Any analogy will fall short on some level.
No, I’m fine with this one. But if you prefer the 8-year-old being tried or the issue of flag burning, or the death sentence, or assisted suicide, you go right ahead.
And a marriage is not just a contract. It is a particular type of contract that has particular significance attached to it. If it didn’t, gays wouldn’t be so hell-bent in trying to appropriate it, would they? Surely you realize that much.
There is a marked difference between “voicing an opinion,” and “voting to strip rights from a minority,” which is what you did on Election Day this year. While I don’t agree with Turnip’s opinion about your personal worth, this particular debate has gone a long, long way past the area where we can simply agree to disagree. Your actions are having a direct, harmful impact on me, and on thousands of other people like me. You can’t reasonably expect us to be okay with that, or to escape some degree of reproach and recrimination over it.
Additionally, I don’t see the relevance of your appeal to popularity. If the majority of the population felt that gays should be stoned to death, I don’t think that excuses any one individual in that society from feeling that gays should be stoned to death. Which is not to say that voting against marriage rights is the equivalent of killing people, I’m merely trying to illustrate that it is, in fact, possible for the majority of a population to be assholes.
It would not surprise me in the slightest. What makes you so sure the term was used only for platonic domestic partnerships?
Ah. So you want to keep the conversation confined to the portion of history for which we have written laws that can be referenced? Or is there something else by which we establish “actual recognition”?
I did not choose to ignore your “arguments”. I dismissed them. Because they were false analogies. You may want to look that up.
But, hey. Entertain us. Demonstrate how society’s role with someone burning a flag is the same as society’s role in SSM. Or how society’s role in someone blowing up a ship is analogous to its role in SSM.
Hey, I’m not the one disingenously trying to tar SSM with the feathers of a completely unrelated kneejerk political topic. You are. So I don’t prefer any of your poor analogies. I prefer instead to point out your poorly made argument.
Aw, heck. While you’re demonstrating those analogies, you may as well go ahead and show us how gays are trying to “appropriate” marriage. Or, you might want to look up that one, too. It doesn’t mean what you think it means, either. And it’s a pretty weak attempt to demonize what you’re arguing against.
Exactly! And if you’re not in a same-sex marriage, you won’t be affected by the gay couple at the next table, or next door, or anywhere. Dammit, this analogy has gotten away from me. Let me try again.
My argument is that SSM is beneficial to same-sex couples who want to marry, and has no negative effect on anyone else, and therefore should be legally allowed.
I still can’t figure out how the smoking analogy fits in, but maybe that’s because I’m a non-smoker who opposes smoking bans and dates a smoker. As long as he doesn’t smoke inside, doesn’t smoke around me if I get pregnant, and doesn’t smoke around our future children, that’s his decision. It’s my decision not to kiss him just after he’s smoked (blech!), just as it’s your decision not to recognize SSM within your religion, regardless of its secular legal status.
Well, given the different histories of the two issues, possibly a bit farther. After all, interracial marriage was practised in the Colonies Northern and Southern before your independence - at least until race began to become too poisonous an issue - and unlike same sex marriages, generally has no fundamental problems in the Abrahamic religions. Finding for same sex marriage as a right is somewhat different from taking a marginal legal ban - that is in the minority of states - on marriages that other than skin colours matched classic Judeo-Christian practise (yes yes, the US is not formally a Christian country, but certainly the character of the culture is effectively so).
It strikes me as a bit of self deception not to recognise the rather larger step. Of course the obvious line of attack for convincing is to draw the analogy you have drawn, but to be honest, it is in fact a rather bit further in cultural terms.
Many, when discussing SSM, bring interracial marriage as a new or expanded definition of marriage.
Interracial marrage is incredibly common around the world and few societies have illegalized on purely racial terms. Usually there were economic/social/prestige issues.
The US example is tied with slavery too heavily.
The U.S. Government is by constitutional definition and repeated proclamation secular.
The SCotUS has stated that discriminatory laws serving only a religious purpose are unconstitutional.
The SCotUS has stated repeatedly that marriage is a fundamental right.
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of property” are “unalienable rights” as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and for gay couples all three are aided and abetted by legalized gay marriage.
There is no demonstrable social harm that comes of gay marriage.
There is no demonstrable social harm that comes of gay marriage. (It bears repeating.)
These being the case, why- other than socioreligious prejudice- should marriage not extend to same sex couples?
I remain curious about your 10th Amendment argument. First, the 10th Amendment is about federalism, not about separation of powers, so right off the bat, you’re off. Second, the 10th Amendment only deals with not delegated, the Supreme Court has been delegated the judicial power (which includes judicial review). Third, what is wrong with State Supreme Courts deciding for SSM? There is no 10th Amendment problem there.
It comes down to how you define the right of marriage. To me, the only interest the State has in marriage is in the civil aspects of marriage (property rights without contracts, taxes, inheritance and the hundreds of other aspects of law). None, and I mean none, of those aspects of civil marriage have anything to do with the gender of the people in the relationship. Just as the civil marriage in Loving, etc., had nothing to do with the race of the people in the relationship.
The only aspects the State should be concerned with in marriage are the aspects that deal with the law. Let the churches decide the religious, relational, and gender issues of marriage.
So, when we talk about the right to marriage, it is the right to join into that civil marriage. And that civil right, although traditionally only granted to one man and one woman, has nothing to do, and should have nothing to do, with the gender of the people involved.
I would tend to say the amount of people who hold an opinion has no effect whatsoever on the worthiness of that opinion.
Out of interest, would this particular view mean that a person who demonizes the voiced opinion that gay marriage is a good plan is less of a base, vile, rotten, irredeemable piece of festering, worthles shit strain of asshole than a person who demonizes the voiced opinion that gay marriage is a bad plan?