Hehe. Okay, you can simply claim I’ve been lying all along. And I can do the same: you’re lying. You don’t believe anything you post. Wow, that was easy.
But the best part of this latest proof of your stupidity is that you claim some sort of victory, when you’ve been slapped and spanked repeatedly and have made no point, have proven nothing—except that you are a glutton for being beat about the ears. So review the last twenty or so exchanges and try to comprehend how pathetic you are. Then, Mr. No Brains and All Bluster, deal.
Finally you got something right: saying it won’t make it true; the truth of it makes it true.
And my actions are in perfect concert with my claims: I don’t want SSM to be legal. I voted that way. I’ve presented a way that the benefits can be had without the word. And my claim that you are an imbecile has been supported numerous times—by both my posts to you (go ahead, check), and by our own. Thanks for helping.
Magellan, out of one side of your mouth, you’re simply fight for a word: marriage. This is the most ridiculous fight I’ve ever witnessed in politics. Probably more childish even than the wailing and gnashing of teeth that went on about Clinton’s blowjob.
Out of the other side of your mouth, you’re saying you want to protect society from the pitfalls of gay marriage which, effectively, could not be any different than equal-in-all-but-name civil unions, which you claim to support (I think you claim to support these? Clarify.)
All votes count. You know that, right? You understand how voting works, correct?
And, yes, my vote counts. It did count. Looks like it helped get passed what I wanted to pass. And I like to think my contribution helped, as well. Looks like it did, friend. Wouldn’t you say?
But I do appreciate you stating so strongly that you think ideas have no value. That’s helpful in understanding where you’ve been coming from.
By the way, I think I figured out who you are, friend. Is this you?
I think it is important that the ideal be upheld, that we have a word that refers to IT. I want to protect that. If that is protected, the word refers exclusively to a man/woman relationship, then I am all for anything and everything else: gays in the military, civil unions, all the benefits and privileges of marriage being extended to gay couples, including adoption, insurance, inheritance, hospital visitation, etc., etc.
I really don’t see how that is not clear. Can you really not comprehend what my position is? Did I do a good job of presenting the reason you might be FOR SSM in my lengthy response to you?
Yours is the monstrosity of the familiar, the horror of the everyday. For all your beatific crowing about “equal rights,” and pallin’ around with your gay pals, and despite the maddening temperance of your rationalization in this thread, make no mistake: you are the voice and face of the oppressor to millions who merely want a part of what the rest of us take for granted. You may be the jovial hostage-taker, the genteel concentration camp guard, the kindhearted massa who only beats his field negroes when they really get out of line—but don’t flatter yourself to think you’re any better than the hardcore bigots you’ve aligned with. Injustice is no less venomous when it’s delivered with a cheerful wink and a smile, and if you continue to mention majority with whom you side, who (with the full backing of the law) can casually choose to strip rights away from other citizens simply because it suits them to do so, it should be with a sense of shame rather than vindication.
Oh, please. I have no shame with how I voted. None. Given the options, I think it the wisest course of action. That’s what we citizens are supposed to do, isn’t it? Or is that true only if they agree with you? Bullllllshit! This game of demonizing those on the other side of an issue on a ballot is childish. And you’re desire to equate me with those you hate because my views overlap with theirs on just one of the issues is asinine, not to mention unfair. Not that, from your post, I have any reason to think you care about fairness.
To further my thought … if that is the case, it just makes no sense to me. If you want two gay men (or women) to be able to have the same rights to marriage as a man and woman, but just not be allowed to call it the same thing … then that just smacks of complete idiocy to me.
It would be like someone saying, “I’m not against black people owning houses, I just want the word ‘house’ defined as a place where white people live. They have to call where they live something else.”
I guess not. It’s genuinely baffling. Do you crusade for the strict preservation of definitions of other words? If yes, give some examples, if no, why not?
I understand you are all about taking human rights away, not granting them. Your agenda is brilliantly obvious. What is insulting is how you think we’re so stupid you can take rights away and say “I’m for equal rights” and we’d actually believe you.
I’m going to vote for a restoration of black slavery, but I’m against black slavery.
I think this is what is confusing everyone, magellan01.
You say:
[list=“1”]
[li] opposite-sex marriage is established as “ideal”[/li][li] gay people should have equal rights[/li][li] gay people can never be part of the “ideal”[/li][/list]
How do you reconcile the discrepancy between points 2 and 3, above? If a union between gay people is not “ideal”, then how can it be said that they’re being treated as equals?
Okay, maybe this is a helpful question, as I don’t see that as being a good analogy. Why? Because it is random. I’m not just randomly choosing a word and wanting to prevent one set of people from using it. Marriage is a foundational institution for society and our country. It has meant, and does mean, the special relationship that a man and woman have entered into for centuries. The one that begat and raised children. It was/is societies recognition of the natural coming together of man and woman. A celebration of what nature pushes and society has deemed a good and stable cradle for the raising of children.
Marriage, as we know it, deserves to retain the meaning it has. It deserves to be held apart from anything that is not it.
I do see the argument for SSM. I think I’ve demonstrated that in my response to Cisco. It’s just that I see one of the criteria for marriage being outside of anyone’s control. We don’t call a man a woman, because those things are separated by their very definitions. If you call a man a woman it makes as much sense as calling him a firetruck, a gazelle, or an eraser. Similarly, regardless of the amount of love and commitment a gay couple may have, they are both the same sex, and cannot, by definition be a married couple. Now some people argue, correctly, that we can change the definition, expand it. Of course we can. But should we? I say “no”, for all the reason I’ve given over the past week or so. I think it beneficial to society to have a word that represents that which it has and does represent.
My honest response to this is: who gives a shit? It makes no matter in the great scheme of the universe what meaning we attach to the word “marriage”, despite what it stood for, lo these many centuries.
Why? Again … what difference does that make to anything?
For ages, lo these many centuries, we retained the meaning of the word “chattle” to include women. Should we cling to that outdated notion too?
What is the benefit? How is society going to crumble otherwise?
Well, that’s unfortunate. A belief that I try to adhere to is to not have my passion for a position exceed my ability to argue the position from the other side. If you have specific questions, I’ll try to answer them. But I’d think a review of this thread, if not the other one in the pit, would probably cover it all.
And I do, actually, have another word that I think we should protect: hero. Aside from the obvious license employed when referring to the “hero of the game”, etc., the word used to mean something very specific. It meant that someone made a decision to go above and beyond what would fairly be expected of him and place himself at great risk in order to help someone else. so, if you heard someone was a “war hero”, it meant the he was a soldier that did something extraordinary. For example, he ran through open fire to drag back a wounded buddy. If he was a fireman, he ran into the burning building after the firemen have given up on it. You get the idea. Slowly, the word came to include someone who was wounded in war, then someone who served in uniform. It was no longer the extraordinary fireman, but firemen in general. In has even been degraded to mean “survivor”. One newspaper article showed a picture of victims of some random violence and called them “heroes”
I think this does not only these men, true heroes, a disservice, but society in general. Heroism, as has been understood back to Homer and beyond, described man at his best, at his most brave, his most altruistic. We, society, deserve to have a word for that. A word that when you hear it in reference to someone, paints a portrait of the man (or woman) the he deserves. Children deserve to know what real heroism is, to learn the range of what humans are possible of.
