Wait, what? Marriage is just for procreation? Where does that leave me, in my childfree OSM? I can’t have a child and noone is going to let me adopt one at my age, do I have to get divorced? How is that fair to the child anyway?
Oh, wait, no. Marriage is about far more things than just having kids. In our case, it is about two folks loving each other and wanting to “seal” it with a ceremony, as well as the government protections marriages provides us.
People who get married just because they want to procreate are probably why there are so many divorces…
Oh. Thought you didn’t bother answering me, I now see I have my answer, in your incredibly offensive post to Miller.
Attention, world. Magellan’s “ideal of marriage” is that a couple be able to pump out the babies. No reference to care, nurture, mutual love, or anything else. If a couple neglects or abuses their children, cheats on each other, etc., they have an ideal marriage, as long as they’re mutually fertile.
Nice. You’ve been here long enough to know one of my hot buttons, I believe. And you went ahead and pushed it. I withdraw anything I’ve said in your defense and any respect I may have expressed for you; I mistakenly took you for someone with human decency who was standing by scruples different from my own.
I am precluded from wishing you any ill by my own principles and the rules of this board, but may I say that I hope someday you come to experience a fraction of the heartache you unfeelingly hand out, and that as you sit there weeping and broken, someone comes along and tells you that after all, you asked for it.
I would tell you to fuck off – but I believe that “off” deserves better than you for a sex partner.
This is RICH. But at least the the claw beneath the velvet glove has been revealed. Color me surprised. You profess understanding, or to want to understand, yet in your second paragraph you push forth such a load of nonsense that you should be arrested and flogged with the wires from a lie detector machine. It’s as if you ignored every other post I’ve written on the topic. But, what they heck, right? If it serves your purposes to demonize me and make yourself appear oh-so-calm-and rationale, what’s a few blatant mistruths—if not lies—in the process. Of course, even a cursory review of my posts in this thread alone would show the flagrant inaccuracies you peddle for applause from the crowd to be just that.
You say you want this simple little post, that’s all; just a few sentences or paragraphs, just to really understand where I’m coming from. Well, Heffalump and Roo pointed out the futility of that exercise. As if just a few lines could provide a complete argument. And the fact that you claim that you can’t understand my position proves that either you don’t care enough as to have read this thread in its entirety (not to mention the other two alluded to), or your predisposition makes you unable to see what Heffalump and Roo and others have been able to glean. Either way, I have better things to do with my time. Especially since that post you so desire (which, in large part, would be a compilation of what I’ve written already in this thread and the other two) would simply draw the exact same questions and attacks I’ve already received. Like yours, for instance. People will simply ignore aspects of my argument—as you have in yours—and attribute to me the lowest motivations. Well, I’ve got better things to do; like scratching my ass.
As far as what heartache I might feel, you don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve had to deal with in my life. You don’t know what heartache I might have had to deal with. For all you know the story of my life could make you cry, but you don’t know about it because I don’t share it. Maybe I feel facing reality and not taking things personally is better than hyper-focusing on the inequity of the cards I’ve been dealt and wallowing in my sorrow and being frustrated because the world won’t re-center itself to make my life easier or more pleasant. So, you me wish me the anguish you mention (even though you claim to not wish me ill, :rolleyes:, right). And should it come to pass, I will do my best endure that. But if you hear no cries of woe from me, fear not, Polycarp, it doesn’t mean what you wish for hasn’t come to pass, only that I am silent about it.
And you’ll have to forgive me, but I have no idea with these “hot buttons” of yours are. I must have misplaced the little notebook that I use to write down all your likes, dislikes, loves, and detestations.
Sorry you big baby, but I know the sorrow you caused married people. Go ahead and tell us how this tragedy of your life entitles you to take away others’ rights. Go on. Tell us the source of this hate. It might help us understand you. Won’t help us agree with you, but will help us understand you. We need to understand your kind.
Behold my power! I cause untold sorrow because of the awesome power I have to prevent people from doing what their hearts desire. I prevent the slight of build from playing in the NFL. I prevent those with less than 20-20 eyesight from being fighter pilots. I prevent those of merely above average intelligence from winning the Nobel Prize (well, I slipped on that one, there is Al Gore). I prevent giants from playing midgets in movies. I prevent fat girls from looking good in thong bikinis. I prevent the crippled from competing against Usein Bolt. And anyone else from beating him, even the guy who really, really, really, really thinks he should have. I prevent the person who orders a hamburger by asking for a pancake from receiving a hamburger.
Since I’d so hate to be accused of ignoring anything, let me offer that it appears all your confusion seems to come down with your confusing two words: “can” and “should”. Consult your dictionary, then reread the thread.
Gotta love the subtext in Magellan’s little rant: gay people are equivalent to short people, people with bad eyesight, the intellectually mediocre, the crippled, fat girls, and people who can’t order properly in restaurants. What he still refuses to acknowledge is that there is no one Ideal of Marriage that is a universally recognized and immutable truth. He has choose to cling to one definition and enshrine it as Truth, but that’s his choice. It’s not a law of nature. It could be changed, and a lot of people could be made happy while harming no one. Why choose an outdated idea over the real happiness of others? I don’t understand.
Let’s then add to the list the 6’8" people with Mensa memberships who want to be jockeys. Or the super-fit hulking 250 pound Icelander who wants to be the best hill climber in the Tour de France. Or all the 7-foot tall people who want to be fighter pilots. Or all the gorgeous, brilliant young women under 5’4" who want to be high-fashion runway models.
Because I’d so hate for you to miss the point in an innocent attempt to further ascribe motives to my position.:rolleyes:
You’re describing people who do not physically fit the actual physical qualifications for a sport or job. This is not germane to the discussion of same-sex marriage. Jockeys are short because they’re lighter and put less of a burden on the horse. That’s a result of physics. As is your hill climber. The fighter pilot and the runway model are the result of human design. They could be changed. If being a fighter pilot or a runway model were subject to civil rights issues, they would be changed. But they’re not. Marriage is.
What you’re basically arguing here is that the universe is somehow arranged in a some ideal way to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry their same-sex partner. And I cry bullshit to that.
Actually, what he told me is not that the universe is arranged in such a way that people *can’t *marry their same-sex partners, as we can see, but that it’s arranged in such a way that they shouldn’t. I don’t know, maybe every time a boy marries a boy, Jupiter slips a little way out of its orbit and closer to crashing into the Earth or something.
I think it has been revealed that this is not about “civil rights”. I’ve proposed a way for all the legal benefits and privileges enjoyed by OSCs to be extended to SSCs. For some this is inadequate. So, this is not about “rights”. It’s about using the institution as a means to achieve equivalence. Not just equality, but equivalence. But a loving, committed gay relationship is not equivalent to a loving committed heterosexual relationship. That is simply a fact of biology. The latter is a societal recognition of what has transpired for eons: man and woman coming together, having children and raising them. The explanation for this is not religious, but Darwinian. And over time, what seemed to work best was given special status. And that institution is a fundamental part of modern society.
When you look at discussion about single mothers in the inner cities you here the lament about kids not growing up with a father. About the lack of strong male role models. And we now try to encourage the young generations in the inner cities to not perpetuate this less than ideal situation—for fathers to take responsibility for raising their children, because the kids benefit from having both parents. They get certain stuff from mothers and certain stuff from fathers. It’s almost as if nature had figured it all out and kids should be the product of a male and a female. Imagine that.
I feel like I’m talking to a wall. The fact is, you’re not fighting for those ideals. You’re fighting for a word. That word, at this moment in this country, means what you think it should always mean forever and ever. But it’s a word. Words change meanings. “Nice” doesn’t mean what it once did. There used to be an opposite equivalent to warmth, “coolth”, that no longer exists. “Marriage” used to mean (and still means, in some cultures) one man and four women. Or 10. Or 30. It also used to mean two white OR two black people of opposite sexes. It also used to mean that the male had complete control over the female and all of her assets. It also used to mean that the husband got to have sex with the wife against her will and she had no recourse.
We’ve taken nature into our hands a million times over and moved things around within it to make our lives more convenient or more fulfilled or more entertaining. Our hands certainly didn’t evolve to type on a keyboard. Our eyes didn’t evolve to read. Our ears and septums and tongues and eyebrows and genitals and skin in general didn’t evolve to provide a canvas for personal expression via piercings or tattoos.
You don’t seem to understand that, for me at least, this leechlike attachment to a word, when that word is pretty much essential to making sure that “equal” remains “equal”, is completely irrational. It’s so much foofaraw trying to rationalize your insane obsession with the purity of a word. Words change. This word WILL change. I guarantee it.
There’s the crux, jelly: in every aspect in which you are personally affected, or that falls within the limited realm of Things That Are Your Fucking Business, it absolutely is.
The rest is just you tap-dancing, endlessly and poorly. Being part of a huge cast doesn’t mean your act doesn’t suck.
Yes, and that’s not what I’m complaining about. I’m complaining about the fact that you arbitrarily and without reason have decided that that should bar me from getting married. Because the idea that not having children is reason enough to refuse someone the right to marry? Is fucking bullshit. Unless you want to extend the same ban to the impotent, the barren, the elderly, and those who just don’t want any kids. Otherwise, it’s pretty transparent that there’s more to the social concept of marriage than simply pumping out sprogs. It’s doubly stupid when you take into account the fact that there’s absolutely nothing preventing gay couples from having kids. Sure, the kid’ll only be a genetic relation to one of the parents, but so what? Or do you want to outlaw step-parents, too?
Yes, change the language. Why not? Where’s the harm? You’ve had, what, fifteen pages to point out where the harm is in changing the definition of “marriage” to include same-sex couples, and the best you’ve been able to come up with is, “Well, maybe if it’s not as special, straight people won’t want to get married anymore.” An argument that is so abominably stupid, you seem to have had the good sense to not pursue it any further.
As for changing history, no. I’m not arguing to make the change retroactive. Alter reality? Marriage is a human social construct, not an immutable law of physics. It means what we, as a society, want it to mean. There is no good reason not to ammend the meaning to include same sex couples. As proof that there’s no good reason not to, I point you to every post you’ve made on this subject, which constitute as good a farce as any I’ve ever seen, except that the consequences are so tragic.
If you were 6’10", could run like a gazelle, and could sink a basket from half-court, and were told you couldn’t be a basketball player because you’ve got brown eyes, then you’d have something half way resembling a point. There is nothing in the biology of gay people that should prevent them from getting married, except that you, magellan, insist that it be so. And said insistance is, again, a special case designed solely to exclude gay people from the institution, and not straight people who suffer the same “defect.” If a lack of an ability to bear children is the sole determinator of the appropriateness of a marriage contract, it should be enforced equally, without regard to the sex of the people involved. To do otherwise is, once again, that self-same bigotry you so stridently decry exists in your heart, despite it’s overabundant presence in your actions.
I’m not ascribing motives. There was a pattern to your examples: they were all in some way inferior or defective. In the above examples, there are concrete physiological reasons why these people can’t achieve their goals, because their chosen professions require a specific sort of physicality. An obstacle created by humans has not been placed in their way arbitrarily to block them. It’s not tradition that prevents a large person from being a jockey; it’s not prejudice that stops the blind guy from being a fighter pilot. The only one I’d object to is the fashion model; it really is stupid that shorter women can’t be models, and I’m not even sure that’s true anyway.
Unlike your above examples, marriage does NOT require its participants to possess any specific body. It does not require anything beyond two people willingly entering into the contract. You are creating artificial obstacles to exclude gays from the institution that are non-essential to that institution. The ability or desire to procreate is not required in order for two people to be married. I don’t see how you can deny that. Thus, there is no credible reason why gays should not be allowed to marry.
I think everyone understands what married means. You can tell a four-year-old that Bob & Gary down the street are a married couple and the kid isn’t going to experience any cognitive disconnect. When people grow up they find someone they love and want to live with. People don’t need to run to the dictionary to figure out what married means.