# How to decide which instances of opposition to gay marriage are hateful and bigoted.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-decide-which-instances-of-opposition-to-gay-marriage-are-hateful-and-bigoted/630653>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [August 6, 2012, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-decide-which-instances-of-opposition-to-gay-marriage-are-hateful-and-bigoted/630653 "2012-08-06T20:14:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 776

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**Author:** ![martu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@martu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/martu)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-decide-which-instances-of-opposition-to-gay-marriage-are-hateful-and-bigoted/630653/776 "2012-09-10T15:59:03Z")

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> [@Marley23](#):
>
> I see. You’re saying a term can mean more than one thing without causing any major chaos or confusion. So if marriage means state-recognized long-term opposite-sex _and_ same-sex relationships, there shouldn’t be a problem. Right?
> 
> I don’t think you are following through on the implications of your own argument here. I’d also like to see you try answering my questions and explaining what exactly is going to happen if (when) “marriage” refers to these relationships regardless of the sexes of the people involved and exactly why it’s going to change anybody’s behavior or identification. If anything it sounds like it would make people less judgmental about sexuality, and I’m having a hard time seeing that as a bad thing. As I said earlier, your argument would make more sense if you were arguing in support of anti-sodomy laws. While those laws had not really been enforced anywhere in recent decades, criminalizing same-sex behavior might actually, you know, affect people’s behavior. “Don’t call it marriage!” doesn’t seem likely to affect anyone’s behavior, particularly that of people who aren’t really thinking in terms of sex or marriage.

Well it is obvious what the problem would be, the ‘ideal’ scenario of a one man and one woman marriage would become rarer because…erm…well dammit I can’t see how allowing a small subset of the population to call themselves married would influence this ‘ideal’ scenario at all.

**magellan01** is not only a bigot but also a coward. Some bigots are too dumb to realise they are bigots and from his posts here I think we can conclude he isn’t dumb. Some people are proud bigots who shout their bigotry from the roof tops, these people are mostly morons. Then we have our cowardly bigots who know what they espouse is bigotry but try all sorts of mental gymnastics to convince themselves, and consequently others, they are in fact not bigots.

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