This raises an interesting point. If scientists, who just love to classify things, were in charge of naming various forms of marriage, no doubt we’d have a whole list:
marriagus heterous paternis : heterosexual - husband is older marriagus heterous maternis : heterosexual - wife is older marriagus heterous terminus : heterosexual marriage currently in divorce court
I’m sure the SDMB membership can supply numerous suggestions. The point is, a homosexual marriage wouldn’t be upsetting to a scientist - rather the scientist would be eager to identify it, classify it and name it.
No. This attempt to equate SSM with marriage between people of different races has been explained extensively in other threads. I’ll just say that interracial marriage has been around for eons, much linger the the U.S. and the compromise forced in its constitution. In comports with the natural coming together of hand and woman, procreation, and the family unit.
I hope they feel that way about gay relationships, but that we still have a word that describes marriage as it has been understood traditionally. It has been a cornerstone of civilization, especially Western culture.
I don’t have a lot of time now to argue the merits and demerits of each position yet again, so I’ll add this here, as it realites to your questions.
I am for equality for homosexuals. As some already know, I fully support extending them every right and privilege one can imagine—except the use of the word “marriage”. I am not against gay people. I arrive at my position because while I am for gay rights, I am also for our society having a term that describes an institution so foundational to our society. Traditional marriage not only is a natural commemoration of the natural coming together of man and woman and the family they create, it has stood the test of time. No society that we are aware of has thought it wise to equate committed SS relationships with marriage. This is even try for societies that predate Christianity, and for societies that were around much longer than ours and were much more accepting of the concept of homosexuality.
So, I find myself torn between two “good” things that I think benefit our society: gay equality and the traditional concept of marriage. That is why I favor civil unions, in which any person in a civil union is afforded the exact same legal benefits and privileges as any person in a marriage. I think most Americans would think that the most reasonable position. If it were to be embraced by the gay community, I think it could be achieved in every state in the not too distant future.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, a good part of the gay community is less interested in the legal rights and privileges they’ve been pining for than trying to alter society in a way that makes them feel good. We’ve moved from cries for toleration to acceptance and, now, to “you must embrace us”. I think most people could even get there, but when the gay community insists that they be allowed to dilute the meaning of a word that has been so important to our society and so many people hold dear, people tend to adopt an attitude of “Oh well, the hell with them.” This happens to me every time I get involved in these discussions on these boards. After I stop I focus more on the importance of the rights I think they should have, but the hubris of some in the pro SSM crowd is off-putting, to say the least. Part of the problem is that the these boards can be an echo chamber for some liberal potions. And the SSM debate is probably the best example of this. So, the hive mind takes over and people are fooled into thinking that “What, there’s still one or two guys who don’t accept SSM—that’s amazing. What’s wrong with him.” But that’s the danger of surrounding yourself with people who think like you. The grooves in the mind get etched more deeply with every chorus of agreement. But a fish in water does not realize that it is wet.
In closing, I participated in this thread to show that the chorus of “there is not rational argument against SSM” is nonsense. As I posted earlier, even champion SSM gladiator Dan Savage agrees with me on that. Yet, some of you will still insist on clinging to the lie.
Or time to explain and support your own assertions, even.
The question is why it will no longer do this if it includes both straight and gay relationships.
Again with this “natural” nonsense.
Please explain why changing society to make it more accepting is this a bad thing.
They’re asking for their rights for a rejection of a separate but equal solution. You can think what you like (and after all you support gay rights, so that’s no problem for you). And I think you’re wrong about how the public feels about it. That’s changed a great deal and the outcome became inevitable years ago.
I’ve never been able to take this argument seriously. It goes ‘I fully support gay rights, but it bothers me when gays ask for full rights. And it’s their fault it bothers me when they do that, so they should stop doing it.’ The blame in that scenario seems… misplaced.
The arguments you’re using aren’t rational. They’re a mix of appeals to tradition and unsupported assertions, and I’m getting a sense there is a reason you are not explaining yourself fully.
If this is so, and you mean it sincerely, then there is no reason not to call it a marriage.
Marriage is different today than it has been traditionally. Look around you. Interracial marriages, divorced parents, unmarried parents, blended families, multinational/racial adoptions, gay marriage, celebrity attentionwhoring marriages, etc. (That only ‘gay’ marriage is considered a, ‘dilution’, of the tradition, is extremely telling, to me.)
It’s a different world. Get used to it. Pining for a return, to a more traditional understanding of marriage, is just convincing yourself something is under attack that isn’t. Things change, they morph and evolve.( Remember when you could marry your 12 yr old cousin? Remember when Catholics couldn’t get a divorce?) Things change. All the time. Getting all pissy, about something that affects you, not at all, is just puerile.
Historical existence is absolutely not support for an ethical policy. Unless you’re willing to defend an historical definition of marriage (you tell me which one and we’ll discuss it), set this aside.
Family structure has been a cornerstone of our species, but you’ve offered zero evidence that the historical exclusion of gay couples from the institution is anything more than a relic of vicious homophobia, much less that it’s been integral to the institution’s survival.
Then you’re not for equality for homosexuals. It’s the old “but you fuck one sheep” phenomenon: if you’re a good person in a lot of ways, but a bad person in one way, it’s the bad thing that’ll define you.
Thisisclearlyuntrue. Recently, many, many societies have thought it wise to equate committed SS relationships with marriage.
Yes, this is a recent development, just as the abolition of slavery was a relatively recent development in the course of civilization. Go back 500 years, and I’m not sure you can find a single large civilization that outlawed slavery: it was a cornerstone of civilization. Thankfully, the forces of liberty and justice prevailed, and slavery has been largely eliminated from the planet.
We’re the same transitional phase with eliminating restrictions on gay marriage today as we were with eliminating slavery 200 years ago. Choose your side.
(And of course the anti-SSM folks aren’t as bad as the pro-slavery folks: there’s a massive difference in degree. But in both cases civilization is changing for the better, and societies adopt the changes at different speeds; in both cases, the US looks to be near the tail end of the change.)
Yeah? Well, I think that we’re almost there, even in the US, for gay marriage: Support for SSM has risen in eight years from almost one-third of Americans to almost one-half, a change of 17%. I believe there’s a positive feedback loop that goes on: people oppose SSM because they can’t wrap their heads around it and imagine vague harms it’ll cause, but then they see it happen and realize there’s no actual harm in it, so they shift their attitudes. As it becomes legal in more states and nations, this feedback mechanism will increase, not decrease, so I see no reason why there’d be less than 57% support for SSM in 2016, and by 2020 we’ll be talking about roughly 2/3 of Americans being in favor of SSM. So we’re going to achieve nationwide SSM within the decade, if I’m right. Why on earth would we settle for anything less than real equality for gay folks?
This is yet more bigotry. No, actually, there’s no “you must embrace us,” any more than straight people who file for marriage are insisting on hugs from the government. This is just another one of the long tired “they want special rights!” canards thrown forth by folks who don’t actually consider gay folks to be equal: when gay folks insist on real equality instead of the ugly substitutes offered them by bigots, the bigots act like the gay folks are getting all uppity.
So, no thanks. You’re going to lose anyway, probably within the decade; your half-measure is unwelcome.
It’s phrased in a condescending manner but there’s nothing objectionable about the concept. Yes, gay rights advocates want gay couples to have full legal protections and they want gays to have legal protections against discrimination the same as other minority groups. And they also want to change the way people treat and think about gays- and they’ve been successful at that, too. Historically gay people have been treated like crap and lately that’s improved. They’ve stood up for themselves and got the word out that that’s wrong. Why is that a bad thing? Isn’t that very understandable since it’s what any group of people would do? Who said anybody has to choose between gaining their legal rights and being treated better by individuals? The civil rights movement was about both.
I think you misunderstood. I’m saying Magellan was insulting gays by belittlling their sincere desire to have what they believe they deserve as a fundamental equal right as nothing more than “making them feel good.”
An amusing aspect of magellan’s word-definition argument is that the act of explaining it defeats it. To wit:
What does he think the “M” in “SSM” stands for? If it’s “marriage”, then he’s de facto recognizing that the word can be used for same-sex pairings. Further, when he says:
…clearly he means for us to understand that “traditional” means “heterosexual”. So he’s in effect created a term (or just added a qualifier to an existing term, really) that conveys the desired concept. Thus, there is no confusion in his own writing between “same sex marriage” and “traditional marriage”, and both can indeed be “marriages”. For some reason, he argues that other people will be confused, and “traditional marriage” will be hurt by the existence of “same sex marriage”, as though koala bears were being driven to extinction by polar bears over confusion of what “bear” means. I’m curious how stupid he presumes these mysterious other people to be.
And as a pure side note:
I realize these are typos and he meant to say “It comports with the natural coming together of man and woman, procreation, and the family unit” (I presume he was thinking about hands coming together, and man and woman coming together, and the concepts got smushed as he was typing it - similar stuff happens to me all the time), but when I first saw “natural coming together of hand and woman”, I pictured a man giving an uppity bitch a good slap, as God intended, and that this was not wholly incompatible with magellan’s other arguments.
And I’m mildly curious what magellan claims Dan Savage’s position is. I’ll have to check the thread for it. I suspect magellan’s interpretation is self-serving, since if Savage knew of a rational argument (even if he disagreed with it) and had described it, magellan would be trumpeting that reason instead of clinging to this dictionary crap.
I understood. I was agreeing with you that once you strip out the belittling language he used, it’s obvious there is nothing wrong with what he’s talking about.
As an afterthought, it was my understanding that American homosexuals were not being generally offered (and stubbornly refusing) the compromise of an equal-in-all-but-name “civil union” status. Rather, numerous states have moved to ban legal recognition of gay marriage and civil unions. I tried compiling a list showing:[ul]
[li]States that have specifically banned gay marriage and civil unions:[/li][li]States that have banned gay marriage and don’t recognize civil unions: [/li][li]States that have banned gay marriages and permit civil unions (or comparable “domestic partnership” recognition):[/li][li]States that allow gay marriage:[/li][/ul]
…but the necessary qualifiers I would have had to add to numerous states made the process daunting. In any case, the last two categories were a distinct minority. Heck, the map on the “Same-sex marriage status in the United States by state” wiki page uses red to indicate a state with a total or partial ban. There’s a whole lotta red in that map.
Thus, magellan’s suggestion that homosexuals are the ones making the process difficult is bullshit.
From what I recall (and I am not gong back over two week’s worth of posts to check this) I believe Savage said something to the effect that a principled opposition to SSM might not be bigotry. That does not mean that a non-bigoted argument has been advanced, just that in theory a person can be opposed and not be a bigot.
In my opinion, (and I am no Dan Savage, am not familiar with his work, and do not presume to speak for him) the only explanations for a non-bigoted opposition are ignorance or an unhealthy obsession with what other adults do in the privacy of their homes.
Savage is possibly being a bit generous for the sake of diplomacy - the cause is helped if he can stage more events like the “dinner table debate”, giving SSM opponents a chance to show how vapid and empty their position is.
I don’t want to speak for him, either, but I can see why feigning politeness is a useful way to talk someone into hanging themselves. We’re kind of doing that to magellan, actually - he can and has expressed his views at length. I rather doubt he’s managed to convince anyone, but I’m prepared to be surprised, inviting any thread-lurkers who were undecided about the issue to venture an opinion of the merit of magellan’s arguments.
It also behooves me to point out that, even given the possibility that a non-bigoted argument against same-sex marriage might exist, it does not follow that any of Mag’s arguments are included in that set.
Given that crustaceans are different from bivalves it would be exceedingly odd to call it a clam or a mussel. This is akin to asking if I could call my relationship with my accountant a marriage. Sure, they are both a type of relationship (just as both crustaceans and bivalves live in water) but one is a business relationship with no implied joining together while the other is a personal relationship with an implied joining of two individuals into one family.
I think the question is better posed as, if oceanographers discovered a completely new bivalve could we call it a clam or mussel? To which my answer would be, if it fits the general existing usage of the term then why would we invent a new word for it?
Well, no doubt the newly-discovered species would get a fancy-shmancy scientific name that they would use among themselves, even if the general-use term was just “clam” or “mussel”, used by people who have no particular incentive to draw the distinction or care much about it.
magellan, apparently, wants to protect the general public from general terminology, thus the authority gets to name the new species and have the new name forced on the general public for their own good. It’s really rather paternalistic, which I guess has a longstanding tradition behind it, too.
If they let the bivalves have the word “clam”, soon seafood lovers everywhere, especially poor defenseless helpless idiotic children, will be confused into thinking being bi is normal. Hence the traditional usage of “clam” must be preserved.