Marley23, get out of my head. You’re freakin’ me out!
Homophobic comment? Don’t know, don’t care. I have no problem with anybody believing what they want to believe or stating there opinion.
Enforcing it is something else.
I have lots of strong opinions that I will happily state.
I too believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. Probably that has a lot to do with the fact that I am married to a woman. Hopefully, that does not make me a homophobe.
I don’t think there should be a law to inflict that personal belief on anybody else. I strongly support the rights of those who feel otherwise to live according to their personal beliefs and I hope they feel the same way about me.
I also feel equally strongly that cars should be convertibles.
But hey, if you want a coupe that’s not my problem.
Of course, there are other aspects of your particular marriage which you do not abstract into essential aspects of marriage in general, I assume. (E.g., your hair colors, heights, etc.)
She’s changed her hair color. Her weight has changed. We’re still married.
If she suddenly grows a penis though, all bets are off.
I don’t mean to cause a hijack, but I just wanted to call out one of Obama’s statements on same-sex marriages. (I agree with your statement, though.)
If you’re merely referring to your own marriage, fine. But if you believe that marriage, per se, is between a man and a woman, and should not otherwise be called a marriage, then yes, that’s homophobic.
Huh? Bigamy is nowhere near the same thing. You think most gay people just wake up one morning and choose to be attracted to the same sex? That at any moment they can just avoid all these issues if they’d just go back to having sex with someone of a different gender? :rolleyes:
And I was a bit high on my estimate for the length of the list I mentioned but close enough (here are a few below).
I have no problem with anybody calling it what they want. I would strongly argue that they should enjoy all the same rights and entitlements as me, including nomenclature. Anything less is rude and wrong.
I also think that it’s fundamentally different than what my wife and I have.
Beyond the mechanics of sex between a male/female versus a male/male or female/female what is fundamentally different about two men or two women choosing to commit to one another in a relationship? What is it the male/female couple can do that the same sex couple can’t? What obstacles and joys do they not both share?
No fights about who left the toilet seat up?
Different in what respects?
(And it should go without saying that what you and your wife have is certainly fundamentally different than what some other men and their wives have.)
Thanks for the site. Not sure I get the direction you went in. I didn’t imply that people were gay by choice. I used bigamy as a comparison of a demographic group discriminated by marriage laws.
“Arguing with the weather only makes you wetter”
You are now, having committed yourself to that stance by your argument about the importance of preserving words in amber.
I am reminded of a Douglas Hofstadter essay in which he responded to a William Safire bloviation against the abbreviation “Ms” displacing “Miss” and “Mrs”. The response was in the form of a alternate-world parody essay in Safire’s style, bemoaning the similar displacement of distinct titles for employed and unemployed blacks.
What I meant to imply was:
A) Bigamy is a choice. Being homosexual almost never is.
B) Bigamists still get the benefits of marriage (unless you mean to say they should be allowed to somehow double up benefits with a second marriage and not being able to is discrimination)
C) Homosexuals cannot even be bigamists.
The thing I can’t quite fathom is the incredible ability of people agitating on this issue to alienate their semi-supporters. While support grows for gay marriage, I’m not sure that this is the best way to go about it.
Joe Hetero: What? Men marrying men? Preposterous! Leave that buggery to the filthy closet!
Jack Homosexual: You’re a bigot.
Jenny Hetero: I’m sorry, but men sleeping with men just creeps me out. Keep it away from me and my kids.
Jack: You’re a bigot.
John Hetero: I don’t care one way or the other, but I don’t see what benefit it brings society for gay people to marry.
Jack: You’re a bigot.
Jinger Hetero (I’m sorry :D): I’m a Christian, but –
Jack: You’re a bigot.
Jerry Hetero: All right, I think gay people are great, but I’m uncomfortable with the idea of gay marriage. Maybe –
Jack: You’re a bigot.
Juliet Hetero: I think the government should get out of the marriage business. Make something called a ‘civil union’ that any group of two can use that gives them the same benefits but isn’t marriage – that way, two non-romantically-inclined roommates could share benefits and auto insurance and such without having to jump through legal wrangles. Call the optional ceremony marriage.
Jack: You’re a bigot.
James Homosexual: I’m against gay marriage because my partner will not quit bugging me to get married and I don’t want to, okay?
Jack: You’re a bigot.
While an excellent example of expanding the definition of a word to previously unknown horizons, I do not believe that this will necessarily improve matters on the gay marriage front. YMMV, naturally.
Am I a bigot?
I dunno about that. Your little “storyline” makes it sound like calling anti-gay (or no-pro-gay, depending on your POV) people bigots is pretty effective. :dubious:
Anyway, while I won’t go so far as to call magellan a bigot (I thought he was an utter douchebag when he first appeared but over time I have revised my opinion several times) I will ask him, and everyone else who doesn’t want “them” to have the word “marriage” - why?
If it bothers you, chances are you probably won’t be attending a gay wedding anyway, so I doubt you’ll have to say it… so what societal catastrophe will be averted if we can just stick to the penis + vagina definition of marriage?
I’m not against gay marriage, but I’ll give it a go.
I try not to make snap decisions about any sort of Issue Of Our Time. One of the first classes I took in college was called Contemporary Moral Problems, and while it sounded to me then and sounds to me now like a complete flake class, the basis of the class was rather Straightdopian: formulate an opinion, even if it’s a nuanced one, based on information and logic and reason and debate rather than gut feelings and What Your Church Says. My beliefs on abortion and affirmative action, among other hot-button issues, radically shifted in that time. (And who says college doesn’t indoctrinate? 
Though my opinions actually shifted toward the conservative, which is hardly to be expected of them ivory tower Libruls.)
So whenever I find myself Making An Opinion, I step back and start thinking and pondering and talking and reading up. And I realized this: It is utterly absurd that any two people can’t enter into the legal relationship we now call marriage. However, marriage has so much baggage associated with it – both good and bad – that a lot of people decide they DON’T want to get married specifically because of it. Look at Couple A of my acquaintance: they love each other dearly, but they’ve seen too many bad marriages in their life to enter into one. And look at the history of marriage itself… full up with the Power of the Patriarchy, with coercion of women and loveless pairings and honor killings and the objectification of women. It’s got good parts too, lots of them, but it’s the people who make those, not the institution itself.
So make marriage the province of ceremonies and rituals and churches and make civil unions available to all citizens regardless of gender. If you’re going to fix something, fix it right.
Oh, and the above ‘storyline’ is not necessarily a timeline of opinion. You’ll find people with all those opinions in your average Starbucks. I just think meeting the reasonably moderate (okay, I only think so because it’s mine :D) opinion of Juliet up there with “YOU’RE A DAMN BIGOT OMG” is counterproductive. It’s like suggesting to a friend that perhaps he should get the cheaper HDTV if he wants to make his rent and having the friend call you a f’ing Nazi fascist child molester.
I wouldn’t say it that way to the moderate folks you describe, but I would still say that opinion is bigoted. We are all bigoted in various ways but there is a scale. The Jerry Hetero in your example holds a bigotry, but a mild one that probably won’t effect the way he treats people. The Joe Hetero holds a bigotry, but a major one that will likely profoundly affect the way he treats people.
Both have a measure of bigotry (I would compare it to racism in that there are degrees) but it will affect their reaction to people in drastically different ways.