right. My “traditional” marriage is more valuable now that the the word doesn’t have the same ugly baggage of exclusion of homosexuals. Some straight people even refused to participate in “marriage” until the law was changed to make in “less watered down.” The word “marriage” was tainted before, and less so now. Let’s rejoice.
I, for one, am thrilled that we’re back to discussing the word marriage, and how we must protect the word from people gaining civil rights.
We don’t stand up for the rights of that collection of letters, who will?
That’s precisely right. My marriage is about the love and commitment my wife and I have both to each other and to the family we created. It’s not about the packages we sport. magellan’s effort to protect marriage turns the focus entirely onto our respective packages instead of on the love and commitment, a focus I find both mortifying and repulsive.
Stop focusing on my genitalia, please, because the particulars of those aren’t what marriage means to me, even if it’s what marriages is about for you.
Just to be clear, you think this is homophobic:
A marriage is made up off a husband and a wife.
Thanks for the guffaw. That’s an absurd position that reveals your extreme bias on the issue. So extreme that it should be gin ores. except here on the SDMB, of course. Where it will get you applause. The sounds of all those one hands clapping is deafening.
I have no problem with that phrase as written (except for the typo of course). It’s when the word ONLY appears between OF and A that it becomes homophobic.
Untruth.
A good number also think Obama is not a liar. So much for that argument, huh?
Down the road, heterosexual couples will be less likely to enter into it. And that will be a very bad thing of us.
Or two.
Cheap shots and blind supposition, containing nothing of actual substance.
Why don’t you want us to repair the institution of marriage?
I’m concerned. The fear about SSM is that it will make the term less meaningful for future generations. It will not point to that special relationship between a man and woman that has been a cornerstone of our civilization. SSM weakens the concept. Polygamous marriages weaken the concept. Polygamous SSMs contort it to even more so.
A future where there are fewer married OS couples having and raising children is not a good thing. Would you at least agree with that?
Completely self-serving reasons? i.e. “I need the votes”
You’ll have to point to this summary of yours first.
To a contorted mine, perhaps. But please do share specifics.
But if we don’t repair marriage it will be so devalued that it will cause the collapse of civilization itself. The collapse of civilization itself would be a bad thing. Would you at least agree with that?
Nobody says that SSM is marriage because two people say it’s so. There are plenty of things that two people can claim to be a marriage and I’ll say it doesn’t match the essential definition of marriage:
-Two five-year-olds say they’re married. No, sweetie, you’re not.
-Two teenagers get a third one with a mail-in minister’s degree to “marry” them on the steps of the courthouse (as I did with a friend when I was fifteen, for shits and giggles). No, we weren’t.
-A bigot trying to make a point by saying, “Fine, if gay people can get married, then I’m married to the Queen of Roumania!” Nuh uh.
A marriage needs to be at least one of these things:
-A genuine commitment between consenting adults to form a family together; and/or
-A legal arrangement contracted via the state.
I see no advantage to restricting the definition, since these two definitions capture the most important aspects of marriage. Restricting the definition according to genitalia puts the focus on the wrong place.
You actually think that people get married and have children because the definition of the word marriage has remained stable?
Talk about guffaws.
People like to point to the Netherlands as an example. The number of marriages dropped in the period of 2001 (when SSM became legal) and 2011. What they don’t look at is the number of marriages went up from 1945 to 1970 and has been steadily dropping since then.
Are there now more married SS couples having and raising children to offset the reduction in OS couples?
The point is that you saw something about the institution that you wanted to enter into it. And that is based on what it has come to symbolize after so many decades. Forty years from now, you might not might not find it so attractive to you. And if large swaths of young couples who are having babies similarly find it, “meh”, that does not bode well for our future.
The one you called “bullshit” and “untruth”, without explanation. And, obviously, without comprehension or perhaps even reading.
As soon as you say what you mean by “watered down”. :dubious:
Which part of that is untrue? A different mechanism means more than a different name. A mechanism is a means for accomplishing something. For example there are many different legal mechanisms for dividing property or investing money or giving gifts. Calling an opposite-sex relationship a marriage and a same-sex relationship a civil union (or whatever) doesn’t make it a different mechanism when everything else that goes into achieving those relationships is identical. And you have insisted over and over that it would be otherwise identical. You’re trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Unfortunately the claims you’re making are mutually exclusive.
Why would that happen? We know that marriage rates have been declining for decades, but I don’t see what SSM has to do with it. If anything, letting couples get married when they previously couldn’t ought to boost marriage rates a bit. And in any case there’s a risk of using prejudice to justify prejudice here: it seems to me that the only people who would decide not to get married just because gay couples can marry are those who share this view about marriage getting “watered down” and don’t much care for gay people. Why are their concerns paramount?
Yes: it symbolizes a strong, long-term commitment to a newly-created family which you love. That’s what it’s come to symbolize (it previously meant something fairly different in our culture, of course). I’m really confused what your “forty years from now” statement means: do you think that if the bit about genitals is removed from the definition I’ll like it less? If not, what do you mean?
I’m not sure why it doesn’t. Certainly there are some correlations between out-of-wedlock births and, say, poverty in our country; but there’s not, to the best of my knowledge, clear cause and effect that’s established, and AIUI there are cultures similar to ours with much less of a correlation. What specific, measurable ills do you anticipate?
Given how often this question is asked of you, by the way, it might be worth bookmarking your answer, so next time you can just give a link. Note again that I’m asking about specific, measurable ills.
But, we have already heard about OS people who were souring on the concept of “marriage” because it excluded our gay brothers and sisters. I think the harm done to the institution of marriage by excluding gay people would be much, much, greater than the harm you imagine from straight people who might for some reason decline to get married because the gays are doing it too.
As to the “meh,” that was happening independent of any gay rights struggle. I have heard many people wonder “why bother getting married” who have no opposition to SSM. Even some gay people don’t see the point.