Actually part of the problem is your failure to understand what separate but equal means. You keep insisting it’s about sets of laws (a term you won’t define) when it’s actually about unequal treatment under the law. The number of laws required to maintain that treatment is not relevant.
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Of course there’s something wrong with water. In the sense of “watering down”, water is nothing, empty. It is valueless liquid serving only to reduce the intensity of the base liquid, it has no particular potential to improve the base liquid.
It is an inherently negative choice. You could have chosen Vodka and made a Screwdriver instead of glass of ruined OJ. You could have chosen Tangerine Juice or Grenadine or any other liquid that works well with OJ, but you didn’t. You chose a liquid that would be perceived negatively when added to OJ.
So, it is shown that you devalue SSM, probably without even thinking that the choice of water is inherently bigoted. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with water, you have lots of friends that drink water, I’m sure.
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Oh, brother. I chose water in attempt to choose something benign, something that would not add another characteristic to the orange juice. Alas, your “problem” with my analogy assume that orange juice is someone better than water. That’s an assumption that needn’t be made. The example was given to simply show that adding something else, makes the original thing not as much of that thing as it was until the second item got added.
Let’s do this, lets flip the example. Let’s start with water and add orange juice. All points still hold.
You honestly believe that this…
…is not bigoted?
The problem is that you’re using terms and then trying to reject the bias associated with those terms even though you picked them yourself. To water something down is to make it less potent, less effective, not as good. Nobody ever says “I love the way this bar waters down their booze!” So here, you are asserting that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage will somehow make heterosexual marriages less good, but you’re trying to reject the idea that this says something negative about SSM and your views on it. Unfortunately it does say something negative about SSM, and that’s the entire point of the comparison. So maybe we should get down to brass tacks: how does the legalization of same-sex marriage make marriage not as … marriage-y as it was?
You are 100% incorrect. I understand what it means perfectly. Just because others think it an appropriate bumper sticker to slap onto their posts, thinking it makes some devastating point, doesn’t mean it does. It simply shows either their rank ignorance of what separate but equal refers to and/or an insistence on grossly mischaracterizing my position. Perhaps both.
I just told you to flip the example. Start with water. Add orange juice. No reevaluate the response you offered based on that.
- I wish I had made that quote, but I didn’t.
- Don’t even try to tell us that watering something down doesn’t mean to make it weaker-that is the only thing it means.
“watering down” means something. “Orange juicing”-not so much.
Yes. Feel free to do a search. Don’t mean to be curt, but I’m not going to rehash pages-long arguments from multiple threads.
No.
Part of the problem is that any analysis that employs discernment, gets morphed into discrimination (benign meaning), then to discrimination (bad meaning) and then into bigotry and finally homophobia.
Pretty nice trick, until one sees what is happening.
Fine. As I said, I was trying to have the added thing be benign. But now that we have the analogy flipped, problem solved.
Another though. If you prefer, change the analogy to be orange juice and pineapple juice. And you can start with whichever one you’d like. The result is the same: the juice you start with becomes less orange-y or less pineapple-y.
This really isn’t that hard.
Your posts strongly suggest otherwise. Perhaps you could explain what it means and how this is different, but from what I’ve seen, you’re saying that your proposal is not a separate but equal situation because it doesn’t rely on different “sets of laws” for different groups. That’s not what separate what equal means.
What does the order have to do with it? You still wind up with diluted orange juice. You said yourself that recognizing SSM “weakens” marriage.
So you think that by doing so you have “unsaid” that SSM would water down the institute of marriage? It doesn’t.
Not “adding water” “adding orange juice” or “masing it different”.
The terms you used were “watering down” and “weakening it”.
Spin away, magellan01, but your own statements are there for all to see.
I’ve read some threads on the subject that you’ve participated in before, and thus read variations on your argument from the quoted post. I’m sure my modest rhetorical skills won’t change your mind at this point, but I did want to verify that you believe your position here isn’t justifiable bigotry, but rather not bigotry at all. So, that’s accomplished, anyway. I submit that your position is an example of bigotry, as you are elevating one type of romantic relationship as being “special”, which can only mean that other relationships are inferior to it.
Let’s do it this way, which I think will save a lot of back and forth. Why don’t you tell me what the phrase, issued in the ruling in the Brown v. The Board of Education, means. And I’ll show you whether we disagree and where. It should be fairly easy to do succinctly.
Let’s start with pineapple juice and add orange juice. Has the Pineappleness been lessened?:eek: Diminished?:eek: Weakened?:eek: Diluted?:eek:
Too late to edit: “making it different”, not “masing it different”.
You are of course free to conclude what you’d like. Personally, I take issue with your word “inferior”. In and of themselves, I don’t think the relationships are inferior. But they are different.
Look at the juice analogy. Is pineapple juice inferior to orange juice? Is orange juice inferior to pineapple juice? Which is the superior one, and why? For me, that’s a useless question.
I’m not doing your homework for you. You keep saying you know what it means, so say what it means. Laziness is not a debate tactic.
I no longer have any idea what this has to do with your argument or your view that the two types of marriage should be somehow differentiated lest opposite-sex marriage be “weakened.” If opposite-sex marriage is pineapple and same-sex marriage is OJ, what’s the harm in combining them? Pineapple-OJ is delicious.
I think pineapple-orange juice is an improvement over either separately.
That sounds really good. How about “improved.” Like we did when we expanded marriage to include SSM.
ETA: Double Ninja’ed