But you have no problem letting straight people who can’t reproduce marry. Which leads us back to the double standard that reveals the bigotry at the heart of your position. “Marriage is about procreation,” is an argument you use only when the couple in question is gay. If they’re straight, procreation suddenly becomes a none issue.
And this is, quite simply, objectively false, as has been demonstrated by multiple studies, as already cited in this thread.
So, you’re trying to restrict the rights of homosexuals on bases that are either unequally applied, or outright lies.
The fact remains that two different groups get to tap into the same single set of laws. That is the point of the analogy. And it stands.
No, I’m saying to different groups: those joined in Marriages and those joined in, e.g., Civil Unions tap into one (1) set of laws. You’re conflating the laws that the groups tap into—hospital visitation, inheritance, etc.—with the laws that define what constitutes a Marriage or Civil Union.
They are two different issues: one is what the benefits are (laws), the other is which groups can tap into them.
Because symbolism is important. Have you heard of flags, insignias, logos? Do you think that the backdrop when a President speaks is just accidental? Do you think the military decorations on a uniform are meaningless strips of colored ribbon? Do you think the the Silver Star and Super Bowl Rings mean nothing? Do you think referring to someone as a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient is meaningless? Do you think verbal badges like “Your honor”, “Sir”, “Mrs.”, “Ms.” “Mr. President”, serve no purpose? How about the word “hero”? Although it’s meaning is being degraded weekly by the media as they use it to describe anyone who wears a uniform, do you find it to mean the same as any other assembly of four letters? Do you really thing symbolism is not important? If so, unsurprisingly, we are starting from way different premises.
Think about it, if symbolism was not important, we wouldn’t even need the word to describe it.
Hell, if the symbolism was unimportant, as I think it was Miller who once explained, no one would care if they had the word attached to their relationship or not.
Yes. And they are both biased and unconvincing. On the other hand, science shows that mothering and fathering are different. That a child gets different things from the female parent and the male parent. Even putting genitalia aside, the to genders are not interchangeable.
How in the world do you conclude that? Bizarre, to say the least.
Which has not had any significant bearing on marriage for quite a while (and ignores the fact that any homosexual couple already has a member who is a “necessary ingredient” for procreation).
So are you proposing that any non-ideal couple should be denied the right to marry? If not, why are you picking on homosexual couples?
Exactly. Society should promote stable relationships and stable families and using a single word to identify such relationships is a better symbol than creating a second class of symbols to identify the same relationship, based on genitalia.
More so, I daresay. At least “Wrench ottoman sunset effort spoon nickel calico. Uvula!” doesn’t contain any obvious self-contradictions requiring increasingly desperate apologia.
Nope. One set of laws that two different groups tap into. Now you can take the analogy further if you’d like. But I choose not to. I’m not offering it as proof of anything, just for illustrative purposes…to help people understand the way I view it.
And this you added for what reason…? On a related note, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile.
First, you might want to remember that I am not the one who brings up “Separate but Equal” in these discussions. Second, on the Brown side of the analogy, a set of laws or sets of laws was not the issue. It was schools. I know you know how an analogy works. Try applying that knowledge to what I’ve written.
Now, if you don’t like the analogy, perhaps you should suggest that people not bring it up by incorrectly stating that my proposition fails because, “How dare you do that, Magellan. Haven’t you heard about Separate but Equal?!” Don’t you know it’s wrong?!!!"
But the laws treat them as one group: licensed drivers. That’s not what you’re proposing. You’re proposing is two groups, not one. This isn’t exactly a complicated objection.
You’re proposing the creation of two - separate, allegedly equal - groups. You’ve yet to explain why the number of laws being “tapped into” is relevant anyone else.
This long ramble doesn’t even attempt to address my question. The question was “Why does this symbolism matter?”
Different is not the same thing as ideal. Perhaps you could bring this science?
Because right after you said opposite sex-couples provide the ideal environment for children, you said you’re 100% fine children being raised in a non-ideal environment. If you’re OK with children being raised in an environment that doesn’t meet your ideal, you can’t say gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry because that’s not ideal for children. For that matter, the word “marriage” all by its lonesome doesn’t have any impact on whether or not a relationship is ideal.
*Brown *and the associated cases were challenges to laws allowing the schools to segregate their students into black schools and white schools. That’s how segregation of the schools occurred.
Some districts believed that, because of Plessy, if they provided abstractly equal facilities to blacks – if they had one set of laws that applied to everyone, just with a black school and a white school rather than an integrated school – they wouldn’t run afoul of the law, because in formal terms they’d be providing equal protection.
What the Supreme Court said, if you like, was that it wasn’t good enough to have one set of laws that applies to both, because the act of distinguishing one from the other stamps the minority group as necessarily inferior.
Then logically you would you be on board with outlawing single parenthood as Republicans in Wisconsin tried to do a few years ago. They wanted to label it child abuse and get CPS involved.
The way that you view it is in error. Under Plessy v Ferguson, there was one set of laws for both whites and blacks.
You had an error in your claim regarding Brown that I corrected. Under Plessy v Ferguson, there was only one set of laws–just as you propose for marriage–but the very identification of “separate” inevitably led to unequal impact. If one ignores that point, one can pretend a lot of things about Brown, but it does not realistically change the fact that you propose a new “separate but equal” law, (with its attendant problems).
As long as you propose that we have separate types of unions that are supposed to be “equal,” people will correctly point to Plessy and the reality of “separate but equal.” You can claim analogy all you want, but the reality is that you do propose “separate but equal” law, then deny that you are doing so. (Brown was about schools, but Plessy was about streetcars and in both cases we were talking about single laws applied to all of society that resulted in unequal treatment, regardless of the language of the laws.
Look at my actual post. You want one law that treats people separately but equal. It is not my fault that you have kidded yourself into believing that you are not proposing new “separate but equal” law. In your proposal, SSM and OSM are separate but they are equal. As long as you pretend that you are proposing something else, you are going to be frustrated that those who can read will recognize that making OSM and SSM separate, (but equal!), is the same as proposing a separate but equal law.
That is basically what the laws are, gender neutral. Here is a PDF of the Hawaii marriage license form. It is filled out as applicant 1 and applicant 2. Each person selects Bride, Groom or simply Spouse and that is the only place on the form that would indicate the gender of the people involved. If each person selects Spouse as the option, the state wouldn’t even know what gender each person is.
Stipulating that for the sake of an argument, you seem to be arguing that because there is a difference in parenting styles*, both typically male and typically female parent roles are required for the best parenting. I’m fine with the idea that there are differences, but you’ll need to bring along some actual evidence that both are necessary to raise healthy kids.
*Which I believe you’ll find, when you examine the research, are almost entirely culturally driven.
Whether this is true or not does nothing to support the argument that opposite-sex parents provide a superior child-rearing environment to same-sex parents. There’s no data that supports this argument, and there’s much data that supports the argument that same-sex parents are just as good, on average, at parenting as opposite-sex parents.
One possible answer to item 3 would appear to be pineapple juice. But that part was getting convoluted. Or if you prefer, I can add item 4. Is marriage orange juice or pineapple juice.