Just as a sort of good-faith exercise here: I think I can explain why magellan feels like his position is being misinterpreted. He doesn’t think Brown involves two sets of laws, only two sets of schools; he thinks that marriage would have to involve two sets of laws to be analogous to Brown. That’s specifically why he thinks Brown isn’t relevant.
He’s equating “schools” in the segregation context to “sets of laws” in the marriage context rather than equating the “sets of laws” in one to the “sets of laws” in the other. It’s confusing because obviously there are laws involved on both sides. In Brown: two sets of schools that they said were equal even though they were separate. Here: he’s saying, there’s NOT two sets of laws governing marriage, just the one. So it’s not a case of separate but equal because he doesn’t want separate schools (separate laws); he wants the same school… you just, like, register for them differently or something.
He’s wrong, because there’s exactly the same number of sets of something in each case, however you count it up. But that’s what he’s saying.
How about there is no way that is going to happen(states giving up rights just like that)? What is happening now, state by state, is what is possible now, and that is SSM.
Get off the roof and put away your fiddle, Tevye.
I wouldn’t put it in the category of correct comparisons, because I think that would diminish the meaning of “correct.” But I’m willing to call it a comparison that has been made, which is equally valid and in no way inferior.
magellan, read this carefully, because it’s exactly on-point. You’re taking two analogous situations and drawing a weak analogy between them by comparing apples in one situation to oranges in the other.
Plessy and The Magellan Plan (hereafter MP) both affect two groups of citizens: a majority and a minority. If you’re going to talk about a group of citizens, analogize to the other group.
Plessy and the MP both involve one set of laws, a set that distinguishes between the two groups of citizens. If you’re going to talk about a set of laws, analogize to the other set of laws.
Plessy and the MP both establish two institutions, one for one set of citizens and one for the other. If you’re going to talk about a pair of institutions, analogize to the other pair of institutions.
Plessy and the MP both claim to set up one set of rights attainable through these two different institutions. If you’re going to talk about one set of rights, analogize to the other set of rights.
If you draw an analogy between a set of rights and two different institutions, or between two groups of citizens and one set of laws, you’re not drawing a clear analogy between the two situations.
Brown
A) Two groups: black students and whit students
B) Legal Benefit/Privilege each group desired: a good education
C) Proposal: Let’s have a set of schools for Blacks and a different set of schools for Whites, which will be “Separate but Equal”
D) Failure of Proposal: even if well-intioned, the reality is that the the set of black schools will not be equal to the set of white schools
E) Solution: Give both black kids and white kids equal and identical access to the entire set of schools
My Proposal
A) Two groups: SS couples and OS couples
B) Legal Benefit/Privilege each group desired: the rights and privileges associated with marriage
C) Proposal: Let’s have one set of legal benefits and privileges that are equally and identical accessed by the two groups in A. Namely, SS couples brought together in a Civil Union and OS couples brought together in a Marriage.
D) Failure of Proposal: not applicable
E) Solution: See C.
That is the analogy. It works from A - C, but fails after that because I’m not proposing that the two groups tap into two different set of laws. Now, you can point to faults in the proposal—perhaps crucial and devastating ones—but they fall outside the analogy. This is a fact, yet I’m sure it will not put an end to people mischaracterizing my proposal by saying that it runs into the same problems with “Separate but Equal” the Board of Education ran into with Brown. It does not.
I expect he has me on ignore and didn’t see my proposal until you quoted it.
When I get home, I think I’ll start the thread he suggested, in which we presume homosexuals are limited to civil unions, unless someone beats me to it.
The essential holding of Brown is not that the Black schools were unequal because they weren’t as good, but that they were unequal and would always be unequal, because they were separate, even if they were just as good. “Inherently unequal.” Separate words for gay and straight marriages would have the exact same problems. The “failure” of separate but equal is not the failure to make black schools good enough, although that of course was true. The inherent problem is you can’t have a separate category for some people, even if you could make it “just as good as the real thing,” without the stigma of inferiority.
If that came up as an option, I would vote for it. But then I’d continue to support full marriage inclusion.
And, as others mention, that is a far, far less realistic solution than what’s currently going on with states legalizing gay marriage.
So I’ll throw a hypothetical right back at you – if a popular referendum comes up in your state, with the two options as allowing or banning gay marriage (and no talk of Civil Unions with this or in the near future), would you vote to allow or ban gay marriage?
The second example fails at C) because this would have to be Federally mandated by Executive Order. There is no way in hell this would even get out of committee, let alone voted on in the House and/or Senate and I think that , deep down, you know this and are hoping that we wouldn’t notice it.
You seem to miss the fact that I am NOT the one that keeps bringing it up. Check every friggin thread. It comes up in every one, but NOT by me. Why? Because Separate but Equal is not a problem that my proposal has. It may have a thousand problems, but that is not one of them. Yet, the charge is made and I have to go through the whole rigamarole again. And again. And again. With people like you asking the same stuff over and over, as if you never were in those other threads asking those same questions.
But perhaps their is hope now. I see that Jimmy Chitwood gives a good summation of what I’ve been saying here:
I’m explaining that this “two sets of laws” nonsense is… well, nonsense.
You’re still proposing two separate groups and insisting they’ll be equal.
As I’ve been saying throughout this thread, segregation and separate but equal were not based on “different sets of laws.” Whatever a “set of laws” is.
Now you’re doing something even weaker than dealing in bad analogies: you’re taking people wildly out of context. It’s a little hard to take this as a mistake.
By “traditional marriage” do you mean Christian “traditional marriage”, or do you support people of other religions being able to follow their own versions of “traditional marriage”?
I think it’s possible we’ve just been talking past each other, so I’ll put this a different way and try to be a little more specific: in post #718 I was not agreeing with you in any way; I’m not sure how you got there. I was saying (again) that your “two sets of laws” concept is baloney. It has nothing to do with the Brown decision or the notion of separate but equal. I was not commenting on the comparison of your SSM idea to the unconstitutional doctrine of separate but equal. What you are proposing is “separate but equal.” Period. In post #723, Jimmy Chitwood said “he thinks that marriage would have to involve two sets of laws to be analogous to Brown.” That’s what I was calling inapt. Not the comparison, but the concept that “sets of laws” are the issue with Brown and with your SSM proposal. I’ve said somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen times that that’s wrong, but I shouldn’t have used the word comparison.
Damn good question. Try to imagine giving women the all the rights a man has to vote except for the right to call what they do “voting”. Instead, what they do would be called “legal advocating”.