I find this argument exceedingly odd.
Can one use this strategy on other valid arguments that one wants to dismiss?
People who are male and want to marry other males, or people who are female and want to marry other females. Also known as “gays and lesbians”.
2,500 years ago these laws were bigoted towards gays and lesbians too, but they would have clapped themselves on the back before stoning the homosexuals to death, so that didn’t concern them.
If your posts are an attempt to play some sort of devil’s advocate in this debate, you’ve done a shitty job of it. If, instead, you are arguing in good faith and think that your argument is coming across in a non-bigoted manner, you’ve done a shitty job of it.
The fact that I can’t tell which you are attempting means that the problem of everyone “putting words into your mouth” might not be on them.
Were there gays and lesbians in Israel, 500BC, who advocated for same-sex marriage? Or is same-sex marriage a modern construct?
Of course. Let’s say that someone wants to legalize meth so that they can kill the poor white population of the country. I would disagree with them even though I am in favor of total drug legalization (except for antibiotics).
The end don’t justify the means and so if the means are horrific then the end shouldn’t be pursued.
No, but there WERE gays and lesbians who were stoned to death for their “perversions”.
In fact, the reason they weren’t advocating for gay marriage is that coming out as gay, or supporting gays in any way, would be a death sentence.
Is your argument that 500BC Israel was not a homophobic society, full of anti-gay bigotry?
Nailed it in one.
I made it quite clear in the thread that the OP quoted, before this debate even began, that I am in favour of same-sex marriage.
However, the topic of this discussion is not
Is kevlaw in favour of same-sex marriage?
It is
Is there a non-bigoted reason to be anti-same-sex marriage?.
I sincerely believe that there are non-bigoted reasons to oppose SSM. No Devil’s Advocacy required. That you don’t agree with these arguments does not make them bigoted.
And I condemn those actions without reservation.
We were doing so much better when you weren’t making up arguments out of thin air.
To save a couple of post+reply cycles though, I don’t think it crossed the minds of the people who wrote down the rule in question that same-sex marriage was a thing that they were excluding. God had ordained that marriage was between a man and a woman and that was that.
Right. They were so bigoted against people who aren’t heteronormative that their existence didn’t even enter their mind.
This is par for the course for 500 BC mind you. Even places where sex between the same gender was accepted in some contexts, like Rome or Greece, could hardly be called “tolerant”. It’s not like 500 BC Israel is uniquely bad about this or anything.
But in what possible way is saying “well, those old people were bigoted, but they didn’t know any better. Now that we do know better, though, we find it more important to stick to a tradition put in place by people who we admit were bigoted than to change our ways to be more inclusive” NOT bigoted? You are placing the (bigoted) opinions of two and a half millenia dead people over the opinions of gay people alive today. That’s bigotry.
Yes.
And I think such people often think the views aren’t bigoted, because their definition of bigotry requires animus.
Whereas, if one consideres bigotry to include favoring policies and/or behavior that has a negative impact on others because of their membership in a group, animus isn’t necessary. A disregard of that impact will do. That disregard can be due to ignorance; or it can be a willful disregard.
– The argument that marriage is an institution primarily for the societal purpose of producing and providing for children is, as has been said in the thread, not necessarily religious; I’ll go further and say that it’s not in itself bigoted. It does, however, have large holes in it; and a refusal to recognize those holes can make it into a bigoted argument, because it’s often applied only to gay people, and not to heterosexual couples in which one or both partners are known to be barren whether for age or other reasons. (It also, of course, ignores the fact that people in a gay marriage can conceive and/or raise children; at least, unless those making the argument also oppose adoption and all forms of fertility aid that require the involvement of someone outside the marriage.)
Another argument I can think of would be one saying that children should all have both a male and a female parent. That one’s not necessarily bigoted against gay people – but it is rather bigoted against intersex people, and it rests on assumptions about the nature of being male and female that are rather bigoted on their own. (It’s also flawed in that it assumes that the children of same-sex couples won’t have adults of additional genders as other immediate family/intentional close family.)
The argument that the government has no place in marriage has been made without any reference to distinctions between gay or straight marriage. My (heterosexual) maternal grandparents never married because they thought marriage was none of the government’s business. They lived as a married couple from their twenties until their deaths, and among other things raised six children together. Their objection to legal marriage genuinely had nothing to do with who was (or wasn’t) getting married.
But when the argument is applied specifically to and/or in reference to gay marriage: that then becomes bigoted. And people who get heterosexually legally married themselves, and/or recommend or celebrate others’ doing so, can’t make that as a non-bigoted argument against gay marriage.
And in practice: the USA is not going to have government stop recognizing everybody’s marriages. Can you imagine the outcry?
No. They’re not forbidding good arguments; and they’re not even forbidden because they’re bad arguments. They’re forbidden because we’ve already had those arguments, over and over and over; and because the repetition is doing damage.
Great typo!
If one keeps shooting at a target despite clearly seeing a person or group between them and that target, claiming that they weren’t shooting at the person or group is unlikely to go over well. Especially when the people/group are unavoidably in that position.
Except that in that book, it was also between a man and a number of women at the same time. Some of those men were said to be favored by God.
Ehhh, I’m not sure I agree. While I’m not one of them it isn’t bigoted to believe politics is the art of the compromise and believe that taking the first step (or back in the day, not expanding the government’s role) is achievable. Without an equal contract in place to replace marriage (civil union) people will fear the removal of their marriage not knowing what is next. Once civil unions exist and are open to all many straight couples would opt for that vs marriage which could lead to marriage being dissolved.
You seem determined to claim that the rule is bigoted. I think you are wrong but I don’t think I will be able to persuade you otherwise as the discussion turns on whether or not “man+woman” is a group that excludes other groups that did not exist at the time.
I think we are at an impasse.
Back to my original argument though, I don’t think calling your opponents ‘bigots’ (or ‘poopyheads’, thanks Mighty_Mouse) is a persuasive debating strategy in a democracy or on the Straight Dope. There are more effective strategies for persuading the people with whom you disagree.
Rejecting arguments as bigoted out of hand can weaken your response. Much better to listen to them and respond, in my opinion. You listened to me and responded and I thank you for that.
I can see the argument that government should open a fully secular “civil union” option for people who don’t even like the (originally religious) term “marriage” used by the secular government, and under this framework, if the Catholic Church doesn’t want to recognize gay marriage that is the right of that church.
But what is the argument to forbid The Inclusive Reformed Church down the street from making their own theological decisions about who can and cannot marry? If their doctrine allows two men to marry, how is it any more proper to have the government tell them this is not allowed than it is to have the government tell the Catholic church that they have to recognize straight marriages?
I am reminded of Achmedinijad claiming that there are no homosexuals in Iran when asked about his government’s treatment of homosexuals.
Tell me, if there were no gay people back then, who is the Bible talking about here?
Modnote: OK, this thread is drifting pretty far from the actual debate. Let’s keep it to the question of the Op and not debate the meaning of words, the history of the Church and etc.
As far as these side bits go, could always start another thread. But no more polluting this one.
This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.
The three definitions that we discussed *here all defined bigotry as animus (plus unreasonable beliefs) towards an out-group.
* The first two were the top hits on Google from the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries. The third was provided by GreysonCarlisle from M-W.
If we are allowed to change the language to make it harder to think unpopular thoughts, it would certainly make it easier to win arguments.
I read a book about this once.
I typed out a response to this and it got eaten by the closure. I think I’m done with the thread until it’s gets cleaned up a bit. Thanks for the interesting conversation.