Captain Midnight, a domestic contract between two parties does not usually convey the same rights as a marriage contract does vis a vis third parties.
I have seen no polls–much less polls taken under rigorous conditions of neutrality of questions and random selection of participants–that identifies the percentage of people who argue one way or another.
However, in regards to the SDMB, (and still without expreessing an opinion as to actual numbers or percentages), there are a significant number of people who argue in exactly the way that Shodan has expressed. It is not a universally held belief, even among supporters of SSM, but the number of posters who hold that all that is necessary for SSM to become legal across the country is for the Supreme Court to recognize certain significant phrases in the Fourteenth Amendment in a “correct” way is rather greater than zero.
All I want is for those who oppose SSM to give me ANY evidence of harm if it is allowed. The truth is there is none, so those who oppose SSM are petty, hatefuly bigots. EOS.
This comes too close to attacking other posters. If you need to characterize other people in negative ways, take it to the Pit.
[ /Moderating ]
Sorry, Sheikh, if I misread you, which I think I did.
As to the toasters, my point is that someone may believe that a word is being misused, even though they understand what is meant. Take the stuffed animals who are married: while nobody batted an eye, that’s because we understand that kids have charming imaginations. If pressed on the issue, though, I can pretty much guarantee that most people would deny that two stuffed animals are literally married, and that the word cannot properly be applied to them.
As another example, you hear every now and then about some inbred British noble who’s decided to throw a wedding for her two schnauzers or something. The stories are funny because they’re so absurd: clearly it’s a misuse of the word “marriage” to apply it to two dogs. Even though we know what’s meant by the idea.
It’s not a misuse to apply the word to SSM, because it means most of what we mean when we apply it to a straight couple, and the little bit of difference is not really important. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t object to an application of the word in other circumstances.
Arguing this issue with magellan is endlessly fascinating to me. He’s obviously an intelligent and logical person, in that he responds to the things I say in a meaningful and relevant fashion. He’s not just spewing gibberish, or using an entirely different set of logical axioms.
And, as far as I can tell, he in does honestly believe it when he says that he believes in full civil union rights, and absolutely does not discriminate against or dislike gay people in person.
And yet, he has this argument that he obviously holds dear which he defends to the absolute bitter end despite the fact that I feel like I have completely obliterated it and eviscerated it over and over again. This isn’t like some other arguments I’ve had with people on the SDMB where I think “well, it’s a tricky issue and I think I’ve made some good points, but I can certainly see why he wouldn’t change his mind”, or “well, he and I just view the issue from different starting assumptions, so we’ll obviously never end up agreeing”. It’s like, I read his argument, and my thought process is “aha! I can easily disprove that claim. Type type type. I win!”, and then I’m baffled when I did not, in fact, win. It’s truly bizarre.
Anyhow, here’s my favorite argument relating to this issue, because it’s simultaneously so off-the-wall and yet such a fantastic analogy:
Tomorrow, we are contacted by friendly aliens. So we start talking to them, learning their language, their culture, their biology, etc. Turns out their entire evolutionary heritage has no concept of gender. It does take two of them to reproduce, but any two members of their species can do it. And it turns out that in their culture, there’s a ceremony where two of them have decided that they want to spend the rest of their lives together, so they gather together friends and family (they have “friends” and “family” much the same way we do), and express their intent to spend the rest of their lives living together, having alien sex, raising alien babies, and generally being a social unit. Oh, and they love each other (they also have “love”).
So, we’re writing the English-alien alien-English dictionary. What words should we use to describe this ceremony/commitment?
It seems 100% completely inarguably clear to me that the correct words to use would be “wedding/marriage/etc”. As in, “hey, my buddies Glorp and Zorp got married!” or “I am going to attend Glorp and Zorp’s wedding”.
But, as far as I can tell, magellan would object to this. And not just for some political reason. He would actually claim that that’s the wrong word, that’s it’s confusing and misleading… that picking that word and trying to use it actually would lead to confusion and misunderstanding because it’s doing a worse job of representing the concept than some other word, or because using that word meaningfully alters what we know it to mean.
Yeah, I don’t get it either.
I don’t know about toasters, but certainly marriage to plants is important in some cultures, be it to ward off future marital bad fortune, or to make one eligible for rights that require one to have been married (e.g. cremation), or to form kinship bonds (and thus property inheritance bonds) between families when an actual human child is not available to make a kinship bond.
The statement that they are married is incorrect, but the usage of the word is correct. For comparison, if I told you that Mary and Bob are married, you wouldn’t be able to tell, without knowing about them, whether that was a true statement or not, but it’s well-formed. If it turned out that they’re not married, then you wouldn’t say that I was mis-using the word “married”; you’d just say that I was wrong.
MaxTheVool, that’s a great analogy! I’ll have to remember that one.
Disgusting… Ranxicon Five made Glorp and Vorp, not Glorp and Zorp!
Yes. he doesn’t like it, but is honest enough to admit that it is just his personal opinion, and doesn’t try to hide behind any Book or fake logic. Honesty can be refreshing and I respect that.
My apologies, I forgot I was in GD as there is a Prop 8 thread in the Pit, won’t happen again.
Y’know, on thinking about the alien example some more, there are probably a fair number of humans who wouldn’t refer to the alien ceremony as “marriage”. Best guess for what they’d call it would be whatever word the aliens use, if it’s pronounceable.
I’m thinking of the Honor Harrington books, a science-fiction series I follow. There’s a race of creatures called treecats, catlike creatures about a meter long and with six legs. They’re close to human intelligence, and mate for life. Well, one of the major characters is a treecat named Nimitz, and another treecat named Samantha is referred to as his “mate” for most of the series, a word that nobody really disputes. It’s not until about the tenth book or so that we learn Nimitz’s own feelings on the matter, and he prefers to use the word “wife” to refer to Samantha. Which, of course, makes obvious sense, in retrospect, but all this time, the humans have been using the animal term, rather than the human one.
Of course, to be fair the treecats were trying fairly hard for most of the series to make humans think of them as animals…
I sometime wonder if opponents of SSM even know anyone who is married.
Couples don’t marry in order to fulfil a natural imperitive to procreate or to conform to a traditional definition of a word. They marry because they’re in love with each other and want to stay together.
ISTM that the actual definition of marriage is, " commitment to make a romantic relationship permanent".
Defining marriage as “a union between a man and a woman” removes the commitment part and the romantic part.
Childbearing obvioulsy looms large in marriage, but clearly it is secondary. A couple is fully married before, after, and in lieu of raising children. The argument becomes particularly flimsy and straw-grasping when it’s maintined that, so long as they’re going through the heterosexual motions–or did for a time–then that’s what makes their marriage real.
No, it’s because they want to stay together and they’re commited to staying together, “forsaking all others, in sickness and in health”, etc.
Having children isn’t even mentioned in wedding vows!
That a statement is intelligible (using the term loosely) is not a good indicator of whether the words in the statement are being used correctly. If someone said “My favorite animals are those big fish with blowholes,” you know that they are talking about whales even though there is no such thing a fish with a blowhole. So you can understand what they say insofar as it provides you knowledge about the world even though, strictly speaking, they are being nonsensical.
Similarly if you said that Bob and Frank are married, I could understand that Bob and Frank are in a monogamous and committed relationship while maintaining that, strictly speaking, your statement is false.
However, it’s hard to see where this kind of view would get you policy-wise. According to this view, same-sex marriage is impossible so it can’t possibly be legalized, nor can it be opposed - it doesn’t exist! So whatever it is that people are talking about legalizing must be something different than same-sex marriage even though they call it “same-sex marriage.” But this shouldn’t be that surprising since we already recognize (I assume) that the legal concept of marriage differs from the social/religious concept of marriage even though they are obviously related. I suppose one could argue that if you allow “same-sex marriage” the legal concept of marriage now differs so much from the social/religious concept that it is appropriate to call it something different.
If I could find Muslim enclaves where same-sex relations were commonplace, would you revisit this claim?
I was unclear - proponents of SSM often argue in two phases. The first is that that the legal definition of “marriage” already includes SSM, and therefore laws to establish it are not necessary. See Chronos’ post about marriage as “the union of one toaster and one blender”.
Then, for better or worse, somebody points out inconveniently that the laws on marriage say “one woman and one man”, rather specifically, or the voters of California amend their constitution to say even more specifically that 'no, marriage does not mean the union of one toaster and one blender - it means what it says - one woman and one man. Get it? One woman, and one man." Then the argument has to shift to what you mention - that the definition of marriage as “one woman and one man” contradicts something or other in the Constitution. I am not quite sure how one can get an “equal protection” argument from that, but no doubt a Justice who sees penumbrae and emanations can get an equal protection argument from a tuna salad recipe.
Regards,
Shodan
[quote=“Chronos, post:128, topic:549765”]
Actually, it’s a terrible analogy. What we call the ceremony of a non-human, extra-terrestrial species has nothing to do with the laws governing our own species her on Earth.