When “It’s traditional” is the best they can do – and, okay, tradition is of non-zero weight in a discussion of social ethics – you know they’re flat bankrupt for an argument.
I think the “definition of marriage” argument is incoherent, but I also think that a stronger argument can be made based on the concerns that drive the definitional argument. (Note by calling the argument “stronger” I don’t mean to endorse its conclusion.)
I think what’s going on is that some people see the institution of marriage as a tool that solves particular problems–and that they think same sex unions don’t solve those problems. Hence to assimilate same sex union to the institution of marriage is an unfortunate attempt to use the wrong tool for the wrong job. To people seeing it like this, we look like we’re saying people should start using saws to drive nails into boards instead of hammers–and we’re insisting on calling saws “hammers.” They might, in a pinch, reply by saying that saws don’t fit the “definition” of hammers, and we’d be right in that case to point out that definitions change and do not constrain anything. But in the hammer/saw scenario, the concern is valid that we’re using the wrong tool for the job. Even if arguing in terms of definitions is a non-starter, nevertheless, the concern that drives that argument isn’t complete nonsense.
But of course this invites some questions.
What’s the job different-sex-marriage does that same-sex-union doesn’t do?
And more importantly, what’s the evidence that calling same-sex-union “marriage” will result in that job not getting done?
If there’s no evidence for this, then there should not be a problem with calling same sex unions “marriages.”
Indeed. For so long as a person in the U.S. has the legal privilege of a two-person marriage, all people must have that privilege. That is what equal justice under the law is. Right now, heterosexuals have that privilege, but homosexuals do not, which is a Constitutional violation. No one has the right to a polygamous marriage, so there is no equality issue.
The vast majority of humans throughout history have been involved in forced and/or polygamous marriage. Two-person romantic love is not the historical norm. I’ll keep saying this until you stop ignoring it.
I’m the only one being honest about what the Christians think, I’m providing a service.
You’re asking two questions: “why is there no right to polygamous marriage under the U.S. Constitution” and “why should there not be a statute authorizing polygamy even if it is not Constitutionally required.” The answer to question 1 is that there is no equality issue when polygamy is prohibited to all, just like there would be no gay equality issue if monogamous marriage were (for some reason) prohibited to all. But given that the government has chosen to be in the monogamous marriage business, it cannot discriminate.
The answer to question 2 neither depends on nor causes the answer to question 1, but in my opinion the reason there should not be a polygamous marriage statute is because most “polygamous” relationships are in fact abusive relationships. The chief practitioners of “polygamy” in the U.S. today are fringe religious cults where underage girls are married to a man who is often their blood relative. That’s not something to encourage as it is harmful to the girls involved. Looking at the minority of “polygamous” situations that are not crimes: If three consenting adults in a “polyamorous” relationship (:rolleyes:) want to create a marriage-like status, they should be free to do so by civil contract, but there is no reason to make an automatic statute for it, and in fact a lot of reasons not to. For example, all of the tax, inheritance, medical decision-making, and so on that is incumbent on heterosexual marriage can be mapped onto homosexual marriage with no effort whatseover; it’s very obvious how it would work. For groups of 3 or more, the entire legal structure needs to be rewritten, and it’s fair enough to put the burden on the people who want to do it to spell out how they wish to arrange matters in their own contracts rather than erecting statutes for an infinite possible number of combinations.
You’re killing me with this, this is NOT a Christian/non-Christian issue. 53% of Americans are in favor of same-sex marriage, and 73% of Americans are Christian.
Per the Public Religion Research Institute:
More than anything else, this is a generational issue. Same source:
Your opponents may be Christians, but that doesn’t make Christians your opponents.
There is no explicit rule against pointing out to Poster A that Poster B holds a particular position or holds it strongly.
However, this constitutes nothing more than a personal attack.
Do not do this again.
[ /Moderating ]
But people with deep moral opposition to homosexuality are not going to treat same-sex couples the same as opposite sex couples simply because the law books use the eight-letter combination “m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e” to describe same-sex union unions. Their social interactions with homosexuals will not be altered one bit. A “spousecontracted” same-sex couple gains absolutely nothing by receiving the title of “marriage”, either legally or socially, unless you count the ego boost.
I agree, to an extent. As a Christian I believe it was originally created by God, of course, but it’s still a lot older than any organized religion, and I think Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists all have equal rights to its riches, if they can find a willing partner of the opposite sex.
I’ve yet to hear of a white Southern segregationist who claimed that the definition of marriage was “A man and a woman of the same race”. There were certainly opposed to interracial marriage, but they acknowledged its existence.
Even today there’s plenty of people who are opposed to interracial marriage… I think you’re going a bit too fast.
I don’t think I can speak for the other side either.
And many Christians, including my friend the Reverend Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, think that everyone has equal rights to its riches, if they can find a willing adult partner. Why do you limit it to the opposite sex? What non-bigoted reason do you offer for this limitation?
I have to ask…“So?” I don’t particularly care if the morally snooty want to call my husband my husband. All I care about is that the government do so, and treat us as a married couple. I’m unlikely to willingly socialize with people who hate me for whom I love anyway. Every marriage equality opponent in the country can childishly refuse to acknowledge our marriage, and I won’t shed a tear. I’ll definitely look on THEM with contempt for being such children, but their approval doesn’t mean as much to me as people like magellan think it does.
But all people already have that privilege. Anyone can get married in America to one other person.
You’re being legalistic. You may win this in court soon, but we’re not a courtroom.
So marriage isn’t a right, huh?
How does that help your argument?
Sorry, no, you can’t do that. Any more than I can sit here and post what I say you think. You can generalize, perhaps, but you can’t represent yourself as the best possible argument Christians could make.
The government has chosen to be in the heterosexual marriage business. As the righties like to say, anyone can get married.
What a ridiculous copout.
[QUOTE]
The chief practitioners of “polygamy” in the U.S. today are fringe religious cults where underage girls are married to a man who is often their blood relative.
Um, maybe if they could be legal they wouldn’t be just the fringe cults.
You sound just like the gay-haters who say gays are all violent child-abusers.
I like how you roll your eyes as someone else’s sexual lifestyle choice while you argue for gay marriage. Well done.
Oh well. Get to work rewriting. In the meantime, homosexual marriage doesn’t exactly map to our social norms, yet we’re willing to try, so saying “it would be hard to rewrite some laws” is another copout. If that were try for gay marriage too, I doubt you’d feel the same way.
Nonsense. The word “marriage” has legal significance; as has been repeatedly pointed out it’s deeply integrated into the law. And the bigots will treat same sex couples better under the threat of lawsuits.
Yeah, yeah, your god hates homosexuals so we should all punish them forever for their “sinful” ways. Standard Christian hate.
You are doing just that when you try to claim they are more reasonable than they are. You’re trying to have it both ways; to claim that the anti-SSM side has other reasons than bigotry & irrationality, and then claim you have no obligation to explain what those (imaginary) reasons are.
False. I’m saying we can’t judge them to be bigoted or irrational without hearing them here, one way or the other.
:rolleyes: We have heard them, for years and years. They’ve been given opportunity after opportunity to produce such a reason, here on the SDMB, in court, and all over the world. They’ve failed utterly to come up with such a rational, non-bigoted reason for their position. I see no reason to pretend that any such reason exists.
And if I’m wrong, they could instantly prove it simply by posting their rational, non-bigoted reason right here and now instead of whining about how “unfair” I am. But they won’t, because no such reason exists.
In the same way that you can’t claim that dogs are unable to speak English until you’ve asked every dog to recite Shakespeare. Powerful point, dude.
I’ve been patiently waiting for one of them to answer my simple question (What changes for straight unions when gay unions are called marriage?), and thus far they have steadfastly avoided doing so. Maybe you can prod them along, so we can find out how unbigoted and rational their reasoning is?
Repeating it forever, of course, does not make your claim true. Among societies that practiced polygyny–a widespread but never universal practice, it was, typically, only the wealthy who were able to pull it off. It is probable that more marriages through history have been monogamous than polygamous.
Similarly, while it is currently a popular notion that romantic love is a modern concept, it is recorded in pretty much all societies for which we have records and even among societies where arranged marriages are the norm, the attraction of the participants has typically been factored into the arrangement.
Piffle.
You are ascribing the views of one group of Christians–a group not even demonstrated to be a majority among Christians–to the whole of Christianity. That hardly makes you “the only one being honest.”
This doesn’t really make sense. If it is not legally permitted for a man and a woman of different races to marry, then interracial marriage doesn’t exist, and marriage is legally defined as being between two persons of the same race.
Similarly, one could just as well argue that today’s same-sex-marriage opponents are opposed to same-sex marriage but they acknowledge its existence. They’re trying to define it out of existence, of course, but so did the mixed-race-marriage opponents of earlier eras.
Anyway, plenty of segregationists invoked in their arguments against interracial marriage just the same kind of concepts of natural and divine law that you refer to. E.g., the Virginia trial judge who originally sentenced the interracial couple who appealed their case in what became Loving v. Virginia:
I.e., the natural and God-given definition of marriage, according to this argument, does indeed require two persons of the same race. Any mixed-race union is just a perversion of marriage due to human “interference” with God’s “arrangement”.
Sounds pretty darn similar to anti-SSM arguments to me.
“…of the same race, so what’s the problem?”
This is the dumbest fucking thing yet. “Stop making sound, careful arguments about this legal question. That’s…that’s being LEGALISTIC! ::drops monocle::”
Marriage to any and all combinations of persons and things is not a right, and no one claims it is except you and Rick Santorum and your other buddies who are bringing in this bullshit about polygamy and marrying turtles and shit. Equal treatment under the law is a right. Denying a gay person the right to marry (or, if you want to be super-retarded about it, denying a man the right that a woman has to marry a man on the basis of his gender) violates equal protection.
Because it shows that appealing to “tradition” and “the definition of marriage” is just as dishonest as it is irrelevant.
The government does not get to make that choice because it violates equal protection. Denying polygamy does no such thing.
It’s the reality. Homosexual couples can be and usually are stable, consenting adults who will make at least as good a use of marriage as heterosexuals have. Polygamy is no such thing; it’s usually just a cover for child abuse, and even when it’s not, it’s a simple sexual fetish that does not rise to the level of a protected class.
I don’t think it’s the purpose of the law to promote adult men raping their adolescent nieces. Do you?
And here we see the insidious damage done by liberal “tolerance” to the cause of gay rights…it gives Christian knuckledraggers and excuse to say things like the above. Homosexuality is a biological fact about a person’s very being. It is not equivalent to polygamy, or liking getting pissed on, or enjoying dressing up as a fox and “yiffing” other idiots in costumes. This is a point on which, of course, both mainstream schools will disagree with me–to the liberal, everything sexual is awesome and equally deserving of enshrinement as an “identity,” to the conservative, every deviance from white heterosexual Christians having reproductive missionary sex is equally sinful and deserving of punishment. Both of them see no difference between homosexuality and sexual fetishes, and that’s why both of them struggle with this part of the logic.
Laws and social norms are not the same thing and do not depend on one another. You have completely failed to grasp the argument.
Any survey that finds a majority of Catholics or Protestants supports gay marriage is obviously flawed. There’s research providing valuable contraindications to intuition and then there’s ludicrous results produce by obviously flawed methodologies. I wish your arguing that a majority of Americans supported gay marriage could actually make it true as you apparently think it does, but the results of actual elections and the behavior of actual Christians makes it obvious that this is not the case.
The problem with the comparison to anti-miscegenation laws is that they were never universal. Mr. and Mrs. Loving were married in Washington, D.C. where their marriage was recognized as legal–as it was recognized in 34 other states* in this country and would have been recognized in most other nations in the world.
One may, of course, argue that the attitudes of people who oppose same sex marriage echo the attitudes of those who opposed inter-racial marriage, but the reality is that there has never been a time when inter-racial marriage was simply not recognized as “real.”
- Seven states have never enacted laws against inter-racial marriage and another ten abolished such laws between 1780 and 1887. Between 1888 and 1967, a further seventeen states repealed such laws.