That’s nonsense. ALL legal rights would be the same. You make my point - you want to fight over a name. Same sex marriage can never be marriage without redefining marriage. I’m white but what if I want to call myself black in a job application. Do I have the right to do that? Why should only black people be the only ones allowed to be black just because that’s the way it was defined in the past?
Dan should stop giving money to organizations that support bigoted policies that go beyond opposition to gay marriage.
Aren’t you fighting over a name just as much as your opponents are? And if all legal rights are the same, why does the name need to be different? All it does is open the door to future laws that affect marriage but not civil unions, so as to bring discrimination back in, beyond the discriminatory effect of a not-a-real-marriage “civil union”. And for what?
Imagine that when anti-miscegenation laws were being struck down, that a group had proposed allowing interracial couples to enter into “mixed unions” instead of marriages. What might you think of their motives? What could possibly be gained from this approach?
What were those bigoted policies?
Those policy positions include: opposing non-discrimination laws protecting sexual orientation, opposing gays serving in the military, promoting Christianity being taught in public schools, and simply outlawing all homosexual behavior.
The black vs. white analogy is a massive failure, because those are not legal terms defined by law. They are just facts.
But since you bring up race, and anti-miscegenation laws are the last way we dealt with a similar issue in this country, I’ll pose this question - would you have been okay with labeling mixed-race marriages as “civil unions” instead of “marriage” as a way of settling that issue?
First, actually, race in the US is self-defined, so yeah, you can call yourself black on a job application. Second, what a terrible, terrible analogy.
Are you married?
I am. And sure, the private parts of my wife and I are important; we’re straight, for one thing, and our marriage would be very different if we were both straight and both men. But if I were asked what the most important, central idea of our marriage is, I certainly wouldn’t say, “I’ve got male bits, and she’s got female bits.”
No. The most important aspect of our marriage is our deep, abiding love for one another; our desire to form a family together. That’s what the word “marriage” means to me. It means people who are not family, but who love one another and decide to create a family together.
And I think that if you ask most married people what their marriage really means, they’ll say something along these lines. I think that this abiding love and desire to be a family is central to the definition of marriage.
As such, when gay folk want to get married, I don’t think they mean one of them is going to change their genitals. I think they mean that they have a deep, abiding love for one another, and that they want to form a family together. And that requires no change of definition at all.
By the way, you’ll find, if you do even a cursory search on these boards, that not only have your arguments been answered here exhaustively before; they have also been answered exhaustively in court documents, which you’ll come across when you conduct that search. It’d behoove you to find out what the counterarguments are to your positions before you continue to make them. That’d save everyone, including you, a lot of time.
And how did he give money to any of those? I’m not saying he didn’t, just suspecting some hyperbole at play.
That’s not fair at all.
Not every single person on one side of an issue is a hateful nasty bigot just because some, or most, of them are.
This is the same logic that is used against gays. Let’s not do this.
The list of organizations he gave to is easily found, as are their policy positions. The main one is the Family Research Council. Read a little about their policy positions, and some of the things they’ve said or people working for them have said, and you won’t think it’s hyperbole. It’s why they’re labeled as a hate group:
(I was careful only to list actual policy positions, not just hateful statements. But there’s plenty of that stuff too.)
Well, not really.
I’m white. I could call myself black on a job application. When I showed up for the interview, though…
Of course, this gets complicated when you’re biracial, but that just shows that we need to stop asking the question.
The pro gay marriage people are such bullies.
Agreed; based on my experience, the largest sources of opposition to marriage equality in this country are inertia, ignorance, and a simple tyranny of the majority that comes from a reversal of the problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs: since most people are straight, they feel no particular need to care or think about the marriage rights of non-straights.
Open hatred and bigotry is a motive for some, to be sure. But consider that per Gallup, moral acceptance of homosexual relationships has risen from 38% in 2002 to 54% in 2012. I argue that that sort of change in such a short time is more demonstrative of people taking the time to be aware of and care about the issue, rather than casting off deep-seated hatred, which is a much more gradual process.
:rolleyes:
You should have heard the pro-interracial marriage people in the '60s! Awful bullies, they were, demanding equal rights as though they really were equal. When will “those people” learn that they are inferior and act accordingly?
I also think the pro gay marriage people have an inferiority complex that is keeping them from seeing reason.
You make good points, ones that I’ve made many times before. The reality is that the cry for equal “rights” has been shown to be a Trojan Horse. When I’ve asked gay “rights” advocates on those boards—numerous times—if they’d be happy with all the legal protections via a civil union that does not use the word “marriage” (which I strongly advocate), the answer is either “no” or "“well, for now, until we can use the word”.
The argument for rights has been revealed to be a dishonest one. They want “marriage”, in order to indicate 100% acceptance and 100% normalcy. (Yes homosexuality is natural, but it is not the norm.) If large swaths of America thinks this is a bad idea, to hell with them.
Due to this insistence, yes, many many people will be denied the actual rights and privileges that all loving couples should enjoy.
Otherness does not equal inferiority nor superiority. Is a wrench superior to screwdriver?
That’s a very good point. I think I have to withdraw my statement that if I were against polygamy it would not be bigoted. Or at least better define the analogy.
The “me being against polygamy” analogy is incomplete because in this hypothetical situation we have not said why I would against polygamy. I’m not actually against it, so I was hypothesizing some kind of non-bigoted reason to be against it, but that deserves more thought.
I can’t really think of any reasonable reasons to be against it. Certainly if I think the way other people love each other is wrong or lesser than the types of love I feel, and not deserving of the same legal status as my love, that’s bigotry. And I don’t give a shit if it comes from religion or not.
This is what I mean when I say they have an inferiority complex. I wonder what they would do if they had everything they want and couldn’t be victims anymore? I can’t think of any other case, anwhere in the world, where a rights movement has wanted to go to the mat over pure semantics. WHY do they think something other than marriage suggests inferiority? Because they doubt their own legitimacy?
What reason, exactly, underlies your position? What rational basis is there for insisting that same-sex marriages not be called marriages?
I don’t know why you’re surprised that people reject seperate-but-equal, it didn’t work out so well when applied to other subgroups of humanity in this country.
100% legal acceptance, yes. Someone’s natural rights do not depend on what the majority thinks. Normalcy or social acceptance is immaterial.
If large swaths of America want to deny equality to fellow citizens, yes, to hell with them. Natural rights aren’t up for a vote.