I saw this, thought “outstanding comeback! Nice job, Miller,” and chuckled.
Then I wrote the post mostly addressed to Magellan that will appear right above this one (or possibly a couple up, if someone posts while I’m composing this), and went over to another Christian-oriented board that I frequent.
And found there an argument that, “since the purpose of marriage is procreation, childless marriages should be dissolved.”
All of a sudden, this just got very personal. It’s not standing alongside you because your rights are being infringed on; it’s slapping down some egotistical and self-righteous pricks who think their beliefs have a corner on the laws that affect all of us, because they just got you gays (for the moment) and now they’re after Barb nd me.
Move over, Pator Heidegger. You were right, all those years ago. It’s a fight that calls for all of us.
I’m not going to bother to find the quote where magellan suggested homosexuals have only been around for a few hundred years. You guys know it’s up there somewhere.
I have a request to make. Would people who know nothing about history please stop shooting off their mouths about it?
The traditional definition of marriage, huh? What’s that? The word is Latin - ‘maritus’ is the noun ‘spouse’, and also the adjective meaning having to do with marriage. As per your argument, the original meaning of the word is the right one, right?
Great! So marriages are now primarily financial matters. Unless women go stay at their father’s house for three days out of the year, they come under the complete power of their husbands - otherwise they stay under the complete power of their fathers. Divorce is no big deal at all - divorce your wife and remarry your friend’s ex wife for political purposes, that’s okay. The Judeo-Christian god has absolutely no place in sanctifying it - even the Roman gods aren’t involved in the way you might think (that is, they are no more involved than they are in every other aspect of Roman life). Oh, and don’t forget - a man may be married to a woman, but of course he’s going to have a few slave girls around the house to sleep with on the side. Maybe some slave boys, if he wants. That’s a-okay. He can fuck whoever he wants, as long as no one’s fucking him. There have even been academic arguments for same-sex marriage in the ancient world.
What? You want the Judeo-Christian equivalent? Well, I know less about that, but I’m pretty darn sure Jacob married both Rachel and Leah.
And I’ll grant you one thing about your last claim. Some academics might agree with you, depending on how you define ‘homosexual’. If, however, you definine ‘homosexual’ as ‘engaging in romantic or sexual attachments to members of the same sex’, you’re sunk. I don’t think this side of the argument needs a cite, but since I have one site I’ve been working with lately on hand, I’ll pass that on to you. If you want more, let me know - I’ve got a whole bibliography lying around somewhere. In fact, the bibliography on this site is impressive.
So pretty please. If you’re going to drive my blood pressure up by opposing gay marriage, at least do it in a way that won’t make my head explode from ignorance.
Helen’s Eidolon, let us not forget that the pater familias was perfectly within his rights to kill every last person in his household. If a wife was under the control of her husband rather than her father and her husband was the head of his household, this meant the husband had vitae necisque potesta (the power of life or death) over his wife.
I’d like to see Shodan’s take on Max’s quoted post, too.
Because I know he and his wife have adopted children who needed homes badly and whom they love very much. And, as Max points out, by the exact same logic as same-sex couples’ marital commitments aren’t “real marriages” in conservative-speak, it’s clear that Mr. and Mrs. Shodan aren’t really “parents”, having no children of their bodies that are really their children, as we are told is the prime purpose of True Marriage.
And, Shodan, I hope you can see that this post is not an unsolicited attack on you, but an appeal to you to see the logic behind the outrage – because I have a pretty good clue, myself, from my own quasi-parenting episode, what it must be like to be told that the children you adopted and love are not “really” your children the way ones that came from your fucking would be.
There’s a whole lot more to marriage than sex. Or than begetting and bearing children. They’re important parts – but must never be mistaken for the whole.
Also, please note that magellan01 believes that people who do not procreate are not having the full human experience and their marriages are neither natural nor idea. How does that make you feel? It makes me feel denigrated, to say the least, as does the idea that my marriage is less meaningful because we have no children. One could also contend that magellan01 is having a less full human experience because he hasn’t experienced being gay. After all, that is a very real and valid part of the human experience… but clearly he does NOT value it as much as the hetero human experience, nor the childless human experience. And he wonders why people get emotional and lose their tempers towards him. No one enjoys hearing their experience as a human is lesser.
I would like to propose that if gay marriage dilutes the word “marriage” then we use the unfortunate outlawing of same sex marriage as a precedent and immediately outlaw McDonalds, rap artists and the Fox Reality channel for diluting the words “food”, “music” and “television entertainment”, respectively.
The art director of a theatre in our state capitol resigned today in the face of criticism and calls to boycott that theatre over his support of Prop 8:
He had “…no idea his contribution would generate such controversy”. His own sister is gay. I’m willing to bet that he could have easily discovered the viewpoint of various gay people by talking to a few folks in his immediate circle.
This is one of the (many) things that pisses me off about the whole deal - that people voted to write discrimination into our state Constitution and then they seem very surprised when they catch grief over it.
I read some other article stating Eckern was a convert to Mormonism and felt he was just abiding by his religion by voting for and contributing to Yes on 8.
“I understand that my choice of supporting Proposition 8 has been the cause of many hurt feelings, maybe even betrayal. It was not my intent. I honestly had no idea that this would be the reaction. I chose to act upon my belief that the traditional definition of marriage should be preserved.”
How can he work among many openly gay people, have an openly lesbian sister, contribute money to and vote for bigotry as a matter of constitutional law, and not expect people to be pissed off?
I would just like to say that I walked by two Mormon missionaries yesterday at my metro stop, and one of them cruised me so hard he just about burned my coat off.
His donation had nothing to do with his job. Yet as a result of that donation, boycotts against his employer were threatened and he had to resign.
Suppose he didn’t resign, and his employer fired him – it’s an easy choice, after all, to fire one person and avoid boycotts that could cost dozens of jobs worth of lost revenue. Would that be OK?
And now reverse the scenario. In Bigotville, CA, a young man who works for radio station KBGT makes a private donation of $1,000 to the “No on 8” group. When this information is revealed, local businesses threaten to boycott the radio station and withhold their ads because this guy works there, and they won’t support any business with fags, and he’s fired.
I was at a protest march against prop 8 last Friday, and I saw a couple of Dominican (? I think) monks in the march. I asked him if he was a real monk, and he said, “I don’t think I’d be wearing this robe if I wasn’t.” I told him, “Maybe not, but there’s a couple guys back there wearing habits, and I don’t think they’re real nuns.”
Bricker, I happen to agree with you. It’s a little bit hysterical that the artistic director for a musical theatre company, of all people, is against prop 8, but I don’t think his livelihood should have been threatened because of it.
