Man… you NEVER turn your back on nazis riding dinosaurs, no matter where God is.
You know, I used to scoff at the “destruction of moral values resulting from gay marriages” thing, too. But yeah, look at Canada.
First you adopt gay marriage … and the next thing that happens, you’ve elected Harper and the Conservatives to form a government! Tell me that’s not a decline in moral values!! 
So that’s why the Canadian dollar moved to parity with the USD.
Yeah… the Canadian “Dollar” eclipsed the dollar.
Well, we only gave him a minority government, so it’s not like he can do much damage.
You really can’t comprehend any possible model of thought that might lead to this feeling? It’s just utterly incomprehensible, as though these people were speaking Urdu?
OK. Let me take a stab at one possible explanation.
You have a degree from Superb University. (Good ol’ SU!)
Today you learn that SU is going to offer degrees to anyone willing to pay $1,000. You might object to that plan. A proponent of the plan asks you: “Why do you care about someone else’s degree? You have yours. How can someone else, 20 years later, getting a degree by whatever method threaten yours?”
Can you fashion an answer to that person, and then analogize your answer to the present situation?
Can you explain your analogy between a college degree, the value of which lies in its symbolism of the quality of the education you attained, and a wedding license, the value of which lies in the commitment you make to your partner? Beyond being pieces of paper, I’m not seeing the connection.
Ah, so someone getting a degree purely by paying money when you had to study hard and pass exams to get yours, would degrade the value of your degree.
So, your analogy is that, “since gay people cannot feel love or commitment to their partner, their being permitted to marry degrades the value of your marriage.”
Personally, if that’s the line of logic you are proposing, you have done a pretty good job of lowering the value of something by comparing it to something else. But not, I think, what you intended to do.
Because it’s viewed as a symbolic representation of a spiritual commitment, and specifically a religiously spiritual commitment. And in the same sense that someone else claiming they have a degree from SU (when you feel that degree isn’t valid) somehow impugns your degree, someone else claiming they have a marriage (when you feel that marriage isn’t valid) lessens your marriage. The real problem yo uhave here is that you’re not approaching this from the idea that a marriage isn’t just between two people, but between two people and God (and in the case of the anti-gay-marriage crowd, an anti-gay God).
If you don’t even try to wrap your head around that, you’re never going to be able to enter the headspace of the people on the other side of the argument from you. It’s the sort of bullheadedness where each side refuses to try to work from the other side’s premises which leads to cultural impasses such as we have now.
Any arguments in favor of state-authorized gay marriages, of course, are totally bunko. Just like any arguments in favor of state-authorized straight marriages. A marriage is either a religious commitment, or an interpersonal one. In either case, the governmetn doesn’t have any business interfering.
Sure, just not one that makes any logical sense.
Yep, only not Urdu. Nonsense. Urdu makes sense. Nonsense doesn’t. Hence the nomenclature.
Sure. My answer would be: “I don’t, and it doesn’t.” If I have a degree from SU, I cannot see how the university’s changing the standards of conferrment would have any effect on MY degree unless my degree is rescinded because I didn’t meet the new standards. Unless I lose mine because I didn’t pay the thousand dollars, I don’t see the problem here.
Similarly (to do the whole “analogize” thing), unless legalizing gay marriage is going to invalidate straight marriages and require everyone to marry their own gender, I don’t see the problem. Since legalizing gay marriage DOESN’T do that…I don’t see the problem.
Again: if two gay people want to get married, how does that threaten MY family, if we’re not required to adhere to the same standards anyway? The validity of my marriage is not dependent upon someone else’s: it’s valid on its own merits.
Analogy: if someone wants to pay $1000 for a degree from SU, how does that threaten MY degree, if I’m not required to adhere to the same standards anyway? The validity of my degree is not dependent upon someone else’s: it’s valid on its own merits.
[sub]Oh, crap! More posts…I’ll get back to you.[/sub]
[sub]Not a post relevant to the thread, just a funny Google ad on this page:[/sub]
Undo Circumcision Damage
The Your-Skin Cone will make you supple and sensitive like uncut men.
Jack Dean Tyler never gives up.
Repeating the analogy doesn’t do anything to make it clearer. You’re leaving too many unstated assumptions. The reason your degree is lessened is because people presume your college isn’t difficult. What is the equivalent in marriage? I don’t think it has anything to do with God. Is it that God is now recognizing commitments that are lesser? So God is making a mistake? I don’t think so. It must be that the state is recognizing a commitment, and in recognizing a commitment you find invalid, this lessens the state’s recognition of your own commitment. But now we have a rather odd view of the value of a marriage license. The value of my marriage license is that the state says we have a strong commitment? That seems a little off.
More importantly, in whose eyes is the value reduced? Not those of us who see gay commitments as legitimate. And not those who don’t see gay commitments as legitimate, because they know you have a straight marriage. So who exactly will be undervaluing your commitment?
I didn’t pick the analogy, and it’s not necessarily perfect: Part of the problem is that you have to view a college degree as an intrinsic good, not something everyone does today. if you view your degree as something merely to impress others, the analogy breaks down.
For instance, my college degree has done squatinsky in terms of finding me a job (philosophy doesn’t take you very far). It certainly doesn’t have much value in the eyes of those people around me. If they started selling them on the street corners, it’d still piss me off.
Those who don’t like the idea of gay marriage see it as selling degrees on the street corner. Even if they don’t recognize the street-sold degrees as valid, they still feel as if they practice somehow undermines what they have.
But, see, that’s what doesn’t make sense to me. Unless they bought their degrees on the street-corner, their degrees are not invalidated anyway.
Let me also propose an analogy here: when I was 10 years old (we’re talking about 1975ish here), I got bitten by a skunk. It almost chewed the end of my finger off, and then ran away (long story). Because it escaped, it couldn’t be tested for rabies, and so I had to get the shots (which at the time consisted of 21 injections into the abdomen over a two-week period…not fun).
Nowadays, I’m told that the equivalent regimen is 5-6 injections in the arm.
How in the world does that invalidate or threaten the efficacy of the injections that I got?
Answer: It DOESN’T. Sure, I could be pissed that a new rabies victim gets fewer shots than I did, but that’s neither their fault nor mine, and one does not invalidate the other. So by what logic should I lobby the state legislature to amend the constitution to dictate that the only VALID rabies injection regimen is the one that I got 30-odd years ago?
[Stupid Me] “If you don’t get 21 in the stomach, then it isn’t really rabies shots!” [/Stupid Me]
It’s bullshit and crap. I partially agree with you that some impasses are due to people not willing to see each others’ sides, but when one side is factually unsupported, being unwilling to get into their headspace is no longer the problem. The problem is that their headspace is full of sailboat fuel and factually bereft.
I am perfectly willing to explore the other side in this debate (and thus my question still stands): If two gay people want to get married, how does that threaten MY family?
If it doesn’t, then why should I side with the people who claim it does?
I think this analogy is actually worse than the college one: the results of a rabies shot are tangible, both a degree and a marriage are symbolic representations of something else.
Factually unsupported? I think the general argument of the anti-gay marriage crowd is “Marriage is between a man and a woman. Why? Because God said so.” It’s an opinion, and not subject to a factual basis.
I know some activists try to make up more ‘rational’ excuses about how gay men sleep around more, or how kids require two parents of a different gender, but that isn’t the real argument. The real argument is that homogays are icky.
If you can even ask the question, then you’re not getting into the headspace of someone who views homosexuality as an unnatural a sin as incest or child molestation. I’m not saying you need to agree with them, but you need to understand how they’re unlikely to budge on the issue. -And- that it’s not important to make them budge.
You shouldn’t side with people who claim it does. You should side with me, who recognizes that there are two different interpretations of what a marriage is for, and that it’s not government’s job to determine which one is right. 
What’s the argument in -favor- of civil marriage again? And should I be taking this to GD?
I wouldn’t agree with the latter part of this (IOW, maybe it’s a worse analogy, but I thought I was still grasping and illuminating the point. YMMV). The results of a both a degree and a marriage are tangible as well. The former for employment opportunities and salary considerations, and the latter for all sorts of reasons including power of attorney, who gets to make medical decisions, income tax filing status, etc.
…which validates my claim that there is no factual support for it. I’m not sure what your point is, here.
But that ISN’T a real argument at all. Maybe they’re icky to some straight people, but those straight people don’t have to marry gay people. Plus, gay people aren’t icky to each other, so why does it matter? As I’ve repeatedly said: legalizing gay marriage doesn’t mandate it for non-gay people.
Oh, sure, I can get into their headspace, but only if I’m an intolerant bigot who is trying to hide behind religion and citizenship to disguise my prejudice against people who are different. It’s not that I can’t do that; it’s that I won’t. As for being “not important to make them budge,” they’re the ones trying to amend the constitution and budge everyone else. I’m not aware of anyone trying to outlaw straight marriage, even though that might be icky to people, too.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you. 
Civil marriage? How about marriage in general? I’ve got an argument for that: when two (or possibly more) people want to spend their lives together and commit to each other, they should be allowed to do so, with all of the rights and responsibilities that come along with such an arrangement. To grant this to some and deny others with a self-proclaimed “not subject to a factual-basis” excuse is descriminatory and uncivilized. I expect that from religion (it’s their right, after all, to believe whatever they want). From government, it’s unconscionable. This is why I think these people are idiots.
Someone want to belong to a church that says gays are icky? Hey, knock yourself out.
Someone want to legislate that mentality, and shove it down the throats of everyone else, whether they belong to your church or not?
Shove it up your ass (“gay” joke left for the reader).
I think you’ve got me wrong here. I’m not trying to make the anti-gay marriage argmuent, here, I’m trying to explain it to you from the perspective of the anti-gay marriage crowd (thin line of difference, I know, but it’s important to understand all of my posts in their intended context.) The argument that is generally made against gay marriage isn’t that gays shouldn’t be allowed to have those rights (q.v. the huge change in polling between support for civil unions and support for gay marriage), but it’s in respect to marriage as an entirely intangible ‘status’ that should be reserved for man/woman relations.
I was more thinking that it’s an afactual discussion.
Again, like I said, this is the fundamental reason why people are against gay marriage. It’s not a factual argument, but it is a major part of the foundation for the opinions against it. I wasn’t trying to state that was my opinion, by the way, either. Perhaps I should have added a winky smiley there, I thought my phrasing showed my opinion of the argument.
Whether you like it or not, straight marriage advocates do have the weight of inertia and numbers on their side. It’s a foolhardy stance to discount them as bigots because they’re following their religious beliefs. I’ts much wiser to attempt to understand their arguments, and try to work within their rules in order to change their minds. Unpalatable, perhaps, but much more effective.
My argument is that those rights and responsibilities should be entirely within the relationship itself. Tax benefits, rights of inheritance and legal and medical power of attorney are all separate issues from marriage: My parents hold my POA, my and my girlfriend in my main beneficiary in my will. I’m married to none of the three, and the status of my relationship to any of them is irrelevant to whom should make medical decisions or inherit my house and car when I kick it.
Government shouldn’t tie ‘marriage’ into any of this.
My thoughts exactly
Sorry, I don’t swing that way. 
I really hope you don’t actually think this way if you understand where I’m coming from.
That’s what they want you to think.
I’m an employer, seeking to choose between several reasonably similarly qualified candidates. You are one of the candidates seeking the position. Your degree being from SU, I have no way of knowing if it represents actual work and study, and is a reasonable indicia of certain core skills and abilities, or whether you simply wrote a check to get it. So I may well choose to pass you up in favor of someone whose degree is more likely to be the result of legitimate effort.
I think the singular form of “indicia” is “indicium” though I don’t think I have ever seen it used.
Would not your degree from SU have an issue date on it? Would not an employer who was aware of the difference in the quality of the effort necessary for the individual degrees also be aware of the effective dates? Confusion would really be applicable only to future students who are getting the exact same piece of paper as the degree buyers and they can make an informed decision as to which degree they want. It should not have an effect on those already holding degrees. (Those students matriculating when the policy occurs would probably have a valid complaint.) How any of this relates to the value of a marriage license, already held by a straight couple, being decreased when gay couples are permitted to acquire one is beyond me. All such arguments, to me, have a basis in religious teaching and as such have no place in deciding a purely legal question. The real issue is an economic, social and legal one, should gay people have the right to desginate a significant other to be the beneficiary of whatever economic, societal and legal benefits a similarly situated heterosexual spouse would have. The answer is not clear (though I support the right.) By refusing to grant this right we are discriminating against gays. By granting it but differentiating it from actual marriage, we are in effect, relegating gays to a different and presumptively inferior class and I can understand their hostility toward the idea.