But marriage wasn’t originally the province of religion. Marriage started as, for lack of a better word, a civil contract. Religions started blessing such contracts as they blessed other things, and then they took over.
But whatever. I assume you’ll have no problem with my eventually marrying a man, since my religion recognizes it as such. I just think it’s remarkable you’d want to go to the trouble of doing away with legal marriage entirely, rather than extending legal marriage equally to same-sex couples. It has proven far more practical to do the latter than do the former – in fact, I don’t think the former has ever been tried.
No, you didn’t. You gave a caveat, which is fine, and I gave a counterexample, which is also fine.
I’m not sure where you live, but here I don’t need the church to enter into an agreement with another. I could enjoin with my partner without a marriage ceremony. All that needs to happen is the same thing apply to homosexuals and poof! Marriage does not belong to the state or the people, marriage belongs to the church. All unions are civil ones first, the only ones that are truly ‘marriages’ are ones that involve a church.
So, the answer is simple, afford all peoples the same rights, call it civil unions, call it anti-marriage, call it spacefarts and candied houseflies, who cares what you call it? If you get the EXACT same things in a civil union as you do in a marriage, you’re arguing over a word, if you argue over a word, you’re just an asshole picking a fight.
Say, Magellan, Mswas and Blake. Any luck with that argument against SSM that isn’t rooted in bigotry?
I see a lot of deflection and attacks but no actual thinking going on with the big three there. Don’t you think it says something if you’re so vehement yet so unable to do this simple thing?
Wouldn’t an honest person change their opinions if they found them unsupportable with resorting to bigotry?
And having a whites-only water fountain and a niggers-only fountain is perfectly fine in your thinking, right?
Separate-but-equal is inherently unequal. If there is no substantive reason to deny someone a right we shouldn’t deny it, that’s the core principle that motivates me here.
As for religions, people married by judges are married. Unitarians officiate at SSMs. Why does your religion get its will enforced and Unitarians don’t?
Why do you think it’s okay to split marriage up like that?
Would you be okay with interracial marriages being called something different?
The same thing could be said for the act of creating a separate class/word for EXACTLY the same thing. If it’s exactly the same, why call it something else, unless you want to somehow make sure some people are never allowed to assimilate completely into mainstream society? It’s much more logical to call two identical things the same thing than to call two identical things different things. Unless you really don’t want to identify with some of those things.
I can’t be arsed to read all through this thread, which I suspect is going to prove quite the trainwreck before it’s all done, but I have to congratulate the OP on finally admitting his inability to be honest in GD. I have long thought he must be perfectly well aware of this character defect of his and it takes a big man to come out and say it like that. Well done and hats off to you, Der Trihs!
Why don’t we make it so that both gay and straight people get to have birthdays, except the gay people have to call it an “annual festival.” You know, to send the right message to kids.
If the word is so insignificant, meaningless, and not worth fighting over, then why not just let us have it?!
He’s saying he can’t be honest in GD because tom decreed his particular bit of honesty (that SSM opponents, including posters on this board, are bigots) to be off limits. He would if he could, but he can’t so he won’t.
Disagree with DT all you like, but don’t misrepresent.
This is a convenient little hiding place, and I hope it serves its purpose of helping you convince yourself that you are not a bigot.
I agree that government should not be sticking its nose into marriage. But they do. And they’re not going to stop. So should that be an excuse to deny equal rights to an entire class of people? The system is flawed, we agree. So how does the fact that it is flawed lead to the conclusion that some people should be denied access to that system?
In the end, your argument is just another rationalization, another excuse to continue the bigotry. Some people have no problem coming right out and saying they don’t like gay people, others need to find cover because it’s becoming less socially acceptable to do so. So they, just like the racists and the sexists before them, come up with arguments like this. In their mind it makes the bigotry easier to swallow. But, just like all the bigoted arguments that have been exposed in the past, these types of smokescreens are getting less and less traction. The tar pits are looming large, dinosaur. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go extinct quickly enough.
It is sad to see so many truly believe that those who differ on an issue of social policy are of necessity “bigots”. I’m a long-time believer that SSM is both just and sensible (and the debate has been won in my country anyway).
To my mind at least, it is obvious that what motivates much of the opposition isn’t “bigotry”, it is antipathy to what was seen as radical social change. The proof? That in this country, once gay marriage was established and became the norm a huge percentage of the opposition dropped away. It cannot be the case that all of these people used to be “bigots” and have since seen the light and ceased to be bigots. Isn’t it rather more likely that they used to fear change, but once change happened and no ill effects followed, they ceased to fear it?
Big “if”. Such “ifs” tend to require court battles because someone opposed to the premise will quibble on the letter of the law, or if he can’t, he’ll quibble on the spirit of the law, or if he can’t he’ll quibble anyway because the people opposed to the premise have lots of money and too much time on their hands.
I guess it’s just gonna have to take a well-publicized injustice like a hospital refusing to take direction from a civil-union partner in a case where they would casually do so from a spouse. I’m sure we’ll see it soon enough.
Yes, bigotry is always sad. This isn’t a matter of “social policy,” as if we were talking about tax deductions; it’s a matter of discrimination, oppression, and denial of civil rights.
I’ve given up regarding my equality and my status as a citizen equal before the law as something on which reasonable people can disagree.
Yup. They used to be against equality for gay and lesbian people, a bigoted point of view, and then stopped. Yay! I approve!
