Ha. Of course you don’t. You can’t hold those two thoughts in that little head of yours. It’s not that what I wrote isn’t true, it’s that you don’t want it to be true. You’re fucking head would explode like the pimple it is if you had to face the truth.
Ha, again. Are you not aware by now that I don’t practice any religion? Man you are just full of fail, aren’t you, tiger?
I don’t believe you.
Have you really been posting here for 10 years? You should be way too old to be trying to impress teenagers by using these inane expressions.
No doubt. You won’t believe anything that doesn’t fit your simpleton cartoon version of the world. ::shrug::
What, you’re not a teenager? Get outta here.
Hey, look out! There’s a Christian behind you!! 
It’s very telling that in the most recent thread, magellan refuses to show us what his actual proposal might look like. It’d be impossible, I think, to show us an actual proposal that lacked any sort of separate-but-equal language, so rather than show us a proposal for us to tear apart, he just continues to insist that, nope, no sir, his proposal has no such language! We can’t see it, but we should trust him.
I don’t want to comment on Magellan01, but is the basic proposal that he sets forth bigoted in and of itself? I’d like to understand why, if so. Here’s my understanding of what he says. (Or the understanding that I want evaluated anyway)
Is this position bigoted in and of itself?
FWIW, I don’t hold this position(being of the view that marriage is not for me, and anyone who wants it is more than welcome to it), but am interested in knowing more about when it’s ok to call people bigots.
I daresay it depends on the reasons behind point #2. Does the person feel homosexual access to “marriage” sullies the concept of “marriage”? The only purely nonbigoted interpretation of this I’ve seen put forth in theory on this board is that someone has an Asperger’s-like rigid understanding of vocabulary, where “marriage” (among numerous other phrases) has a strict definition that cannot be altered, and any proposed alteration cannot be processed. I’d consider this a form of mental illness and not bigotry. Anything else I’ve seen stems from homosexuals somehow not being worthy of marriage, that marriage must be protected from them, but I’m open to alternate interpretations.
I could vaguely imagine the line of reasoning coming from someone who had a very simplistic view of history and was honestly not aware of how the division, once written into law, opened the door to abuses and biases; the kind of person who, when first hearing the phrase “separate but equal”, took it literally and thought it sounded okay. I think I was that person, briefly, when I was twelve.
Clearly by insisting that magellan01 is a bigot we are diluting the traditional meaning of the word “bigot”. We should instead be using a different - but equally strong - term for someone who is willing to, at best, needlessly complicate the lives of millions and, at worst, greatly facilitate those who would discriminate against those millions, solely due to unsupported speculation of the effects of violating etymological pedantry.
I suggest “flaming asshole”.
Yes. You are treating people differently based solely on the basis of their sexuality. If people think they are equal they will treat them that way. Equal means equal. Not equivalent. Not close. Not effectively the same. Not extraordinarily similar. Not separate equal. Not functionally similar. Not the same in all but name.
Equal means equal.
If you don’t think people are equal, say it.
If you do, act like it.
and France in one more month.
The UK is working on it as well; the England/Wales bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons by 400 votes to 175 (mostly grumpy Tories voting against, but notably not all the Tories) and the committee is due to report at some point soon and the third reading presented. Not sure what’s going on in Scotland other than the Government is in favor of SSM and is planning to put forward appropriate legislation at some point.
But the premise is that you aren’t treating them differently, you’re calling them something different. There is a difference is there not?
Does equal mean same though? For instance, let us say you have to refer to a marriage between two people of the same sex, do you use any identifier at all? Do you, for instance, call it a gay marriage? Or is it essential that no descriptor that marks it out as something different be allowed? Or is it just essential that only one legal descriptor is allowed? That might make sense.
I have no idea what you mean when you say equal. People are equal, but people aren’t the same, not even in front of the law. This is why a repeat offender gets harsher sentences. This is why women tend to win custody of children more often than men. A priori, a difference does exist between the marriage of two people of different sexes and a marriage of two people of the same sex. I personally agree with the view that any such differences are not fundamental, and there is no reason to stop people of the same sex from getting Married. At the same time, I can also appreciate the possibility that someone may hang on to this a priori difference, object to a union between two people of the same sex being called Marriage, and yet not be a bigot.
No. Words have meanings. That is why this whole discussion is stupid. “Bigot” doesn’t mean “person who is racist, or homophobic, or sexist without offering an explanation as to why.” It just means someone who is.
That’s why it’s indulging in a fantasy about how words, marriage, laws, and homosexuality work to even have the discussion and thus to point out that premises such as “marriage has always been defined as one man and one woman” or “the purpose of marriage is to produce legitimate children” are untrue, and anyone who says them is either a liar or an idiot. Marriage between persons of the same sex has been a reality in some places for over ten years. Polygamous marriage is legal for the majority of the world’s population. Marriage as a consensual, romantic institution is an invention of the nineteenth-century greeting card industry. “Traditional marriage” if defined as “the kind of marriage most people had” is either a peasant man marrying a peasant woman because their parents exchanged money to make it happen or a well-off man marrying and raping three prisoners of war. Most people throughout history were born to slaves or concubines and had no legal parentage. Having two people of the same sex who love each other being able to marry is, of course, moving marriage MORE towards this fictitious ideal and moving it AWAY from its ugly historical roots, but hey, if people who claimed to want to “defend marriage” actually wanted to do so, they wouldn’t be spending all their time crusading against allowing people to marry, now would they?
Oh, so you do agree with me that marriage has a meaning. Excellent!! You want to expand it; I want to keep the meaning its had traditionally. So we differ there. But at least we agree on what I’ve been saying in every one of these discussion: “words having meanings”. Thanks, compadre.
You’re a liar about “the meaning it has had traditionally” and about the implied premise that traditional things should not change when they are wrong. And you KNOW you’re a liar, and you abuse the rules of the message board because you know that in most of the threads, people can’t point OUT that you’re a liar. There is a possibility besides you being a Christian bigot–you’re an overgrown version of a 12-year-old Internet troll who gets some sort of pathetic transgressive thrill out of annoying people for its own sake because you think that finding a loophole that allows this somehow makes it obligatory for you to actually do so.
I see where you’re coming from, but I think your statement is overly broad, for two reasons:
(1) People believe WEIRD things. If Lekatt can honestly believe that he agrees with atheism and also believes in God, someone out there can support gay rights in everything but marriage
(2) Also, it wouldn’t surprise me if supporting gay rights in everything but marriage was a transitional phase that a fair number of people went through while transitioning from not supporting gay rights to supporting gay rights. It’s hard for people to admit that they’ve been wrong about something fundamental, so it’s kind of human nature to stubbornly hang on to some bits of old beliefs and only let them go one by one.
Also, to be frank, I’m made a bit uncomfortable by comments like “We all know what magellan & co are like towards gay people in the real world.”. Now, I will preface this by repeating as I have many many times that I find Magellan’s view on gay marriage wrong and reprehensible and indefensible and poorly argued. BUT, I also honestly think that it’s fairly likely at this point that he is as he presents himself… that is, when he says “Living in San Francisco, I have plenty of friends that are gay. Two couples even have adopted children, and I have supported gay adoption since I first became aware of the issue. I’ve gone on vacation with gay people and shared rooms with them. I’ve celebrated holidays with them. I’ve worked with them and had them work for me. And each and every one of them would love to work for me again if I called them.” and so forth, he’s telling something at least fairly close to the truth.
Why do I believe that? Well, Occam’s razor, basically. Sure it’s very very weird for someone to hold the position Magellan claims to hold. But I think it would be even weirder for someone who was actively and consciously homophobic to spend 10 years very consistently trolling the SDMB without slipping up, but without actually having any obvious objective or goal or anything. Frankly, if it’s just an enormous put-on, seems like he picked an awfully tame position on the scale of trollish positions.
So, if I accept that Magellan holds the (wrong-headed and impractical) position that he claims to hold, then what do we gain by going on and on about how bigoted he is? Frankly, it reminds me of calling regretted-drunk-sex rape. It just cheapens the term. As long as there are still entire countries in the world where gay acts are capital offenses, and still a significant (although thankfully thinking) percentage of the US population who openly and proudly agree with that position, getting all up in arms about someone who holds a position that would have been in the 95th percentile of liberality 20 years ago just seems a bit silly to me.
Which is not to say that he’s NOT, technically, bigoted. Just that to the extent that he is, it’s preposterously small potatoes.
(Of course, I’m posting this all from the position of someone who passionately defends gay rights, but for whom the whole thing is just an intellectual exercise, as I’m straight and married – so I certainly don’t want to seem to be scolding people for being less forgiving than I am when they are actually living it rather than observing it…)
It’s hardly something just coming from him. It’s practically the standard line from every Christian dipshit and Republican politician. “Hey I got no problem with anyone, I just want to defend marriage!” If this were true, you would think there would be more support for prosecuting hate crimes, ending workplace discrimination, and the ten million other equality issues besides marriage, but they all conveniently forget the other stuff they support in all circumstances besides setting up the stream of milky-white bird shit that comes out of their mouths whenever marriage is mentioned.
Temper, temper, little one. So, you deny that marriage has, in the U.S., traditionally meant one man + one woman? Ha! Thanks for announcing to the world how detached you are from reality. Now that would be pure comedy gold, but the way you get in such a HUFF, makes it more tragic. Still, I snicker.
As far as me lying, that’s all your left with, isn’t it, tiger? And you KNOW this? Hehehe. That particular charge has been leveled by other idiots. None of it stuck, with even my detractors pooh-poohing that charge. As far as annoying people, you might notice that this is a debate board. When a subject comes up that I have an opinion on, I sometimes choose to voice it. Two things that go into that decision are 1) my time and 2) if I think that I can offer a different opinion to a particular thread. Since this board leans so left, and idiots like you both try to shut down conservative voices and make it less likely for newcomers to offer a fresh conservative voice, it’s likely that you’ll find my opinions in threads like those regarding SSM. Tell me, there are other posters who have posted in at least as many of those threads as I have, so—and this is for the OP of this thread, too—why not shout at the other posters who keep posting the same opinions over and over. Oh, oh, oh, let me guess. Because you agreeeeee with them. As I’ve mentioned before, people like you don’t need a Great Debate forum, you need a Great Circle Jerk forum.
But differences aside, I am glad that we do share the opinion that “words have definitions”. High five?
Yes, words have meanings. But your argument fails on at least three separate levels:
(1) meanings of words change ALL THE TIME. It’s natural. It happens constantly, it’s not a big deal
(2) even if it was a big deal because words very very rarely changed meaning, it would only be a big deal within the context of language, whereas what we’re comparing it to is denial of fundamental civil rights to citizens, which is vastly more important. (I mean, if you do hold the position you claim to hold, and for you marriage+civil unions > legal gay marriage, it’s hard to see how you could possibly not still believe that legal gay marriage > old status quo, if those are the only two choices.)
(3) It does NOT really change the meaning of the word. I’ve used this analogy over and over again, because, frankly, it’s one of the best analogies I’ve ever come up with. So you overhear two people talking about two other people with gender-ambiguous names, say, Pat and Chris. Pat and Chris are, from the context, clearly a romantic couple. Then one of the two conversants ask if Pat and Chris are married. What information is the person trying to glean from that question? Is it (a) whether Pat and Chris are of opposite genders, or is it (b) what is the level of seriousness and commitment that Pat and Chris feel towards each other.
The fact that the answer is so self-evidently (b) tells us all we need to know about how fundamentally important the opposite-gender part of the word “marriage” is.
Seems to me that most such people also openly oppose gay adoption, frequently have issues with gays as teachers, etc. That is, their position is closer to “I will claim I’m OK with gay people in a vague sense, but in fact propose all sorts of legal restrictions” which is different from the claimed-Magellan-position of “I want absolute total legal equality for gays in every possible arena, except for marriage, and even then I want this elaborate (and, to us, clearly impractical) separate-but-equal system”.
But this is a silly and irrelevant tangent.
Hey, guess what—I’m not a republican either. Conservative, yes. Registered Independent. Never voted for GWB either. Now how does that all fit into your pointy little one-synapse head. LIES! Lies, I tell you. LIES!!!
You funny.