No, the sad part is that I had to respond to an ad hominem.
Damn board rules that I must have missed.
It was indeed a stupid question, sabba. I suggest a bigot is (among other things) the person who doesn’t *care *if the laws have to be simple or complex, as long as “they” are kept in their place. It’s clear that magellan has no idea of the difficulty of what he proposes nor the inevitable selective application that would follow any attempt and would ensure unequal treatment, nor any interest in contemplating such, as long as homosexuals can’t use the word “married.”
So, as far as everyone has seen, Magellan is advocating Separate But Equal, right?
I just want to check, to see if anyone accepts Magellan’s mouse-fart of an argument.
Because I don’t know Magellan or his posting history, I pointedly asked about a hypothetical earlier in the thread, and now, so that I could understand what the outrage/anger/whatever was focused on. If the law is replacing the word marriage with “marriage or civil unions” who are you keeping in what place? You are making a distinction, true enough. But is that in and of itself bad? It may be a slippery slope for further poor treatment as you pointed out, but I don’t think the demographics agree with that. Most young people support gay rights. How would a law using different words for opposite sex marriage and same sex marriage reverse that?
There is no need for a term to differentiate car insurance, mortgages, employment agreements, or any other type of contract based upon the sexual orientation of the participants in the contract. To have a special term for a marriage contract is also unneeded. It would create a legal distinction without a difference, and history has shown that humans cannot be trusted with such a situation.
But none of those other situations deal with the prospect of life long relations, sexual and otherwise, between two people. Marriage does(poorly in my opinion, but whole 'nother thread). And there are several a priori differences between heterosexual and homosexual people who may want to spend their lives together. The obvious one is that any children that have to enter such families will definitely not be the natural offspring of both parents. Another possible one is that men are generally more promiscuous than women. Gay men famously have more sexual partners than any other sexual orientation, the lucky bastards. Does this have the potential to lead to more broken marriages than for other orientations? Probably not, but if it does, does it require a public response? maybe by making children easier to adopt for same sex couples? Maybe by making marriages between gay men easier to dissolve? A priori distinctions exist. Why the desire to rub them out? Human history also points that we have gotten better and better in preventing the abuse of our fellows, even if they look and behave differently from us, and even if we recognise this difference. Separate but equal came at the end of the US’s long history of abusing blacks, not at the beginning.
Easier to dissolve? Easier than a Las Vegas divorce? That ship has sailed already.
And, unless things have changed in the 25 years since I got married, any questions about sexual fidelity is between the participants in the marriage, and is not part of the process for application for a marriage license. Another non-starter.
Adoptions should be based, as they are now, on the suitability of the couple to be parents as determined by a social worker or equivalent. What the prospective paretns do in the bedroom has no bearing on their ability to provide for a child.
These are just examples of a priori distinctions that I’m making up off the top of my head to tell you that they exist. These are not serious objections that you have to knock down to convince me that gay people should be allowed to get married. I couldn’t care less. What I do care about is finding out if the desire to have the distinction acknowledged, and nothing more, is enough to get you branded a bigot.
ETA: And I care more because I want to get a feel for board culture. On the issue itself, I’d be happy for gay people to enjoy the same name for their civil union as everyone else.
How about first declaring that there is a distinction, defining it, then stating why you think it matters to keep it? The answer says everything it needs to.
You might get farther if, instead of making up the distinctions off the top of your head, you invested some effort into finding distinctions that actually exist. None of the examples you just listed fit the bill.
To the best of my knowledge, his posts in this thread perfectly encapsulate his posting history on the topic; that is to say there’s nothing he’s said here that he hasn’t said before, including the “ONE set of laws! Why you so stupid?!” attitude.
Are the terms interchangable for everyone or are some people limited to the latter one?
Saying it only may lead to disparity is being extremely generous. I’ll grant that if, say, liberal New York had gone with an equivalent-in-all-but-name civil union status, there would probably be relatively few problems. What about the 20 or so states that went out of their way to ban civil unions, though?
I think that you mean “except” instead of “while” in the above quote.
You can’t “preserve” a word, meggie. What you seem to want to do is reserve a word. But the word you want to reserve is already not as limited as you think it is. It doesn’t apply just to unions between a man and a woman. If “marriage” can apply to furniture, and it does, then it has drifted greatly from its original meaning. And, of course, it already applies to same sex couples. You lose.
http://www.antiquetrader.com/antiques/furniture_detective_married_furniture_pieces
Let’s hope that my china cabinet isn’t illegal.
Narcissism is what I’m seeing in Megellan’s posts. He wants to deny a right to one group for no particular reason except that it pleases him. I don’t understand people who think like that. I don’t think Megellan01 understands himself or he would be able to logically explain his point after ten years of trying.
He reminds me of my mother who was Narcissistic. She spent 74 out of her 98 years on this earth being resentful of her older unmarried sister who got to stop milking cows as part of her farm duties when Mother got married. Mother wanted to be the only one who got that privilege. She wanted it to be reserved for those sisters who got married. I doubt he will see the parallel.
BTW, long before those “traditional” wedding ceremonies, people became “married” simply by choosing to live and sleep together. That was the tradition.
It really bothers me when I see someone who would let millions be disappointed just to satisfy his own unreasonable and troublesome preferences.
Well, I’m so glad that you let us know that. I had always wondered.
Sadly, “separate but equal” may have come nearer to the end of slavery (almost 100 years later) than to the end of abuse of African-Americans – which hasn’t happened.
elucidator, nice catch on my slaughter of the language. My guess is that POEM has not been wondering where I am anyway.
Finally: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.” – a Shakespeare sonnet
From the musical Cabaret, an excerpt:
“And the world can change.
It can change like that
Due to one little word: ‘Married.’
…
And the world despair which was often there,
Suddenly ceases to be.
For you wake one day, look around and say,
‘Somebody wonderful married me.’”
I haven’t read the whole thread and God forbid that I should ever have to but judging from the first page and from similar threads in the past it seems to be a given among the vast majority here that an opinion that upholds the traditional definition of marriage is by its very nature a stupid opinion.
To believe that the Earth is flat, that the Moon landings were faked, that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions, these are stupid opinions because they are held in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But to sincerely believe that the word marriage should be reserved as it always has been for the union of a man and a woman, that’s not a stupid opinion, that’s a different opinion and I think it’s unworthy of this board to brand it as stupid simply because they disagree with it. (I have no idea what other opinions magellan01 holds and it’s quite possible that some or many of them are indeed stupid. I just don’t believe that this is one of them.)
BTW I am not of the opinion that the word marriage should not embrace the union of man and man or woman and woman also. But I would not condemn those of a contrary opinion as stupid simply because they held that opinion. These aren’t matters of fact, they are matters of belief.
It’s stupid because even people who are so small-minded as to not be aware of anything outside of their inane Bibles can see that there are any number of other forms of marriage recognized there. “Traditional marriage” is one man and several prisoners of war. We redefined it to be a man and a woman marrying for love less than 200 years ago. We can continue redefining it as much as we please. Hiding behind false notions of “tradition” or semantics instead of coming right out and saying “I don’t like gay people and thus I want to deny them legal rights” is dishonest and passive-aggressive, which is why it pisses people off so much. And yes, it’s perfectly legitimate to brand people stupid/evil for believing differently than oneself, if one’s beliefs are morally correct! What kind of moral relativist soup do you live in where this is not the case?
Not all opinions are equally valid, or equally sincere, or equally thought out. This board is about poking into asserted opinions to learn what’s behind them, and how they were arrived at, and what the consequences would be if we all held them.
Given the support and careful explanation behind the contrary opinion, that this would keep gays from being legally and socially accepted as normal and that the burden is therefore behind the proponents, and the lack of support behind the opinion in question, it’s certainly both fair and illuminating to dismiss it as insincere on its face, and that it is in fact intended to have the effect we all know it would have.
That’s not branding it as stupid, it’s branding it as bigoted and dishonest - and that conclusion is forced by the evidence.
The TL;DR response is “well, maybe you should read the whole thread before berating other posters on their entirely reasonable positions”.
It’s cliched, but “you’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts”.
The problem being mags is claiming his own opinions are facts, i.e. that his notion of “traditional” marriage is objectively the way is defined and has always been defined.
As an opinion, “marriage should be defined thusly” is ok. You can argue that POV, even if people disagree.
As a statement of fact, “marriage is and has usually been defined thusly”, is just wrong. And that’s the problem mags runs into.
I guess the stupid part comes in when you start saying that the gays get to have something that is exactly like marriage in every way, no wait, it actually is marriage, but they shouldn’t be allowed to call it marriage, because, um, that is a special thing for the straights, and using that term for the gays would cause the straights so much strife they’d be forced to come up with a whole new exclusive term that means “straight marriage.”
The really interesting thing to me is that the whole issue for him is about language, and the language is changing whether the law goes his way or not. People will (and do) call gay people “married” whether it’s legally recognized or not. If you’re someone who’s upset by this trend, you’re screwed and no amount of legislation is going to help you.
Well, so he claims, at least. It strikes me as an oddly specific battle to choose, surely there are more significant linguistic controversies to choose from.