I think your confusion stems from me wanting married OS couples and SS Civil Union couples to have access to all the same legal benefits and privileges. You seem to want me to go further and say that I’m arguing for anything beyond that. I’m not. You want me to attach something along the lines of social acceptance or “lack of stigma” to my proposal. But it is not part of my proposal. My proposal is a legal one, nothing more, nothing less. Even if saying you’re “married” is a benefit or privilege, it is a social distinction, not a legal distinction. Meaning there is nothing extra the law is giving people with the label, it’s what they are able to tap into by virtue of having the label. In my proposal we have two labels. And the people who fall into either of those two categories tap into that one set of legal benefits and privileges.
And yes, while I think there is a legitimate debate to be held, in both of the current threads you do seem intent on playing a game of gotcha. I’ve called you on this already. I’m glad someone else has seen the same thing.
Magellan, distinctions made in the law are legal distinctions. A benefit that people receive because of the law is a legal benefit. You’re splitting finer and finer nonexistent hairs in an effort to maintain the pretense that you propose legal equality. A social distinction would be if you said, “The gummint can call them whatever they want, but I’m not gonna call them married.” Change to that position, and the conversation changes.
No gotcha. I know you’re glad that someone else is taking your side in however minor a form, but there’s no gotcha. In my opinion, the legal denial of the word “marriage” is exactly what’s wrong with your proposal. Your unequal and unjust proposal is thoroughly workable. It’s just unequal and unjust in this particular matter.
If it seems like a gotcha to you, it’s probably because it took weeks for you to admit to a simple thing, that your law treats gay and straight people unequally.
Nitpick to Zoe: There is a non-trivial distinction between common-law marriages and what we post-Sixties people call ‘shacking up’: the common-law couples held themselves out to the community as living together as husband and wife. Shackees do not.
I don’t believe, Magellan, that Zoe “was trying to build an argument that there was a time when [common-law] “married people” consisted of same sex pairings.” Rather, she was arguing that some small percentage of them were on faact same-sex couples regarding each other as spouse and not caring whether that was recognized by the greater community. “Boston marriages” of spinsters are one good example, as couples such as Tennyson and Hallam (cf. “In Memoriam AHH”). Such relationships were only a small proportion of CLMs, but they did exist.
It is simply not true that “even when we go to Ancient Greece, where homosexuality was as much a part of daily life as probably any other time and place in history, you do NOT have SS marriages, Even they drew a line.” Rather, standards varied from polis tp polis. Granted, in Athens, the limited-term erastes/eromenos lover-and-mentor relationship between adult warrior and adolescent prevailed, one we would consider pedophilic (actuallly ephebophilic). But in Thebes, the 150 couples of the Sacred Band were regarded as married. There were a couple other examples which do not come quickly to mind. But I hope the one that did will be sufficient to make the point.
I’m totally confused as to why you want happy couples to use one phrase to describe their legal status, while couples without curves or angles should use another. Or have the words “gay” and “straight” somehow changed meaning over time???
I don’t want to hijack this thread and perhaps this is the wrong place for this (if so, mods feel free to delete). I am asking because I am genuinely curious. If gay people are legally allowed to get married (and call it marriage), what exactly is going to happen to the instutition of marriage that is so horrible?
Straight people will stop getting married becuase if gay people can get married, they’re not doing it?
Straight people will suddenly turn gay because the fact that they couldn’t get married was the only thing stopping them from switching sides?
Straight married people will stop procreating because why bother now that gay people can get married?
Maybe these questions have been answered on this thread and I missed it or another thread that I haven’t read so I apologize if that’s the case. I guess I am just dying to know what this catastrophic event is that will happen if gay marriage is legalized?
Yeah, definitely. Worrying about the purity of the English language (ENGLISH, fer gosh sake!) is like making sure your sister, the whore, put on a CLEAN pair of crotchless panties this morning…
What if Joe’s Coffee House offers a Friday discount to married people, but not to people with civil unions? Would this be permitted under your proposal?
If so, then the two kinds of union are not equal.
If not, then you would end up with a vast degree of regulation over private enterprise, and a very long-lasting round of lawsuits. Is it worth it?
Is that a fair measure of someone’s intellectual level? Because if so I’d like to ask you if you’re the same Aji who thinks that a couple thousand years ago there was a dude who went to a party and used magic to instantly ferment the nonexistent sugars in water to turn it into an alcoholic beverage, and who thinks that even today it’s possible to drink a similar alcoholic beverage and, because it’s magically turned into that dude’s blood, live forever.
I’m personally unconvinced that someone’s irrational beliefs in one area impugn their intelligence generally.
Yes. I am, apparently, an ardent suporter of irrationality, so doubting the scientific accuracy of my work is understandable. (if you think the water to wine trick was good, wait till you hear the bread-wine into blood-body-soul-divinity one).
But, if someone brings a guy to play for team Rational, it is, of course relevant if he held such a ridiculus position; especially one that can cause much, much more damage than anti-SSM people can bring.
You’re quoting someone who wants to make it ieasier for people to die from ridiculously preventble stuff.
Also, after calling me an attention whore a couple of posts away, it speaks volumes that you’d reply to a post not directed at you.
It’s true that you and reason don’t even live in the same time zone. Nonetheless, while I might despise Maher’s anti-vaccination views, I don’t necessarily think that someone’s stupidity in one area negates the wisdom of their humorous observation in another. To think otherwise would be classic ad hominem.
Yes, dumbass, it speaks to my understanding what “attention whore” means.
Yeah, sure. However, it’s one thing to have a differing view on the species of flower to be planted on the neighborhood park and another to make people die.
If you wanna use their comments, knock yourself out.
Yeah, but the insult “attention whore” does ring a wee bit hollow when you constantly answer to the whore. I mean, if you constantly fuck the whore you cannot take the moral high road.
A couple of things.
Don’t take the board too seriously.
Talking about KK is on a whole different multiverse than espousing policies that kill people.
Even in that less-than-earth-shattering threas it was apositive comment on how a woman’s natural looks are better than an overproduced one.
This is coming from the person who just recently remarked “I’m glad to live in a world were magellan01 is the biggest bigot who ever bigotted”? I guess only you can be a hypocrite then.