I do not claim that “other benefits” might accrue to this proposed new institution; I claim that the existing legal institution would be renamed.
Again, for you: what disadvantage do you see in renaming the legal institution of marriage “civil union”? If the only disadvantage is that you think it’d be hard to do, I ask you again why you think it’d be harder than including SSM under the legal institution of marriage.
However, I suspect that you’ve got a terminal incapability to respond to what people say; I don’t hold out much hope that you’ll read my posts carefully this time, either, or that you’ll read the bolded text I gave above, and so you’ll probably continue with your smarmy and absurd insinuations that I’m opposed to gay marriage.
This is why I think activists should all learn to play chess.
When you get out the chessboard, your desire to win has zero effect on whether you’re going to win. If you’re playing chess on behalf of orphan kids so that you can buy them teddy bears for Christmas, you can still lose the game.
Y’all know that I have frequent dustups with Shodan; even here I think that he’s focusing on the less-rational advocates of SSM in order to score political points. However, the overall situation is that your chess opponent is giving you sound advice on how to win the game, and you’re ignoring it in favor of shouting, “THOSE ORPHAN KIDS DESERVE TEDDY BEARS! I DON’T HAVE TO PLAY CHESS WELL!”
Well, yeah, you do. Unless you’re gonna start the bloody revolution, you’re gonna have to work within the existing system. And the existing system heavily favors majority-rule, as evidenced in Louisiana. Horrible as the results sometimes turn out to be (and FWIW, I’m absolutely opposed to what Louisianans did), that’s the reality we got to work with.
The rightness of the cause, of securing equal rights for SSC, is not sufficient to achieve the cause. It’s gonna take strategic thinking, gonna take smarts and diplomacy and a whole heapin of wisdom, to secure justice.
Passion’s not enough, and when your opponents point that you, you do well to listen.
Oh gee, what’s it been since you started agitating for gay marriage - twenty minutes?
And you aren’t getting the point. You cannot “take” gay marriage. You are trying to force other people to regard your relationships differently - to recognize them legally, in other words, and to extend the benefits that have traditionally only been extended to heterosexual marriage.
And some of you are going off into hissy fits over terminology, but that is another issue.
But look at it this way.
It would seem at this point that Bush is going to win re-election. Sorry to bring it up, Daniel, but the implications are important.
It isn’t a sure thing, obviously, but unless something drastic happens in the debates (and neither side has any history of drama in debate), Bush looks to be President for the next four years. And part of the duties of a President is to appoint federal, and especially Supreme Court, judges.
Now Bush’s ideas of judicial restraint and strict constructionism are much closer to mine that they are to the advocates of “Gay marriage now and forever!” And since it is also likely that the Republicans will continue to control both the House and the Senate, it seems that Bush has a chance for the next several years to put in judges who will push the judicial pendulum back to the other side, where judges don’t make laws or make up new rights. (Calm down, Poly, it doesn’t matter if they are making up or recognizing new rights.)
So as the re-election of the President seems more and more likely, the chances that y’all are going to get what you want from the decision of the Supreme Court as opposed to from the states or some referendum get more and more remote. Leave aside if this is right or wrong, it just seems to be inescapable that it is less likely.
And yet here on the SDMB, you all seem to be hell-bent on offending or alienating everyone who might possibly be persuaded to support you and give your snowball of gay marriage a chance in hell. As you are doing with Bricker - and he is someone who by and large agrees with you!
Why in hell are you putting all your eggs in a basket that won’t hold you for the next four years?
It’s the Deep South in 1964. And some elderly white guy is saying to a Freedom Rider “You know, you colored folks may have a point there, about civil rights and all.”
And the Freedom Rider screams back, “It’s Afro-American, not colored, you fucking bigot! You and your white-trash friends can go to hell!”
Fast forward forty years, and you got the SDMB and Bricker. And Mr. Moto, and practically anyone who doesn’t instantly order flowers every time some gay guy announces he has found Mr. Right for the third time this year.
It would be trivializing the discussion to suggest you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But you sure don’t make a lot of converts by screaming “Fucking bigot!” everytime someone hesitates before announcing his support for whatever you think you want.
YMMV, but gays have a lot more at stake in this than I do. Maybe something to think about.
Since only one example can falsify a negative, I am happy to tell you that you are wrong. I suppose you could argue that I never did really fit into the category of “people like [Shodan],” but I did, in fact, have an upbringing that predisposed me to believe that homosexuality was morally wrong and that it would be dangerous to me, society and even to them to countenance it in any way. I felt distressed for “them”, as one would for a drug addict or an alcoholic or anyone engaged in a self-destructive process, since that’s what I had been taught homosexuality was. If something sends you straight to hell no matter what else you are and do, whoa, that’s bad! You need to be stopped for your own good. And I am irresponsible and unloving if I don’t try to dissuade you from your destructive course.
Perhaps it’s because I was inherently reasonable underneath that veneer, but it took years of association with reasonable, loving, patient gay friends, for whom I am thankful, to make me realize the error of my way of thinking. For the record, I didn’t get in their face with my skewed opinions. I only discussed my distress with a few closer friends, both gay and straight, who fortunately recognized that a reasonable approach would be more effective and ultimately helped change my mind completely, such that I will defend gay rights, including the right to marriage, and gladly teach my child the same.
I don’t insist that’s the only way to approach the debate, for there are situations that demand more heat and passion of expression, but I can’t let it be said that it never works. It worked on me.
No, you have not done anything but repeat an assertion.
While giving no reason *for * renaming it.
Do you want to tell all those millions of people who thought they had marriages that they don’t? You have, once again, given no reason for the change. The burden is on you to point out the benefits of the name change. If that’s all it is, why bother?
Yada yada. All you’ve said is “I’ve already said it”. No you haven’t.
Until you can say why they should not be able to use the term, that must be the default interpretation - that you balk at allowing gays to be called “married” for reasons you don’t wish to be made public.
Now present an argument, including some actual reasoning for once, or admit you cannot. The rest of us can already see that.
That’s certainly true. He isn’t evil, and neither is anyone else still struggling with the issue. We all, well, many of us anyway, have had to think this through at some point, and we’ve at some point faced our prejudices and hypocrisies and overcome them. Many have not yet done so, and some, like Shodan, refuse to. Bricker isn’t evil, and neither is Left; they’re just in that earlier phase.
Every time? Come out and visit Massachusetts sometime. Not that long ago, it was the center of the abolitionist movement, too. Every advance starts somewhere.
Now, class, can you identify the inconsistency here? I know you can.
Bullshit. But your reading comprehension problem is your problem, not mine; until you engage in something beyond sophistries, I’m done with you in this thread.
In case someone with more intellectual honesty and/or reading comprehension than ElvisLives is confused about whether I’ve done more than repeat an assertion, I’d encourage them to look at posts 180, 184, 187, 198, 213, and 232 in this thread. Matt has engaged me on the substance of the comity argument, and rightfully so: it is in this area that I believe my argument is weakest, inasmuch as it’s untested. However, I do think it’s an avenue worth testing.
I have yet to see you or the other GOP stalwarts saying anything of the kind. Your every statement seems to be the reverse, as in
Way to trivialize relationships. I’ve been with my guy since July 2001–at which point on the Shodan Scale of Accceptability do you start to take my relationship seriously?
Are you hesitating, Shodan? Are you considering changing your position? Do you support my right to marriage?
The gist of your post is to tell gay people to shut up and say nothing, to wait for you to hand us our rights. Name one instance in the history of the species that this has ever succeeded as a tactic.
Scylla, Airman Doors and gobear are some of the most reasonable right-wingers on this message board. And you appear to have a screaming personal beef with every single one of them.
At least when I get pissy and bitchy, I get pissy and bitchy at specific groups of people based on their treatment of me personally, not at “right-wingers” in general.
To Bricker, most of my vitriol in this thread (and related ones) was actually aimed specifically at those who really do hate us. You kind of got mixed into it accidentally. I missed your desire for government to get out of the marriage business altogether. I apologize to you.
Well, I’d suggest that the dicta in Lawrence - abut as gay-friendly a decision as you’re going to find - was a pretty good clue which way the Supremes would lean if the issue came to review. But since a law is presumed constitutional, and the challenger must overcome a heavy burden to show otherwise, the fact that there is no explicit ruling does not mean that the see-saw is balanced. On the contrary, it’s got a fat kid on one side and a skinny kid on the other.
Because “marriage” is a word that means “the union of a man and a woman.” If we are describing the union of a man and a man, then we need a new word. “Civil union” refers to the legal union of a person with another person. Happily, it applies to the union of man and woman, as well as to same-sex unions. It is thus a perfect substitute for “marriage.”
By advancing arguments which show the salubrious effects that will follow from the change advocated.
And I appreciate the apology, but believe me – I understand how high emotions can run. For me, this is ultimately about theory: I have my marriage, and my benefits, and while I would like to think I would debate calmly and rationally if I were in a position in which I had no legal recognition available for my union, I know that that’s more likely a fond wish than an accurate prediction.
I do firmly believe, however, that even were I in that situation, I’d be much more ficused on the meat of the matter - the legal rights - than on the term used. Give me the tax benefits, the medical decision-making, and the rest, and call it “Officially Hooked Up.” I’d be happy, I firmly believe, because I really don’t look to the government to validate my relationship.
But I guess I feel that way because I look to the Church to recognize my relationship in a meaningful way. And I guess if you don’t really subscribe to a church or religion, or if your church ALSO doesn’t recognize the relationship… well, I guess I can’t imagine that.
Anyway, I’m rambling a bit here; sorry. I wanted to just say that I really do get that this is not a dry theoretical debate – this is a discussion about things that people hold dear. If I get harsh words my way, I’m sure it’s because of how important this is.
Okay, and in the case of slavery, that would be what, exactly? I’m not much of an historian, but didn’t the end of slavery more or less cripple the South economically for about a century? Obviously, the war had a lot to do with that, too, but the South’s entire economy was based around slave-owning. What “salubrious effects” did abolition have for anyone who wasn’t a slave?
Any particular reason why we can’t change the definition of the word “marriage?” I mean, we’ve already done it for “gay,” “queer,” and “faggot,” and that was all without anyone in the homosexual community even asking. What’s one more word?
By the way - Left Hand of Dorkness: with regard to post 262 in this thread…
that is an absolutely brilliant post. I wish I were smart enough to have written it. I intend to steal that analogy, file off the serial numbers, and use it as my own.
One key element was the notion that the nation could not indefinitely remain half-slave and half-free. Innovations related to agriculture and the Industrial Revolution were making slavery less and less profitable. I don’t agree that the loss of slavery crippled Southern economy – destruction from the war, and the arrival of the boll weevil were potent economic forces.
No, we could change the meaning of the word. It won’t make the sky fall. I oppose it, but if it happens that the majority don’t, then I’ll go along with it.
“Marriage” seems to be working just fine as a description of the union of two people of the same sex. MA residents understand how the descriptor works. Canadians seem for the most part to be handling the concept OK. There are a couple of European countries who seem to be dealing with it just fine, and the good people of Spain are gearing up to deal.
“Marriage” in many places in the US used to mean “the union of a man and a woman of the same race.” Now it doesn’t. Your freaky little language puritanism seems not to extend to that change of definition.
Language evolves over time. This has been explained to you about a billion fucking times. You’re a prick, but generally you’re not a dumbass. Yet about this you are. If your sole objection to the idea of two people of the same sex getting married is “but it always was this way before,” get over it.