The process of one substance suddenly transforming into the same substance is one of the more common, but unappreciated, miracles.
You’re expressing a sadness that people couldn’t be as impartial as you have so exemplarily managed to be.
So yeah, “self-righteous back patting” still sounds like a sneer to me. Even if you could convince me otherwise, you’re still stuck with condescending. Because it was.
I, for one, would tend to trust the people who have been pushing the strong moral argument that has corresponded to the current series of stunning victories. I would trust the people who are winning. The conservative movement in aggregate has stood for evil on this particular issue, and that’s true regardless of the possible decade-long naive ignorance of any individual members of that group. The strong moral argument speaks directly to that.
I would not trust the armchair quarterback who argues a strategy contrary to what I perceive has actually been working. It takes more than a “suggestion” to give up an argument that we happen to believe is both true and effective.
I don’t want to deny whatever good you have done in your own communities, trying to open people’s eyes. But the particular margin for change that you’ve personally experienced in fighting the good fight is not the same thing as the national moral shift of the country. What works for you personally does not necessarily work for the national dialogue.
This is an important point, and I want to make it clearly although it’s already been stated in this thread: We’re not talking about the bigotry of tax policy, or the government budget, or some other abstract economic issue. I realize that plenty of people make similar assumptions of “evil” about these issues, too. They do it all the time on these very boards. You’re not wrong about that happening, but you’re not showing any sensitivity to the individual posters who are taking a stand on this particular issue. How many of the posters here, in this thread, regularly kneejerk negative motives in the other threads? Seriously? You will find no accusations of tax bigotry. If you broaden your net, you’ll be able to catch a few fish but you’re not going to catch all of them.
Your advice here is misplaced. The moral argument is winning because the moral argument is right. Separate-but-equal is a larf, has always been a larf, and it’s a position that many of them have landed on – possibly not all of them everywhere, but most – because every other defense they put forward failed. This is a last ditch effort, and however much nicer it is than the previous outright oppression – and it is legitimately nicer – the moral argument still holds against it. There is no need for a separate name for the same institution, for the same rights and privileges, for the equivalent acknowledgement under the law.
The primary argument against using Civil Union for all actions licensed by the state is that marriage as recognized by the state preceded marriage as recognized by the church. In fact, a significant portion of church laws regarding marriage, (or even Matrimony), were taken directly from Roman civil law. (That is where we picked up monogamy, for example.)
We have not really established marriage as a civil institution so much as we have carried on the tradition that we inherited from the Romans prior to Christianity. The primary reason that marriage is intertwined with religion, (in regards to resord keeping, for example), is that for a very long time, the church was the only institution that was sufficiently stable–with a sufficient number of clerks, (clerics: people who could read and write)–to survive the various migrations, invasions, and changes in government to support a system that documented the marriage.
You gave it a good try.
It’s not just the Romans. Did you know that in Japan people get married, despite the fact that most of them are not Christians? Christians don’t have any hesitation using the word “marriage” to describe a Shinto or Buddhist or Hindu ceremony. They don’t have any hesitation using the word “marriage” to describe a union solemnized before a judge, or a guy in an Elvis costume. My Mom, despite being catholic, married her current husband in a courtroom, there were no priests present, just a judge. Did she really get married?
It doesn’t matter that there are churches that wouldn’t recognize her second marriage. And in actual fact, there are no actual human beings who believe she’s still married to her first husband, and is merely separated from him and committing adultery with some person. By the laws of the United States she is married to her current husband, and even if technically according to Catholic doctrine she’s not really divorced because divorce is ontologically impossible, there are no actual human beings who have ever met her that have actually believed this.
The notion that only Christians should use the word “marriage” to refer to their unions, and everyone else should use some other word is fucking nonsensical, and no actual human beings actually believe that Hindus and Buddhists and atheists and apathists can’t get married. They only believe that about same sex couples. Civil unions for everyone and marriages only in churches isn’t how it works. We already have civil unions for people who don’t want to get married in churches, we call it “marriage”.
We should call Christian “marriages” something else and save the word marriage for all non-Christians, give them a taste of that old time discrimination. There are older religions and cultures than Christianity who I’m sure are annoyed Christians have stolen their word and used it for their offensive fake ceremonies
What does George Wallace have to do with anything?
I had a comment about the washing machine analogy, but upon preview, I’m unable to voice it.
In this case, both sides cannot win, because they want different things. SSM supporters want homosexuals to be able to get married. “Marriage traditionalists” want to exclude SS partners from being able to legally call themselves married. Somebody has to lose.
From a guy I know in a similar situation, his mom had her marriage of 30 odd years annulled in the Catholic church so she could marry someone else. Yep, that marriage “never happened” or “wasn’t valid”. So what does that do to the legitimacy of him and his siblings? Fortunately, legitimacy isn’t a thing anymore.
Well, obviously, if two parties have conflicting positions on something, one will win and one will lose when the argument is decided one way or the other. But, what is it that the opponents of SSM will actually lose? They will lose the argument, they may lose face, but what do they themselves lose? Sure, pro-SSM folks will win the argument and not lose face, but who cares? I know what gay couples will win (new rights and responsibilities, acceptance, equal treatment, legal protections).
So, other than losing the argument, what have opponents lost?
And if you stop there it seems as if both sides are on equal footing, but this is where you have to ask exactly what it is each side will lose if they do not prevail. What exactly do SSM deniers lose if they do not prevail? What rights are taken away from them? How do their personal lives change?
edited to add: Ninja’d by RitterSport, it seems.
Wait, what?
I’m an actual human being, and I certainly believe it. A valid Catholic marriage can be dissolved by no power on earth. She may certainly enjoy the legal status of ‘being married’, in the eyes of the United States government, but in an ontological sense, she’s married to her first husband as long as the two of them are alive.
And how does this ontological sense affect insurance benefits?
What about Irishman’s example above, where the marriage of 30 years (with children) was annulled by the Catholic church?
Even if she becomes an Episcopalian?
I thought it was valid and now it’s invalid but they said it was valid until they invalidated it because it was never valid! pow
This is why I hate Captain Kirk.
What is significant is that here is a man who is eager to force his own view on another human being regarding one of the the most important personal decisions a person can make—whom she considers to be her “real” spouse.
I don’t care whether it’s a religious belief. It’s despicable.
That kind of religious belief deserves no respect.
Straight Dope didactic (or, possibly, pedantic) interjection:
Obtaining a Declaration of Nullity does not and has never meant hat no marriage has occurred. No child born into a marriage for which a later Declaration of Nullitty has been issued has been regarded as illegitimate. (The usual exceptions for insufficiently educated clergy, including the occasional bishop apply.). While the popular explanation is that “there was no marriage,” the actual declaration is that the marriage was sacramentally invalid so that the prohibition against marrying a second spouse (among other things) does not apply to either party. The church does not declare that there was no marriage, only that there was not a valid sacramental marriage.
The Catholic Church (at least in more recent years) has considered the offspring of annulled marriages to be legitimate. As you note, not that legitimacy really matters anymore, fortunately.
It doesn’t, were you under the impression it did? The law can call lots of things ‘marriages’, which I don’t think are actually marriages. I’m content with accepting them as convenient legal fictions. Marriage as a legal construct and marriage as a metaphysical, moral reality are two different things.
Likewise, an African immigrant polygamist and his four wives are going to consider what they have to be a ‘marriage’ in the real sense (i.e., in the eyes of God, and in terms of their personal ties to each other), even though the law doesn’t treat them as married.
Are you asking me what I believe personally, wat the Catholic Church believes, or something else?
Speaking personally, I think that when two Christians undertake a valid Christian marriage, then that marriage is indissoluble, and so any further marriages any of them undertakes is technically either adultery or polygamy. I also think sexual sins are generally the least serious, that human nature is weak, and I think that depending on the circumstances, it might well be a kind of forgivable, tolerable adultery/polygamy, that God won’t and the church shouldn’t hold against them. But I have a very hard time accepting that a valid Christian marriage can ever be dissolved, save by the death of one of the partners. The words of Jesus are hard to get around, here.
The Episcopal Church has (unfortunately) accepted remarriage of divorced people for a very long time, but it’s worth noting that their parent church, the church of England, didn’t accept divorce and remarriage until 2003, I believe.
I think Lemur was speaking hyperbolically–clearly there’s at least one person who doesn’t believe remarriage is possible in at least some sense (although your use of the term when you talk about how the Episcopalian Church allows remarriage shows you understand what it means and in another sense DO believe it is possible). The relevant point, however, is that this is far from a majority understanding of marriage, and when we’re trying to figure out what the word means, except as a term of art for highly orthodox Catholics, your definition is not especially relevant.