What is the rationale for opposition to same-sex marriage?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@magellan01

Correct. Quickly, here are a few reasons:

• There is no need to us the word. We can craft a law tomorrow that would afford gay couples all the she rights and privileges.

What’s the harm in using the word? It’s just a word, after all. It’s not copyrighted or trademarked by anyone, so this isn’t like somebody coming out with a new beverage and calling it “Pepsi”.

• Since we can grant equal rights without the use of the word, we find common ground with the millions of Americans who believe, for both religious and secular reasons, tht marriage should be between a man and a woman. I am not religious, but I see no reason to jab a thumb in your neighbor’s eye when it is not necessary, when you can get the same thing you claim you want without doing so.

There are a lot of civil-rights issues that caused friction, especially early on. that doesn’t mean the pursuit was wrong. Besides, there have been some efforts to ban civil unions or other marriage-like structures, so a simple name change isn’t a solution everyone will be satisfied with.

• As language progresses, it should get more accurate, more specific, not less. I don’t see any group wanting to erase the words “giggle” and “guffaw” from the vocabulary and because we can all just use “laugh”. I find it particularly odd that we would go from currently having a word that clearly points to the special union that a man a woman can enjoy, a union that has been a cornerstone of society, and move to a place where we don’t even have a word to clearly describe it.

Its unclear to me how a gay marriage affects, let alone diminishes, a hetero marriage. And what’s so special, exactly, about the hetero marriage? Two people have formed a permanent mutually-exclusive bond. Is there some other critical aspect I’m overlooking?

• I think that it is in society’s best interest to promote behavior that best benefits society. I think that a traditional home consisting of a married man and woman is the ideal environment in which to raise a child. Perfect always? Hardly. Can a single parent or a gay couple do a terrific job in this regard? Absolutely. I’m not looking to penalize those groups. I simply think that society should have cues laid out for the next generation that guides them into situations that are most beneficial to society as a whole.

It’s unclear how gay marriage has any such effect on child rearing. either the gay couple won’t have kids, or if they do, surely raising them in a two-parent household is better than the alternative, isn’t it? What are these alternatives?
[ul][li]Situation - gay person had kids through hetero means sometime in the past, has now formed gay marriage, arranges for custody of kids. Alternative - leave the kids in the custody of the other parent. Possibly the other parent is a great parent who has formed a new hetero bond, possibly a worse parent who remains single. Unless you want to evaluate each case individually, I’d guess that it all cancels out.[/li][li]Situation - gay person uses artificial insemination or surrogacy to create a new child while already married. Alternative - don’t create the new child and the human race edges slightly closer to extinction.[/li][li]Situation - gay couple adopts a child. Alternative - the child stays in the orphanage or foster care or whatever.[/li][/ul]

I’m have trouble seeing the downside, here.

• The slippery slope argument (which is not always fallacious). If we say that “marriage” no longer means what most everyone knew it to mean, where do we draw the line.

Well, take it up with whoever wrote the first divorce law, when marriages were suddenly no longer “'til death do us part.” I understand the Catholic equivalent, annulment, has been practiced for quite some time, hence (for Catholics at least) the concept of terminating a marriage is well established. For Jews, divorce rituals go back further still. What does “everyone” know marriage to mean, exactly?

If marriage is simply an agreement be loving, consenting adults, why can’t we have polygamy? I’d go as far as to say that the it would be easier to defend polygamy (which I am against, to be clear).

I’m not against polygamy, myself. I just recognize the potential for abuses and impossibly tangled court cases. As such, the “slippery slope” argument doesn’t scare me.

[ElvisL1ves]

@mswas

Whenever we settle on a status quo there will always be a group that comes out on the wrong side of it and feels like a victim because they are dissatisfied with the outcome. Sometimes it’s not a matter of right and wrong.

How about when it’s a matter of the Constitution and the law? That’s what the question to you was. Change “wrong” to “unconstitutional and illegal” and try again.
:dubious:

Both sides of the gay marriage debate believes their side has the moral authority.

Beside the point. Only one side has the 14th Amendment as authority.

The real damage that is occurring is in the terms of the debate where people are dismissing the value of the nuclear family as a result.

And that is, among other things, exactly what the anti-SSM side is doing - wanting to deny the status of nuclear family, with all it entails, to gay couples with children.

That’s really what disturbs me, this encroaching trend among the left to have a derision for the traditional family. It’s unfortunate that our bipartisan system has resulted in the debate being framed in this fashion, but it has.

It’s even more unfortunate that the concept can so easily be completely inverted by those grasping for a rationalization for their opposition. Isn’t that who has framed the debate in this fashion? By inventing false and even counter-rational arguments like the ones you insist on making?

I disagree that the counter arguments are entirely irrational.

Irrational = not the result of reason. As has been shown in great detail.

[ElvisL1ves]

@mswas

When I talk about leftist victimology, I am not talking about intent but about arguments that have been made explicitly, like the idea that a term that someone finds offensive is de facto offensive and that we should all have compassion for the person who is being offended.

If you use a word you know will offend the person you’re addressing, and why, and intentionally, is the resulting offense *their *responsibility?

[Bryan_Ekers]

I have to admit, the point of this “victimology” angle escapes me, except as a roundabout ad hominem. A citizen wants to do something he or she sees other citizens doing. There is no good reason to prevent it. Therefore, let the citizen do it. I fail to see the “victim” angle in this.

[jayjay]

@Bryan_Ekers

I have to admit, the point of this “victimology” angle escapes me, except as a roundabout ad hominem. A citizen wants to do something he or she sees other citizens doing. There is no good reason to prevent it. Therefore, let the citizen do it. I fail to see the “victim” angle in this.

It’s somewhat ironic in that the “victim angle” is actually being played by the opposition to ssm, at the same time as they’re telling us that we’re the ones playing the victim.

Have you seen the ad put out yesterday by the so-called National Organization for Marriage (aka “NOM”…oh, how I eagerly await a lolcat on that one)? It’s a litany of ways that whiny opponents of gay marriage have been “victimized” by the insidious gay agenda. A doctor laments that she’s forced to treat homosexuals! A church decries the government forcing them to rent a church-owned beach venue (which has been open to the public to rent for years) for a gay civil union celebration! A woman in Massachusetts tears up as she tells us how the schools are undermining her right to raise her child as a rabid homophobe!

Cry more, wingers! Your bitter tears taste like honey…

[gonzomax]

The gays I know want marriage for legal reasons. If a gay gets sick the person who loves them and lives with them has no legal right to make hospital decisions. The hospital will ask their parents about what care they want. Often the gay is estranged from his family . Yet the person sharing their life can not make the important decisions .
If they die, the soulmate may not be an heir in the estate. Their financial entanglements can often be nullified. The partner can wind up losing the home they shared. They are entitled to what other couples have. No more,no less.

[CannyDan]

@gonzomax

<snip> They are entitled to what other couples have. No more,no less.

Indeed.

As **Miller **(and others) continue pointing out, this includes the right to call themselves married.

Upthread a paragraph has been touted as providing full rights for non-hetero households without using the word marriage.

Using my broad over-simplification brush ™, I’ll ask you to recall that once upon a time in this very country, people of color were considered less than a person (3/5ths?) and lacked even the right to own themselves. When slavery was abolished, what if abolition had been done by creating some parallel person-hood, as civil unions are being offered as a parallel to marriage? Let’s try that paragraph here.

“It is hereby decreed that all rights presently accorded to persons are now also accorded to coloreds. Any additional rights given to persons will also be given to coloreds. And any rights removed from persons will also be removed from coloreds.”

That does it, right? Gives colored people all the rights, separate but equal, that are accorded to persons.

Except, of course, the right to call themselves persons.

Somehow I don’t think that would have settled the issue.

[Polycarp]

We need to remember that, while a legislature can pass a civil union law giving all the rights and privileges of marriage except the name to couples choosing to enter into a civil union, it’s just as easy, from the standpoint of law, to repeal that law or to amend it to say that civil unions have a few selected rights and privileges but not the others.

Second, another way in which civil unions are not identical to marriage is portability. And rather than going hypothetical, let me give you an example from legal reality today. Take New York. New York does not have a gay marriage or civil union law in place, but the authorities with the right to do so have said that New York will give full faith and credit to gay marriages entered into in another state, equivalent to New York’s marriages, just as they have always done for straight marriages. New York does not have a civil union or domestic partnership law – those couples are not united in civil unions or domestic partnerships in New York law. It will be up to a court to decide how or if the affairs of a couple with a Vermont or New Jersey civil union are recognized by New York;s courts. On the other hand, there’s a body of law in place for marriages already – surviving spouse, next of kin, tenancy by the entireties, parents signing for a child, the works. If Tom and Fred married in Massachusetts and moved to Albany or Buffalo with their adoptive child, the Albany or Buffalo schools are bound to accept an excuse signed by Tom or Fred, the hospitals are bound to admit the marriage partner as next of kin and follow his instructions on care in an emergency, etc. This is because they are married under New York law – not civilly unioned or dometically partnered under some other state’s statutes that may or may not be recognized as equivalents under New York law, depending on what the judge had for breakfast.

That, right there, is a good legal reason for stop drawing unnecessary distinctions at law: if it walks like a duck and quakcs like a duck, there’s no need to call it an anseriform aquatic waterfowl.

[Bryan_Ekers]

The Persons Case:

On October 18, 1929, Lord Sankey, Lord Chancellor of the Privy Council, announced the British Privy Council decision that “yes, women are persons … and eligible to be summoned and may become Members of the Senate of Canada.” The Privy Council decision also said “that the exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word “persons” should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?”

Labels do indeed matter.

[mswas]

@ElvisL1ves

If you use a word you know will offend the person you’re addressing, and why, and intentionally, is the resulting offense *their *responsibility?

No, but it has little to do with the word and more to do with the interaction between the people. The ‘victim’ has created a political minefield for others to navigate and the so-called ‘oppressor’ might just be callous to the idea. Where is the responsibility of the so-called ‘victim’ to not politically charge words? Why is it my responsibility to know the hairbrained etiquette of every subculture on the planet for fear of giving some grave offense by using some word they don’t want me to? Certainly if I am doing it intentionally then I am ‘trying’ to offend them, and the fact of trying is what makes it offensive not so much the word that is being used. When we create these politically correct minefields it is a palliative for the effect, and does nothing to address the root cause. When you get on someone’s case for using a word that they did not know was offensive, it creates resentment that wasn’t necessarily there before.

[mswas]

So the crux of the argument is:

Gays: When we join in a union based on love it is marriage.

Anti-Gay-Marriage: It’s not exactly marriage, it’s like marriage, why don’t you come up with a different word?

[ElvisL1ves]

The Federal involvement that has long appeared inevitable could begin very soon - the District of Columbia Council has just unanimously voted to recognize SSM’s performed elsewhere. The US Congress, which has veto power, can either let it happen or have a debate and vote on it. But they can no longer avoid the issue.

[JR_Brown]

@magellan01

Again, I’m arguing that gay relationships do not offer the state the benefit of a presumption of childbearing. They cannot do so. So, no marriage.

magellan01, my semi-coherent little butterfly, take a look at this:

@The Boston Globe

[Adoptions to same-sex parents] make up roughly 3 percent of annual adoptions in Massachusetts. […] Forty percent of same-sex couples aged 22 to 55 are raising children [nationwide], about 5 percent of whom are adopted, according to the Williams Project, a UCLA Law School think tank.

Here’s the Williams Project report cited above: PDF

According to the 2000 census, married couples without children (28% of all households) outnumber married couples with children (24%). So the “presumption of childbearing”, or at least child-raising, is pretty similar between married heterosexual couples and (presumably mostly unmarried) same-sex couples. Personally, I’d assume that same-sex couples who want to marry are more likely to have or want kids than those who don’t, and would thus have an even higher likelihood of having children. Therefore, allowing same-sex marriage would promote child-raising just as well as heterosexual marriage does.

Your thoughts?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@mswas

Anti-Gay-Marriage: It’s not exactly marriage, it’s like marriage, why don’t you come up with a different word?

Why is it not like marriage and why is a new word necessary?

[ElvisL1ves]

@mswas

Where is the responsibility of the so-called ‘victim’ to not politically charge words?

It’s all the other guy’s fault. Gotcha.

[qutoe]Why is it my responsibility to know the hairbrained etiquette of every subculture on the planet for fear of giving some grave offense by using some word they don’t want me to?
[/quote]
If you’re discussing a subject, you know what the words mean. If you don’t, you should find out beforehand. It is your responsibility as an adult not to dismiss others real concerns upfront, before you even recognize what they are, with terms such as “hairbrained”.

When you get on someone’s case for using a word that they did not know was offensive, it creates resentment that wasn’t necessarily there before.

Ignorance doesn’t often surrender the fight cheerfully.

[VinylTurnip]

@mswas

Anti-Gay-Marriage: It’s not exactly marriage, it’s like marriage, why don’t you come up with a different word?

I continue to be amazed at the depthless fortitude of crusaders who—despite having shrugged at the hundreds or thousands of new words added to the lexicon over the years, ignored those that slipped into obscurity or archaism, batted nary an eye over ersatz horrors like “acoustic guitar” or “brick-and-mortar store,” grinned cheerfully when a “computer” was transformed overnight from a person into a ubiquitous piece of equipment, yawned and studied their fingernails intently as political boundaries around the world expand and contract, the continent of Africa alone being so nominally volatile that paper maps and globes are rendered obsolete the moment they roll out of the sweatshop—faced with the prospect of relaxing, however slightly, the stricture of definition around the single word “marriage,” suddenly and violently devote themselves to a newborn and all-consuming fight to defend the precious, vulnerable immutability of the English language.

[mswas]

@ElvisL1ves

It’s all the other guy’s fault. Gotcha.

[qutoe]Why is it my responsibility to know the hairbrained etiquette of every subculture on the planet for fear of giving some grave offense by using some word they don’t want me to?

If you’re discussing a subject, you know what the words mean. If you don’t, you should find out beforehand. It is your responsibility as an adult not to dismiss others real concerns upfront, before you even recognize what they are, with terms such as “hairbrained”.
[/quote]

Not when they follow the vagaries of pop-culture trends as they do today. Witness the argument about childless vs childfree. I do not have any responsibility to use the word, ‘childfree’. If the childless person is offended by my word usage that’s their own conceit.

Ignorance doesn’t often surrender the fight cheerfully.

No, it certainly doesn’t. Nor does the tactic of calling an honest difference of opinion, ‘ignorance’. That implies that if I understood what you were saying I would agree with you, except I do understand and I don’t agree.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@mswas

Nor does the tactic of calling an honest difference of opinion, ‘ignorance’.

Is this an admission that your objection to gay marriage is simply a matter of opinion? If so, I’ve no objection - your opinions are entirely up to you. If it’s not an admission and a rationale exists which can be independently verified, I’m still waiting.

[mswas]

@VinylTurnip

I continue to be amazed at the depthless fortitude of crusaders who—despite having shrugged at the hundreds or thousands of new words added to the lexicon over the years, ignored those that slipped into obscurity or archaism, batted nary an eye over ersatz horrors like “acoustic guitar” or “brick-and-mortar store,” grinned cheerfully when a “computer” was transformed overnight from a person into a ubiquitous piece of equipment, yawned and studied their fingernails intently as political boundaries around the world expand and contract, the continent of Africa alone being so nominally volatile that paper maps and globes are rendered obsolete the moment they roll out of the sweatshop—faced with the prospect of relaxing, however slightly, the stricture of definition around the single word “marriage,” suddenly and violently devote themselves to a newborn and all-consuming fight to defend the precious, vulnerable immutability of the English language.

These is an argumentum ad hominem. People care about the things they care about, and don’t care about the things that they don’t care about. The term, ‘bigot’, applied in the face of disagreement is a tactic of dehumanization, because everyone knows ‘bigots’ are not worth listening to. It’s very fashionable. You have no responsibility to understand the other side’s opinions because they are backwards heathens.

The funniest thing about this argument is how the ‘slippery slope’ fits into it. People use the argument that marriage is already debased by divorce and various other things, and why aren’t these people making the same big deal about divorce? When the reality is they DID make this big a deal about divorce, and they lost, and the slope slides on down to classifying the union of two men as, ‘marriage’. Next it will be polygamy. So from the social conservative’s perspective the slope is very real, and they are totally correct. The fact of divorce now allows people to make the argument that hetero marriage is debased, so it’s hypocritical to try and maintain some kind of ideal of the institution of marriage.

My opinion remains that we should remove the institution of marriage from the civic sphere entirely. Civil Unions for everyone. It’s only a matter of contract law at this point.

[mswas]

@Bryan_Ekers

Is this an admission that your objection to gay marriage is simply a matter of opinion? If so, I’ve no objection - your opinions are entirely up to you. If it’s not an admission and a rationale exists which can be independently verified, I’m still waiting.

I stated my opinion on gay marriage in this thread, you got it exactly wrong, lets see if you can find where I stated specifically what my personal opinion on gay marriage is. I made it its own paragraph so that it would be quite clear.