Well, I found your reasoning on the “filthy, unclean, degenerate” point was entirely irrational and without merit; I would tend to hope that if I assumed from that and your general rationality that you said what you did because of a deep and abiding loathing of that lower-than-you magellan, you’d rightly correct me on my irrational argument. You assume far too much.
I agree, and I find that particular belief of magellan’s rather unpleasant and incorrect myself. But this is a highly charged topic, for both sides. One side being offensive doesn’t mean that we should necessarily infer unpleasant motivations on their behalf, especially when they have already stated their actual reasons. There are less offensive ways of saying you disagree with his plans than to say they’re “amusing” or referring to his “hypersensitivity”, for example.
Does magellan’s argument of dilution suggest that SS couples are unworthy of the status of marriage?
From what does this unworthiness stem from?
Dilution happens when the stuff you want is intermixed with the stuff you don’t want. What is the stuff you don’t want in SSM couples? Is it the butthole-pleasures?
We’ve established it isn’t the inability to have children or the ability to raise them. What is the factor that keeps them from having the rights you or I enjoy? Specifically enumerate them please. If it’s not *ickyness *I have no idea what it might be. It hasn’t been done yet, so far as I can tell. Maybe I missed it. If SS couples weren’t *icky *to magellan and his ilk, what would the argument be?
Actually, when someone advocates limiting my rights just so he doesn’t have to apply a word in a way he dislikes, “hypersensitivity” is one of the least offensive phrases I can apply to that. If you personally could use words less offensive in such a situation, well, I’ll grant that you’re a better man than I.
As far as “amusing” goes, as Elvis Costello noted, “I used to be disgusted/Now I try to be amused.”
Allow me to add my congratulations on your joining the fight.
Oh, wait …
No, you’ve suggested that there might be negative effects, but you haven’t actually stated any even as possibilities. But don’t feel too bad, a lot of other people have tried hard to think of something but haven’t come up with anything either.
We understood and stated what is best, and why, when we put the equal protection clause in the Constitution so long ago. It’s very well proven to be “best for society over the long term”. Anybody who wishes to claim otherwise needs to offer something more than handwringing.
Perhaps you could enlighten us as to how you concluded that about the Constitution.
We aren’t. We’re removing an unconstitutional (because it is illogical and unfair) restriction on eligibility for it. The institution is utterly unchanged in jurisdictions where that restriction has already been removed. So why do we see this false claim so often repeated?
And that’s where the concept, and Constitutional requirement, of equal protection offers us a guide.
They need to explain why they hold that view, in the face of the facts, then. It ain’t so.
The gays have all made it clear that they most certainly do. And that, besides the legal ramifications, is why they wish to share it too.
Explain. Do you think married straight couples are going to be somehow forced to engage in SSM themselves? No? Then what are we straight marrieds being “forced” to swallow, exactly? Is it something other than a ban on acting upon a traditional hatred?
Just ftr, I haven’t notice my own marriage being “diluted”, or otherwise affected in any manner or to even the slightest degree, since gay couples in my state started enjoying the same right to it that my wife and I always had. I haven’t heard one single peep from any other married couples claiming theirs has, either. I haven’t heard or read a single speculation anywhere about what exactly even could happen to it.
And I do, all too clearly. Here’s a hint: If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, it isn’t the mirror’s fault.
New York State made a fundamental change in the institution of marriage. On January 1, 1908. I know the date very well and precisely, because my grandparents were among the last couples to be married (last in our county, possibly last in the state) on December 31, 1907.
On that date, marriage went from being something contracted between legally eligible couples, and recognized by the state, to something licenssed by the state. That’s right, on that day marriage licenses became a legal requirement. An onerous one? No. But nonetheless one with great portent. The state moved from being the social institution that recognized and defended marriages legally contracted by free citizens, to the role of permittor and licensor of who may and may not marry.
It’s 101 years later. And another change in who may legally be regarded as married is in the offing. And people are treating marriage licenses like they have been in existence since Hammurabi wrote his code. They haven’t. The people who held and loved me when I was small told me different. And if they were alive today, at age 130, they’d be standing at my side in protest against people claiming that “we’re changing time-honored institutions”. Because it’s so much bull. Grandpa and Grandma told me so, when I was just a little boy.
I don’t understand. The ability to produce children is the norm, but the actual production of children is irrelevant? Is the norm to be allowed by law, but all others excluded? Who gets to define the norm? What if an otherwise “norm” marriage contains no ability (or desire) to produce children? Is it not-norm and therefore not a marriage?
So? Go back thirty or forty years and a major criteria for most people was a bride and groom of the same race. Go back thirty or forty years and you’ll find all kinds of “norm” things that society has since modified or discarded because societies evolve.
The reasoning I’ve read from you is not compelling, and in fact I hesitate to use the word because your version of reasoning dilutes “reason” far worse than gay marriage could ever dilute marriage.
So? What they want, they feel, will make them happy and more secure. It will not make anyone else unhappy or less secure unless they want to be.
Happy and secure citizens are good for society. Unhappy and agitated citizens are bad for society. Do you disagree?
My prediction for the long-term effects is that gay people will continue to appear in society. Some will form marriages with others. Some of the marriages will end in divorce and one or both partners may go on to form other marriages. Heterosexuals will remain the majority. Some will form marriages with others. Some of the marriages will end in divorce and one or both partners may go on to form other marriages. Children will be born to those who want them, heterosexual or homosexual, married or unmarried. Life will go on.
Did you have a more dystopian image in mind?
Such as?
What is the longterm downside? If you’re going to base an argument on it, it would help if you described what you have in mind and some line of reasoning as to how it will come about.
How does the existence of an SSM shove anything down the throats (or to use the earlier metaphor, jam a thumb in the eye) of anyone? Couldn’t this same argument have been used to prevent blacks from voting in 1950, because that would be shoving something down the throats of white voters? Could it have been used to prevent women from voting in 1900, because that would be shoving something down the throats of male voters?
The protection of your throat against imaginary shoving is not sufficient.
Have anything I’ve written in this thread struck you as myopic or frothing or militant? If so, I’d like to know so I can strive for a more reasoned tone.
You’re saying you have offered proof? Comon!! I’m sure you know the difference between proof and a personal opinion. I haven’t even asked for proof but merely any shred of evidence. I haven’t even seen that yet. Others have offered case law and statistics but what have you offered other than an opinion and an argument that doesn’t hold water because of a glaring *lack *of any evidence?
OY!, baby. Where have you been? I haven’t seen your name pop up, I don’t think, since your move. I hope it went well. But you didn’t come here for small talk, you came to disagree with me again. Well, here we go:
I’m glad you brought this up, as it was touched on before, but I think it an important point. Two things: First while I agree that the default should be to be blind to gender as a rule, when we look to certain things in which gender does play a role, it’s fair to take a closer look. Look at driving laws, and gender shouldn’t/doesn’t play a role. On the other hand, take an instance of a teacher having sex with 14-year-old student. I think we’d agree that that’s a bad idea and that we need laws to prevent it. But I don’t thing the crime is near as bad if the student is a boy and the teacher looks like one of those blond teachers that got caught a few years ago. Hell, when I was that age if the French teacher, Miss D., took me for a spin it would have been all my prayers answered. The risk to a young woman is greater on both a physical and emotional level.
But more important, we can look to things being grouped together and consider them equal for one purpose, even though they are not identical. And when evaluated on another criterion, the dissimilarity is, in fact, important. so, as I mentioned earlier, two different things, A and B might be equivalent for certain purposes, but that does not mean that A + A = A + B or that A x A = A x B would hold their equivalence when viewed against another metric. So yes, women and men and gays and lesbians should be viewed as equal when it come to laws in which gender plays no role. But when we evaluate a couple, we’re not judging them as individuals, but as another entity. So the equivalence may or may not hold up.
I think this is a pretty good encapsulation. And while on these boards any SSM opponent will be in a small minority and be put in a defensive position, I think that the burden really falls to those advocating the change.
Okay, this is a joke, right. I lay out an analogy in which two groups tap into one bus, or “school” and no matter how many times I type it it is simply ignored and people come back with two of this and tao of that…
Good one, guys. April Fools eleven days delayed. YOU GOT ME!!!
I am doing unto others as I would have them do to me. I’m agreeing that the union with the person they love should be afforded all the legal protections, benefits, and obligations of marriage. If I were gay, I’d be fine with that. I would understand that I live in a society and that what I might think ideal for me personally might not be the best for that society. That there are considerations beyond my personal happiness and long term ramifications to be considered. But I guess I’m a strange bird around here in not thinking that the world must cater to me. Strange as it may seem, I also think that people who come here should be expected to learn English and we shouldn’t have driver’s license tests printed in God knows how many languages. Like I said, I’m straaange.
Double-standards notwithstanding, do you have any examples of differences in how the law treats adult men and women? If the standards of law is that equal treatment is to be enjoyed by all, then why should marriage stand out as such a glaring exception?
Why shouldn’t it hold up? Men and women can form various “entities” like corporations and legal partnerships and co-operatives and whatnot without regard to gender. What exceptions other than marriage can you think of?
I’ll accept that burden. Some of my fellow citizens want access to a legal “entity” that other citizens enjoy, in a manner that represents a trivial variation on the existing form. I have no reason to seek to deny this to them, so I will vote in ways that favor such a change.
Then we’re good for SSM, right? I have already posted the information that almost eight years ago the number of children of SS couples is in the millions. By your description of marriage, we should be recognizing those families with the word marriage as a clear benefit to society.
. . .
I dunno, Some straghts might not like it. and an imaginary “dilution” don’t seem much like valid arguments when you’re trying to establish or maintain societal support for the rearing of children.
Actually, it does the exact opposite. It creates a legalized stigma to attach to same sex unions while putting the children in those families in a box labeled “other.” That is necessarily harmful to the raising of children and insisting on that stigma simply to punish some few homosexuals whom you consider “self-serving,” is a pretty nasty way to treat those children when your claim is that we need to use a particular word to support the raising of children.
Makes no sense. The Men’s social club is made up of all Jewish men, so no dilution. Even it it was made up of zero Jews, still no dilution, because it’s a Men’s Club allowing in MORE MEN.
It’s not that they aren’t “worthy”, it’s that they don’t qualify. A homosexual man can join a men’s club. In fact, he and the man he is committed to can. Because…they’re both MEN and the criterion for joining a Men’s club is maleness. But here’s an example where the discrimination favors the gay couple. Because a man cannot have his wife join the same club. And his wife is not a degenerate. In fact she’s really nice , and hot!
Or for reasoning you don’t agree with, and for some reason it makes you more comfortable to categorize it as stupidity or bigotry. By the way, can you point to when and where choosing your partner was illegal? Thanks.
The point, as many of us (myself included) have tried to demonstrate, is that the way to have “one bus” is to give everyone marriages–the fact that the distinction is made can in and of itself lead to different treatment under the law (either by the risk of the law changing, or the way other jurisdictions treat marriages and civil unions)
As I posted a page or two back, some of this isn’t a theoretical issue that turns on the marriage laws being amended again–it’s what would result NOW if we changed our law to have “marriage” and “just-as-good civil unions”). No matter how many times I and other seek to show that to you, you seem not to respond. I genuinely want to understand what your answer is.
No, you’re not. You state that there is a benefit to heterosexual couples from having their relationship (1) called a marriage, and (2) from not having gay couples call their legally recognized relationships marriage. Your very argument seeks to deny same-sex couples that benefit of marriage. (even if it is reduced by the redefinition, there is still a benefit therefrom).
Well, you could say exactly the same thing back–that we live in a society where what might be “best” in the perception of one group (keeping marriage as a man/woman) is not the best thing for society, and that there are concerns beyond their personal feelings to consider. Your entire argument is that the world ought to cater to the “traditional” definition of marriage, regardless of what that means for those denied it. (your evaluation is that the cost is low of keeping the two distinct–but many of us disagree, or at least think that the “costs” you’ve identified of allowing same-sex marriage are no greater than those you’re asking same-sex couples to bear).
So I’ll ask another question: you say that if you were gay, you’d be fine with a “civil union.” That’s your view-but why should the same-sex couples be the ones who have to be “fine with it?” Why shouldn’t the answer be that “allowing same-sex marriage will make some traditionalists uncomfortable–but if I were a traditionalist, I’d be fine with it–because I realize that same-sex marriage isn’t going to reach out into my bedroom and change my relationship with my wife, and I realize that there are many to whom having their relationship called a “marriage” means a great deal”–while you might not agree with those to whom having the right to a “marriage” matters, remember that many do not agree with your contention that it would be damaging not to keep marriage as one man and one woman–and I want to hear why you think you have the right to choose who gets accomodated.
I do not believe that. I also did not say that. Or suggest that. You need to review your set theory. And I intentionally chose the word to narrow the field.
I understand that. This has been offered up before in other threads. I disagree. I don’t see why I as a heterosexual male would look to a gay relationship and think that it applies to me. Not when I am inundated with tons more examples as I view as more relevant.
Now, I do think that gay marriages will suffer lower divorce rates, which is a good thing. But should this happen, I would also expect that over time SSM will begin to match HS in divorce rates and all other ills.
Do married people have any kind of social obligation to other married people? I’m not married myself, so I admit it’s possible that all married people are members of some secret “club” and would take great offense to the wrong kind of people getting in.
Ha! This is great. I must be from another planet, right? As it turns out, I live in San Francisco, where it is, I’d say, impossible to not know gay people. Also, I am in a creative field, with a much higher incidence of gays than the general population. Third, I have gay friends, friends I go visit in Ground Zero, a.k.a., The Castro. I’ve spent holidays with gay couples and have gone on vacation with a gay guy. We even shared a room!:eek:
I’d ask you to reread what I wrote. The litany of AS this and AS that referred not to a couple of any stripe, but to the institution itself. I’m sure each relationship is super-duper special to its participants, that wasn’t the point.
Your analysis, weak as it is, has now been dealt with, I hope, to your satisfaction.
If I misunderstood you, I apologize–I’m glad to hear that you can tell the difference between a gay and straight poster. Shouldn’t you therefore give greater credence to those heterosexuals who’re calling for same-sex marriage, since their thinking isn’t biased in the way you have a problem with?
Well, that is just plain unsatisfying. As someone who thinks we ought to set our personal opinions aside and think objectively about what is best for society, I hoped you could offer a more nuanced and objective response than “I just don’t think so,” or “I wouldn’t do it, so I’ll assume everyone works that way.”
You don’t seem to be arguing it’s unreasonable to conclude our hypothetical couple would look to those around them to determine how to live their life, and I don’t think you’re arguing that they won’t have any gay friends, or know any gay families (since there are many now, and the numbers will only grow in the next twenty years)–so I’d really like to know what you think is different about a gay family that means their friends won’t consider them when trying to find a model as to how to live their life in terms of family dynamics, whether or not to marry, and so on?
Would you mind terribly addressing some of my analyses? I’ve tried not to make any of them personal, nor do I care in the least about your circle of friends.
If we were starting with a new idea, I think I’d agree with you, as it would help the word men what you want it to mean. But that’s not where we are. Marriage has been around long enough, with all those marriages that might not qualify on a more stringent checklist, and there is ZERO confusion. So, it seems to be a vastly unnecessary step. To me, anyway.
Really? What do you disagree with? Do you not think it has been around a very long time? Or do you think it is not known to mena a certain thing?
That depends on how you measure the value. I think it will reduce the incidence of marriage amongst heterosexual couples. And I don’t hold that to be valuable at all.