I’m not talking about amending the constitution. Prior to all of the uproar, many states had marriage laws on the books that didn’t specify gender in any way. While I’m not going to make the claim that the respective legislative bodies had SSM in mind when leaving out the genders, they nevertheless did. Once SSM started to look like it might have a chance in some places, most of those states were VERY quick to rectify that situation. While they may not have necessarily changed the intent of the law, they sure as hell changed the text of it, thus changing its possible application, depending on when, where, and why the law might have been challenged.
I was simply asking if you had a problem with what the states did back then.
I wasn’t actually aware that it occurred so I can’t say that I was concerned at the time. Do I care now? No, not that much, because gay marriage shouldn’t be slipped in through a loophole. Like Tom said, it is a change and should be recognized as such.
Lobohan, this is an emotional issue and I tend to cut folks slack in such situations. However, if you keep throwing words like “childish” and “bigotry” around with such abandon, you are going to garner a Warning.
Just address the arguments without trying to characterize the posters.
(That goes for the rest of you, of course. Lobohan is simply the most emotional poster at this point.)
I have always assumed that people married because that was the tradition for men and women who wanted to commit to spending their lives together and that that was the primary reason. Marriage has been intended as a statement of commitment between two people.
If you think that I, or I venture to say, anyone else, believes this, you are sorely mistaken. But even if you are being truthful, it simply makes your statement that began this exchange less believable.
I was truly interested in you pointing to logical flaws in my reasoning. So, I’m a little disappointed, but not surprised in the least, to see that your bluster was just that.
I’ve not argued that the meaning of the word couldn’t be expanded, only that it shouldn’t be expanded. Part of the reasoning for that does, indeed, go to tradition. And that does not, in and of itself, render it fallacious. If you disagree, we can define marriage to be between a man and a tractor a man and twenty women, a man and his goat, or a man and himself.
And I don’t think the “Package Deal Fallacy” you looked up means what you think it does, as it doesn’t apply here. But even if it somehow did, you should have read further down the Wiki page:
Looking to the natural order is not necessarily fallacious. Not when it goes to that which defines what the things is. As you should have read on the Wikipedia page:
So, to the degree (small) that you think the fallacy applies, I think you assess it incorrectly. Or you don’t understand with the fallacy is. If you think what I wrote in the paragraph you accessed does suffer from that fallacy, I’ll have to ask you to be more specific.
Well, you have yet to point to the illogic of any part of my position. You may disagree, (and heck, you may even be correct or have a better point) but you have yet to substantiate your claim of my argument being illogical. (I am somewhat amused that you don’t see yet why you won’t be able to do so, but I’ll play along.)
Again, no identification of the flaw it the point I was making. I’m shocked. And by the way, an opinion doesn’t need evidence. Without it, you are free to remain unconvinced, but that has nothing to do with the logic of the argument. The fact that you don’t realize this is quite amazing. And I don’t think “ignorance” means what you think it means.
Just to be clear, you included this statement to show my argument is illogical, yet point to no flaw in logic. Okay. But moving along, if you don’t see how what I wrote is 100% factual AND not a slur against gay indicates that you have no grasp of logic whatsoever. Again, unsurprising.
You were, and still are, moving the target, but now your making me really laugh. The fact that mswas taking you to school has proven so ineffective is not to your credit. You still make the same mistakes. It’s quite unbelievable really.
Do you read what you write? If you do it’s kind of hard to believe that you voluntarily hit the “submit” button. I don’t want to discuss this? Ha! What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing, genius? You see, NOT wanting to discuss it would result in having near zero posts. Not to confuse you with numbers, but my posts in this thread number substantially higher than that.
Look. you don’t understand some very basic things. Mainly that your disagreeing with a point doesn’t render it illogical or fallacious or wrong. You misunderstand the burden of an opinion and the role of evidence and proof. Mswas tried to explain much of this to you, very patiently, but you’ll have none of it. :rolleyes:
Earlier, you said that my argument(s) were "illogical. When asked to identify the argument you had in mind in that post you instead claim to have chosen one randomly. And when attempting to demonstrate to show the illogic of what I wrote, you failed.
I know you think you’re a smart guy. And I want to engage you on that front. But based on your refusal to digest what mswas has written in this thread and what you have continued to put forth, I’m seeing that as less and less of a possibility.
It might be more helpful if instead of you trying to classify what you see as flaws in my arguments as technical fallacies, you simply pointed to specific excerpts and said “this doesn’t follow, it doesn’t make sense, and here’s why:”.
I get your point, but wouldn’t you agree that deciding on a divorce is a big deal? That people struggle with the decision greatly? That some marriages have gotten close to breaking apart, but the people have decided to try yet again to make a go of it, because it is such a weighty decision? I do. I also think that some of those marriages have been turned around for, in part, their desire to not break such a solemn union?
I think we 're mainly in agreement, but just thought I’d share the thinking behind my statement.
I don’t get why society’s need to promote the “ideal” (granting for the sake of argument that such a need exists) requires banning things that are harmless but not-ideal.
maybe not even harmless but actually a positive but less than ideal situation. The same less than ideal situation that straights already have the option of.
If we accept that the family unit of Male Father, Female Mother, and kids has long been the tradition under the term married, why should we assume that will change or be affected in any way because a small percentage is not traditional. As Tom explained so well, the natural evolution of society has already established a change.
And, are truly supporting and promoting the ideal in any way by denying equal rights to a small minority? IMHO we are clearly not promoting the ideal that moves society in a more positive direction. What’s happening is one ideal, which won’t be harmed or affected adversely, is being used as a false justification to do real harm to another important foundational ideal.
Hardly self evident since there’s nothing to support this either.
Nothing to support this either.
Please see my post about baseless unsupported fears.
I repeat, What’s happening is one ideal, which won’t be harmed or affected adversely, is being used as a false justification to do real harm to another important foundational ideal.
A busy night, and more than a hundred posts to catch up with. Still though, the same arguments seem to be circling the same bowl. With a couple of exceptions.
Somewhere upthread is offered the canard (I paraphrase, being too lazy to go back and quote) “Your lack of religion is a belief system equivalent to my religious belief system, so you can’t have the law intrude on my (religious) belief system in favor of your (irreligious) belief system.” Thank goodness *that *nonsense didn’t go anywhere.
And also exceptional was **tomndebb’s **marvelous summary in post 908. My only quibble is that I might have expressed “…it is time to recognize the expansion of the meaning of the word.” a bit differently, as “…it is time to recognize the expansion of the application of the word.” Otherwise, it hits 99+%.
Sigh … that’s been explained so many times to you that the fault for any failure to get through is your own entirely.
Amendment XIV to the US Constitution: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.
Fine if you define “family” as including “childless couples”. Otherwise your definition is too narrow.
Your tying that to in vitro fertilization of all things, without stated regard to the overall social context of the time in which civil rights, equal protection, and equal opportunities for social minorities* of all kinds* were being examined and guaranteed, is interesting but idiosyncratic.
But not to the marriages, either in words or in meaning, of heterosexual couples.
The Defense of Marriage Act specifically excuses them, for now. Don’t look for the current Supreme Court to even take a case examining its constitutionality, much less strike it, though.
Happening already. Iowa was an example.
Just for curiosity, what is the comparable equal protection language in your Charter?
Well, don’t be hassling tom (though I’m not sure if I was included in his “‘rational’ foofaraw” remark, or if so, if I should be offended by it). The 1950s were a crushingly conformist time in the U.S. and improvements in education, wealth and technology have allowed them to gradually (but obviously not completely) escape it.
Sure marriage was once primarily about having children - and having a lot of children, because you could reasonably expect most of them to die before the age of ten. This is no longer true in the westernized countries, so why hang onto the trappings? Many humans feel the need for long-term companionship and the security that entails. Most of these humans specifically feel the need for a companion of the opposite sex, and some feel the need for a companion of the same sex. So what? The objections of magellan and mswas hinge on the fact that they don’t like what these latter companion-pairs do privately. In an age of increasing freedom and tolerance, I expect this view to gradually shrink in popularity, though there may be backlashes along the way.
I have no doubt whatsoever that there were a sizable number of Americans in 1967 who saw Loving v. Virginia as the first step toward turning the U.S. into a nation of mongrels and half-breeds. They had no evidence this would happen, but they could make vague-though-dire predictions. I’m sure there was similar rhetoric in 1920 when women got the vote about how this would destroy Christianity (women no longer being subservient and such).
All this is purely academic, anyway. Every voter over 60 who dies is more than likely to oppose any normalization of the treatment of homosexuals, and every voter who just turned 18 is more than likely to shrug at such efforts. The last holdout states will likely be Alabama, Texas and Utah. I figure a decade, tops. If I’m still an SDMB member (and assuming the SDMB still exists), I’ll try to remember to link back to this thread in April 2018.
Well, maybe Obama can tackle that in his second term.
Heh, I never even thought about it because compared to the contentious American example, gay marriage in Canada earns a mere shrug. It was like “Ontario approves gay marriage” and everybody just went “uh, okay.” Saskatchewan and Alberta put up some token resistance, but it was futile and they knew it and the Federal Civil Marriage Act of 2005 sealed the deal, though by then every other province had already approved gay marriage within its borders. The Charter itself was unmodified, though its section 15 (in place since 1985) was used to bolster the CMA:
Alberta (being our equivalent of Texas, I guess) is the province most likely to resist, for what it’s worth.
They did in 2000. The invocation expired in 2005 and they could have renewed it, but by then it was clearly hopeless and there was a good argument that the definition of marriage was a Federal matter and not a Provincial one, so they gave up. When the Civil Marriage Act passed, Alberta started issuing same-sex marriage licenses, though I’m sure there a suitable amount of grumbling, all very Canadian and polite.
