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Because marriage is about PROCREATION! And if you’re in a hetero marriage and you don’t have kids then you can just county yourself LUCKY motherfucker because you just exploited a loophole!!
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Don’t call your mother a loophole!
Regarding the ‘more rational’ side of the debate. I found this quote that I think goes into my feelings on that topic quite well.
“Modern man is so committed to empirical knowledge, that he sets the standard for evidence higher than either side in his disputes can attain, thus suffering his disputes to be settled by philosophical arguments as to which party must be crushed under the burden of proof.”
I don’t know who said it, I got it from here: The uniquely awful example of theism — LessWrong
That’s not an explanation, that’s an assertion that homosexuality is equivalent. You still haven’t explained it, you take it as axiomatic that sexuality should be a form of identity that is recognized by law. Please prove to me that it is such. You really haven’t answered this question yet. I don’t expect you to because I don’t believe that you can, this is more about the limits of rationality than it is about proving such a thing.
No one is depriving homosexuals of life, liberty or property by denying them marriage. They are denying them a legal distinction that you have yet to demonstrate, ‘rationally’, includes them.
So far you are the only one that’s come out in support of incest marriage. The rest of these motherfucker’s are hypocrites. 
It is not a form of identity but the characteristic or trait being discussed (and you say you believe it is naturally occurring) is ascribable to a group and is immutable and, as such, can be and has been designated a suspect class based on the below, with regard to strict scrutiny when examination is made of laws (and/or statutes) which are alleged to be discriminatory go against the equal protection clause.
Per wiki:
The Iowa Supreme Court found homosexuals fit the above description according to the law and ruled the way they did because (i) homosexuals are a discrete group affected by the law in Iowa, and fitting all the other criteria, must be afforded equal protection under the law in the absence any compelling reason to deny them such.
Therefore, it is recognized by law.
I don’t see the relevance. The 14th Amendment was written quite some time ago, and despite any feelings you might have about what they do in private, American homosexuals are citizens of your country who want a right other citizens currently enjoy. This is no more a high-falutin’ philosophy debate than any civil-rights issue, nor am I requesting some preposterously high standard of proof. In fact, all this talk about how “special” hetero marriage just establishes an unfalsifiable standard. How could I possibly demonstrate that “specialness” won’t be lost?
Well, to be serious for a moment, a closer read will show that I expressed misgivings about marriages between people closer than first cousin and then conceded the point solely to avoid a tangent. I don’t believe that counts as “support” by any measure. I won’t be discussing it in this thread, nor concede that it’s an inevitable product of gay marriage.
In all fairness I wasn’t the one throwing around ‘rational’ as a badge of honor and ‘irrational’ as a mark of shame. That was others, you being one of them.
Well that was a joke, but in all seriousness, the point of the incest comment is not to claim that there is a slippery slope, though the slippery slope is real and a necessary part of the argument, the point is that EVERYONE draws the line somewhere, EVERYONE discriminates against SOME group. So the question is: “Regarding sexuality, where do we draw the line?”, it’s not an attempt to start a conversation on incest or even to claim that gay marriage will lead to incestual marriage.
So I think that everyone pretty much agrees that there should be no Oedipal marriage, so as such we are all discriminating against Motherfuckers, Sodomites and Breeders alike.
Well, no, but if it makes you feel better to say so, go ahead. Without bringing in issues of honor or shame, would you rather have the laws of your country written and executed with a eye toward the rational or the irrational? If your government bans something that some of your citizens want while offering it to other citizens, do they need a good reason? Such situations and reasons do exist (i.e. some degree of maturity is needed before taking on the responsibility of voting - hence require an arbitrary but acceptable minimum age of 18). Why need it exist in this situation? Arguments about how the “specialness” of hetero marriage must be protected are not convincing as long as it remains unclear that gay marriage will have any effect on hetero marriage, positive or negative.
I am dubious about incest marriage due to a percieved potential risk of coersion. Doubly so for marriage between close family members of differing generations. I feel that (in either of the above cases) this could, and in the majority of the few cases where it would occur likely would be used a method of formalizing and legalizing pre-existent abusive relationships.
If we knew that wasn’t likely to occur particularly often, I’d be all in favor of siblings getting together and having eleven-toed children.
Relevent to the point, I do not think the above potential problem applies to the average gay marriage, so you can’t slip from justifying gay marriage to justifying incest marriage without clearing this hurdle.
So you are willing to limit everyone in order to avoid the potential for abuse?
Ok, that’s a good distinction that separates it. What about consentual polygamy? How do you feel about that? Lets forget about the cultish polygamy of the FLDS, and imagine a kind of Modern version. A boy and two girls meet in college and become fast friends, eventually they find themselves having threesomes all the time, eventually they move in together and it works, should they be allowed to make that into a marriage?
I’d rather rational, legal or otherwise mean something other than, “The side that agrees with me.”
Yes, if they are offering something to some citizens and not others, but the crux of this issue is whether or not that is actually happening. You take it as a base assumption, but the other side rejects that base assumption. To them marriage as defined is between a man and a woman, so as they define it, it’s not being withheld from anyone.
Right, well it’s a redefinition of marriage. I think it would be more mature to recognize it as such rather than pretending that it’s being arbitrarily withheld. As far as I know the concept of homosexual marriage has never existed in any culture prior to living memory. So I don’t think that we are talking about allowing homosexuals a right they are being denied, so much as it is expanding a right they didn’t previously have. (This paragraph is my ACTUAL opinion, and not a hypothetical)
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Yes, and that is a reasonable argument. In otherwords this is the final stage of normalizing homosexuality as an acceptable part of society.
If you can find a flaw in my reasoning, I ask that you point it out. If you can present solid reasoning of your own, please do so.
There was a time when “voter” meant “man” (and an earlier time when it meant “land-owning man”). That a segment of the population prefers to define a word a particular way means nothing unless lawmakers decide the law must also be defined in that particular way.
They’re free to call a gay marriage not a “real” marriage if they like, but it’ll have to same legal recognition as their own straight marriages. They’re just going to have to get over it.
I recognized it as a modification quite some time ago. The withholding aspect is the resistance in just the last few years when the mature thing to do would be “you want to get married, too? No problem. Here’s your license. Mazel Tov.”
So? Does it never previously existing (assuming this is true) make it impossible or automatically unacceptable?
Admittedly, your arguments are some of the most solidly rational in the thread.
Right, and that’s what’s up for grabs now. It’s a clever rhetorical tool to argue that they SHOULD be that way, and that the original intent was for them to be that way, but that’s not the case.
Yes, ultimately.
Well it will happen shortly anyway. I expect it to be pretty normalized in most of the nation with a few holdouts within the next 10 years.
No, but it also means you have to question every aspect of it before simply accepting it.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the people who drafted the 14th Amendment has no idea it would used in this manner (heck, the14th talks about the “privileges” of “citizens” but it wasn’t until the 19th Amendment that women got the privilege of voting, as they apparently didn’t count as citizens until then). They did not, however, write in an exception for homosexuals, so it’s up to modern-day Americans to apply it as they see fit.
Well, it’s been legal in Denmark for 15 years and in Canada for about six, and I’m not aware of negative repercussions in either country. About how much more questioning do you think would satisfy you? Would any amount?
By ‘everyone’ do you mean 'all incestual couples? If so, then yeah, I am. As far as I can tell it’s kind of precisely the identical reason we don’t allow minors to enter into contracts - because there is an intolerably high risk of coersion. Which, uh, suddenly reduces from 100% to 0% when they attain their majority. Oh well, we have to draw the line somewhere.
Seriously though, there are certainly some minors who are responsible enough to engage in contracts, and there are certainly some siblings that would be able to have healthy romantic relationships with one another. Too bad for them they’re part of a group that we (or, in the latter case, me) thinks on average is too much a risk.
I’m okay with consensual polygamy* in any state that doesn’t allow the minimum marriage age to drop below the recognized age of majority. In a state where you can get married at 14 with the consent of your parents, I see far too much risk of parents ‘selling off’ their children to each other, especially within (but not limited to) closet communities like the FLDS.
Heck, I’d favor banning ‘underage with parental consent’ marriage for monogamous couples in a heartbeat. Take that, traditional conventions of marriage!
- This doesn’t erase the legal-complexity issue, of course; you need to surmount that first. But that’s a technical issue, not a fundamental problem with the union itself.
Marriage has existed for a VERY long time. For many of us, marriage is marriage, whether it be between heterosexuals or homosexuals. When this is all said and done, I don’t plan on attending “homosexual weddings”, but simply “weddings”, after which, the couple in question will be in a “marriage”, not a “homosexual marriage.”
No, it’s expanding a right that they’ve always had (just ask the far right, who will happily tell you that gay women are free to marry any man they want). We’re just expanding it to include people that they might actually be interested in marrying, which is sort of important to many people when it comes to a marriage. Dick Cheney is free to marry the woman of his dreams. If he had a son, he’d be able to also marry the woman of his dreams. His daughter should be able to do the same, and not allowing it certainly looks like gender discrimination to me. Personally, I find it clear that sexuality belongs in the group of “suspect classes”, but even if not, you could make a strong argument that it’s gender discrimination.