Post 1201 
It’s my attempt to find a motivation for his stance, after inviting him repeatedly to explain his reasoning. He admitted with this “no facts” premise that he has none, so it must lie elsewhere.
It’s not an important question, but since he’s attempted to accuse me of not knowing the rudiments of science, it’s certainly no more offensive than what he’s thrown my way in last few hours, and it’s indistinguishable from your own very recent “xenophobia” remark.
Well, let’s run with his roller coaster analogy. I think it’s helpful.
As I paraphrase it, Magellan is saying “The Rule is 5 feet and over.”
People ask: “Why?”
He responds “Because if you’re less than 5 feet tall, you can’t fit in the seat” [reproduction]. Plus, it’d be less special if everyone could ride.
Everybody else asks: “But you let fat people ride, who can’t fit in the seat, and people with back injuries, who can’t sit down, and so on” [straight couples who can’t reproduce]
Magellan: “Ah, but those are Tier 2 criteria–they’re still five feet tall”
Everybody else: “But you just told us that the reason the rule exists is to make sure riders can fit in the seat, and they can’t!”
“Plus, here are people less than five feet tall who can ride” [gay couples raising adopted/artificially inseminated children]
Magellan: “It’d just be different if we let people less than five feet tall ride–it’d change the definition of the roller coaster”
Everybody else: “but the reason you give us for that definition doesn’t make any sense! You let people ride who don’t fit the justification, and don’t let people ride who do fit it—and if that isn’t the reason, why shouldn’t we get to ride?”
Magellan: “But there’s another rollercoaster–that can be the roller coaster for those less than five feet tall” [civil unions]
“It’s both just as good” [‘equal’ rights] and there are plenty of people who think MY rollercoaster is way cool, and it’d be less cool if we let other people ride [“diluting marriage”], plus the rule has always been this way".
in the rollercoaster example, it seems to me clear that the limit makes no sense–if you really care about people fitting the seat, you’d want to exclude those who couldn’t fit [nonprocreative straight couples] and include those under five feet tall who could [adoptive gay couples].
Otherwise, I see it boiling down to arguing at the same time that “this coaster is way cool, and we don’t want to let other people ride”, and “I’d not be satisfied with the other roller coaster” but at the same time, “that other coaster is just as good–and people less than five feet tall ought to be satisfied with it”
I don’t see how they can be reconciled–especially if the justification for the limit just doesn’t make sense anymore—if that was what we’re trying to do, the current definition of marriage is both underinclusive and overinclusive. It boils down to discriminating in favor of sterile opposite-sex couples over sterile same-sex couples (and ignoring that both can adopt, or use IVF).
Hence, I think the coaster analogy really shows the flaw in the justifications to ban SSM
Much of our Western culture comes from the Bible, one part of which assumes polygamy as the norm. Our Western culture changed from polygamy to monogamy - it can just as well change in this respect also. Plus, the billions of people who practice Islam are hardly the same as some remote tribe.
First, I fail to see what is sacred about the old definition. I far prefer the new one myself.
I appreciate your discomfort with the new definition, but on one hand we have millions of people desperately wanting government recognition of the seriousness of their relationships, and on the other we have some people (not only you by a long shot) uncomfortable with changing the definition of a word whose definition is not the same in all countries and all times. Don’t you think there is an imbalance in importance here?
It is true that there is a biological difference between two of the same sex and a man and a woman, but is it important? A male female couple can practice exactly the same sexual activities as two men, if they wished to limit themselves that way. I’d say the important part of a marriage is not the biological aspect but rather the psychological one, and in that sense there is no difference at all.
The difference is that motivation is really not relevant to the discussion. Attacks on the arguments are fine, but when we begin attacking the poster, we’re in danger of derailing the whole thread. A bit of sarcasm is survivable, (and I would say that there has been a general exchange among many posters in that regard), while introducing the topic of motives is liable to lead to a lot more personal conflict. (You’ll note that my reference to xenophobia was an attempt to explain why an injudicious use of words would harm his ability to persuade; it was not a claim that he was xenophobic.)
Actually, to complete my analogy–
It’s important that the government provide the roller coaster–so that it’s not just that one group doesn’t want to share its roller coaster, but that it wants the government to enforce its definition of who can ride.
To put it another way–nobody (I think) disagrees with Magellan that there is on some level a physical difference between a man and a woman, and two men. The question which many of us are unsatisfied with Magellan’s answer to is Why he thinks that’s a distinction that should make a difference in access to marriage.
Let me be clear: Magellan, catholics, muslims, buddhists, and that family up the street are welcome to define a group of people joined together to live life together in a special way any way they want. They can use any word they want. That’s not the issue here.
What is the issue is whether the government should abide by a restrictive definition of marriage, especially when marriage is a short-cut we use to give couples a bundle of rights, and (as I have described much earlier in this thread, and others continue to assert), (1) the rights you get today from marriage are vastly different to those acquired through civil unions [which are defined by individual states]
(2) even if you changed the system so that each got the same rights domestically, there would still be differences, and
(3) even if the two groups got the same rights now, it’s a lot easier to change a law that says “marriages get these rights, civil unions also get these rights” (to say “marriages get these rights, civil unions get those rights” than to change one that doesn’t create two categories of legally recognized relationships.
I respectfully disagree that your statement and mine are fundamentally different, I was not attacking magellan, and if questioning motivation is now off-limits, it was not so earlier in the thread.
I came across an old essay from a libertarian site exploring the topic in the OP and thought it quite good. Here it is. I does a good job of expressing many of the sentiments I’ve attempted to share. Those that are interested in the debate, I think, will find it of value.
Now that the thread has been bumped, I wanted to make a point that’s been rattling around in my head.
One of magellan’s points, that he’s repeated over and over again, is something like this: (correct me if I’m understand it wrong)
“If lots more (gay) people get married, that dilutes marriage, and makes each individual straight marriage less special, just as if you have an exclusive club and then you let more people into it, it makes your club less exclusive”.
Thing is, I think that’s in many ways backwards. Suppose I’m a high school student and I want to form a club for students with 4.0 grade point averages. I happen to know there are 25 students at my high school with 4.0 GPAs. What’s more special: a club consisting of me and two of my best friends who have 4.0 GPAs, or a club consisting of all 25 4.0 students? Which one is better achieving the aim of the club? Or to make a slightly better analogy, the school used to be a boys school, and back when it was boys only there was a club for boys with 4.0 GPAs. Then the school admitted girls. Does admitting girls with 4.0 GPAs dilute the club and make it less special? Assuming the club has some aim such as “spread respect for education and service” or something, will it be able to achieve that aim better having all the 4.0 students at the school as opposed to just the boys?
Similarly, if we view marriage as “the club of pairs of people who have formed lifelong romantic commitments, and intend to go through life publicaly declaring their couplehood, forming family units which will be an important foundation of society”, is your club better if 5% of the couples that qualify to join it, who are fulfilling the membership qualification, are excluded on a technicality?
(Now, I’m sure you disagree with me about what is or is not a technicality, but my point here is about the dilution argument.)
I really don’t see how you think that by including more things under an umbrella that the definition isn’t diluted. I think you’re possibly seeing scope as a substitute for purity. If there is a club I care about, I might see value in the club being larger enough as to have it noticed, or to have impact. So, a club that “agrees with Magellan on all things”, might be pure with it’s membership of 1, but it would have no scale. So, there might be somethings that I’m willing to compromise on. For instance, I prefer blue cars over red one, but I really don’t care that much it, so I compromise. If, for whatever reasons, I want my club to have scale, I’ll keep compromising, making my club bigger and bigger. But, by definition, I’m making the criteria less restrictive. And that makes the dilutes the original idea of my club. There is a point to which I will do that and still feel the club represents my core beliefs. But if, for instance, someone advocates outlawing abortion, then it would not be acceptable to me that that person would be admitted because he or she would not be representative of something that is important to me.
Of course, this is a moot point for the issue of marriage. It already has massive scale. In fact, it is woven into the fabric of our society. So, we’re left with the dilution discussion. Is it a good thing or a bad thing. Obviously, I think it to be not only a bad thing, but a ridiculous thing.
Quickly addressing the analogy you offered. The girls who join the school and have a 4.0 GPA, may or not dilute the group upon admission. If maleness was an important founding principle, then it would clearly dilute the group. Take the Million Man March. Although women and children attended, the purpose of the event was to focus on black males, and the responsibilities they have to their families, society, and themselves, they made the name narrower rather than broader. If the school club was created to simply coalesce those with 4.0GPA, and the club was all male by accident (it being an all-male school) then admitting girls would not dilute the definition of the club.
I’m sure you’re quite enamored of it since it’s nothing but a very bloated and ornate restatement of the slippery slope fallacy. “Some people say the slope isn’t slippery, but they can’t imagine how slippery it is because they’re not standing next to the slippery part!” Dreck and drivel.
If that’s all you got from the article, you might want to read it 17 more times. And, I trust you understand that a slippery slope argument, is not always fallacious. If not, glad to be able to inform you of that fact.
That’s not what I got from the article, that’s simply all it says. It’s nothing but a collection of anecdotes (likely apocryphal strawmen) retelling a series of cases where the Good People warned that the slope was slippery, and the Bad People failed to imagine how terribly slippery it was in the middle. That’s all.
OK, let me help you out here. I suspect you were trying to make the point that fallacious premises do not imply that the conclusion is false. In that case I’d point out that I’m not saying your conclusion is false, just that the argument fails to prove it. Or maybe you meant to say that a slippery slope argument can be valid if you argue logically that each change in degree must inevitably be followed by another change in degree, in which case I’d say you’re welcome to begin making those arguments whenever you feel like you’ve got enough valid arguments to start. I’m sure we’d all like to hear them.
Just to be clear, I would add that your linked article is also fallacious by implication if you take it to draw any conclusions about gay marriage. She actually did detail a few non-gay-marriage slopes that were in fact demonstrably slippery at every degree. But gosh darn it, when it comes to the subject explicitly declared in the title of the article, she fails to mention even one marginal case. Don’t you find that extraordinary? (I’m guessing you don’t). My guess is that she knows she can’t support any marginal cases, but she can do the next best thing which is relying on less astute readers to infer the fallacious argument and buy into it (which it seems you’ve done).
Yes, it does express the sentiments you’ve attempted to share. It does not, however, present a compelling argument against gay marriage. Rather, it’s a mishmash of irrelevancies, strawmen and well-poisonings which conveniently ignores on-point arguments that would hurt the author’s argument. I found the section on divorce to be particularly amusing in its foolishness.
Man, I was just thinking about that essay the other day. Hasn’t got any less retarded with age, has it?
I guess it defines how you define compelling. If you mean it to be “worthy of taking notice”, I’d say it is compelling. If you use to the word to mean closer to “convincing”, no, that is not how I’d characterize it. It’s merely a gathering of a few more arguments. But I do think them to be rational, which satisfies the OP. Which is really all that can reasonably be hoped for given the strong opinions on both sides of the issue.
And now you want to redefine “retarded” to mean logical, cogent, sensible, and correct!?
Sheesh. Give you guys an inch…
What on earth are you talking about? There’s not a single argument in that article, rational or irrational, for or against gay marriage. The author’s only point is that people sometimes miss a valid slippery slope argument due to lack of imagination. Neither she nor you have even remotely attempted to fill in this missing piece. We can only assume that you (plural) know there aren’t any marginal cases and are trying to guile us into buying that there are. Either that or it’s dog-whistle rhetoric that presumes everyone will infer whatever she means are the gay-marriage marginal cases. Alright, I’ll bite on that. I’m calling you both on it. What are the marginal cases where permitting gays to marry would make it less likely for heterosexual couples to marry or remain married, and what is the logical support for said cases?
But you didn’t “give” us anything - you found someone who agreed with you. That’s great, but it doesn’t mean the two of you are agreeing to something reasoned.
A number of the comments following the essay do a better job of articulating its flaws than I could. One of the author’s responses is interesting, though:
This stance, by the author’s own admission, isn’t specifically against gay marriage, but it can be directed against just about anything with the potential for social change - integrated schools, universal suffrage, the printing press… It’s a generic argument based on some kind of ill-defined anti-intellectualism (because to the author, intellectuals are apparently a bunch of know-it-alls who have no conception of what could happen if their theories were put in practice).
Anyway, the best argument for gay marriage isn’t some high-falutin’ sociology experiment cooked up by a bunch of ultra-liberal college professors at their weekly Educational Policy and How Best to Destroy America Roundtable brunch, but rather the relatively simple:
[ul][li]Individuals in a supposedly free society want to do something that other individuals already do.[/li][li]No reason exists for the exception.[/li][*]So let them do it.[/ul]