except that it does.
It will change it as much as allowing blacks to marry whites. That is to say, not to any extent that intelligent or non-bigoted people would find upsetting.
It will not change as long as people wish the word to describe a normal sexual relationship.
TWEEEET!!!
The words “bigot” and “bigotry” are now off limits in this thread.
It is little more than name-calling and a way to simply dismiss one’s opponents without actually addressing the issues.
If you really think that the only reason to oppose SSM is “bigotry,” then you can rest, well assured that your point has been successfully presented in this thread and there is no longer any reason to keep repeating the same tired phrase in the hopes that you can simply overwhelm your opponents with mindless chants.
[ /Moderating ]
Really, you don’t understand this? The same reasoning you are using to argue against SSM has been used in the past to justify banning interracial marriage. This is pure logic.
Magiver believes A is true.
A can be used to support B.
If you don’t agree with B, you must either abandon A or condone B.
So, you either support banning interracial marriage (or would have supported retaining its illegal status, in the past), or you concede that the social definition of “normal” should have no bearing on whether or not a specific type of relationship is legally recognized.
You’re premise that I have to agree with a former law in order to agree with a current law does not make sense.
People use marriage to describe an almost infinite array of relationships. Your opinion on what is acceptable is just that.
People made the same arguments about inter-racial marriage and you are just as wrong. No amount of fiat handwaving by you will change that.
I beg to differ, but I submit most humbly to your enmoddening. 
The law is not my opinion. The reason people oppose changing the definition of marriage as ascribed by law (the question of this thread) is my opinion.
The premise, which you seem to misunderstand, is that normal was different in the 60s. If any deviation from normal is bad, as you seem to be suggesting, than ending miscegenation laws was bad.
But that assumes that your notion of their being a normal has any meaning whatsoever. It doesn’t. Normal means many different things and has meant different things throughout history. From chattel, to political leverage, to citizenship, to help raising a child, to romantic love, there are an infinite number of reasons to marry. And your deciding that one or the other isn’t a good enough reason is hardly compelling.
The word marriage has meaning, and it is codified. There is an infinite number of variations that could be entered into without this codification.
Yes and the codification was changed in the 60s. Was marriage damaged by the change allowing blacks and whites to marry?
If the codification can be changed without lessening marriage, you haven’t a case.
I don’t know what God’s will is on it. At this time I would avoid any voting, and would not necessarily perform a ceremony to marry a gay couple - but would need to pray about the request.
As such I am a gay marriage agnostic, and until God proves His case to me, I will stay neutral on it. Though this thread has given me some insight, but not enough to state it one way or another.
There are lots of completely benign traits that are not *the norm *, as in average, but nobody would refer to them as not normal, meaning occuring naturally.
That’s playing with semantics in a way that serves no purpose in this discussion. Red hair is not the norm either in the sense of average, but it does occur naturally in a small percentage of people. The critera of harming others , in this case society as a whole, is a pretty crucial one when it comes to determining people’s civil rights. If we denied rights to redheads we’d be seen as idiots and rightly so.
Can you explain how the term normal, as you are useing it, has any relevency in this discussion?
Based on what? The ability to love and make a rational committment to another human being? There simply isn’t any rational realisitc reason to deny SSM as part of equal civil rights.
Did you complete forget how this particular conversation started?
Let me refresh your recollection:
The question posed by Polycarp was NOT, “What is the wisest social policy?” It was, “Would [my hypothetical law] be constitutional?”
I answered:
You leapt in:
I responded:
You responded:
And here you were quoting Loving v. Virginia, which led me to believe you understood the context of the conversation perfectly, and were making a legal argument.
Now you come along and say, in effect, Hey, whoa, hold on! What’s all this about courts, ‘n’ stuff? I’m just talking about what the best social policy is.
Well, if that’s your question, it appears we are in complete agreement. Same-sex marriage should be enacted by all fifty states.
But if you content it’s a constitutional necessity, then you’re wrong. The federal constitution does not compel same-sex marriage recognition. Which is the conversation that we were having.
I’m sure you’re right: that probably is what motivates many people.
But does it make sense?
In other words, what, specifically, is the value of retaining the definition of marriage so that it represents that specific, normal relationship?
I mean… if I were the CEO of a trucking company, and were giving a press conference to announce that we had just installed a set of GPS devices in all our trucks to improve dispatch efficiency and package delivery tracking, I might say, “The marriage of this new technology to the age-old practice of shipping and delivering represents an exciting new time for Bricker Trucking…”
I assume you wouldn’t leap from your seat in horror at my use of the word marriage in that context, right? You would understand it as a useful description of the permanant partnership formed by two entities, even though that word had not, before this decade, ever been used in connection with GPS devices.
So why is there a reluctance to acknowledge that the word is the best descriptor of the legal union of two men, or of two women, in a relationship that is in all meaningful ways precisely analogous to the legal union of a man and a woman? What is the principled distinction of the opposite-sex union that makes it, and it alone, suitable to be called a marriage?
Oooh. Let me repeat this: yorick says, the overall goal is to encourage stable family units. Are you saying that the state’s interest in marriage is primarily to promote stable family units – with or without children? Because gay marriage does just that! It allows people with same-sex attractions to create a family, with the same financial and health-care safety nets that straight people have. It encourages people to create bonds that provide mutual support “in sickness and in health.” It helps people care and provide for each other, during their lives together and after one partner dies, via survivorship benefits. That way, the single person does not become a burden to the state. Oh, and if desired, gay people can also raise children within this stable relationship.
I would also add that the marriage commitment helps people remain devoted to each other long term, through good and bad times, and also reduces the amount of sleeping around (which has all sorts of social consequences). I would say that, except that straight people have so degraded the sanctity of marriage already – what with all the rampant divorce and infidelity – that this would be a stretch…
What I really don’t understand is how those that want same sex marriage banned on religious grounds think that it is up to them - or their religion - to decide. Christianity, for example, didn’t come up with the idea of marriage. Marriage - or suitable equivalent - is about as old as humanity itself.
There’s one argument I keep seeing popping up, in this thread and elsewhere, that “marriage is the natural order of things.”
There is nothing natural about marriage. Making babies is natural. Spending time with people you love is natural. All else is constructs.
I paraphrase Doug Stanhope: in this day and age, if marriage didn’t exist, who the fuck would invent it?
My point being, it’s a construct that we – the inventors of it – can change for the better if we see fit (see Loving v Virginia) and there’s no rational reason that I can find not to extend that construct toward a group of people who want and deserve it.
Why? Is there something inherently wrong with incest or polygamy? If you can accept the fact that two people of the same sex love each other and want to spend their lives together then why are you bigoted against brother and sister, or MMF and MFF relationships?