I don’t know. It may be his religious leanings. Or his view of history. I don’t know. I have no idea. I’m reasonably sure, however, that you don’t know it’s from fear or hatred either, and to the extent you impute those motives to him you’re practicing prejudice. plain and simple.
Racism? I dunno. I’ve never been a member of a country club. In any event, it it not germane to this discussion.
A sincere question: What have I been asserting?
Wait a second. You yourself advanced a reason earlier. I’ll modify it slightly and offer it:
Hypothetical anti-SSMer says: Our country is one where the majority rules. I disfavor SSM because the polls show that the majority disfavors SSM, and while I personally have no problem with it, it’s wrong to impose upon the majority that which they do not want, so I don’t favor legal same-sex marriage.
Look, here’s the real problem. I (and I suspect raindog, but I’ll let him speak for himself) are treating this as an academic inquiry on the nature of rhetoric. We are speaking dispassionately about how the argument and counterargument is going here.
But this is a real issue, and effects real people’s lives; our government – and our citizenry – are telling people they don’t matter quite as much as other people. That’s wrong, and it’s infuriating, and it may make it impossible to have a dispassionate discourse about the subject.
I’m going to bow out. I don’t want my academic, theoretical discussion to place me in alliance, even remotely, with the side that really does wish to deny same-sex marriage rights. I think there’s a place for this kind of discussions, but it’s not now.
You are asserting that:
Yet you refuse to put up one of these arguments. This is a debate. In a debate, if you assert something you’re expected to substantiate it. You have not, so you are failing this debate.
And looking mighty silly in the process.
Never mind that it is not derived from or consistent with reality? It’s still “rational” even if it’s a bald-faced lie? (Note: That is not directed at Bricker personally, but at those who use it as a rationalization)
You know damn well that government has never used that criterion. Ever.
If your position is that any old bull you can dream up after the fact as a rationalization constitutes a “rational reason”, then you’re welcome to it.
So far as I’m aware, there is no law against marrying a tree. It’s a legally meaningless concept, because a tree cannot exercise any of the legal rights or responsibilities associated with being someone’s spouse, but no one’s going to come and lock you up for having a marriage ceremony with a spruce.
This is an absolutely meaningless distinction. If we passed a law tomorrow making it illegal to go to a mosque, that law would be blatantly discriminatory against Muslims, even if the law also affected Christians and Jews. You’ve also failed to create a contrast with anti-miscegenation laws, because your logic works just as well for those as they do for gay marriage: everyone was forbidden from marrying outside their race, therefore, no one group was being discriminated against. Hell, the logic works better there, because unlike gay marriage bans, interracial marriage bans actually prevented both white and black people from doing something they wanted, while gay marriage bans only prevent gay people from doing what they want to.
The definition of a word is nothing more than what people understand the word to mean. If saying that Adam and Steve are married communicates the idea that they’re in an exclusive, loving, long-term relationship, then the definition of the word marriage has already changed to include gay couples. Whether the government keeps up with the popular definition or not is a separate issue.
You see, I knew you’d get that wrong.
I am asserting that there are many reasons for opposition to SSM, with homophobia being just one of them; and that painting everyone who disagrees with SSM with the same homophobic brush isn’t just incorrect, but counterproductive to the cause.
Maybe you didn’t know, but it’s possible to scroll up and reread every word in a thread. Including your own. And for as long as the servers stay operational, too. Years, even.
Lobohan copied and pasted your own words. :rolleyes:
Then it should be easy to tell us what some of them are, shouldn’t it? Why is it so hard for you to do?
But, surely that’s not a reason to oppose SSM, merely a reason to oppose a particular method of implementing it. Presumably, this hypothetical person would vote “yes” on a bill legalizing gay marriage, right? I wouldn’t call that person an opponent of SSM, just someone who wants to see it enacted by the legislature, as opposed to the courts.
That also is not a valid reason in a constitutional democracy, where rights are not derived from majority vote. It’s “hypothetical” because it’s false.
In the same sense that I know that the angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees (in Euclidean space)? No.
However, if that’s the standard, then he could’ve posted “I hate those fags” and I wouldn’t know if he did that out of fear and hatred either. (After all, he could’ve been deliberately trolling. Or have left the keyboard unattended a la Hal “I love ewe” Briston.)
Debunking the procreation purpose can be done in two ways, each of which isn’t an argument of overriding other concerns–but plain inconsistency in the argument–in that marriage as it is now structured does not particularly further that goal, and that the exclusion of same-sex couples is entirely inconsistent with it, unless the argument uses a definition of “children” of a couple that is at odds with (1) how they are defined anywhere else, and (2) our common understanding of the term.
The first, and to my mind the most straightforward, is that marriage as an institution is simply not tailored in any meaningful way to support procreation, or to target couples who can procreate. Yes, it requires one couple of each gender–which is necessary, but not in any way sufficient for natural procreation.
Eighty-year-old couples can marry. Infertile couples can marry. Couples who can only procreate with medical assistance can marry (while they can procreate, you specified “natural”–presumably, to try to avoid my second point.) There is no requirement to intend to procreate, or even to be capable of so doing.
In simple terms, the argument is that if marriage is designed to further natural procreation, it is pretty poorly structured. If marriage is desired to further natural procreation, its definition must be changed–as it does not serve its desired purpose. But, in my experience, nobody who makes this argument seems to endorse any of those changes.
But that’s not all.
The second, and much more compelling argument as to why this justification is inconsistent, however, looks to the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. Since the argument is used to exclude expanding marriage to same-sex couples, it is reasonable to examine if excluding same-sex couples in any way furthers the purported goal. Here is where the definition of “natural” procreation is at issue.
Firstly, to be consistent, this argument must define “natural” procreation to exclude surrogacy, IVF, donor sperm/eggs, and similar assisted-fertility treatments. Why? Because same-sex couples can, and do have children using such methods.
Secondly, this argument ignores the fact that there seems to be no distinction anywhere else between (1) natural born children created by sex and (2) children of a couple created through the use of modern medicine, and (3) adopted children. Again, if this argument is to be taken at face value, it contends that (2) and (3) are not really the parents’ children.
And that just isn’t how it is today–both from how society treats families, and from our own commonsense understandings of “parent” and “child.” This definition of “procreation” doesn’t seem to be consistent with how it is defined in almost any other context.
Secondly, I often question if the same-sex marriage opponent making this argument uses this distinction in any way other than as a way to define the purpose of marriage in a way that excludes same-sex couples. In my own experience, I have never found an advocate of this argument who makes the distinction between (1) and (2-3) for any purpose other than supporting an argument to prohibit same-sex marriage. I’ve never found one who can explain why that is a distinction that makes a difference. At the least, I have never found any reason to believe those making this argument in fact genuinely believe and use such a distinction between “natural” and “artificial” procreation (and Bricker, I understand you are stating, rather than endorsing the argument, so I do not extend that disbelief to you)—the evidence for this is that those arguing that this definition of “natural” procreation is fundamental, or even important, don’t seem to use it in any other aspect of their lives. It doesn’t seem to be important to them, except to artificially limit the definition of “procreation” to exclude things same-sex couples can do.
So the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” procreation is one that (1) does not comport with our common usage, and (2) may not even be genuinely held by the opponent of same-sex marriage.
Why is this important? If we define “procreation” to include procreation with the assistance of modern medicine, and adoptive children (as I would argue is how it is understood and applied today), same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples can both procreate.
Hence, excluding same-sex couples from marriage does not “tailor” marriage to only couples who can procreate–it in fact excludes a set of couples who are perfectly capable of procreation, as we now understand it. Under any reasonable definition of procreation, barring same-sex marriage hurts, rather than supports a goal of allowing couples capable of procreation to marry.
Here’s my argument for why it’s not equal rights (beyond the obvious–that “equal rights” means equal–i.e. the same thing for both).
If opposite-sex couples get something valuable from being able to call their union a marriage, that is itself a right granted by the government that same-sex unions should be entitled to under an equal rights argument.
If, on the other hand, opposite-sex couples do not gain any value from calling their union a “marriage,” they are not harmed by sharing that term with same-sex unions.
To argue you can have “equal rights” without using the same term for both same- and opposite-sex unions, one has to both argue that the term “marriage” is valuable in some way (as if it isn’t, there is no harm from sharing it), but that it is, at the same time, of no value (because if it was, it would be one of the rights of marriage to which an equal rights argument applies). That is, obviously, untenable.
Others have answered this already and answered it well I think.
You (Bricker) said you are bowing out of the argument but since you threw down the gauntlet here I am curious about your response to those who responded to you.
In general I agree and feel a rose is a rose by any name. I wonder at this seeming sticking point with the gay community. Why not just get the reality in place and who cares what it is called as long as it is the same?
However, someone crystallized the issue here for me earlier in this thread (I think it was this thread) by noting would it be “equal” if, when anti-miscegenation laws were cast out, we called interracial marriages “Miscegenation Unions” rather than marriage?
When cast in that light I think the issue with the word and why it matters becomes clear.
“The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal…The dissimilitude between the terms ‘civil marriage’ and ‘civil union’ is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status.”
Chief Justice Margaret Mitchell, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
That’s a great analogy. But I think it misses the bigger point–of what right opposite-sex couples have to decide if the term “marriage” is valuable to same-sex couples or not.
If, as one assumes, the term is of some value, and opposite-sex couples think they are better off not letting same-sex unions be “marriages” there is a clear conflict of interest in letting those couples be the judge of whether the term “marriage” has any value.
An analogy is useful. The government gives me an envelope, and tells me that you and I have “equal rights” to what is inside.
I open the envelope, and tell you there are two hundred dollar bills inside. I give you one, and take another. I tell you that you have your equal share. I then put the envelope in my pocket, and start to walk away.
–Would you be satisfied you have received half of the contents?
–If you asked the obvious question, would you be happy if I told you that I had checked, and that there was nothing of value left inside the envelope? What if you could see that there was something left inside the envelope, but not what it was—would you believe me when I told you that it was worthless, while insisting that I get to keep the “worthless” stuff, and that I get to decide whether the stuff left inside the envelope was valuable or not?
–Would you be happy if I then went around arguing how important it was to me to be able to keep the envelope, after “sharing” the contents?
That is exactly what the supporters of denying same-sex unions the term “marriage” are often doing—spending a lot of time remarking as to how important it is that the term not be used for same-sex unions, but responding to an equal rights argument that the term isn’t important, and that same-sex couples should be happy without it.
OK. And I agree that whorfin’s post is certainly in the spirit of dispassionate discourse. Not unconflicted about continuing, but…
Yes, but now you’re moving to an argument about how well this rule accomplishes this goal. Without checking, I’m willing to wager that the percentage of opposite-sex unions that produce children outweighs the percentage of same-sex unions that do. So the government can say, in effect, this is our goal, and we’ve chosen an imperfect but very inexpensive way of furthering it. Sure, we could check for fertility, and deny marriage to those opposite sex couples that for reasons of age or physical malady can’t have children, but that would require expense and an infrastructure. By simply declaring only opposite-sex couples can marry, we reach the general vicinity of the goal, and that’s good enough for us.
No, he is going to vote whichever way the majority votes. He is completely agnostic on the issue, and only resists attempts by the minority to impose its will on the majority. The moment the majority favors it, he will, too.
I agree with this 1000% and simply add:
Clarity seems to diminish inversely to passion, to the point that not only bystanders look like enemies, but allies.
Bricker, Cite for “the government”, *any *government, *ever *having said that that is the goal of marriage, in any context other than using it as an excuse not to let the gays do it? :dubious: Any at all?
The problem, as you must know, with trying to engage in “academic” discourse is that it rapidly becomes “imaginary” discourse. Or even starts as such.