Well, I would agree with that. I’m of the philosophical persuasion that words have no inherent meaning. None.
And you’ve given us a good example of that. To be sure, people may troll. But in my estimation the more creative license you use in determining (speculating is actually the word…) someone else’s intent, or feelings (their meaning) the more likely you are to be engaging in rank prejudice.
Well, if I ever meet someone who actually does this, I’ll amend my earlier statement to “homophobes and complete morons.” Seriously, how does this guy’s position even make sense? The whole point of an election is to see what the majority of the population wants the country to do. He’s basically sabotaging the very mechanism by which he seeks to determine what should be done. By voting with the perceived majority, he’s making it impossible to determine what the actual majority really wants.
Well, I appreciate your belief that I am being dispassionate–to my mind, so being is an admirable goal in debate–while I have an opinion, I think it can be supported by a dispassionate examination of the facts-and so strive to do so.
I see two issues with your response-first of all, to the expense argument, there are plenty of ways of checking for fertility inexpensively-the simplest of which is to simply require the couple to affirm that they know of nothing that would make them incapable of having children. Similarly, one could very easily put an age limit (say, sixty) on women wishing to marry.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, one issue of importance in this debate (that would not be an issue on rational-basis review, but is to me key to the policy-based argument we are having here)–is that the lack of tailoring includes a challenge to the argument that marriage is in fact designed to be limited to those able to procreate.
My argument, in other words, is not just that those making the argument that marriage has a purpose of fostering natural procreation should be arguing in favor of redefining marriage in order to actually serve that goal in any real way.
Instead, it also challenges the contention that the purpose of marriage is to foster natural procreation. The institution of marriage is something that now exists. There is, I hope you will agree, debate over its purpose–even if just limited to whether it has a purpose of encouraging natural procreation, or just plain ordinary procreation in its modern, broad sense.
The fact that marriage is not structured in a way that encourages that only those capable of natural procreation to get married, is to me evidence that marriage does not have a purpose of furthering natural procreation. (and, as I have pointed out, if the purpose of marriage is instead to support and encourage committed couples, families, or procreation as it’s understood today, then restricting it to opposite-sex couples frustrates, rather than furthers that purpose)
You seem to be under the impression the majority of religious opposition exists because of they don’t want the word ‘marriage’ to be used. This is false. Every attempt to grant gays any type of right has been opposed vigorously. Your proposing compromising with people that have no interest in doing so.
I didn’t get it wrong. You know that this is Great Debates, right?
This forum isn’t Great Say Whatever You Want and Ignore Criticisms and Pretend That You Aren’t Repeatedly and With Great Force Shown to Be Arguing a Fool’s Stance.
You seem to be unwilling or unable to debate this in an intelligent and honest fashion. I suggest you find some other forum where unsubstantiated claims are met with happy giggles and weird-uncle hugs.
Here’s the debunking: it’s based on fantasy. The government does not want to encourage, reward, and legitimaize by official sanction those pairings which can result in natural procreation, and not reward pairings that do not have that result.
In reality-land, reproduction has not been a real problem for the governement; we’re not short of people. Sure, there are some concerns expressed by some about the fact that popultion growth diminishes with third-worldyness, but these fears are not widely held and have never coalesced into government policy. In fact the only government policy I’ve heard about regulating childbearing is the Chinese policy of restricting it.
So, one might ask, where did you get the crazy idea that the government cares about whether you have kids? The answer is of course post-hoc reverse rationalization backwards from the fact that hetero marriages can have kids, and that SSM marriages (normally) can’t. In other words, the reason emerges as a result of fact-free rationalization based in the specific goal of isolating and arguing against SSM marriage.
In other words, the argument is based in homophobia.
The slightly modified argument is ridiculous; it’s not a reason to oppose SSM marriage at all. What it is, is a reason to prefer (require?) that the issue be decided by referendum, and to get your butt to the polls and vote on it, one way or the other. To think this is an argument for voting any particular way is to completely misunderstand what voting is for.
To do better, look at the unmodified argument. That argument is, succinctly, “I’m not a homophobe, but everyone else is. If we legalise SSM marriage people will go apeshit and retaliate in predictably unpredictable and consistently horrific ways, and because we are a lawless country which is incapable of controlling its masses of monstrous, chaotic, and evil people, we must ban SSM to placate the slavering masses.”
The response to this argument is, “In a country where this applied, people would be too afraid to ask for SSM, because the would expect to be killed, by everyone and anyone upon raising the notion.” At best this is an argument for the law to be enacted at the state level, so that backward dens of homophobic man-beasts would not have a laws forced onto them by the right-thinking liberals of another region. But for sufficiently small regions, this argument cannot apply.
Not all reasons to opposed SSM are “Because I’m a homophobe”. But all reasons only exist because the person making the argument is a homophobe. The reasons are all based in homophobia.
Except the one which is based on fear of muderous homophobic monsters that you might believe permeate and control society. But in America, you have to be a homophobe to believe (via projection) that the majority of people will react that violently to gay marriage.
Sure. Me, too. The problem is that we’re calmly and dispassionately discussing an issue that plays real havoc with real lives, and there’s an argument to be made that this discussion is itself disrespectful because of that. Someone, not sure who, hinted at this view above when he said that the mere fact that your arguments even tangentially align you with bigots should give you pause.
There’s long been a presumption in law that every woman is fertile. There’s even a classic hypo in Wills and Estates to illustrate the Rule Against Perpetuities known as the Fertile Octagenarian. To draw that analogy, we could have easily crafted inheritance law so that it presumed a woman over sixty could not give birth; we never did. We could do it now, but it’s clearly not “easier” than not doing it.
Even if that’s true with respect to understanding the motives behind the many legislative bodies that have crafted these rules, it remains a possible valid viewpoint for a single person to have. Remember the challenge here is: there is no single rational reason to oppose same-sex marriage. And remember this challenge excludes even an argument which is rational on its own but is overmatched by other reasons.
That’s an absurd standard, of course. Of course there’s a reason. I’ve got two in play right now. Neither one survives even the most off-hand scrutiny when weighed against other concerns. But each is, undeniably, a reason to oppose SSM, not rooted in animus against gays.
Which kind of brings me back to the first point in this post. A dispassionate rhetor can easily concede that this is so. It doesn’t hurt his cause in the least. But for someone strongly emotionally vested in the issue, it becomes important to deny even the tiniest crumb to your opponent, even those crumbs which the dictates of strict logic must inevitably award to his side.
From what I’ve seen, a certain amount of opposition to SSM here in Canada came from simple social conservatism - the notion that marriage as an institution was “always” a certain way, and should not be tinkered with.
This motivation mostly melted away once SSM was introduced, to the point that the present (Conservative) government has given up on trying to change it back - there simply lacks enough of a constituency who cares sufficiently, once the change has been made.
Why do I say this wasn’t the result of homophobia? Because if it was, one would suspect, the opposition would remain, since homophobes would have exactly the same motive to oppose SSM now that it is in place, as they did before it was in place.
I know it will not be a popular argument here, but a certain amount of social conservatism isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes the breaks should be put on social change, so that mistakes are not made. It isn’t irrational to argue that social change should be made slowly (it may however be wrong). Nor is it necessarily evidence that the person seeking slower social change is a bigot (though of course they may be).
In my opinion, it was wrong, but not irrationally so, to oppose SSM on the grounds of social conservatism. It was wrong because there was no substance in any of the alleged and vague “harms” to be expected from social change allowing SSM. This has now been proven by the fact that SSM was introduced and no harms (but rather many benefits) resulted. Plus, the argument from equal rights was compelling, and should trump any vague and undefined concerns.
Bullshit.
If this were so, childless marriages would legally distinct from those with children. As it is, the government doesn’t even ask people who apply for marriage licences when, if ever, they plan to have children. It’s utterly and legally irrelevant to the process of obtaining a marriage license. A couple that simply cannot for some biological reason engage in “natural procreation”, suffers no barrier to getting a marriage license unless (as is the law currently in most of the U.S.) that reason happens to be that they are of the same gender.
If that’s the best the anti-SSM side has, then they have nothing. It’s an irrational, wishful-thinking argument that assumes a purpose in the law that isn’t there, which frankly kind of surprises me coming from you, since I was under the impression you went to great pains to lecture us on what exactly the various laws actually say and that we should not imagine stuff that isn’t there just to suit our existing beliefs.
I consider the issue sufficiently debunked. Got anything else?
Another reason these discussions are unwise. Inevitably, someone comes along who has missed the beginning and doesn’t understand the strict limits upon which the discussion is now based. Here is a good example.
Sure, I say that we should read the text of the law… when the issue is deciding what effect a law should have on a given set of facts.
But this exercise is utterly different: it’s a challenge to imagine a single rationale for opposing SSM, not rooted in animus against gays.
If we’re doing that, then of course we are free to imagine any motive we please that even remotely conceivable for our opposition to SSM. Indeed, we can imagine someone who says, “Yeah, I wish they WOULD ask people if they’re going to have children before issuing a marriage license.” That person would obviously be in the clear for even that objection.
But this post illustrates why I wanted to drop out. Here’s someone who didn’t understand the context of this discussion, and will possibly walk away from it shaking his head at Bricker’s rank hypocrisy in promoting textualism at all times except this one instance.
Don’t dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back, now.
Not as applied to marriage, there hasn’t. Come on, now.
Fine. Name such a person.
No one has said that second part. There has been no need, because even the first part of the challenge remains unanswered.
Not to mention made of straw.
“Undeniably”? There are plenty of people, including almost everyone in this thread, who deny it vigorously. We have closely examined any such suggestion, easily established that it’s a tawdry rationalization at best and an outright lie at worst, considered the other possible reasons for maintaining it anyway, and found none. There is no other conclusion a “rational” person can reach. But you, on the other hand, refuse.
Do you even know what a rationalization is?
There is not even a crumb being presented.
You pretend to be objective, and to dismiss anyone who demonstrates otherwise as “strongly emotionally invested”, but you haven’t offered any “objective” argument at all - not even a crumb.
Time to drop the self-congratulation and apply some actual debate, m’kay? Sheesh.
I’m afraid I’ll have to double-down on my call of “bullshit.” What you just offered in no way supports the position you described. The rejection of the “procreation” argument isn’t because I have some reflexive need to identify and label homophobes, but because it doesn’t actually appear anywhere (that I’m aware of) in the necessary paperwork to obtain a marriage license, nor is there any legal provision (that I’m aware of) that a marriage licence can be revoked (or even threatened with revocation) if procreation does not occur.
If you know of a case where it does appear in the laws of any of the fifty states, I’d like to read it for my own edification. If it does not, then inability to procreate is not a legal basis to deny a marriage licence. Similarly, claiming that it’s lack of procreative ability that prompts someone to oppose gay marriage fails when they have no objection hetyero pairings that also lack this ability.
I realize that the law is under no obligation to be self-consistent, but please do us the courtesy of not lecturing us on the exact wording of Loving and then turning around and creating a spurious (and textually absent) governmental goal of encouraging marraige for the purpose of creating children.
Here’s someone who didn’t understand the context of this discussion, and will possibly walk away from it shaking his head at Bricker’s rank hypocrisy in promoting textualism at all times except this one instance.
Did you understand at all why I’m in this and what I’m responding to? My disucssion of Loving was a legitimate discussion of law. This is not.
Can you please do me one favor? Explain to me what you believe my purpose here is right now. What am I trying to prove?
Tell you what: you get Brian Eckers to understand what’s going on here, and I’ll continue. This is exactly what I was afraid of: he has conflated my position with the position this hypo has forced me to argue, and he lacks the ability to tell the difference between my positions in “real life” and my offering an argument in this hypothetical instance. Defending this hypo isn’t important enough to me to get tarnished like this. I’m out.
How about you tell us? :dubious:
Sheep green fish bicycle rampant Preston; asinine choral baby matter tasty quaint persecution? Ribbit haha tadpole boring quell testicle, national zeerust candelabra basic twelve mitzvah amabat senor.
I don’t believe you. And I dare you to prove me wrong.
You’d be getting the same rights as everybody else has to register your legal bond with the government. Your marriage, and the ceremony you choose to get married, would be up to you and yours, as would its “specialness” to you. (You get your special feeling through the government? Creepy. 
)
How would the state’s recognition of your union “not have any communal importance?” Particularly when it becomes the only thing that the state does for couples gay or straight?
My point was that I can take my government-issued marriage license and validate it by getting married in a church by a preacher. It’s the only aspect of life I can think of where a government function can be carried out by a purely religious ceremony. (Yeah, you can also go to the justice of the peace, which doesn’t invalidate my point.)
What makes you find the current form very valuable now? Society’s reaffirment of the traditions of the marriage ceremony/process? The community looking positively upon the union – announcing it in the local paper, for example?
What you propose to allow by its very nature is non-traditional, so the “preserving the traditions” part of the argument doesn’t hold much water.
Do you want society to simply look favorably upon your marriage? How does legalizing the process do that, if it’s religious or moral beliefs that cause some to view the practice with disfavor? If you’re granted a government marriage license that a majority in society view as bogus, that’s special?
On the other side of that coin, all of a community’s positive support for the marital bond would continue to exist – you’d still get your picture and write-up on the society page in the local paper.
Morality evolves – and appears to be evolving on this issue.
Can you back that up? Because here I see that a majority of Americans continue to oppose gay marriage, but a solid majority also supports civil unions.
And interestingly, while a solid majority of protestants surveyed disapprove of gay marriage, more support gay civil unions than do not. Even more eye-popping, more Catholics surveyed supported gay marriage than do not, and a large majority of Catholics support civil unions.
Milossarian, are you aware that the government institution and the religious rite are separate things already? And that the debate is over the government institution only?
Poor Bricker.
I think you’re figuring out it’s not quite enough to say you’re a good Muslim.
No, in this group you’ll have to strap on a suicide vest to prove your mettle.
Don’t you know these infidels are devils?
Actually, for all I know this could be the fiftieth time. It’s not like I follow you around with a scorecard.
Your phrasing, as I recall, is that this was something “the government wants to” do. Perhaps there’s some hairsplitting distinction between what a government wants and what it enables itself to do by law. I invite education on the matter, though perhaps this isn’t the best thread for it.
It’s not relevant what I believe about your motives, any more than what raindog believes about the motives of the pro-SSM side and what he believes they feel about the anti-SSM side. My motive (beyond the general motive of my own entertainment) is to either get an anti-SSM arguer to give me a good reason, or admit that he cannot.