No… Please point out the relevance. That was a dumb response.
I am not sure what you are referring to here. Not trying to be a pain but could you point out more explicitly who did what where that that you think was a dodge (or dishonest or unfair debate or whatever fits)?
For my part I think I have argued against your premise precisely that such thinking is not applicable only to SSM (read my example about someone opposing assault weapons).
Indeed I would say that an argument on whether a stance is rational or not must be applicable to all cases in a similar vein and not just SSM.
IMHO anyway.
Maybe, in the most generalized possible sense. It’s like saying an asteroid that destroyed the Earth would resolve the obesity problem. It’s true, but something more specific is typically sought.
Huh?
This boggles the mind. This has to be…well there is a word for it we are not allowed to accuse others of in GD but it really fits here.
So let’s see this “juvenile, simplistic, and distorted summary of my posts in this thread.”
First, Miller was not making a comment on your “posts” (note the plural). He was responding to one post of yours.
As for the rest he is entirely accurate. You have ranted against mischaracterizing opponents of SSM then go on to compare those who argue against opponents of SSM to Al Qaeda terrorists.
Pot and kettle seem insufficient to describe this.
Here was the line that started this:
That’s not limited to those ONLY against SSM, but includes anyone against SSM as part of a larger philosophical position.
If you’re trying to be correct by focusing in on a technicality then I can sincerely say “who cares?”
Due to time constraints I’ve had to skim so perhaps I missed something but I gather your point is that someone could have a larger philosophical view of “majority rules even if we or I personally don’t agree” and that would be reasonable and not a result of homophobia. Is that close?
While this may be, and that’s may be technically correct I have serious doubts. To deny some minority group some privilege long sought that even remotely equates to a question of equality is a serious matter. This issue has been around long enough that anyone who actively made an effort to vote away rights already granted by others is most likely motivated by more than that type of larger philosophical view.
For someone to say “I personally don’t object to SSM but because I believe in majority rules I’m going to have to vote against it” is seriously missing the point and displays a pretty profound ignorance of the history of civil rights in this country. It would rate very high on my bullshit justification meter.
on a related point.
Both you and raindog seemed to have a pet peeve about the generalization that those who oppose SSM are motivated to some degree, mild or strong, by homophobia. It’s been characterized as demonizing the opposition and treated with an air of “it’s so broad a generalization it must obviously be wrong” I have always been pretty critical of broad generalizations myself and generally dismiss them pretty readily. In this case I’ve examined this one pretty carefully over time and find it to be accurate. I’ve made the attempt to explain why. If it’s accurate then demonizing doesn’t even apply does it?
Furthermore, I’m sure you and **raindog **would agree that people can be mildly homophobic and not realize it or acknowledge it. It’s because of the complete lack of a substantial rational argument against in juxtaposed with the seriousness of the equality issue that I reluctantly came to my conclusion. I also looked at the history of civil rights in this country and tried to fathom the mindset of those who opposed equality.
With that in mind would you say those some of those who supported slavery were not prejudice? Were there rational arguments to maintain slavery that did not smack of prejudice against an entire race? Economics was certainly a huge consideration but when considering the freedom of a race of people could you make a rational economic argument that supported slavery? I doubt it. Only by embracing the inferiority of a race , the heart of prejudice, could that argument be made. Once you recognize in your mind and heart that they, whomever they may be in the questions of equality , are my equals, then you can no longer deny them. Until then, on some level that same they are seen as less deserving of equality and that can only be prejudice. In the case of SSM the name of that prejudice is homophobia.
When the majority of people in this country supported slavery were there rational reasons, absent of prejudice, to support it?
When the majority supported denying blacks and women the right to vote were there rational arguments absent of prejudice to deny them that equality?
Meh, I’ll play devil’s advocate.
FTR I couldn’t give a toss about SSM either way. If it were up to me there would be no state sanctioned marriages, any two or more consenting adults could enter into civil contracts concerning household finances, child-rearing etc. and any Chess Club, Gamer’s Guild or God Association could endorse those contracts or not a they see fit, but it would have no bearing on the legality.
But I will put forward this argument:
Cultural standards have value to the culture itself. This seems self evident, so I won’t bother to derive it.
The cultural standard in this culture is that marriage occurs between a man and a woman.
People want to defend that standard simply because it has intrinsic worth.
Other people may want to change the cultural standard, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile to preserve the current standard.
That seems like a rational argument for SSM to me. Not one I personally endorse because I see no value in any marriage, gay straight or polygamous. But rational nonetheless.
It’s at least as rational as the Quebecois striving to maintain their language, or Native Americans striving to hold on to traditional lands, or anthropologists and linguists striving to preserve dying languages. And all those thing are government funded, and all are supported most stringly by liberals, ie the very people who most strongly object to preserving the tradition of male-female marriage.
Now of course we can argue about whether cultural diversity does have vale, and whether it matters if a tradition that has been the cornerstone of western culture for millenia is destroyed. And there wold be fair arguments on both sides. But that is inevitable because marriage is a subjective cultural institution. But if we accept that culture has intrinsic value and is worth preserving for its own sake, then there is a reasonable and rational argument against completely altering one of the cornerstones of a culture.
The glaring difference I see in SSM and your examples is that allowing SSM in no way threatens the preservation of male-female marriage. Nobody here objects to preserving that tradition. We simply want to expand it to include SS couples. The people that fight to preserve a dying language or beliefs aren’t trying to make those the only legal languages or beliefs are they?
I would counter that in two ways.
Firstly, it isn’t different. BY “it doesn’t threaten it” I assume you mean that it doesn’t prevent others from partaking, since that is the only sensible reading I can give to it. But shopkeepers in Quebec putting their signs up in English doesn’t threaten the existence of the French either, since those who wish to speak and read French can still do so. Similarly Amazonian Indians selling their lands to multinational corporations doesn’t threaten there culture either by this reading, since any Indian who doesn’t want to sell can still live on the piece of land that they own.
Which brings me to my second point, which is that any culture is much more than simply what is allowed, and cultural integrity relies on much more than the potential for people to play act. A culture is an ongoing process defined by the interactions of individuals as much as by individual actions. It is also as much defined by what is prohibited as what is allowed.
If we follow your reasoning that western culture still exists when you fundamentally change one of the cornerstones of that culture, then we are forced into the position that no practically no culture has ever been destroyed. After all Inuit can still practice Inuit culture if they want want, and first century Amritheans can still practice first century Judaism and speak Aramaic if they want, and so forth.
Of course nobody believes that is true because it so obviously isn’t. If a members of a culture can’t set cultural boundaries, if people can deviate from cultural norms whenever it suits them, then the culture does not exist in any practical form. And in the real world it will very rapidly change into a culture that is unrecognisable to the original practitioners.
Nobody objects to Quebecois speaking French, we just want to expand it to include English as well.
Nobody objects to Hindus eating vegetables, we just want to expand it eating beef as well.
Nobody objects to Aborigines living as traditional HGs, we just want to expand it to include 12 years of school education as well.
I could go on like that all day, and we would all know that the statements are nonsense. If those changes occurred the cultures involved would have changed so radically from the original that nobody belonging to the original culture would recognise or accept them.
By allowing freedoms that were unthinkable for the original culture, by destroying the basic taboos of that culture, you have destroyed it.
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My bloody oath they are. There is legislation in Quebec making it mandatory that signs be in French, and you need only do Google search to confirm that many people are fighting to limit or abolish contact with various primitive people.
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If you destroy the taboos that define a culture then by definition you have destroyed that culture and made the alternative the only culture available.
Imagine if all the Orthodox Rabbis, tomorrow, made a ruling that Jews could now eat pork, that the Sabbath was no longer holy, that circumcision was no longer necessary, that law no longer derives from the Torah/Talmud and so forth. They don’t ban those things, Jews can still practice them if they wish, but they are entirely optional. Are you going to argue that modern Orthodox Jewish culture still exists? Much less that it will exist in 70 years time? What are the chances that an Orthodox Jew from 1900 would recognise or feel kinship with the so-called Orthodox culture of 2080?
Orthodox Jewish culture would have been destroyed. Yet nobody has prevented anybody from actually doing anything. All they’ve done is opened up more options. Which, according to you can not destroy a culture.
To drive this point home I will ask you: has any Inuit culture been destroyed? Most ethnologists and anthropologists would argue that, yes, they has. Yet there is nothing stopping any Inuit from walking out tomorrow and living the life of Nanook of the North. It’s just that now they have more options in terms of how they make a living, what type of building they sleep in, what food they drink and so forth. So by your argument it seems the culture still exists perfectly. Of course I hope we both can see why that isn’t true.
I know it’s a side-issue, but how do you compel third parties to recognize these contracts? I can imagine a nurse in a hospital approached by someone who wants to visit and/or make decisions for a critically ill patient:
Nurse: “I don’t care if you and he signed a paper. *I *didn’t sign it - nobody at this hospital signed it. Get lost.”
Is the nurse’s behaviour wrong? She’s not bound by someone else’s contract, is she?
This only makes sense applied to SSM if you want to assume that SSM will come to dominate. That is, allow SSM and so many people will turn to it that hetero marriage will become an obscure, barely remembered quaint tradition.
I think we can say that is absurd on the face of it. SSM will not overwhelm and dominate the culture edging out hetero marriage.
As such I think this is a faulty comparison.
<Updates list of acceptable insults when debating SSM proponents.>
That was a lot of work for an argument that boils down to gibberish. I assume you argue that the allowing of inter-racial marriages in the south destroyed white culture? No, that would be stupid to argue, wouldn’t it?
The amazing blindness of arguments like these is that you assume that your culture is the only one allowed. Look, if your church thinks oppressing gay people is what god wants you to do, have fun. Don’t marry them in your churches. Your culture is unaffected.
If your church will allow gays to marry (and some do, believe it or not) then why exactly in our secular society is allowing that a danger to the first church? It’s not.
The presupposition of your argument assumes that there already aren’t a Balkanized patchwork of cultures at play in America. That somehow by legalizing SSM churches opposed to the practice would be required to host SSMs. Simply not true.
There already are places where gays can marry. There already are people who exist in cultures where gay marriage is acceptable. It’s a fucking chicken-little argument to assume that the culture of the anti-gay marriage homophobes is under any threat at all. They can still deny the rights to the gays that attend their churches and they can still treat homosexuals like dirt in their daily lives (up to the limits allowed by the law of course).
Chicken Little histrionics do not an argument make.
I would assume she is, if it’s part of the contract. IANAL, but it would seem that simply adding a “power of attorney” or similar clause to the contract would get around that. AFAIK right now I can ask my lawyer to draw up a contract giving power of attorney to one or more consenting adults, and that gives them the right to visit and/or make decisions for me if I become critically ill. I would have thought that simply including the same in the marriage contract would have had the same effect. Like I said, IANAL, but it hardly seems an insurmountable problem.
No, it makes sense even if only 1% of homosexuals marry.
Well that is your opinion of course, but the point is that the argument is rational. Whether you find it convincing or whether you think it has flaws, it remains rational, which was the question asked.
If that is the closest you can come to civility then I have no interest in discussing this with you.
You are making silly, illogical arguments. Can I have a list of words you’ll find acceptable to describe such arguments?
Or not, either way.
Heck, in that case I’ll make sure I include an “all nurses must give me cookies on request” clause in any contract I sign, even if it’s a contract for something wholly unrelated like cell phone service.
But “power of attorney” isn’t just something you casually include in civil contracts. It carries a number of heavy-duty implications, and while I suppose you could write up a lengthy power-of-attorney directive to cover numerous things like health decisions and child care and management of property (though I’m not sure if you can draft a directive in such a way that’ll compel an insurance company to cover your “spouse”, or compel the government to accept a joint tax return), you’re looking at a thousand-clause document that’ll take weeks to prepare.
Anyway, let’s assume you write the onmibus-of-all-omnibes power-of-attorney directives, covering every conceivable situation. You coulda saved yourself a lot of trouble and just gotten married.
As opposed to current marriage laws, which took millenia to prepare. Or proposed SSM laws, which will take years to prepare.
Of course as in those cases, or as in the case of every other standard contract, only one person has to do it once. After that everybody copies. The legal paper work connected with my house purchase was 15 pages long IIRC, but the lawyer draw it up in a single day. That’s because it was standard. While no doubt the first one did take weeks to prepare, now it is a standard contract that takes hours.
I can’t see why exactly the same thing wouldn’t apply to marriage.
Yeah, everybody who ever got divorced knows how much trouble marriage avoids.
I don’t think your examples apply. Your argument seems to be that wanting to preserve the culture as it is, without major changes, is not irrational or fear based. I’m saying if you’re willing to harm innocent others and deny equality to preserve something intangible within the culture that probably won’t really be harmed anyway, that is irrational and fear based. Clinging to fiercely to traditions can be destructive and when it is it’s proper to ask why.
This kind of extremism isn’t correct and doesn’t help the discussion.
Although lots of people resist and dislike change it is a realistic part of humanity and any culture. Technology changes our culture as well. The proper question is what changes are acceptable and advance the society and which ones may harm it? The conflict here is that our culture has a history and tradition of defending and advancing the rights of minorities against the status quo despite the fact that the majority may resist. So, in the case of SSM which tradition advances society, the pursuit of equality or preserving the status quo? IMO the answer is obvious.
concerning the bolded section. This is again an extreme that doesn’t apply or advance the discussion. Please refrain.
<snip>
Was our culture harmed or advanced by the advance of civil rights and all the taboos that were destroyed?
Why is the nurse, or any third party, required to recognize or comply with the terms of your contract?
I’m sure “millenia” sounds impressive, but when I buy a house, I’m not obliged to spend a moment contemplating the millenia of science and engineering that went into its construction. And if the proposed SSM laws take years, it’s not because they represent some wholly new idea - it’ll be because of various obstructionist tactics. Ideally, when this nonsense is past, a gay marraige will be legally indistinct from a straight one.
Does your house purchase contract mean your partner in the purchase can file a joint income tax return with you? Does it mean your partner in the purchase cannot testify about privilieged details about the house-buying process without your consent? What language do you anticipate sticking in a contract that will oblige the government to accept these ideas?
We often refer to marriage as a contract, but it’s more of a legal status which, once obtained, third parties (including the government) must recognize. It’s rather like turning 18. Once you do, you’re a legal adult, with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities that entails. It was not necessary for you to jump through a number of legal hoops to obtain this status, nor spell out in writing every last detail of the terms of the adulthood you have now obtained. You don’t have to show the “can now buy cigarettes” clause in your “adulthood contract” to a shopkeeper, just proof of age. Similarly, one doesn’t have to dig through an omnibus contract to show a nurse the “can make medical decisions” clause - just a marriage license.
And why prevent gays the same right to be miserable as straights? Ha-ha-HAAAA, you’re hilarious.