Interrupting homophobes everywhere, I dare say.
The whole Mother’s Day, Father’s Day thing. In this analogy, it isn’t the ‘Mother’ or ‘Father’ we should be focusing on, but the ‘Day’.
Sure there’s a Mother’s Day, as there’s traditionally always has been; now Father’s want their own day? It will cheapen Mother’s Day. What’s wrong with ‘Father’s 24 Hour Period?’
It beats the shit out of the 3 to 5 days mothers get.
That sounds like the punchline to a very bad knock-knock joke.
I was worried that this would constitute a hijack, but I actually think it’s germaine to the conversation. The idea was that the word “sex” had a fixed meaning (I believe either that it was specifically between a man and a woman, or maybe that it had to have the potential for procreation) and that gay people were, by definition, incapable of having it.
Presumably by having sex, gays are diluting the word, meaning that straight people will probably want to stop having sex altogether within the next couple generations :eek:
I was THIS close to posting
SPOO!
Is there any other kind? 
Yes, but you’ve got the backside of Mt. Rushmore.
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“The interrupting homophobe.”
“The interrupt-”
“FAG!”
Actually, yeah, why don’t you explain that? Because there’s a tendency in this country, in custody cases, to favor claims made by the mother over claims made by the father. Which always struck me as bullshit, personally, and I know there are more than a few organizations out there lobbying to change this. So, your comparison between gay marriage to parenting does have some relevance to this debate, although not, perhaps, in the way you’d intended.
I’d be much more willing to believe this if you didn’t immediately go on to make this comparison:
The problem here is that the purpose of the Medal of Honor is to recognize soldiers who are clearly superior to their fellows. If allowing everyone to marry devalues marriage in the same way that giving everyone a MoH devalues the MoH, then it must be because you believe that straight marriage is clearly superior to gay marriage. Which you claim is not your argument. So either you’re being disingenuous in your reasons for opposing gay marriage, or you are not very good at crafting analogies. Out of charity, I will assume the latter.
Except… you did specifically say that gay marriage would devalue straight marriage. Now, I’ll say this much for magellan: he’s very careful to use terms like “dilute” instead of “devalue,” because he genuinely believes that neither relationship is more valuable than the other. You, on the other hand, consistently use “devalue” when you discuss this issue. Which seems to be a pretty clear marker that you’re making a value judgment about gay marriage. Which makes it a bit harder to swallow your claims that you aren’t arguing that gay marriage is inferior to straight marriage. Or, you just not very good at choosing your words. Again, out of charity, I’ll assume the latter.
This gets back to that question that spawned your first post in this thread: in what way is gay love different from straight love? And, more importantly, how do you know its different? I’m presuming that you’ve never actually been in a homosexual relationship, correct? All of your relationships have been strictly hetero? If that’s the case, how can you possibly know that the love between two gay people is different from the love between two straight people?
Granted, you could turn that around pretty easily. How can, say, jayjay know that gay love is the same as straight love? Presumably, he’s as ignorant of the latter as you are of the former. Luckily for all you monosexuals, you’ve got people like me around. See, I’ve been in relationships with women. I’ve been in relationships with men. I’ve been in relationships with women who used to be men. And while each relationship was unique, I’d be hard pressed to figure out any differences that were due to the gender of the person I was sleeping with. From my own personal, internal experience with love of people of both genders, I can say that there really is no difference between the two.
Admittedly, that’s purely anecdotal evidence. But it’s also more evidence than you’ve been able to pony up for your side of the argument.
No, I don’t do any of that. Because I don’t care about either of those days. They aren’t real holidays. There are no rights, rewards, or responsibilities attached to either of them. Consequently, it’s not really possible to exclude anyone from either of them. If you want to celebrate your dad on Mother’s Day, you can do that. It doesn’t change the nature of the day, or the character of anyone else’s observation of it. Which, actually, makes it a pretty good analogy to the gay marriage debate. If I want to take my dad out to lunch on Mother’s Day, I can do that. Nobody is going to stop me. Nobody is going to accuse me of devaluing their relationship with their mom. Which is precisely the sort of reaction you ought to have to gay marriage.
I thought your whole argument was that they should be treated the same, just given different names. Should I chalk this one up to your inability to right clearly again?
Problem is, you can’t do that while they’re separate institutions. As long as gays have one thing, and straights have another, the thing gays have is going to be inherently weaker, simply by virtue of being separate. Even if you could over come all the roadblocks to creating a separate institution that is truly equal (and I, for one, don’t think that would be possible in the first place) what you will have created is a parallel institution that will forever more be vulnerable to shifts in public attitude that would allow for it to be weakened. As long as they are separate, there is always the danger that, at some later date, some legislator is going to come along and pass a law saying, “Marriages can get X, but Civil Unions cannot.” By putting all such relationships under the same umbrella, it becomes more difficult by an order of magnitude for a legislator to make changes that would only effect gay couples, and not straight couples. Without that shared umbrella, gay relationships cannot, by definition, have equal legal protection. They will always have some lesser level of protection.
For the record, you are neither cute, nor funny.
Why do SSM debates always end up talking about incest? 
That was my assumption, as well. Am I wrong about that? Because traditionally, Kelly is a man’s name. If our poster here is, in fact, a woman, well, she’s clearly devaluing the name “Kelly” by using that name despite her gender difference. Kelly, if that is your real name, and you are, in fact, female, I’m going to have to demand that you change your name. Or your sex. One or the other. Even if you really, really like your name. Because if there’s one thing you’ve taught us here, it’s that tradition and irrational prejudice always trump personal happiness.
If I was going to suggest an analogy, it might involve Mississippi youth, whose age of majority is 21 while most of the rest of the U.S. has it as 18. The “specialness” argument would be from someone in an 18 state arguing that their enjoyment of being of the age of the majority (and all the benefits that entails) would be diluted if Mississippi 18-20 years-old could enjoy it too, that they can’t enjoy drinking beer legally knowing that a 19 year-old Mississippian (?) could as well, and that the very word “adult” loses its special meaning if it applies to 20 year-olds from Jackson or 18 year-olds from Biloxi.
And of course, who could prove such an argument wrong?
1910 - Women are threatening the traditional definition of government by demanding the right to vote. None of the historical democracies on which we based the American government allowed woment to vote. Women could not vote in Athens or the Roman Republic. And we all know that women have different political ideas and goals than men do.
So, we can protect tradional voting by giving women something equal but not called “voting” (which traditionally and legally only men can do).
We can call it “opinioning” and instead of casting a vote the woment can “express their opinions.” These opinions will be counted exactly like traditional votes in any election, and women will then have all rights of an elector without the actual title. Promise.
I don’t understand how they could reject this as a reasonable compromise.
1960 - To answer the demands that people of color have to sit at the front of the bus, which is traditionally where white people travel, we are instituting a system of “jitneys” specifically for colored people, and they can sit wherever they want in these “jitneys.” Since colored people have different destinations than white people they should be happy to get their own transportation system, which will be the equal in every way to the one traditionally used by white folk.
I feel ya, bro.