There’s nothing about the love between a man and a woman that isn’t just as true for SS love.
To think otherwise is proof of bigotry towards gays. Their love isn’t the same as our love? I can’t think of a more dehumanizing way to talk about a group of people.
A brilliant notion. And while we’re at it, I think black people are so goshdarn special they deserve their own section of the bus.
Let’s be fair, nobody is trying to give gays their own section of the bus.
They’re not allowed on the bus.
If they’re lucky, we might allow them some sort of “special” transportation instead of a bus. They’re definitely not going to be allowed to call it a bus, though, maybe we can call it a “civil transportation unit”.
And that’s, uh…, bad, right? Because society recognizing an icky relationship inherently creates a “Threat to Traditional Marriage”?
Ah, the institution of heterosexual marriage---- so special, so unique, so sanctified and pleasing to the LORD— and yet, apparently as fragile as a spun-sugar geodesic dome.
Leave aside “socially”, what’s wrong with that?
Well yes.
Gay sex is 10 times more appealing than boring straight sex. Obviously no man would want to have sex with a woman, but since God commanded us to, we have no choice.
As for the notion that “marriage” is a religious term, I’m an atheist. I also claim to be married. Am I kidding myself? Am I re-defining the word “marriage” to suit myself? Can a non-Christian really be married?
Except that nobody in favor of gay marriage is suggesting this. It’s a straw man set up by the opposition.
If I give you a dollar, you have a dollar. If I then give your next-door neighbor a dollar, guess what – you still have a dollar! Can you simply not stand for anybody else to also have what you have?
To those that think that they will lose the “specialness” of their marriage if same sex marriage is allowed-you are still the only one in the world married to your spouse, and you can’t get any more exclusive than that.
If your (presumably heterosexual) marriage must receive some sort of special recognition, it seems to me that’s what church is for.
Get a marriage license, and then get married in church. Problem solved. You now have a “special recognition”. And when a gay couple get a marriage license and then get married in a church which recognizes gay marriage, your marriage is still special.
Your marriage is a magic spell whether you believe it or not.
Is a marriage between a man and a woman in, say, Massachusetts different than one in, say, Rhode Island in any noticeable way? Is the Massachusetts one less of a unique celebration of their love? Has any straight couple felt compelled to cross the border because it just wouldn’t be the same otherwise? What, exactly has been gotten rid of?
Can we just skip ahead to what you think is the strongest anti-SSM argument? This “stronger” one you describe is idiotic and unworthy of analysis.
Okay, I can see a connection between what you just said, and the first sentence from your previous post. I still don’t understand how the second sentence relates to either. It seems a total non-sequitor.
I really can’t think what else could possibly be a necessary component for being a bigot other than bigotry.
I don’t think this is actually possible. You either believe that a particular group is somehow less worthy than the mainstream, or you don’t. If you’re “working to change” a belief that, say, blacks are inherently lazy, haven’t you already changed your mind about it? If you hadn’t, why would you be trying to change it?
Except that there’s no particular reason to think that Diogenes is right about Obama. It would be nice if his supposition were true, but there’s no evidence to support it, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I tend to take people at their word. Obama has said that gays should not get married, based on some unstated fundamental difference in the quality of relationships between gay couples as compared to heterosexual couples. This is a bigoted position. If one holds it, they are a bigot. In Obama’s case, he’s less bigoted on the subject than most people in the US, which speaks well of him. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s still a bigot, though.
When I have, in the past, argued that it is okay to be “bigoted towards bigots,” I did not intend to give the impression that, if someone is a bigot, it is acceptable to employ racial, religious, or sexual slurs against that person. I’m genuinely surprised that anyone could have read that particular argument, and arrived at the conclusion which you have. For your benefit (and, I expect, yours alone, because I can’t find it in me to believe that anyone else could have arrived at your specific error), I do not think it is ever acceptable to insult someone on the basis of their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. I do think it is acceptable to insult someone based on their habit of insulting other people for their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. That’s what is meant by the “bigoted towards bigots” line of argument. It was never (God help me) intended to cover using racial slurs against people who disagree with me on gay rights.
The fundamental flaw in this argument is the assumption that love between a man and a woman is, on the whole, noticeably different from love between two men, or love between two women.
Further undercutting this argument is the fact that, if you go back about ten years ago, the people currently arguing that gay relationships should have their own “special” kind of recognition overlap almost perfectly with the people who used to argue that gay relationships didn’t deserve any kind of recognition at all.
By this logic, regardless of how many people were awarded the Medal of Honor, it would have the same weight. That’s not the case. Or how about granting half the NBA “All-Star” status? Part of the specialness of the term “marriage” in our society is owed to the fact that it has been tightly defined, restricted to one man/one woman. You expand the definition—for good or for ill—and the term is watered down.
That’s not an argument for whether the term should be expanded, only that expanding it does, in fact dilute its meaning.
Personally, I think nothing. And that would be the case with civil unions.
Sure, if you start from the assumption that gay relationships are in some way inferior to straight relationships. Otherwise, your logic doesn’t work, as is demonstrated by the fact that the examples you picked to prove your point are situations where someone does something extraordinary. Certainly, the Medal of Honor would be diminished if you started handing it out to people for being particularly good potato peelers. But it is not diminished if you hand it out to everyone who jumped on a hand grenade to save the lives of their comrades - regardless of how many service members have been jumping on hand grenades to save the lives of their comrades.
Of course, if you started restricting who could get a Medal of Honor based on an arbitrary, in-born characteristic that has no bearing on the person’s bravery, I think that it would diminish the concept of the MoH. Like, say, if left-handed people who jumped on a hand grenade got a Medal of Shininess, while anyone else in identical circumstances got a Medal of Honor, I think that would be extremely damaging to the concept of the award, because creating a new “honor” purely as a vehicle for discrimination does not elevate the new award to the same level as the old one - rather, it drags down the old award to the level of the new one.
Which is, I think, the central irony of this entire debate. The single biggest threat to marriage in the USA isn’t gays, it’s social conservatives who insist on politicizing the issue, and making the word “marriage” a vehicle for hatred and bigotry.
No idea what you mean by “just as true”. I’m simply saying it’s different. Not inferior or inferior, different. If my father started demanding that I also call him “mum”, I would explain to him that while he’s not inferior to my mum, he is different, and I would prefer to identify him differently, rather than just address both him and my mother as “mum”.
Woah. Why would you jump to the conclusion that if gay love is different, it’s therefore inferior? What are you, a bigot?