kanicbird, in a way, you are being mildly hypocritical, just possibly not realizing it. You speak of the need to recognize the differences between people, but then offer generalized stereotypes about how men and women act, and why that supports their marriage.
Not everyone will fall into those stereotypes, and with gays and lesbians, you have people who are rather obviously wired a bit differently than the norm. I only say that, because homosexuality is not a choice, it is as ingrained in us as your heterosexuality is in you. If something as fundamental to a persons ability to have relationships with other people as their sexuality can vary as it does from person to person, what makes something like their gender roles so out of the reach of the differences?
The differences between a heterosexual and homosexual relationship aren’t enough to justify the creation of a new word though. Remember, it was Jesus himself who espoused loving everyone, and not being judgemental. Besides, we aren’t looking to force gay marriage upon churches, that is wholly up to them.
All we want is the government recognition of our marriages. If a progressive thinking church wants to condone gay marriage, great, but what is needed is the government recognition of that marriage.
Very possible modro and thanks for pointing it out in such a kind way.
Let me explain a bit and lets see if you still think I might be hypocritical:
Men and women are very different (IMHO), they are wired differently, and almost different animals. It is from this different point that they develop into senciant humans So I see it as 2 seperate things converging into a common thing (human). Different pathways must be taken by each to arrive in this common ground. As such they will have generalized tendencies that can be traced back to their initial difference and different pathways they traveled to arive at being a functioning human.
Also I know that physically we are all born female, and then the male gene kickes in and changes one’s life forever for about 1/2 the pop, but many will argue that when this happens the entity is not human yet (mostly in the context of abortion, which I care not to go into today), I would wag that the gender is physically extablished before the person is self aware, or put another way, before the soul in in the body.
I guess this is the heart of another matter. If that’s all you want, then as far as I’m concerned you can have it in any state, in the union includign the teratories of Guam, Purto Rico, and the Dsitrict of Columbia (and the Panama Canal Zone, if we didn’t give that up). The term marriage, to me is a spirtual term, but as a secular term, I guess I would be OK w/ it.
I am somewhat troubled by the systematic stripping of all religon from the Gov’t, but if we truly want a gov’t w/ absolutly no religion AND we allow the state to honor marriages I guess in that context the term could be used.
Would you be upset if gay marriages were allowed as ‘marriages’, then a new term (lets use ‘Zort’ ) for a M-F union was invented and widly adopted to the point that marriage was no longer used to describe M-F unions?
I just wanted to point out that someone wrote in to Miss Manners yesterday to ask what the most proper term would be for two men who have undergone a marriage or commitment ceremony. She reommended using spouse or husband as partner seems to be often used to signify relationships which are less formal. Miss Manners definately does not reccommend the creation of new words.
Yes, yes I would. Whether it’s the gay marriages or the straight ones that are given the new term is irrelevant: I think the term refers to a type of relationship, and the genders/ sexual orientations of those involved is irrelevant. The relationship bears the label, and if the relationship is the same, so should be the label. But I think we agree on this, we just disagree that the relationship can be the same.
If zort were to refer to marriages sanctified by a priest, that would be cool by me, though. Although then zorted people would also be married, which would be the secular term. And if a priest chose to sanctify a gay marriage, then they would be just as zorted as anyone else. Maybe zort would only refer to marriages sanctified by the Catholic Church, where the Pope can refuse to let priest zortify marriages. Or whatever. So now maybe we need zort for catholic marriages, and zwibber for Jewish ones, and branck for protestants, and gruud for the Muslims, and this is just starting to get silly, no?
If you need to get that specific, can’t you just use a phrase instead of needing a separate word for each possible subtle difference? To wit:
married in the eyes of the law
married in the eyes of the Church
married in common-law
etc.
Well, my whole point is that in a homosexual relationship, those different pathways may very well find themselves reversed from their typical gender role. Remember, homosexuality is, itself, an “aberration”, so there is nothing to say that the gender specific wiring isn’t capable of the same things. Put one way, if there was no such thing as variations in gender roles, you wouldn’t see any transgendered people.
Well, it is much more difficult to have true freedom of religion if the government is endorsing one religion over all others by either passing laws based upon it, or displaying it’s icons in government buildings.
It is wholly possible to have a fully secular government that has laws that are also moral. The basic idea is to just pass laws that are a “good idea” and skip the laws that target a group of people simply because a religion doesn’t like them.
Basically, it’s a bad idea to turn religious dogma into legislation. Having a fully secular government in no way prevents you from practicing your religion, and being a moral and just person. By having a fully secular government, it also permits people with differing viewpoints to practice their beliefs, and lead what they believe to be a moral and just life.
Laws should only be passed when an activity can affect the lives of others. Laws such as the Texas Sodomy Ban, for instance, should never have been legislated. Having the ban put in place has no effect on people who already believe it wrong. Where it becomes a problem, is when a group of people who can’t have sex in any other fashion are then barred from doing that activity because someone else thought it wrong.
Put simply, if you think it is a sin, don’t do it. In a culture like ours, where there are millions of people with differing beliefs, one group should not be allowed to make its sins law.
Marriage in the sense that we are talking, is the fully secular sense. Churches shouldn’t be forced to recognize them if they don’t want to. All this is about, is the various legal issues involving marriage. If your church believes that gay marriage is a sin, then by all means, don’t have them going off and marrying gays in your church. This isn’t about forcing church recognition of gay marriage. Freedom of religion means that if your church thinks gay marriage is wrong, then your church doesn’t have to marry gays. Just don’t put laws into effect that keep them from going to the Justice of the Peace and getting a fully secular marriage done either.
Here lies the problem. And after some thought, I have come to a different conculsion. A marriage as I see it is a blending of ying/yang in a complementry fashion, that the 2 people together make up for the other. What I consider M-M and F-F ‘marriages’, and for that matter some M-F ‘marriages’ is more of a spirtual pairing where both partners may contain w/in themselves individually both ying and yang, and are not truly complementry, in the fashion that one is really making up for the ‘lack’ of another.
Don’t the eskimo’s have 19 words for snow? As language gets watered down it may be needed to add a few word now and again to help differenciate things.
True, but then again I see no problem with a religious group renting space from a public facility, or if free, allowing them to use it just like a non-religiuos group. Also things that have historical significants (IMHO) should be allowed for that reason alone. The Ten Commandments not only is the Law given to man by God as beleived by some religions, but is also a very importaint part of human society’s evolution.
The example you cite involved the Gov’t restricting freedom in the name of religion - which is a bad idea (I think we can agree on that). But in the case of banning the religous group from unsign public space, this is the case of the Gov’t also restricting freedom, again bad idea - so the group should be allowed to use the public space. The 3rd idea, as I see it is Gov’t displayign a religous and hystorical item, I personally don’t see it in itself as bad.
Possibly each one is (for lack of a better term) both male and female (possesing ample qualities of each), perhaps not, I don’t know.
I still fail to see what this inherent, invariant and non-overlapping difference, which you seem to consider essential to marriage, actually is. And given that you seem to admit that some M-F couples may not have it, why can’t some M-M or F-F couples have it?
A few posts back you mentioned that the left/ right brain, etc. differences were mere symptoms of this crucial underlying difference. The only underlying difference I can think of is chromosome count, which certainly is non-overlapping, and leads with some variation to all the symptoms discussed.
But in terms of relevance to the way that two individuals relate to each other, those symptoms would be far more relevant that the underlying chromosomal cause. And given that the symptoms are not invariantly and non-overlappingly determined by the chromosomes, I don’t see why chromosomally similar individuals could not be symptomatically ying-and-yang, if that makes any sense.
I have accepted that a single person can either be:
1 ying or yang (determined by state of body when soul enters, or when self awareness begins) which corosponds to that persons gender.
or
2 both ying and yang, as the ‘person’ moves toward human existance, the path he/she takes may (as you and I have both pointed out) lead to having both m and f charactistics. (again this is a change in view as this topic has evolved.)
The marriage as I see it is when both couples have opposite characteristics and together form ying and yang. a spirtual pairing is when at least one of the couples has both to begin with. Perhaps a case can be made for a (yang) - (ying/yang) union being a marriage, since the yang is now ‘completed’ by the other persons ying, but I see it as eachother completing the cycle for each other in a codependant way.
Spirtual pairing I see more as co-independant (to create a new word).
So what exactly are you proposing - that a couple has to have their yin and yang measured somehow, and only if their yin/yang ratio gets your approval will they be allowed to marry? What planet are you from?
kanicbird, you started this thread stating that you supported giving gay couples all of the same rights that straight couples have, but you just didn’t like using the word “marriage” for gay couples.
Now I’m thinking you really just don’t like the idea of gay couples. Care to clarify for me?
Here’s a question for you, though. Is it wrong for me to refer to myself as “married”? I do still have a husband, but we were joined by a judge, so technically, what we have is a “civil union.” But never once have I ever referred to myself as “civilly unioned.”
However…I’m sure gay couples would be more than happy to call themselves “civilly unioned”…
*if only the government would freaking let them. * They can’t even do that, which is the whole point of their argument.
I’m all for calling it “marriage,” myself. As Polycarp said, if it walks like a duck, you know? Just let them be allowed to actually DO it.
It would not be required for gay couples because how i (convienently) defined it they can’t get married, as there is no co-dependancy as it involved ying and yang. It might be required for hetro couples to determine if there is a ying/yang co-dependency. If a hetrocouple is each both ying and yang then the relationship would be the same as a same-sex couple - and (IMHO) use the same term - but this term is not marriage.
I think you are misinterpering what I am saying and taking ‘thought excercises’ which I am using to explore different avenues as how I actually feel, I see some of this as a matter of personal freedom where Gov’t should not tread. My problem is that the term marriage is not a gov’t term (again IMHO), it is being used by the gov’t (out of nessasety), but the union is not goverenemental in nature. By secularizing the term you are destroying some of it’s original meaning - this is the problem I have. By inventing a new term for either a secular union or a spirtual pairing you aviod this conflict and the reason to change the meaning of the word ‘marriage’
Now as I have looked into the non-secular meaning of ‘union’ I can see a difference.
I think this is a bit overblown. Marriage, in one form or another, seems to be or have been common to just about every human society, not just those with a particular religious tradition or form of spirituality. (And the wide variation in the forms marriages have taken also makes many of the objections to broadening the term to include same-sex marriages baseless as well. Even the “Judeo-Christian” tradition has historically embraced polygyny and concubinage, for example; the legal and social structure of monogamous heterosexual marriages has also changed dramatically in the last couple of hundred years.) Another point to be made is that marriage, in whatever form, has always tended to be a social relationship, not just an individual romantic attachment–the modern idea of marriage as a voluntary romantic partnership between two consenting adults is fairly new. Therefore, suggestions that the state just get out of the “marriage business” are fairly radical (in the sense that they are suggesting a major change in how society is ordered); much more radical than simply extending the possibility of marriage (as it’s currently definined in all respects save the gender of the participants) to a group making up less than 10% of the population.
Given all this history, no one religion or group has a monopoly on the institution of marriage. Christians certainly didn’t invent the institution. I don’t really find kanicbird’s personal views on “yin” and “yang” and proper spiritual relationships to be sufficient to deny the well-established term “marriage”, with all its legal rights and obligations, to citizens–gay and lesbian or otherwise–who want to avail themselves of the institution.
I don’t think you got my main point, I don’t even think I got it in this context.
Why not just invent a new term?
Because people (in general) feel the need to be like everyone else, they want to be included and not be different, becasue different is wrong.
I don’t feel this way and think differences is what makes humanity great and differences are benificial to humanity and should be encouraged.
Making up a new term is expressing a difference while expanding the old term to include new aspects is diminshing the difference.
So you think I’m wrong to refer to myself as married? I should refer to myself as…what? Civilly unioned? Secularly unioned? Wurrelled? Zorted? Or my personal fave, that I saw on these boards ina thread about this same topic several months ago, “Shirleyed”?
kanicbird, you are positing a religious or spiritual essence to marriage. If you want to enforce your particular notions for marriages, go found a religion and deny marriage to everyone who doesn’t meet your particular standards. If you want a term for your yin-yang certified relationships to distinguish them from mundane and pedestrian marriages that have not been so adjudicated, make up a word for your sparkly new religion’s thing and stop trying to hijack a common term.
Religious beliefs are not sufficient standing for a matter of law. I do not subscribe to your religion, I am not and will not be converted by your arguments, and I am not going to accept that someone’s Newagey handwaving is sufficient or even a relevant argument. I have seen no evidence for any sort of gender essentialism, so arguing that something about marriage is sacred on the basis of gender essentialism is like sanctimoniously informing me that it was so decreed by the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
Go ahead and believe what you want to believe, but don’t expect that other people will find your beliefs a legitimate basis for public policy that encompasses everyone else. If you only consider a yin-yang certified relationship legitimate, go forth and be sure that those are the sorts of relationships you have. If you feel a need to treat relationships that don’t pass your certification standards as inadequate, keep in mind that those people who have such relationships will likely treat that sort of declaration with contempt.
Actually Lilairen I see the ‘traditional’ marriage as inadequate, as in the 2 people involved are incomplete and come together to form a whole, each one alone is inadequate. It has been pointed out that many homosexuals have both ying and yang in the same person and therefore are complete - Such a union does not further the completeness of both members.
It would seem we are passing this point in time.
I don’t think you know my religion, as I’m not sure I do either.
Not asking you to convert, just to open your eyes, as I am using this OP to help open mind.
Pull down pants, and look (do it w/ your mate if you want ). Look at statistics as to weight, height, occupation, test scores. These are very basic differences that I can’t see anyone ignoring or dismissing.
Yes I have a spirtual view of marriage, and such issues involve faith which is not good debate material.
Persephone Only looking at this page, I assume you are a female married to a male by a judge? What is that marriage to you? You must judge if you have a marriage, a spirtual pairing or a scheme to stay inside the country. I don’t consider the 3rd a marriage either FWIM’s. You (and him) must decide within your own beleifs what it is, It’s not for me to judge.
A same sex union does not and can not involve the ying/yang co-dependant pairing and thus must be a different type of relationship.
Also another note, I don’t see a ying/yang co-dependant relationship as superoir to others, all I’m saying it’s a different type of relationship (and different does not mean wrong, contrary to popular opinion)
You keep alluding to “your beliefs”, but don’t ever come out and clarify them. I feel like we’re all going in circles simply because the target keeps changing. Why not just post your actual beliefs regarding issue so that we can have this debate based on all of the facts?
With that said:
Do you think a legalized homosexual union, with the same benefits as a heterosexual one, is morally okay?
Are you in the “love the sinner, hate the sin” camp?
Do you think homosexuality is a choice?
Do you think a union via a Justice of the Peace should carry the same legal benefits as a union via a religious leader?
Do you have any issues with a union between a 30 year old male and a 13 year old female?
Would you be okay with calling a same sex union a marriage as long as they remained celibate?
If a gay man married a straight woman, would you be okay with calling it a marriage?
You have yet to demonstrate that there is even any such thing as “ying” and “yang” (or to clearly explain what “ying” and “yang” actually are), and thus your positing that these undefined qualities are somehow lacking in same-sex unions is unfounded and irrelevant.
). Look at statistics as to weight, height, occupation, test scores. These are very basic differences that I can’t see anyone ignoring or dismissing.