I am saying no such thing. What we have here is another logical fallacy, the fallacy of the excluded middle, aka false dilemma. We can consider two propositions:
1: Marriage is about sex and nothing else.
2: Marriage is about “love, commitment, faithfullness, etc” and not about sex at all.
The excluded middle here is that both sex and other factors such as love, committment, etc are fundamental aspects of what we think of as “marriage”.
Ummmm…yes. It looks to me like you’ve gotten into an excercise in pure logic divorced from anything concrete. Assuming for the moment that it is true, as you say, that “Male Friend : Female Friend :: Gay Lover : Straight Lover”…what exactly is this supposed to prove, in relation to our debate here?
Maybe I should just let this thread die, already, but…
First, my apologies if I misinterpreted you.
What this is supposed to prove, in relation to our debate here, is that, in the same way we have the same term (friendship) for that particular relationship, whether it’s with someone of the same sex or the opposite, we can have the same term (marriage) for this particular relationship, whether it’s with someone of the same sex or the opposite. This does not mean that marriage and friendships are the same. It doesn’t even in any way negate that some of the dynamics of the friendship might differ on average depending on the genders involved. But the friendships are similar enough that they go by the same term.
Is the purpose of this analogy clear yet?
I argued that the critical features of marriage are fidelity, love, commitment, etc., which are present in both gay and straight marriages; you argued that they shouldn’t go by the same name, because the sex is different. This was the source of my misunderstanding above, for which I apologise.
So, now, you hold (if I am reading you right this time), that because sex is involved in the one relationship but not in the other, that analogy fails to hold. Could you explain why, in terms even an idjot such as myself can comprehend?
Incidentally, I would explain the failure of the nazi to farmer analogy above not on the basis of one being humans, but on the basis that in the one case, beings are being snuffed out because they are considered worthless and the world would be better off without them, whereas in the other, they are being snuffed out to provide food. Different entities, yes, but also different intents and different relationships to the victims. I’d think a better analogy would be to predator-eradication programs, which despite dealing with non-humans, are these days considered not-good. Granted, the fact that humans are involved in one case makes it even more reprehensible, but that’s not the crucial reason I reject PETA’s farming==holocaust argument.
No offense, but I would like to hear how Joe interprets his own analogy. I don’t mind responding to your interpretation of it, though:
It seems to me that here you are simply assuming what you are setting out to prove. We can have the same term for this particular relationship. We can do a lot of things. We could have the just one word for “cat” and “dog” if we collectively decided to. And in some circumstances, it wouldn’t make a difference. But in others it would. So in the interests of preserving clear communication, which is what language ought to be about after all, we keep the two words.
I can make up my own entirely new language, and start speaking to people in it. No one can stop me from doing that. But no one would be able to understand me, either. So in the interests of continuing to make myself understood, I stick with english.
So the question is, with these interests in mind, should we expand the definition marriage. I gave my reason why I thought we should not in my first post. I have yet to see an argument that counteracts it, or an argument for a positive benefit of expanding the definition that would outweigh it.
I want to be sure I am not misinterpreting you here. Are you asking me, seriously, how and why a sexual relationship is different from a non-sexual one? Because I really don’t know if I can explain that, any more than I could explain sex to someone who had never had it before, or sexual desire to someone who had never experienced it. I mean, I could explain the mechanical aspects of sexual intercourse. I could also explain the phenomenon of a rainbow to a blind person, by talking about light refraction and such. But there’s just a level of communication we wouldn’t be able to achieve.
That analogy shows that it is not necessary to invent a new term to describe an equivalent relationship just because it is between people of the same sex.
A male can have a female friend and label the relationship “friendship”.
A male can have a male friend and label the relationship “friendship”.
A male can form a union with a female and label the relationship “marriage”.
A male can form a union with a male that is equivalent with the one formed with a female, and which should be correctly labeled “marriage”.
The whole problem is that the law prevents them from using the word “marriage” in that last case for no particular reason.
But gay couples have all these aspects. They can be committed and loving, and they can have sex. Is the nature of the sex they have so different that it should prevent their relationship from being labeled “marriage”? I mean, heterosexual couples have anal and oral sex, too.
No, he’s not. You were stating that my above analogy does not hold because friendship does not include sex, and marriage does. You have failed to grasp the fact that the sexual and non-sexual relationships were not being compared to each other. Thus, whether or not one relationship involves sex and the other doesn’t is irrelevant.
Here’s what you wrote in your first post:
I countered that, by your very argument, the relationship between to male friends is fundamentally different than the relationship between male and female friends. Thus, if you wish to argue that a new term must be invented for gay unions because the relationship is fundamentally different, then, by the very same argument, you must invent a new term for same-sex friends. If you fail to do so, then you are admitting that your own argument is invalid.
That is what I derived my analogy (which you never seemed to quite understand) from.
To answer that, I am going to quote you from another thread , in which you stated
Now, I am going to ask you this: If the government is going to restrict the right of gay folks to call themselves married, should there not, according to your own broad assumption, be at least some evidence that there would be a positive net benefit in doing so? And if so, what is this benefit? Because, as you yourself point out, it is not up to those whose rights are being restricted (e.g. gun owners in the one case, or gay couples in this one) to prove that they should have those rights; the onus of proof is on those who would restrict rights to prove that there is a benefit to such restriction. And, I might add, that is a very weak definition of ``rights’’; a stricter one would call for not only a net benefit, but an actual conflict with others’ rights, before any can be restricted.
And if you tell me the broad assumption doesn’t hold because I don’t have sex with my rifle, then, well, I’ll roll my eyes so far back in their sockets that I’ll get whiplash.
Ahhh, I think I see the problem here, finally. And it is, largely, my own fault. I must accept the blame. I did indeed write this:
But I assumed that the word “relationship” would be understood to mean “intimate, sexual relationship”. I should not have made that assumption. That is what I meant, though, and I think I had at least a little justification for assuming that it would be understood the way I meant it, as we were in a thread discussing that specific kind of relationship and no other.
I am sorry my mistake caused us to go around in circles the way we did.
Stop right there. I have been very careful, in this thread, to restrict myself to speaking only on matters of language, and not law and government. If you want to know what I think the government should do on this matter, well, if you can quote me from another thread, I can do the same. Here is what I said in this thread
PS to viking: About this:
I was not trying there to define what a “right” is. I was simply putting forward a standard for judging whether or not to create, or keep, restrictive laws. It is necessarily a partial standard, I admit. But I do try to stay narrowly focused in the GD forum, I hate getting off on tangents. Also, I find this particular standard useful in gun control threads. I have posted recently in two such threads here, challenging people to come up with evidence of restrictive gun laws having any actual, practical benefit. No one has taken up my challenge. My hope is that people who are on the fence on this issue, who happen to be reading the thread, will see this and draw the appropriate conclusions.
Ah, I see. That explains why we seem to have been talking past each other
However, on what do you base your assumption that sexual relationships between two members of the same gender are different from sexual relationships between members of opposite genders? So different, in fact, that they require a different name?
Opposite-sex partners can love each other, have a committed relationship, and have sex.
Same-sex partners can love each other, have a committed relationship, and have sex.
Is the type of sex so very important that it should deprive same-sex couples from being married? Even though you would not deny that option to an opposite-sex couple that only had oral and/or anal sex?
I just can’t see how the relationship between same-sex couples is different from a relationship between opposite-sex couples.
As I understand it, it’s not the specific sex act that’s relevant. It’s the fact that men and women are different. But somehow, the fact that men and women are different is only relevant for intimately sexual relationships. I’m confused as to why that is, though.
I base it on the fact that men and women are different, in a way that matters to people in a sexual relationship. Is of paramount importance even, except, again, to that very small minority of us that are perfectly balanced bisexuals. I mean, we have the gender-free word “person”, which is appropriate for use in many circumstances, but not when seeking a mate. There’s no column in the personals for “persons seeking persons”.
If men and women are unique for the purpose of having a sexual relationship…and I think all of us participating in this thread have agreed to this, as we all have a strong preference one way or the other for our own sexual relationships…then can’t we agree that with different combinations of unique ingredients it is desirable to have different names?
Some people love dogs and hate cats. Other people love cats and hate dogs. Except for the small minority which likes both (just play along, here). If dogs and cats are unique for the purpose of having a pet relationship…and I think all of us participating in this thread have agreed to this, as we all have a strong preference one way or the other for our own pet relationships…then can’t we agree that with different combinations of unique ingredients it is desirable to have different names? In other words, can’t we agree that you can’t call both dogs and cats pets?
Your whole argument hinges on the fact that the people who can have a relationship with both men and women are largely in the minority. If true bisexuals were more common, then it’s obvious that you would not have been able to make your argument at all.
So now I ask, does the existence of bisexuals somehow alter the nature of heterosexual or homosexual relationships for other people? If not, then it makes no difference if 99% of the population are bisexual, or 0% are. The differences and similarities between hetero- and homosexual relationships would be identical in both cases.
From this, we must conclude one of the following:[ol][li]There should be different names for both same-sex and opposite-sex relationships even if 100% of the population is perfectly bisexual.[/li]There should be the same name for both same-sex and opposite-sex relationships even if 0% of the population is perfectly bisexual.[/ol]I would say that option 2 makes more sense.
But this is the logic we’ve been refuting by use of various analogies, which you claim don’t hold. You have yet to defend why you think they don’t hold, except that the fact that marriage is an intimate sexual relationship makes everything different. So I’ll try one more here:
Alice wants to marry Bob.
Chris wants to marry Diane.
Alice has no interest in marrying Chris, and Bob has no interest in marrying Diane. Clearly, Alice, Bob, Chris and Diane are all unique for the purpose of having a sexual relationship, so how can we call Alice and Bob’s union the same thing as Chris and Diane’s?
Now I’m sure you’ll agree that the above logic is silly if the reason Alice has no interest in Chris is that he’s a tough-guy biker dude and she likes soft-spoken accountants. But you’re saying the same logic is perfectly valid if the reason Alice has no interest in Chris is that Chris is Christine, and Alice likes, well, men.
Ok, before I reply here, I just want to be sure I am understanding you correctly. This time, you really are comparing pet ownership to marriage. Am I right this time? I want to be sure.
I thought we had a misunderstanding on the purpose of all those analogies. I certainly don’t concede that any of my arguments have been refuted.
No, they are not. All individuals are unique, of course, but for the purposes of having a sexual relationship, Bob is not unique for Alice (assuming she is straight). If Bob were not available to her, for whatever reason…say he died and left her a widow…she could have a relationship with another man. But not with a woman. In this respect, it is Bob’s gender…the male gender…that is unique for Alice.
If Alice meets a really nice soft spoken accountant, who meets every requirement on her list of things she is looking for in a mate, and then some, with the sole exception that she (the accountant) is a woman, then Alice (still assuming she is straight) is not going to have a sexual relationship with her.
Hmmm. “Pet ownership” and “marriage” don’t equate unless you have a chauvinist POV where “my wife” equals “my car” or “my dog” – a possession of the man.
But at rock bottom, what we’re talking about is legal and societal recognition of a relationship – a mutually agreed upon bond between two people.
On the other hand, try this one: the reasons for keeping a pet are varied, but generally that which people get out of keeping pets, they get from keeping a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a hamster. Therefore we can call “pettiage” the relationship between a human being and another mammal which considers itself attached to the human and gives him/her affection and allegiance.
But a small minority of people keep boas and pythons as what they call pets, and claim to have the same feelings towards their snakes, and receive the same affection and allegiance from them, which “normal” people do from their dogs and cats.
Now, this is obviously a perversion – have you seen what Scripture says about snakes? But in a free society, they’re privileged to keep snakes if they want. But it’s clearly not “pettiage” as it’s been traditionally defined – the relationship of a human with another mammal. Therefore, we need to coin a new term for it – a “herpeto-human commensalistic union,” perhaps?
This seems close to the argument that’s being used. Care to work from it?
How can you say that? Have you ever met Alice? Have you discussed the issue with her?
Maybe Alice is a type-A, high-energy, extroverted party-girl, and for her, marriage requires a complementarity between her and a more laid-back, relaxed, down to earth fellow like Bob.
Maybe Chris, on the other hand, is also type-A, high-energy, extroverted, and wants to marry someone who can share his wild party-animal lifestyle.
By your logic, only Alice and Bob can marry, because marriage is all about complementarity of the the people, whereas Chris and Diane can only have a union, because they are too similar and don’t complement each other.
If my husband or my boyfriend were to die I could have another relationship of that sort, yes.
That does not indicate that my partners are interchangeable with other people; I think the idea that people are interchangeable, that there’s nothing important about a particular person, that it doesn’t really matter who those people are so long as they have the right genitalia, is not only wrongheaded and disgusting, but actively harmful to actual relationships. (How many people do you know who spend their dating lives trying to “trade up” and leaving wounded people behind them?)
Neither of my partners is just a penis to me. They are unique, wonderful individuals who would be impossible to “replace” if, gods forbid, I lost either of them.
It doesn’t matter. The qualities of the differences between men and women are not an essential part of marriage. In no traditional marriage vow does it say “I vow to think with the other side of my brain than my partner”, or “I vow to put tab A in slot B”. Nor does legal marriage acknowledge the role of the differences between men and women. It just isn’t the big issue.
Now marriage has traditionally and is legally between a man and a woman. However, the tradition is changeing and some are seeking out to change the legal.
But I don’t see anyone seeking to codify the differences between genders into either traditional or legal marriage. There is no widespread “established gender roles in marriage” movement.
Perhaps not. Perhaps someone else here, who is better than me at understanding analogies, or at least your analogies, can help us out.
Well. Joe Random has disparaged my ability to discern the true meaning of analogies, and perhaps he is right, so I am going to continue to be careful. Are you drawing an analogy between pet-owner relationships, and marriage (or marriage-style) relationships? It certainly seems that way to me, what with your coining of the term “pettiage”. But I do want to be certain.
Ummm…no, of course not. Alice is a hypothetical person. She isn’t real. Why do I have the sudden feeling I’m in the middle of a Dave Barry column…
I never said, or meant, that “marriage is all about complementarity of the the people”. In the first place, marriage has several aspects, so it is not “all about” any one thing. In the second place, I have been arguing that we ought to continue to reserve the use of the word “marriage” to describe relationships that have one particular kind of complementarity, and I have laid out my reasons for why I think that.
So…assuming you are now single, it won’t be an essential matter to you whether a potential future spouse, or lifelong committed intimate partner, is a man or a woman?
Actually, failure to consumate a marriage, ie failure to “put tab A in slot B” as you put it, has traditionally been a grounds for annulment. Also, withholding of sex by one partner in a marriage has traditionally been grounds for the other to sue for divorce. In this recent thread the OP asked how these laws might apply to legal gay marriage. Interestingly, nobody answered it.
I believe these things are still in the current marriage laws, though I don’t know for certain, and anyway I am sure there is some variation among different jurisdictions. Perhaps there is a lawyer specializing in family law hanging around here somewhere who can fill us in on the details.
Well, Polycarp can certainly answer for himself. However, I’ll go ahead and give my interpretation, because this is very similar to an analogy that I made earlier.
To answer your question, no one is comparing owning pets to marriage. Just because an analogy contains both pets and marriage doesn’t mean that they’re being directly compared. What is being compared here is an idea, a concept.
On the one hand, we have a relationship for which we have a name. “Pettiage”, in this particular analogy. On the other hand we have a relationship which we name “marriage”. Now, these two relationships are nothing alike, and no one is suggesting any differently. However, they both have one thing in common. They are relationships, and they each have a traditional meaning.
On the side of “pettiage”, we can see that the traditional meaning involves a fond attachment to another mammal. Now, there exists a small minority who wish to keep snakes as pets. A good number of other pet owners are deathly afraid of snakes. Keeping a snake as a pet is not an option for them. On the snake-person’s side of things, they may have severe animal dander allergies, and so keeping a mammal is not an option for them.
So we have a minority who wish to have a relationship that fails to fit the traditional meaning of the label they wish to give it, and for whom it is not an option to participate in the traditional form of this relationship.
Now, look at the above sentence. Without any other context, can you tell whether I’m talking about “snake pettiage” or “gay marriage”? Or maybe it’s about something else entirely. Therein lies the power of analogy. The above can apply to any type of relationship for which there is a traditional form, and which has a small minority who are unable to participate in that traditional form.
The purpose of the analogy is to construct a generalization, and that I have done. Now I can apply the generalization to specific instance of “relationship” which fits the “shape” of that generalization. Notice that I am not comparing any specific relationship to any other specific relationship. Rather I am comparing multiple specific relationships to the generalization that encompasses them.
Should snake owners be allowed participate in “pettiage” with their snakes? Should homosexuals be allowed to participate in “marriage” with their partners? Because both of those situations can be represented exact same generalization, they must have the same answer. Either you answer “yes” to both, or you answer “no”.
So if you say that gay couples cannot participate in “marriage” because their relationship doesn’t fit the traditional meaning, and because they cannot participate in the tradition form of the “marriage” relationship, then you must also agree that snakes cannot be part of the “pettiage” relationship for the exact same reasons.
To me, it makes less sense to deprive snake owners the ability to participate in “pettiage” than it does to allow homosexuals to participate in “marriage”. Thus, I must conclude that gay marriage is permissible.
We’ve been down this road before. To the snake owner, you could say “So…assuming you are now petless, it won’t be an essential matter to you whether a potential future pet has fur or not?” To which the person will reply, “of course it makes a difference! I’m allergic to pet dander!”
Does that mean that snake owners can’t call their snakes “pets”? Please be aware that I’m not comparing pets to spouses. I’m simply taking your exact line of reasoning and applying it to a situation that is similarly constructed. If your line of reasoning is valid, then it is valid no matter what kind of relationship is under consideration. If applying your line of reasoning to another kind of relationship (one that has the same general form) results in an absurdity, then your line of reasoning is flawed.
Applying your line of reasoning to the relationship called “pettiage” – a relationship which I have shown has the same abstract, general form as “marriage” – results in an absurdity.
Thus I conclude that your line of reasoning is flawed.
Gay people have sex, too, y’know.
What about a heterosexual couple that only participates in either oral or anal sex? Not the likeliest of scenarios, but still within the realm or reason. If they can still be considered married, then the type of sex a couple has is irrelevant when determining whether or not to consider them married.
