# Why should I care about gay marriage?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [February 20, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766 "2014-02-20T02:37:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/61 "2014-02-21T19:10:51Z")
It does if it’s legal language.
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### Author:  [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/62 "2014-02-21T19:12:03Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> You have a remarkable ability to ignore logic. It has nothing to do with ‘equal protection’. The entire gay marriage movement rests on a straw man argument. Either there can be limitations imposed on marriage, or not. How are those to be determined? \*All limitations on marriage that exist in law have no support other than custom. \*If you want to get rid of one part of the ‘system of customs’ (opposite sex) that is an arbitrary move. Why should \*any \*part of the ‘system of customs’ retain any force if people can arbitrarily redefine marriage as no longer being between a man and a woman? Everything falls away. You cannot ‘pick and choose’. What if I want to marry my sister? My dog? My television set? You say that is absurd? How so? It is no more absurd than marrying someone of the same sex.
I’m sure there will be better arguments than this; But you’re BORN a homosexual. You’re not born a polygamist.
Your other examples are just silly.
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### Author:  [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/63 "2014-02-21T19:28:38Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#):
>
> I’m sure there will be better arguments than this; But you’re BORN a homosexual. You’re not born a polygamist.
>
> Your other examples are just silly.
Not a polygamist, no, as no one is born married, but it’s quite possible some people are [born polyamorous.](http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2013/10/16/is_polyamory_a_choice.html)
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> Either there can be limitations imposed on marriage, or not. How are those to be determined?
Concordance with the Constitution is a good start. Unless you support the limitation on interracial marriages?
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/64 "2014-02-21T19:37:11Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> You have a remarkable ability to ignore logic. It has nothing to do with ‘equal protection’. The entire gay marriage movement rests on a straw man argument. Either there can be limitations imposed on marriage, or not. How are those to be determined? \*All limitations on marriage that exist in law have no support other than custom. \*If you want to get rid of one part of the ‘system of customs’ (opposite sex) that is an arbitrary move. Why should \*any \*part of the ‘system of customs’ retain any force if people can arbitrarily redefine marriage as no longer being between a man and a woman? Everything falls away. You cannot ‘pick and choose’. What if I want to marry my sister? My dog? My television set? You say that is absurd? How so? It is no more absurd than marrying someone of the same sex.
Are you for real? Because I’ve only ever seen this argument presented as parody before.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/65 "2014-02-21T19:40:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> People should support civil rights in general, even when they are not personally a member of the group which is benefiting from a specific case. Because all individual civil rights help foster a general atmosphere of civil rights. A society that sees the importance of civil rights for gays and black people and women is also going to see the importance of civil rights for straight white men.
Agreed. We should care because that’s what a social species does.
Someone asking the question “Why should I care about all those other people who aren’t me?” might very well be a sociopath - any explanation or answer we could give would probably not have much effect.
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### Author:  [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/66 "2014-02-21T19:42:54Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> My television set?
I don’t give a shit, go ahead and marry your fucking TV.
Then your TV can get put on your health insurance, it can be your healthcare proxy, visit you in the Hospital when you’re sick. Your TV can inherit your property when you die, without having (and losing) a long legal battle with a family that hated you when you were alive. When filing taxes, you can list yourself as married, of course, since a TV isn’t a person, and doesn’t have a SSN/Tax ID, you don’t get to claim it on your taxes. Any other awesome marital benefits you wish to partake of with your TV?
I know people who would LOVE to have those benefits with their SS partner, if the price is letting you marry a Trinitron, I’m cool with it.
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### Author:  [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/67 "2014-02-21T19:48:50Z")
I can only really speak of my own opinion and reasoning for this issue. On one hand, I’m straight and it’s really no skin off my ass if SSM is legal or not.
Here IS my problem: I am not at all comfortable with laws stating that a group of Americans can’t have the same rights and protections that most other Americans are allowed to have. And I do feel I have a dog in this hunt because I’m a baby boomer and Jewish and grew up closer to what happens when it’s legal and accepted to deny certain rights and protections to selected groups of people. One name I have for it is “Tyranny of the Majority”.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/68 "2014-02-21T20:12:09Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> You have a remarkable ability to ignore logic. It has nothing to do with ‘equal protection’. The entire gay marriage movement rests on a straw man argument.
The entire gay marriage argument rests on the idea that homosexual relationships are just as valuable as heterosexual relationships, and that withholding government recognition of homosexual relationships causes severe hardships to homosexual couples that are not experienced by heterosexual relationships.
What part of that is a strawman?
> [@](#):
>
> Either there can be limitations imposed on marriage, or not. How are those to be determined? \*All limitations on marriage that exist in law have no support other than custom. \* If you want to get rid of one part of the ‘system of customs’ (opposite sex) that is an arbitrary move. Why should \*any \*part of the ‘system of customs’ retain any force if people can arbitrarily redefine marriage as no longer being between a man and a woman?
But it’s not arbitrary. Homosexual relationships are functionally identical to heterosexual relationships. There is no aspect of one, that does not apply to the other. That’s not arbitrary at all, that’s recognizing that two things are the same, and then treating them as such under the law.
> [@](#):
>
> Everything falls away. You cannot ‘pick and choose’. What if I want to marry my sister? My dog? My television set? You say that is absurd? How so? It is no more absurd than marrying someone of the same sex.
Why can’t you pick and choose? The logic that finds gay marriage a social good simply doesn’t apply to those other situations. A dog (far less a television) cannot own property, make medical or legal decisions, or be entrusted in the care and raising of children. These are absurd comparisons, because it is _literally physically impossible_ for half of the couple to enjoy the rights associated with marriage.
Incest is a bit different, in that it does at least involve two humans. But the historical bans against incest are entirely unrelated to the historical bans against homosexuality. There is no concern, for example, about congenital defects caused by gay sex, and no logical reason why relaxing bans against one necessarily means we must relax bans against the other.
> [@](#):
>
> Language does change, but not by court order. Duh.
That boat sailed decades before SSM became a legal issue. People have been introducing their same-sex partners as their wife or husband for, well, pretty much as long as there’s been a visible queer rights movement, really. If I tell you I’m marrying my boyfriend, and you understand that means that I’m making a ceremonial announcement of my intention to spend the rest of my life in a romantic relationship with another man, then the meaning of the word “marriage” has already changed, regardless of whether the law recognizes the relationship or not. The recent trend towards legalization is simply a matter of the law catching up to the language.
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### Author:  [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/69 "2014-02-21T20:21:37Z")
This is my answer to this, and the other ‘morality enforced by law’ issues of our times;
Which of these two is better for us as individuals, and for our society as a whole?
That we should be who we are, free to express ourselves and pursue our own happiness as guaranteed in the preamble to our Constitution?
Or that we should be forced to be who we are not, in order to satisfy those whose morality crumbles in the presence of things they are not?
I know which side of that equation I am on. I am secure in who I am. I am not threatened by that which I am not. True Justice and Equality says that we should accept others as they are, not as someone else would like them to be.
So what does Gay Marriage have to do with me, since I am neither Gay, nor Married? What it has to do with me is Outlawing it being on the wrong side of the equation. The side that fears what is different and wants to stamp it down and make it be as they are.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/70 "2014-02-21T20:29:54Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> People should support civil rights in general, even when they are not personally a member of the group which is benefiting from a specific case. Because all individual civil rights help foster a general atmosphere of civil rights. A society that sees the importance of civil rights for gays and black people and women is also going to see the importance of civil rights for straight white men.
Exactly. I know the discussion has moved on from here, but I wanted to underscore this. Hard to believe that some people can’t see or understand this seemingly simple point, or the implications of NOT feeling this way about issues like this.
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### Author:  [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/71 "2014-02-21T20:30:03Z")
> [@YoungKusher](#):
>
> I’m not sure why some of the posters here are “too good” to merit a newbie with a response, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.
>
> This is an antiquated definition you’re using (based on modern cultural understanding of the term). What has ever stopped people from changing the definition of a word based on modern cultural concepts and usage, or other reasons for that matter?
>
> They recently had to change the definition of the word “literal” to include the usage of emphasizing a point. Prior to that, the definition was that it referred ONLY to something being literally true. I understand this has much smaller consequences than changing the definition of “marriage,” but the point is there.
>
> I’ve never in my life thought that, as part of a marriage, women and children were the literal property of the husband. That’s just ridiculous…
>
> Are you suggesting there be a new term for the union of gay couples?
Because it’s called ‘lying’, that’s why. And I didn’t say that women and children were the ‘property’ of the husband, but rather that it _used to be_ that way.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/72 "2014-02-21T20:36:52Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> You have a remarkable ability to ignore logic. It has nothing to do with ‘equal protection’. The entire gay marriage movement rests on a straw man argument. Either there can be limitations imposed on marriage, or not. How are those to be determined? \*All limitations on marriage that exist in law have no support other than custom. \*If you want to get rid of one part of the ‘system of customs’ (opposite sex) that is an arbitrary move. Why should \*any \*part of the ‘system of customs’ retain any force if people can arbitrarily redefine marriage as no longer being between a man and a woman? Everything falls away. You cannot ‘pick and choose’. What if I want to marry my sister? My dog? My television set? You say that is absurd? How so? It is no more absurd than marrying someone of the same sex.
What a load of horseshit. In your example here, only marrying your sister is analogous because, presumably she is human…just the like the PEOPLE who are wanting the same rights that heterosexuals have taken for granted for centuries. Ironically, there have been periods of time when people DID marry their sister or brother or other close kin, and with the permission even endorsement of whatever church was about to give it, and more importantly the sanction of the society they lived in. Marriage itself is simply a contract between two people and society, and there is zero reason why it can’t be extended between two people of the same sex and society. In the past, society has arbitrarily set limits and custom on who could or couldn’t marry, and those limits…those ARBITRARY limits…have been changed many times. Perhaps you didn’t know that at one time interracial marriage wasn’t sanctioned by many cultures, including our own. Today, those limits seem insane (and fucking stupid), yet they changed and expanded as society changed and expanded. It’s ridiculous for you to sit there and say that now it’s cast in stone because YOU (and some others like you) want it to be that way, as if it’s always been that way. The only one being absurd here is you if you think we don’t all see through such ridiculous antics.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/73 "2014-02-21T20:37:12Z")
What’s called lying, specifically?
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### Author:  [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/74 "2014-02-21T20:37:55Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> And I didn’t say that women and children were the ‘property’ of the husband, but rather that it _used to be_ that way.
Then your point was terribly unclear. Why bring it up?
ISTM if you’re suggesting that:
1. “Marriage was instituted to protect women and children, and furnish grounds for considering them the ‘property’ of the husband. They are ‘his’.”
and
1. This is no longer the case
then you agree that the definition of marriage is essentially arbitrary and changeable.
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### Author:  [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/75 "2014-02-21T20:38:19Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> The entire gay marriage argument rests on the idea that homosexual relationships are just as valuable as heterosexual relationships, and that withholding government recognition of homosexual relationships causes severe hardships to homosexual couples that are not experienced by heterosexual relationships.
>
> What part of that is a strawman?
Because it has nothing to do with ‘value’. This has to do with sex (being male and female), not sexuality. I am not saying that being homosexual is ‘wrong’. I am saying that the nature of marriage is that of a union between males and females.
> [@](#):
>
> But it’s not arbitrary. Homosexual relationships are functionally identical to heterosexual relationships. There is no aspect of one, that does not apply to the other. That’s not arbitrary at all, that’s recognizing that two things are the same, and then treating them as such under the law.
The law does not recognize the existence of any ‘love’ or ‘affectionate relationship’ in marriage. It has nothing to do with that. You can marry someone out of spite. Or hate the person you are married to after a while.
> [@](#):
>
> Why can’t you pick and choose? The logic that finds gay marriage a social good simply doesn’t apply to those other situations. A dog (far less a television) cannot own property, make medical or legal decisions, or be entrusted in the care and raising of children. These are absurd comparisons, because it is _literally physically impossible_ for half of the couple to enjoy the rights associated with marriage. .
Incest is a bit different, in that it does at least involve two humans. But the historical bans against incest are entirely unrelated to the historical bans against homosexuality. There is no concern, for example, about congenital defects caused by gay sex, and no logical reason why relaxing bans against one necessarily means we must relax bans against the other.
[/QUOTE]
Hawaiians and Egyptians married close relatives. Many cultures have had the same practices.
> [@](#):
>
> That boat sailed decades before SSM became a legal issue. People have been introducing their same-sex partners as their wife or husband for, well, pretty much as long as there’s been a visible queer rights movement, really. If I tell you I’m marrying my boyfriend, and you understand that means that I’m making a ceremonial announcement of my intention to spend the rest of my life in a romantic relationship with another man, then the meaning of the word “marriage” has already changed, regardless of whether the law recognizes the relationship or not. The recent trend towards legalization is simply a matter of the law catching up to the language.
Complete nonsense.
You did not address the issue of having more than one spouse, by the way.
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### Author:  [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/76 "2014-02-21T20:39:37Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> What’s called lying, specifically?
Changing the ‘meanings’ of words by dictate.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/77 "2014-02-21T20:39:52Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> You cannot ‘pick and choose’.
Actually you can. I trust that’s the end of this argument now and forever…
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### Author:  [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/78 "2014-02-21T20:41:40Z")
> [@andros](#):
>
> Then your point was terribly unclear. Why bring it up?
>
> ISTM if you’re suggesting that:
>
> 1. “Marriage was instituted to protect women and children, and furnish grounds for considering them the ‘property’ of the husband. They are ‘his’.”
>
> and
>
> 1. This is no longer the case
>
> then you agree that the definition of marriage is essentially arbitrary and changeable.
Huh? Where did you come up with that? I said that the custom of the father ‘giving away’ the bride at the wedding ceremony dates from the time when wives and children were considered ‘property’. The unmarried girl was the ‘property’ of her father to be given away. Marriage benefits women and children far more than husbands. It provides them with certain protections. Alimony, child support, all these things are enforceable after a marriage has been concluded.
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### Author:  [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/79 "2014-02-21T20:45:41Z")
> [@Melchior](#):
>
> Huh? Where did you come up with that? I said that the custom of the father ‘giving away’ the bride at the wedding ceremony dates from the time when wives and children were considered ‘property’. The unmarried girl was the ‘property’ of her father to be given away.
Yeah, got that part. But you agree that women and children are no longer considered property. Which suggests any definition of marriage that relies on that idea is no longer valid.
> [@](#):
>
> Marriage benefits women and children far more than husbands. It provides them with certain protections.
Children, certainly. Please cite that modern secular marriage provides greater benefits to women than men.
.
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### Author:  [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2014, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-care-about-gay-marriage/681766/80 "2014-02-21T20:48:10Z")
> [@andros](#):
>
> Yeah, got that part. But you agree that women and children are no longer considered property. Which suggests any definition of marriage that relies on that idea is no longer valid…
How does that follow? It does not ‘rest on’ that definition. I was talking about the ceremony.
> [@](#):
>
> Children, certainly. Please cite that modern secular marriage provides greater benefits to women than men.
> .
Talk to any divorce lawyer.
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