You’re confusing reservation with apathy.
Robin and Pat can be married like motherfucks.
I was composing post #40 before seeing post #39. No, I’m not trying to trap you, just figure out why it took you 13 posts to finally get around to:
I seems that you’re not the only one in this thread with reading comprehension problems. But just to ruin your day for a real reason. You and I are both humans on the planet earth in the year 2012. HA! Take that! :rolleyes:
I tried to make it clear in my first post. I mentioned “leave marriages … to who ever wants one.” My entire point is two people being married? Beautiful. But where government is concerned, as a legal matter, for lack of a better term, I dunno, I expect a more sterile (no pun intended) legalistic term to apply to make sure every thing was on an even keel.
I firmly believe, any two people, regardless of gender, should be able to get married if they want to. Or to get wedded, or joined, unioned, schmerfeflerked, or whatever .
Sure… it looks unnecessary to me, but whatever.
Maybe I’m watching too much science fiction.
You’re not talking in Greek, Jack - you’re just suggesting that a change in official terminology is warranted, when (as far as I know) no country that has legalized gay marriage has felt the need to do so, nor can I see why such a need exists.
You’re talking about a country (I’m assuming you’re American) which still requires new citizens to take an oath in which they promise “to renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen” and “to bear true faith and allegiance” to the United States. (And Canada, for example, is no better–their immigrants have to swear or affirm that, among other things, they will “be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors”.) Compared to all that, the mere word “marriage” is as cold as a cash register.
The term has already been changed. The use of the word marriage to describe both heterosexual and homosexual unions has already been accepted in Argentina, Belgium, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden in addition to such countries that even use English, (and are, therefore, not suspect of having any translation issues regarding the word), as South Africa, Netherlands, and that large majority-English-speaking neighbor on our border, Canada. It is also recognized in law in seven of the United States and conveys a clear meaning even in those states where it has not yet been accepted in law.
Same sex marriage or homosexual marriage or some other variant that employs the word “marriage” has already entered the language and requires no special “expansion.” The expansion has already occurred. The phrases convey meaning that is recognized and understood by anyone hearing them. The time to have resisted using the word marriage to identify the familial union of people of the same sex was twenty or thirty years ago. Now it is simply intransigent conventionalism or homophobia.
Plus, historically it has been used to mean other things than “a union between a man and a woman”; polygamy was historically common. And in recent times, it’s changed into a fairly equal arrangement, instead of being something pretty close to a master/slave relationship where the man owned and controlled the woman; that’s a much bigger change to the nature of marriage than just expanding it to same sex couples.
The idea that the 1950s American “nuclear family” cliche is some human universal is ridiculous.
I do so hope you realize that means that I don’t care if two dudes or whatever want to marry each other, correct? If not, then there you go. Some of y’all seriously foam at the mouth.
Now off to the other thread to read the probable bajillion responses directed at me.
Indeed, if we’re talking about redefining marriage, it used to be defined as, “A union between a man and one or more women”.
And at the same time it was defined as, “A union between a man and a girl”.
we don’t really need to discuss this stuff do we? It’s pretty well understood that people of a certain group have all sorts of silly ideas from their books and organization leaders that have no logical foundation. If you believe in their stuff you agree if you don’t you have no reason to anymore than you would to suddenly hate gingers.
Discussion will only waste good celebration time.
Or maybe next time someone tells you that this argument will hijack a thread, you should believe them :).
US History? BULLSHIT! Marriage was a union of a man and a woman OF THE SAME RACE. Every white man was free to marry a white “girl,” and every “colored” man was free to marry a “colored girl.”
Should that have been changed (If you let the whites marry the coloreds, soon men will want to marry men).
One thing I notice about the anti-abortion crowd: When they say “adoption,” they usually mean “adoption by a straight married couple.” A lesbian I know got pregnant via rape and went to a Planned Parenthood to discuss her options. When she decided to keep the child and raise it with her partner, some of the protestors actually told her “You should have the baby and give it to a real family.” Apparently they thought she and her partner were polyester.
Nope. There was never a time when the entire US or the federal government defined it that way.
Let’s see, for my statement to be “bullshit”, or even just wrong, you would have to believe that either every “colored” man is not a man and every “colored” girl is not a girl.
Odd beliefs you have there.
Prior to 1996, the federal government did not define marriage and anti-miscegenation laws were the norm in the majority of the US for the majority of it’s history.
Of course the same people who tend to be the most vocal against gay marriage also consider their wives chattel, as their religion teaches them.
So it is not surprising they would have issues with a man marrying a man, who is the property in such an arrangement?
So what? That doesn’t mean it was the definition of marriage.
:rolleyes:
Nevertheless, that have been times in U.S. history (indeed, for most of its history) where the number of states with anti-miscegenation laws outnumbered the states without, and whether or not an interracial marriage could be legally considered a marriage, the participants were still subject to criminal prosecution. Heck, there were even proposed constitutional amendments.
However marriage was legally defined, a couple could be punished for getting an unacceptable marriage. If there’s a practical difference between banning a type of marriage and punishing those who get that type of marriage and then annulling it, it escapes me.