Okay, I guess I misread you on that one - I thought (and, apparently, so did Jack) that you were equating your position on SSM with his, when in fact they are, as he pointed out, miles apart.
Yeah, that’s all I was referring to with the “snark bubble” comment. As a connoisseur of good snark, I felt it incumbent upon me to point out that your snark didn’t make much sense.
Just out of curiosity, can you expand on this a bit. What period are you talking about? Is it still that way in your mind? If not, when did it change?
Also, for the period that you think they were treated as property, do you think they were treated identical to slaves? If not, what would you say were the differences?
I quibble with your “make much sense”, but I was a little loose with my reading which does fairly strip my reply of points. I commend you on being a staunch Defender of The Snark.
Well, the U.S. has enshrined the concept of equal treatment under the law, though it’s taken them quite some time to put it into practice. There was a time when blacks were subject to different laws than whites, there was a time when women were subject to different laws then men, and now the issue is whether or not homosexuals will be subject to different laws than heterosexuals.
Beats me why anyone would want to treat his fellow citizens to unequal treatment without a durn good reason, but what can I say - I like justice and liberty.
We already have a topic that we both have an interest in: SSM and its relation to inter-racial marriage. Feel free to continue, as I’m very curious as to what some of your answers might be. Why in the world would we continue on a different topic? The Black Sox Scandal? The pros and cons of Tivo? The whereabouts of Amelia Earhart’s plane?
And if you took my comment regarding skin thickness to bit pit-like, I apologize, as it was not my intent. The fact is that Miller’s comment to you was mild and it would probably be best to take those comments for what their worth and move on.
I think SSM should be legal. I just don’t think bullshit arguments do anything to promote it.
You’re not “still” making that claim. That’s the first time you made it. You’re all over the map with what you are claiming, making easy pickings for people who do think SSM should be illegal.
My main issue was that you made the claim that the Federal government never defined marriage between races as verboten.
Now where they did not, as that is not a Federal level law, they did decide that such laws were legal.
As for the evangelical christian view of why they oppose gay marriage I am not all over the board, just falling for thread drift.
In Biblical based marriage the woman is property, for some who hold those views it is very difficult to think of a relationship outside of one where the female subjugates to the male is still the norm.
E.G. from Mark Driscoll’s own mouth.
At least in my area of the world, these are the people who are putting money behind the fight against SSM, a very very real fight as there is a bill in front of my state legislature right now.
If you were a woman at the time of the Civil war it was likely that
You could not file for divorce from your husband for the same reasons he could
If he did leave you had no rights to your kids and or to any property.
If your husband died you also did not have rights to the children or property in many states, in others the control of both would be handed over to a male relative.
You could not own property in many states, nor could you vote.
Your money was your husbands, but not the other way around.
You had no recourse if there was spousal rape, even if you were separated.
You could be beaten with no recourse, and it was not grounds for divorce.
This all changed with first wave feminism, no it was not as ugly as pure slavery but I never made that claim, it does reduce a woman’s roll to that of chattel, personal property of the husband.
Even so, not being able to own property, or control it, or vote, is a far cry from chattel slavery. and of course, doesn’t change the fact that inter-racial marriage and SSM were/are disapproved of for different reasons.
This is why I said in some states, these are all state level laws, some did not allow women to own or inherit property until the 1890s.
If you had clicked through on your own cite to this URL
So? Nothing I said put different words in your mouth. Now, maybe we can get back to the issue: that inter-racial marriage and SSM were/are objected to on different grounds?
Do you now see now the reason people were against inter-racial marriage is not the same reason as to why people might be against SSM now? And that bringing up the former when discussing the latter is a conflation of the issues and a cheap appeal to emotion? Not to mention insulting to those who suffered through slavery?
I don’t think the reasons are exactly the same, but there is more commonality than not. Both are based on a non-scientific understanding of humans and human sexuality and an attempt to impose that misunderstanding on others. Certainly some who opposed interracial marriage did so on religious and not just cultural grounds. Both groups thought, incorrectly, that it would be bad for society. And both groups fought against a change in society that was inevitably going to happen.
While I can see overlap, the hearts of the reasons are worlds apart. Blacks were viewed to be inferior beings. The notion of inter-racial marriage was, at its worst, almost akin to bestiality. Blacks were viewed as being less than men an women. That is what was made the U.S. version of slavery even worse than the normal version, in which anyone could wind up a slave to a victor. Gays, on the other hand, do not suffer that same deficit. Certainly not in degree now in the eyes of the majority who oppose SSM.
Assumes evidence not available, as I know of no SSM opponent who believes that the degradation of society they fear will happen inside a few generations.
We’ll see. If if it happens, we’ll see how long it lasts before society swings the pendulum back the other way. As I’m sure has been done scores of times by past civilizations.