I don’t have much time right now, but this one really isn’t that difficult. A simple analogy:
Scenario A: Every baseball player who holds a starting position on a pro team is inducted into The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
Scenario B: As it is today, only a very small number of players are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Which Hall of Fame scenario do you thing is more meaningful? More “special”?
So, do you now see how expanding the definition of who is included in a particular set reduces the specialness of that set? If we cannot agree on this basic logic there really isn’t any point to any further discussion.
This analogy would work better if it took any relevant qualification whatsoever to enter into a legal marriage now. I won’t bore you with all the examples of thoroughly unqualified people who enter into legal marriage; I’m sure you’re aware of them. This isn’t a Relationship Hall of Fame we’re talking about here.
So unless you can explain why being among the best ballplayers ever is like walking down to the clerk of court’s office, or unless you can explain why gay people automatically are worse at relationships than straight people, or unless you can find another way to defend this analogy, you need to abandon it. Which gets us back to the question: Why is marriage made less special if homosexuals engage in it?
Your country club only allows WASPs, if they start letting in Jews and Catholics, what’s the fucking point of joining?
Isn’t that a little closer to what you’re arguing. Because you don’t want people you think are less than you to be allowed into your club?
Also, wouldn’t, by your absurd standards, marriage be made more special, if you outlawed interracial marriages and marriages for the blind and elderly? Think how special it would be then!
To me, a much more reasonable analogy would be: Say that the HoF only allows in right-handed players. One day they decide actually left-handed players can be just as good at baseball as right-handed players. Hey, how about we let them into the Hall, too! And then they do, and left-handed kids grow up thinking that they can be respected enough to get into the Hall and don’t feel that just because they are a minority of the population that they don’t deserve recognition.
Two proposals, magellan, to compare to your position. BOth of these would do a better job of preserving marriage as an institution of family, IMO:
An adult may apply for a maximum of one marriage license every ten years. This would serve to cut down on frivolous marriages.
The marriage of a couple who is not legally responsible for caring for a child within five years of the wedding, through birth or adoption, is declared null and void.
Would you be willing to give a higher priority to both (or either) of these proposals than you do to resisting same-sex marriage? If not, why not? I think they target your claimed objections much more closely than does an objection to same-sex marriage.
(edit: FWIW, I think they’re both lousy proposals–but that’s because I think magellan’s proposed aims for marriage are pretty lousy).
Here’s an even better analogy: Suppose the HoF only lets in heterosexual baseball players. Then one day they realize that homosexual baseball players can be just as good as heterosexual baseball players!
I really hope you can come up with a better analogy when you return. (Actually, I would hope that you could actually come up with an explanation that does not sound like Lobohan’s country club explanation.)
By the rules that you apparently prefer, everyone in the entire world can already get married. Your “solution” merely prevents a tiny minority from marrying each other. What is “special” about an act in which everyone can already engage, (provided they choose a partner from among the overwhelming majority of people instead of the tiny minority who actually appeal to them)?
You are asking too much of the analogy. It was offered to make one point, i.e., that the more inclusive you make an identified set the less unique/special that set becomes. That’s it. I intentionally made it simplistic, trying to abstract one particular point.
This analogy goes to the specialness of sets generally, but it seems that people are too emotional to be able to focus on the one (sub)point being made. One should be able to agree with my analogy on a particular and not think that that agreement in any way indicates agreement with my position on the issue of SSM.
Okay, but as I said, it still fails, because marriage, unlike membership in the Hall of Fame, doesn’t derive its value from its scarcity (what you seem to be calling “special”). That single point you’re trying to extract is therefore irrelevant to the case at hand.
Your analogy works better under similar circumstances–say, right to eat at a restaurant. Sure, when only white people could eat at a restaurant, the set of people eating at a restaurant was more “special” in the sense you’re using the word “special”–but the food wasn’t any better.
So I guess we need to alter the question. Why is marriage less “special”–in any relevant sense–if gay people can do it?
Well, feel free to make the next analogy complicated. We can take it.
But marriage isn’t special, at least in the way you’re implying. The “specialness” you’re describing can be felt by a homosexual couple as strongly as a heterosexual one (and even then, there are hetero couples who get married capriciously or for economic advantage), so you’re asking us to have regard for a quality of specialness that is so hopelessly ethereal that it can’t even be defined, let alone its quantity measured to see if gay marriage will cause a decrease.
By your argument, any couple on Earth could declare that their marriage is so incredibly awesomely special that any other marriage allowed to exist corrodes that specialness. Is it true? Can they prove it? Can anyone prove to them that it’s not true? It’s unfalsifiable, is it not? Is an unfalsifiable concept a good basis for law?
Are Canadian hetero marriages less special now than they were before 2005? If so, could you be so kind as to explain how, and what effects, if any, this loss of specialness will cause?
Anyone can feel free to quote or rephrase this for magellen’s benefit on my behalf, with or without attribution.
To be fair, that’s not at all what he’s saying. He’s saying “PENIS IN VAGINA=SPECIAL; PENIS IN VAGINA ALONGSIDE EVERYTHING ELSE=NOT SPECIAL”. According to his definition of “special,” he’s right–it’s just a meaningless and irrelevant definition of special.
So, as was mentioned earlier, the “specialness” of marriage was damaged when anti-miscegenation laws were eliminated. Right? If that’s the case, then “special” is not a desirable attribute.
Yes. Equality of all people under the law is both a universal human right and a bedrock Constitutional principle in the United States. To oppose it is morally unacceptable and reflects on your character. This is not a debatable issue. (To oppose equality using an insane analogy about baseball is not necessarily worse than opposing it for any other reason, but it still a failing on your part).
Here’s an analogy for you: we don’t determine whether people are racist by listing all the racist beliefs they don’t have.