The "call it anything but marriage" argument reminds me of the separate but equal doctrine used to justify racial segregation.
If the bond between your parents (or anyone else for that matter), is really special, then nothing anyone else does is going to change that unique and special bond in any way shape or form. That is like saying your Dad would suddenly stop loving your mom because a gay couple got married in a different state.
By that logic I should go wake up SP and tell her I felt a disturbance in the force and now that I have become aware of gay marriage occurring in Connecticut that our vows are meaningless.
Seriously if you are OK with marriage equivalents and civil unions, why quibble about the semantics of the word "marriage"? It makes no difference whatsoever what they call it.
If the people spending millions of dollars on this really just want to defend the sanctity of marriage why not pass a bill that "Establishes rights for Same-sex couples to engage in marriage-like unions"
They could even draft the proposal to make the name of the new legal status "not-a-marriage" just to make the difference abundantly clear.
The concerned citizens protect their monopoly on the use of the word marriage, and gay couples get the same civil rights as the rest of the population. Everyone would be happy right?
Instead proposition 8 was worded, "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry."
It sounds like the real focus is not on protecting the sanctity of anything, so much as it is concerned with making sure a particular group is has their rights "Eliminated".
Once again, a straw man out of you. I never said that gay marriage would cause a disturbance of love. In fact, I clearly stated they were independent, refuting the guy in the video. But you come in and say, "Yeah because gays can marry it means your Dad loves your Mom less" argument, which is a straw man. Proponents of gay marriage LOVE to connect love and marriage because then they can argue that marriage is love and you're denying people LOVE if you deny them marriage. But you're not. You're just denying them status quo acceptance of a major iconic religious based contract.
What I actually said was that it changes the perception of the contract between married people to others and possibly to the married folks themselves. That is what I said.
I also didn't say call it anything but marriage. I said, develop your own form of civil union, it doesn't even have to be marriage like.
The basis of my point is that gays want to be accepted and be like everyone else, and they see marriage, as in the literal marriage certificate etc, as a way of finding equality and acceptance. However, it isn't going to give them what they want. To find acceptance you need time and pressure to change a people. In this world of instant gratification they're barging into something that is pissing a lot of folks off.
You can related it all you want to race issues of the 60s, which is a default knee jerk reaction of all liberal rightists when confronted with resistance, however the two have some very different qualities about them. One is a denial of basic human rights and legal grounding. Its people being quashed simply for being. The other is something that a is a choice (it is a choice to decide to try and marry), and there are already legal alternatives to marriage in many places. They also have the choice of pursuing an alternative to marriage. They also already have the right to basic human individual equity. They've been denied acceptance into an institution founded on religious doctrine.
A lot of people try to related this also to the interracial marriage bans of the past. I think thats a much stronger argument that you should have used instead of the separate but equal one. However, race is clearly handled in many religions and the teachings of equality prevail. The religious works aren't so concrete on homosexuality.
Accepting gay civil union laws seem to pass polls in landslides. Gay marriage bans seem to pass even in highly liberal/gay states.
See a trend here?
I can see where you are coming from though.
1. You hate religious institution so you'll attack and side with damn near anything against it. 2. You love/respect homosexual friends and want them to have what they want.
However, friendship, wants, and hatred, don't go so far in contract law. And thats what we're talking about here. Altering the basis of a contract.
Whether their desire for marriage it is based on/driven by a need of love, lust, tax breaks, or just an official piece of paper is irrelevant; this particular group is being discriminated against, and it is wrong.
You say you would rather have them develop their own unique and special/beautiful/unique thing instead of pursuing marriage,but that exact set of rights is being denied to them. That is discrimination.
This discrimination is based (in part) on the presumption that the traditional heterosexual civil unions we commonly call marriage are somehow better/special/more unique than anything these homos can come up with so they cannot have it because they will somehow dirty it up or dilute it for everyone else.
That is complete bullshit, because it is not like marriage is some currency/commodity with a finite supply. Printing more marriage certificates is not going to cause inflation and reduce its market value.
Which is why it is nonsense to claim that one couples' marriage (or civil union or whatever) has any effect whatsoever on the intrinsic value/sanctity/bond of the marriage of another couple, heterosexual or otherwise.
Since it cannot effect the actual value, you must be speaking to the perception of value.
If your perception of its value is based on keeping it exclusive to just your in-group, then develop your own religious tradition and with special requirements and keep it all to yourself. Since most religious groups already do that, why should they care if yet another group of people is doing it the wrong way?
Just the fact that we are talking about same sex couples makes it distinctly different from your romanticized ideal of traditional marriage. It is already different, it is already their own separate form of civil union.
Allowing same sex couples to marry in no way limits your ability to follow whatever long held sacred tradition you want to follow for your future ceremony, you can still exchange rings, whirl chickens over your head, crush glasses under foot, tie yourselves together and drink each others blood in all the same crazy irrational ways you did before and be comforted by the belief that your people are the only ones who do it right.
You and your ilk obviously aren't going to ever see eye to eye with me on this issue. I tried to make my point and you're unable to understand it because you seem to not be able to grasp how perception of value can affect actual value.
In our generations of PC, instant gratification, and self loathing crusades for righteous, many sacred institutions are going to change and I guess this is just going to be another victim of it.
People like my parents, grandparents, and many others that have gone before homosexual marriage arose are going to be insulted and disgusted by their PERCEPTION of loss of value of their marriage vows. However, who cares about them. Their just stupid and can't think "correctly". The gays need to feel equal and be accepted by everyone right?
I'm going to stop arguing with you on this now and let it die. I think you're wrong, you think I'm wrong.
Incidentally, I do not hate all religious institutions, just the ones that use their tax-exempt religious status to influence politics by spending millions of dollars to promote hatred and discrimination.
In Iran for example, it is illegal to execute a virgin.
But sometimes they find a girl who just really needs killin', so in order to get around this little problem they appoint someone to marry the girl and rape her, so that they can kill her properly. This is all right and proper because they have always done it that way.
"If the bond between your parents (or anyone else for that matter), is really special, then nothing anyone else does is going to change that unique and special bond in any way shape or form. That is like saying your Dad would suddenly stop loving your mom because a gay couple got married in a different state."
Emphasis mine. As in, it DOES NOT (and should not) affect the love and marriage of your parents. Just because other people get married (gay or not), that does not affect the bond that your parents share. That bond is special in and of itself.
Also, as I've said before, churches can refuse to marry ANYONE for ANY reason at all. Proponents of gay marriage are just trying to make it legal to get married at ALL, not force the idea of marrying in a church. For instance, people have the option of marrying in a church or not. Heterosexual couples can have civil unions (marriage by Justice of the Peace, for example) and it is still considered legal. There are also Covenant Marriages here.
Nico, what it does is affects the perception of that bond. Perception affects realized value.
Love is NOT AN ISSUE. I don't know how many times I need to say this.
What it does affect is a contract between two people that meant something very specific has now changed. And those two people don't like the new definition of that contract.
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If the bond between your parents (or anyone else for that matter), is really special, then nothing anyone else does is going to change that unique and special bond in any way shape or form. That is like saying your Dad would suddenly stop loving your mom because a gay couple got married in a different state.
By that logic I should go wake up SP and tell her I felt a disturbance in the force and now that I have become aware of gay marriage occurring in Connecticut that our vows are meaningless.
Seriously if you are OK with marriage equivalents and civil unions, why quibble about the semantics of the word "marriage"? It makes no difference whatsoever what they call it.
If the people spending millions of dollars on this really just want to defend the sanctity of marriage why not pass a bill that "Establishes rights for Same-sex couples to engage in marriage-like unions"
They could even draft the proposal to make the name of the new legal status "not-a-marriage" just to make the difference abundantly clear.
The concerned citizens protect their monopoly on the use of the word marriage, and gay couples get the same civil rights as the rest of the population. Everyone would be happy right?
Instead proposition 8 was worded, "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry."
It sounds like the real focus is not on protecting the sanctity of anything, so much as it is concerned with making sure a particular group is has their rights "Eliminated".
For further reading please see:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-tradition.html
Reply
What I actually said was that it changes the perception of the contract between married people to others and possibly to the married folks themselves. That is what I said.
I also didn't say call it anything but marriage. I said, develop your own form of civil union, it doesn't even have to be marriage like.
The basis of my point is that gays want to be accepted and be like everyone else, and they see marriage, as in the literal marriage certificate etc, as a way of finding equality and acceptance. However, it isn't going to give them what they want. To find acceptance you need time and pressure to change a people. In this world of instant gratification they're barging into something that is pissing a lot of folks off.
You can related it all you want to race issues of the 60s, which is a default knee jerk reaction of all liberal rightists when confronted with resistance, however the two have some very different qualities about them. One is a denial of basic human rights and legal grounding. Its people being quashed simply for being. The other is something that a is a choice (it is a choice to decide to try and marry), and there are already legal alternatives to marriage in many places. They also have the choice of pursuing an alternative to marriage. They also already have the right to basic human individual equity. They've been denied acceptance into an institution founded on religious doctrine.
A lot of people try to related this also to the interracial marriage bans of the past. I think thats a much stronger argument that you should have used instead of the separate but equal one. However, race is clearly handled in many religions and the teachings of equality prevail. The religious works aren't so concrete on homosexuality.
Accepting gay civil union laws seem to pass polls in landslides.
Gay marriage bans seem to pass even in highly liberal/gay states.
See a trend here?
I can see where you are coming from though.
1. You hate religious institution so you'll attack and side with damn near anything against it.
2. You love/respect homosexual friends and want them to have what they want.
However, friendship, wants, and hatred, don't go so far in contract law. And thats what we're talking about here. Altering the basis of a contract.
Reply
You say you would rather have them develop their own unique and special/beautiful/unique thing instead of pursuing marriage,but that exact set of rights is being denied to them. That is discrimination.
This discrimination is based (in part) on the presumption that the traditional heterosexual civil unions we commonly call marriage are somehow better/special/more unique than anything these homos can come up with so they cannot have it because they will somehow dirty it up or dilute it for everyone else.
That is complete bullshit, because it is not like marriage is some currency/commodity with a finite supply. Printing more marriage certificates is not going to cause inflation and reduce its market value.
Which is why it is nonsense to claim that one couples' marriage (or civil union or whatever) has any effect whatsoever on the intrinsic value/sanctity/bond of the marriage of another couple, heterosexual or otherwise.
Since it cannot effect the actual value, you must be speaking to the perception of value.
If your perception of its value is based on keeping it exclusive to just your in-group, then develop your own religious tradition and with special requirements and keep it all to yourself. Since most religious groups already do that, why should they care if yet another group of people is doing it the wrong way?
Just the fact that we are talking about same sex couples makes it distinctly different from your romanticized ideal of traditional marriage. It is already different, it is already their own separate form of civil union.
Allowing same sex couples to marry in no way limits your ability to follow whatever long held sacred tradition you want to follow for your future ceremony, you can still exchange rings, whirl chickens over your head, crush glasses under foot, tie yourselves together and drink each others blood in all the same crazy irrational ways you did before and be comforted by the belief that your people are the only ones who do it right.
Reply
In our generations of PC, instant gratification, and self loathing crusades for righteous, many sacred institutions are going to change and I guess this is just going to be another victim of it.
People like my parents, grandparents, and many others that have gone before homosexual marriage arose are going to be insulted and disgusted by their PERCEPTION of loss of value of their marriage vows. However, who cares about them. Their just stupid and can't think "correctly". The gays need to feel equal and be accepted by everyone right?
I'm going to stop arguing with you on this now and let it die. I think you're wrong, you think I'm wrong.
Reply
In Iran for example, it is illegal to execute a virgin.
But sometimes they find a girl who just really needs killin', so in order to get around this little problem they appoint someone to marry the girl and rape her, so that they can kill her properly. This is all right and proper because they have always done it that way.
Yeah traditional marriage for the win!
Reply
Reply
"If the bond between your parents (or anyone else for that matter), is really special, then nothing anyone else does is going to change that unique and special bond in any way shape or form. That is like saying your Dad would suddenly stop loving your mom because a gay couple got married in a different state."
Emphasis mine. As in, it DOES NOT (and should not) affect the love and marriage of your parents. Just because other people get married (gay or not), that does not affect the bond that your parents share. That bond is special in and of itself.
Also, as I've said before, churches can refuse to marry ANYONE for ANY reason at all. Proponents of gay marriage are just trying to make it legal to get married at ALL, not force the idea of marrying in a church. For instance, people have the option of marrying in a church or not. Heterosexual couples can have civil unions (marriage by Justice of the Peace, for example) and it is still considered legal. There are also Covenant Marriages here.
Reply
Love is NOT AN ISSUE. I don't know how many times I need to say this.
What it does affect is a contract between two people that meant something very specific has now changed. And those two people don't like the new definition of that contract.
Reply
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