Purpose of marriage is to fascilitate the creation of families between loving individuals and provide stable households for children. You are being very disengenuous imo and it's obvious what my counterpoint is to your statement.Originally Posted by rvg
Look at the statistics of children with 2, 1 and 0 parents. That's all the merit you need. Let them be properly married, so we can get these kids in proper families and improve their lives.Then come the emotional appeals.... I'd love to see people argue homosexual marriage on the merits instead of resorting to racial comparisons.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Nonsense. Marriage does not necessitate family and vice versa. It's an ages old tradition deeply intertwined with the world's major religions. The ceremonial part of the life partnership contract between a man and a woman. Civil unions would grant them all the practical aspects of family creation, but they instead seek to defile traditional marriage. This is no longer an issue of rights.
"And if the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war." - William Tecumseh Sherman
“The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.” - Warren Buffett
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Read the thread. I've been more than willing to argue gay marriage on the merits. When someone claims gay people are 'in a pissing match with the general public', though, there really isn't any intellectual path forward. You just have to point out the idiocy and move on.Then come the emotional appeals.... I'd love to see people argue homosexual marriage on the merits instead of resorting to racial comparisons.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
This debate is over. Marriage-like benefits for everyone, your choice of who you share your benefits with and why. Problem solved. Marriage is a religious institution and has no place in government, but we'd all like to be able to leave our house and social security to someone who we care about for one reason or another without it being taxed or void, so win win. I'm pretty sure that most of us can agree to this.
Marriage will be better for it
Last edited by ICantSpellDawg; 02-10-2012 at 00:07.
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-Eric "George Orwell" Blair
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
(Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
"Defile" ahhh now I am meeting the real rvg!
Marriage stopped falling within the sphere of religion when the religious allowed government benefits to be conferred upon married couples. Now you and Dawg want it back solely in the religious sphere once you guys started becoming the losers in our democracy. Well guess what, deal with it. I spit on your sacred idea of marriage.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Do you guys think we should rename Christmas too? The federal holiday I mean. Because it isn't being celebrated in the Christian way by many people who are still calling it Christmas.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
This isn't over, you know. The SCOTUS hasn't expressed an opinion on this issue yet. So I might just yet get the last laugh.... Now you and Dawg want it back solely in the religious sphere once you guys started becoming the losers in our democracy. Well guess what, deal with it. I spit on your sacred idea of marriage ...
Too late, it's already been done. It's Holiday Season, mkay? Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings and all that jazz. "Christmas" nowadays is just an empty word that can be safely replaced with "BUY! BUY! BUY!".
"And if the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war." - William Tecumseh Sherman
“The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.” - Warren Buffett
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
But do you want them to change the official name of it? Should it be officially X-mas? That would be the equivalent of changing "marriage" to "civil union". Or I guess Christians could call it Christmas but everyone else isn't allowed to.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
That's the thing. Once the idea behind it is hollowed out it no longer matters what it's called. It's a holiday, yes, but there's nothing 'holy' about it anymore.
"And if the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war." - William Tecumseh Sherman
“The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.” - Warren Buffett
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
No good. X-mas has Christian religious connections. You'd need a properly secular name, like Winter Shopping Season. Or maybe you could co-opt Yule, since Norse paganism isn't so much of a thing these days.
Ajax
Last edited by ajaxfetish; 02-10-2012 at 06:46.
"I do not yet know how chivalry will fare in these calamitous times of ours." --- Don Quixote
"I have no words, my voice is in my sword." --- Shakespeare
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." --- Jack Handey
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Last edited by Strike For The South; 02-10-2012 at 10:11.
There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
When you can't win an argument, change the subject.
A nice summary of the logical barrenness of gay marriage opponents:
[A]t every turn Judge Vaughn Walker, who presided over the trial, expressed frustration at the fact that the opponents of gay marriage either had no case or couldn’t be bothered to make one. Arguing for the gay marriage ban, seasoned attorney Charles Cooper called only two witnesses (the plaintiffs called 17), one of whom was not deemed qualified to testify as an expert. As Cooper finally explained in his closing argument, "Your honor, you don't have to have evidence for this. … You only need to go back to your chambers and pull down any dictionary or book that defines marriage," Cooper told the judge. "You won't find it had anything to do with homosexuality."
This defense satisfied almost no one. Ted Olson, the plaintiff’s attorney, was absolutely flummoxed by Cooper’s claim that he had no burden to do anything beside assert the immutability of traditional marriage. In his closing argument, a perplexed Olson replied, “You can't take away the rights of tens of thousands of persons and come in here and say 'I don't know' and 'I don't have to prove anything.' ” [...]
Perhaps, as many speculated at the time, it reflected the deeper reality that there was no factual or empirical case to be made: The evidence, the data, and the experts overwhelming agree that gay marriage does not harm children. And that leaves opponents of gay marriage to argue a tautology: Gay marriage is wrong because it’s wrong. [...]
At the podium, Cooper’s answer was more or less a Zen koan: “Your honor, you’re left with a word, but a word that essentially is the institution,” said Cooper. “If you redefine the word, you change the institution. You cannot separate the two.” [...]
That is not legal argument or empirical evidence. It is the death rattle of a movement that has no legal argument or empirical evidence. Nobody disputes the fact that Americans opposed to gay marriage believe passionately in their ideas and arguments. But that doesn’t necessarily mean those arguments should win in a court.
Last edited by Lemur; 02-10-2012 at 17:52.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
He is right. If this struggle was about rights, we could have found the middle ground in civil unions and everyone would have gotten what they really wanted. It's not about rights, it's about symbolism. The insistence of the homosexual community on "marriage" as opposed to civil unions proves that there's something greater at the stakes here: they are trying to force through the notion that homosexual behavior is morally correct, something that civil unions would not do.
Look, if you're a homosexual who wants to register a relationship, adopt, file joined tax returns and all that, that's all find by me, it's a matter of justice and fairness. If you want all that and you want to call it "marriage", I will do all I can to stop it. That is something that you will not get without a fight. You're entitled to your opinion, I'm entitled to mine, and I am willing to defend my opinion with the same fervor with which you defend yours.
"And if the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war." - William Tecumseh Sherman
“The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.” - Warren Buffett
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Which is not, as the court ruled, a compelling position, not when other people's access to things such as right of attorney, legal visitation, custody, inheritance and so on and so forth are impacted.
There's no one saying you have to like, accept or approve of gays. (At least, no one sane.) Your disapproval and dislike is fine. But denying them the ability to marry* carries real-world consequences which are not symbolic.
As for the institution of marriage, I would suggest that strip clubs, video chat and no-fault divorce are all bigger threats to the institution.
* And yes, we are all familiar with the canard that "they are free to marry someone of the opposite gender," so I don't feel compelled to address this every time I mention it.
Last edited by Lemur; 02-10-2012 at 19:34.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Yes. That is exactly why civil unions are no substitute for marriage.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
I don't think anyone against gay marriage is advocating those. They just see gay marriage as just another blow to the institution of marriage.
Why should those rights only apply in romantic relationships? What if I just have a best friend that I want to have those abilities?
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Demonstrate the harm to marriage, please. Nobody else has been able to without reaching for a tautology. The other things I mentioned do measurable, demonstrable harm to marriages. Gay people shacking up does not.
Non sequitur is non sequitur; it does not follow. Furthermore, what you describe was already kinda-sorta the law of the land in the middle ages, through a process called adelphopoiesis, which was probably (but not necessarily) an early and church-sanctioned form of gay marriage.
For a broader-ranging examination, a sociology prof writes:
[M]arriage throughout history has not been about children. It is a social institution for adults, one that organizes intimate relationships and distributes resources. Essentially, marriage is an institution because it is good for adults and for society; often it's good for children too, but that's not the reason the institution exists.
More importantly, it is an empirical fallacy to impose expectations on individual behavior based on the average outcomes of groups. This is the first thing I teach my students every semester. By definition, most families are not optimal, but society does not allow only optimal families to have children. If it did, only married, Asian, college educated, wealthy, church-attending (but not evangelical), blue-state-residing people would be allowed to procreate. (The fact that stepfathers are more likely to abuse children does not mean that we prohibit men from marrying women have children from prior relationships.)
I initially expected children of same-sex parents, on average, to fare worse than those of opposite-sex parents on some outcomes, if only due to social prejudice, and the likelihood that these children experienced the dissolution of their biological parents' relationship (most children of gay/lesbian parents are products of prior, heterosexual unions).
It has been a pleasant surprise to me, over the past 10 years or so, to find more and more credible research showing no disadvantage for children of same-sex parents (though more and better research is needed).
Last edited by Lemur; 02-10-2012 at 22:38.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
A blow to the institution.
What. A. Joke.
There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
This argument is about what kind of relationships Americans recognize as special and unique enough to receive benefits from government. We do not have consensus on this, but nearly all of us can agree to disagree and stop having the government view specific types of relationships as special. Equality.
I want to exorcise government from everything in America but the basics, creating a devolution of responsibility and power into the hands of the people. This approach does just that. Stop supporting gay marriage, start supporting civil benefits for anyone who wants them, irrespective of number, irrespective of relationship type.
Last edited by ICantSpellDawg; 02-12-2012 at 21:29.
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-Eric "George Orwell" Blair
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
(Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
To borrow Strike's words, what a joke bro. All the religious know that if they can get government out now, they can have their segregation allowed again.
I would be happy with government not getting involved anyway, since there are lots of churches that are more than welcome towards gay marriage. I drive by one such church everyday as I go to uni. But I am too young, and too full of spite to not admit that I would rather see the purity and holyness of your institution of marriage burn before your eyes.
It's a win-win for me.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Good, I was there at one point. Extremism on one end brings you, eventually, to extremism on the other - in most cases.
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-Eric "George Orwell" Blair
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
(Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Why?
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Why not? I did to at one point. When you believe in nothing, it breeds a contemptible bloodlust. This can only be solved by believing in something good and being in sync with natural law.
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-Eric "George Orwell" Blair
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
(Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Because religion in America has done nothing in the past 30 years except repress and cause suffering. Even in this thread, the religious want to declare gays as selfish for wanting to use a term, not for forcing their religion to practice gay marriage (which is not what gay marriage is about), but for using a word legally.
This same movement is currently arguing against Obama's attempt at making sure all women have access to contraceptives, because their moral outrage means more to them than the health of women.
This same movement is why people like Santorum are even talked about in American politics. Religion is a poison in american society.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
You don't know what I believe in.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
The evolution of your opinion in this thread is kind of sad. The reason for governmental recognition of marriage is to promote family creation and social stability. Instead of looking rationally at the issue, including the ever-growing body of research on gay relationships, and slightly altering the institution to recognize contemporary social norms and our national inclination toward equity and inclusion as was done with interracial marriage, you want to burn the house down. It's a fair enough position, but the thought process behind it is... well, again... sad, as it is not based on libertarian principle but prejudice. Yay for consensus, though.
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Some of my friends were raised by grandparents. Social policy should evolve where it needs to evolve, not where one group would like it to evolve. The people who need support are single mothers who have close relationships with their mothers or siblings - lets strengthen that bond - their choice or misfortune. Or unmarried single people who take care of their parents and never really hit it off with someone romantically - we could strengthen them individually. There are people who really don't have sexual or romantic interests. These people could horse trade benefits for lasting, life long support. I don't want the government telling me what is best for my family. Marriage will sink or swim on its own. Whats sad is a relationship that requires Federal and State recognition to be truly legitimate.The evolution of your opinion in this thread is kind of sad. The reason for governmental recognition of marriage is to promote family creation and social stability. Instead of looking rationally at the issue, including the ever-growing body of research on gay relationships, and slightly altering the institution to recognize contemporary social norms and our national inclination toward equity and inclusion as was done with interracial marriage, you want to burn the house down. It's a fair enough position, but the thought process behind it is... well, again... sad, as it is not based on libertarian principle but prejudice. Yay for consensus, though.
Your position is a sad one, Panzer. Gay marriage? This is what you spend your time advocating for? Leave people be to live the lives that they'd like, but don't require society to specifically subsidize relationships which are held to be amoral by a questionable majority. You want equality? work towards it. Gay marriage isn't equality, it's a moral corruption of an already unfair system. Selective "equality" is farce.
I'm tired of governments enacting lobby interest studies which support BS idea this or that to tell people how to live their lives. Who needs them? You've bought into it hook, line and sinker.
Last edited by ICantSpellDawg; 02-13-2012 at 05:01.
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-Eric "George Orwell" Blair
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
(Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Re: Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional
Interesting. Just two pages ago you could be found advocating a slightly different position.
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