So for people in New Zealand, Wales and who use the Internet nothing much will have changed right? :hmmm:

Then please explain further.

Then I apologise. It looked hostile to me, but perhaps I was getting excited myself.

Then you include yourself in that statement? Again I apologise. It seemed dismissive to me.

Perhaps. I don't know myself well enough to judge that.

If you mean the one about misinterpreting or over-reacting, then you're welcome. If you meant something within the "Gay Marriage" argument itself, you'll need to explain.

That's your opinion, nothing more. It might very well be wrong.

And yet you are so adamant about it. You claim to have no dog in this hunt, yet you argue as if it's your very life's passion. Me, I don't care about it either, but I do care very much about people's rights.

I've already worked on it. That's why I admit that my reactions may be wrong, and support the rights of those I disagree with.

So why deny them the right to just do so?

But you don't advocate a middle ground. You advocate the restriction of a percieved benefit from a portion of the population, and your basis for doing so seems to be solely morality. What you advocate is not compromise at all.

And "your side"? What exactly is "my side". I've said I find homosexuality distasteful, so it can't be that. The side of advocating equal rights for all?

*Sigh*

What benefit am I restricting? I am in favor of 100% equal rights.

If the term marriage itself is a benefit, than I'm no more restricting a "perceived benefit" than you would be. Heterosexuals perhaps "perceive" that term to mean a man and woman's union as a benefit...

So, either you're saying that the heterosexual's "percieved" benefit isn't actually a benefit and therefore it shouldn't matter to them, or you're saying that it IS a benefit but one that only matters to gays as you are in favor of removing that "benefit" from straights...

The Frau was telling me how they handle marriage in Germany, and I think their system would work well here in the US.

Everyone gets married in a non-religious civil ceremony before a government official. This establishes the legal state of marriage. Then, the couple can go to their church for the religious ceremony of marriage. This establishes the religious/spiritual state of marriage.

Churches are free to establish their own rules and exclude anyone they wish. Also, no one is forced to have a religious ceremony.

The problem we have in the US is that for too long there has been an intermixing the process of legal state of marriage and the religious/spiritual state of marriage.

Let's separate them. Hey separation of church and state. I like how that sounds. :yeah:

The government gets to make the rules concerning the legal state of marriage and the churches get to make the rules concerning the religious/spiritual state of marriage. A win-win situation.

If a church disagrees with the legal state of marriage, they don't have recognize it in their religious state of marriage.

:har::haha::rotfl2:

Comment of the year material there!

And I would argue that there have been, and perhaps still are, societies where commitment to sexual relations and production of children with one partner only is neither required nor expected of either sex. People have sex with whoever they have choose to have sex with, whether one partner or many, and a woman may have the children of one man or many different men and nobody really cares.

Saying that there is a biological reason why one system may be "preferable" to another when it comes to the survival of the species is one thing.

To turn a person into a second-class citizen and deny them the rights and opportunities that another person gets just by virtue of having a penis because of some supposed "biological imperative" that is not an imperative in any meaningful sense to the person being denied those rights, is quite another.

The notion of limiting a woman to one sexual partner has as much to do with the patriarchal imperative of guaranteed paternity as it does anything else. It wasn't about having children, it was about making sure that any child that came along was the legitimate progeny of the husband/owner of the woman who bore it. At a time when it was impossible to prove conclusively who a child's father was by any scientific means, the only way to ensure that the child you passed your property and position on to was actually yours was to control the sexual behavior of the mother.

In a patriarchal society where almost everything of value is passed down through the male line, guarantee of paternity is all-important. When a child comes out of a woman's body no one can deny who the mother is - but paternity is up for grabs unless that woman's body and sexuality and ability to reproduce at all are completely controlled by someone else. Combine this with the reality that women were the de facto property of their husbands (if not actually by law) and therefore not to be used for the pleasure or procreative needs of anyone else (even with their consent) and it's easy to see that the social imperatives behind the enforcement of female monogamy need no biological motivation to reinforce them.

In matrilineal societies, or matrifocal societies (not to be confused with a matriarchal society, where the positions and privileges of the sexes are the true reverse of what they are in a patriarchy*), woman typically have far more freedom to choose one partner or many... not because they're "in charge" but because guarantee of paternity is not a vital issue for that society.


*And AFAIK, no one has ever been able to prove that such a society ever existed, which is why the use of the word "matriarchy" has fallen out of favor with anthropologists and historians... it implies something for which they have as yet found no conclusive evidence.

So, your opposition to gay marriage is the use of the word "marriage"?

The fact that language is an ever evolving thing kind of makes that a less than strong argument. The meanings of words one hundred, two hundred or five hundred years ago are not the meanings we use now. Words from 20 years ago don't always mean the same thing they did then. Words 20 years from now will mean different things.

If the result of civil unions is the same as marriage, why not just call it marriage?

Dude, we have marriage licenses. Than you can pretty much do it however you want. I'm good with that.

...and do union licenses for gays and let them get hitched how they choose.

That is an interesting read. It confirmed what I had already suspected, which is that same-sex marriage is wrong on a level that cannot really be described. Without a rhyme or reason to it, it is simply wrong to some. I can understand that to an extent. But society is always changing and it's time to adapt and let go of the phobias (or whatever it is).

This could be ongoing for some years yet, I suppose. Thanks for the link. Still reading through the half I haven't read yet. :DL

*More Sighing*

No, my opposition is to the fact that gays can't do without the term "marriage". I frankly don't give a damn. But, some people do.

I'll turn your argument right back on you - if language is so irrelevent, than why not just use a different term?

You know what's ridiculous about this: most places in the US would probably allow Civil Unions. Use your own logic to extend the natural evolution of things: Now gays have a foot in the door. Maybe we'll all evolve to just call it marriage. Maybe we won't.

In either case, you're getting the legal rights, which is the most important part of it. And probably in a generation or two, you'd get the term as well. Who knows?

But instead, we have the minority attempting to IMPOSE upon the majority. All or nothing is their stance. It seems that the majority is in favor of nothing.

Compromise leads to progress. All or nothing leads to people entrenching themselves into their beliefs even further.

...and when you're the minority who wants something, it's idiotic to turn down the compromise that gives it to you because you can't stand the conditions, which you argue is meaningless, but the fact that you can't stand that condition shows it's not.

So maybe the term does mean something afterall, which renders your argument moot.

In any case, people have to start somewhere.

No, I got your position, as my analogy pretty clearly shows.

You and I have the right to eat Spam, but not anything else.

Gay men and women also have the right to eat Spam, but not anything else.

Therefore we all have the same right to eat Spam, but not anything else. Equal rights FTW!

The fact that you and I can be perfectly healthy and happy eating nothing but Spam, whereas for the gay man and woman it has the exact opposite effect, is completely irrelevant as far as you're concerned, because people only have the right to be happy and healthy if they can be that way eating nothing but Spam, just like us. The fact that we won't let them eat broccoli, which would contribute to their health and happiness, is beside the point since we would never want to eat broccoli ourselves - yuck! - and have forbidden it to everyone else regardless of whether they want it or not.

It's the same old same old... you can have whatever you want, as long it's what I think you should want, my opinion of which is based solely on what I want for myself. If that's not what you want, you can either make do by pretending to enjoy it anyway or do without.

And OMG if we let them eat broccoli we'll have to admit that it exists and that some people actually survive on it, and don't need Spam at all! This would completely invalidate our preference for Spam! And then they'll probably start demanding that we eat broccoli and pretend to like it or else go hungry! That would be wrong, except of course when we do the exact same thing to them.

So, yeah, I think I pretty much got it. :up:

But the "right" to marriage is only for people who believe the 'Correct' way?

You say they can marry someone else, but not whom they love. How is that not deying the same benefit.

I used the word "benefit" because in our society marriage is portrayed as a benefit to those who partake in it. If it's not then why deny it to someone based on their orientation?

But the real question here is the law as voted on and the judge's action. Is marriage an innate right? Insomuch as the freedom to do what we want is an innate right, then yes.

If it's not an innate right, then what is it? A social contract? Then to what end?

Is it an official acknowledgement of a love relationship?

What is the purpose of stating that it is only between a man and a woman, except the express reason of saying to homosexuals "See, you aren't allowed to do this"?

To that end the law is a nose-thumb to a segment of society, base solely on morality. In that it's wrong.

:haha:

You are baaaaaad.

I know because the sheep pressed charges. :O:

I wasn't rape I tell yea! The sheep was asking for it!

I have witnesses who will flock to my defense...

:03:

Justice is already blind... no need to pull the wool over her eyes.

Anyway, the DA has already rammed home his case with the jury and is shepherding them towards your inevitable conviction.

In other words, ewe haven't got a chance.

I feel like we're going in cricles here. What imposition is it upon heterosexual married couples to let gays marry their chosen partner? As Steve said, it neither picks our pocket nor breaks our leg.

I'd say imposing conditions or differentiations (namely calling them "civil unions" instead of "marriages") upon a class of citizen based solely upon some trait or characteristic (in this case homosexuality) is insulting and discriminatory and implies inferiority. There's no compromise to be had - they just want the right to marry someone they're romantically attached to and have it be called a marriage - the same as any heterosexual couple.

I guess I'm going to have to go on the lamb... :O:

It is what it is. What's the harm in calling it what it is?

See my post. Call it whatever you want. But you seem to be hanging onto the word "marriage" for some reason. I'm just wondering why. It's not like the meaning or concept has been constant throughout history. Why cling to the word?

No, it just puts a big sharp pin in the balloon of imagined superiority over those people by treating them the same as us even though they're not "normal," i.e., different from us in ways that might make us uncomfortable and threaten all our longstanding and beloved stereotypes about sex, gender, love, and human interaction.

In other words, they'll be allowed to eat broccoli, which will make our preference for Spam seem like the random result of factors which nobody really understands instead of clear and inarguable evidence of our higher moral natures.

But do we have to let them call it "eating" broccoli? Can't we make them call it "ingesting" or "consuming" instead? "Eating" is our word.