'Mother,' 'Father' Changing to 'Parent One,' 'Parent Two' on Passport Applications

[Aramike]

I took TDW's little rant as being against gay marriage/gay couples adopting a kid. That's what I was going for there.

Fair enough.

The answer to irrational bigotry and intolerance isn't for the victim to grow thicker skin.

Why not?

If the "irrational bigotry" you're referring to merely is using traditional terms such as "mother" and "father", than again, why not?

Because hate isn't a value.

Disagreement and opposition isn't necessarily hate, either.

And as I've said before, if the majority doesn't want to recognize the worth and value and equality of human beings just because they're gay, then yes, that idea needs to be rammed into their heads.

If by "value" you mean generically human life, I would agree with you. If by "value" you mean one's abilities to perform functions, either by biological imperative or one's ideological leanings, such values SHOULD be questioned.

Not doing so is along the same lines as allowing people with horrible eyesight to fly airplanes in the name of civil rights, which makes no sense.

Civil rights trudges on, no matter how much people kick and scream and wail against it.

Civil rights are indeed important, but they shouldn't fly in the face of pragmatic sensibilities nor preclude discussion of an individual's fitness regarding the ability to engage in society's most important functions. And, being a member of a larger subgroup does, in some ways, define the individual. If those particular definitions are seen as detrimental to certain functions, engagement in those functions should be examined.

[Skybird]

The family (mother, father, children) is under expliciut special protection by the state - so it is ruled black on white in the German constitgution. It is intentionally given a special status, due to the importance of it for the communal wellbeing and future survival.

If now the term family gets watered down and desribes non-families as well, relations that do not have the capoability to contribute to the communal interest by producing new kids and future tax payers paying for the old, then this can be achieved by two ways: the special legal status of families gets destzroiyed, or it gets relativiised by lifting other couple rerlations of homosexual natuzre to the same legal status . Both is what is being done. Which is a breaking of the constitution, in case you have not noted it, becasaue the constitution rules, for good and sane and vital reasons, that families are not to be seen as equal as other social relations, both as being of higher importance. This additionally is also due to the keeping of the interest of the weakest, the children.

Giving homosexuals the same legal status and tax privileges like families, and claiming they are of the same value for the community, is discrimination of singles, colleagues and social friendships. If homosexuals now are treated the same way as hetereosexual couples, although they do not controibute anything more to the community than twio individual persons ´not reproduzcing and not raising a family, then I demand the same legal status and the same tax privileges for people like me: singles.

Which still would be a breaking of the constitution.

You can argue that men and women are not equal as long as women have no penisses and men have no breasts, and you can cry wolf over black snot being white and whites not being black, and that it is not erquality as long as they all are not light brown. But it is absurd. It is as absurd as claiming that it is a thing of euqlaity that hetereo and homo couples must be treated the same, and are of the same benefit for the community. They are not, and it does nothing for a community whether or not to homsexual people live together or not. Couples reproducing and educating chiuldren in our shrinkling and over-aging Wetsenr societies - that is what it is about. And youz cannot argue around the basic design nature has decided for ther bluieprio9nt of the human species. Homosexcualisity is a reality, but it is not the norm, and it is not the way survival mof the species was meant to be acchived by. And in this understanding, homosexuality is not "norm al", and never will be. A homosexual population of any sypecies - dies within two generations. Period. Is that fair or unfair? Honestely said, nature doesn'T ask you for your ideas of fairness. Man is a heterosexual species. That's
how he is meant to be, to live, to survive as a species. Live with it.

A homosexual couple is of no more value to the community than is the single living. So why should the one be given the same special status like families, and the other not? Why should any of the two be given the same status like families/hetero couples, when none of the two do contributes as much to the community, as families do, invests as much in timer and money, and securess the future survival of the community by producing and educating kids??

I am against singles like me being given the same tax status and benfits and the same legal status, like families. And for the same reasons I am strictly against giving homosexual couples these benefits and rewards. I qwould contraqdict myself if I will it for the one, and exlcude it for the other. So I rule it out for both - for the sake of families still being recognised as something special that is more important than singles, and homosexual relations.

[trekchu]

Originally Posted by Skybird

*snip*

Have you somehow been asleep for the last seventy years?

While admittedly giving singles the same tax status as couples is daft, gay couples can procreate if willing to go over a few hurdles.

[Safe-Keeper]

Originally Posted by Skybird

[sigh]

Oh, I dunno, you're actually on-topic now. It's a start.

For the x-thousandth time: a homosexual man cannot replace the role-model of a fem,ale mother, nor is a lesbian women capable to serve as a role model of a male.

So if you have a tomboy or an especially feminime man, they shouldn't be allowed to marry because mommy isn't being a real mommy if she works full-time and takes her kid on motorcycle rides? You have to "serve a role model" to rear a kid now? Poppycock.

And homosexual couples cannot and will not reproduce, their value for the community thus is zero

Disgusting. My aunt and uncle cannot reproduce either, yet they contribute to our society just fine, and my beloved 10-year old cousin would very well still be in an orphanage in China if it wasn't for them. Please think before you post.

they are not capable to biologically contribute to the survial of the tribe, to put it in archaic language.

Then neither are other people who are unable or unwilling to reproduce. We would have to terminate the marriages of a ton of sterile cancer patients if marriages were only to serve as a baby factories for "the tribe". Even then, there's such a thing as artificial insemination and adoption, thus homosexual/lesbian couples can, and do, raise couples together just like straight couples.

That you cannot understand the context in which I see the relativising of the mother-role (some emancipatory activists even still think that every coitus is a demonstration of males subjugating females, and all that nonsenes...), and how ideologic leftist camps try to demonstrate enforced equality between genders by destroying the traditional roles of fathers and mothers so that the gender-component gets ignored, does not automatically mean that you lack of understanding indicates that I have it wrong. Maybe you simply are not capable to see it, or you simply do not wish to see it, for whatever your motives are.

Or maybe I just don't understand what on earth it should have to do with gay marriage.

A gay man has the exact same rights WRT marriage as I do. I could (and did) marry a woman, and a gay guy can marry a woman, too. He can't marry a man, but neither could I. No discrimination.

50 years ago, all white people were free to marry other white people, and black people were free to marry black people.

Add in that "love" in a court ruling, and it begs the question why any "love" can be abridged (why not marry 10 people, or your sister? If the real right is to "marry who you love."). Better to treat it as the non-right it is, and pass a LAW instead of trying to legislate in court which will certainly have unintended consequences.

"Indeed. If we're to let white people marry Negroes, what's next? People will be marrying cows, and children, and sheep! It's a slippery slope, I'm telling you!"

Giving homosexuals the same legal status and tax privileges like families, and claiming they are of the same value for the community, is discrimination of singles, colleagues and social friendships. If homosexuals now are treated the same way as hetereosexual couples, although they do not controibute anything more to the community than twio individual persons ´not reproduzcing and not raising a family, then I demand the same legal status and the same tax privileges for people like me: singles.

Buzzz. Wrong. Singles, collegues and people in "social relationships" can marry each others just like gays can.

You can argue that men and women are not equal as long as women have no penisses and men have no breasts, and you can cry wolf over black snot being white and whites not being black, and that it is not erquality as long as they all are not light brown. But it is absurd.
It is as absurd as claiming that it is a thing of euqlaity that hetereo and homo couples must be treated the same, and are of the same benefit for the community. They are not, and it does nothing for a community whether or not to homsexual people live together or not. Couples reproducing and educating chiuldren in our shrinkling and over-aging Wetsenr societies - that is what it is about.

Again, sterile couples do not reproduce either, yet they're allowed to marry just fine. Heck, sex offenders, spouse-beaters, poverty-stricken, and terminally ill people are allowed to marry. Reproduction or the ability to raise children in an optimal environment has never been a requirement of marriage.

And youz cannot argue around the basic design nature has decided for ther bluieprio9nt of the human species. Homosexcualisity is a reality, but it is not the norm, and it is not the way survival mof the species was meant to be acchived by. Is that fair or unfair? Honestely said, nature doesn'T ask you for your ideas of fairness. Man is a heterosexual species. That's how he is meant to be, to live, to survive as a species. Live with it.

Appeal to nature. Logical fallacy.

A homosexual population of any sypecies - dies within two generations. Period.

Bollocks. Homosexuals can have sex with the otrher gender and reproduce just like we straight people can. Period.

And in this understanding, homosexuality is not "norm al", and never will be.

Appeal to common practice.

[tater]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

50 years ago, all white people were free to marry other white people, and black people were free to marry black people.

It's not at all the same.

This is interesting, and I think a valid POV (note that as I said I am PRO gay unions, just not through the courts, but by law).

The Majority Opinion of the New York Court of Appeals in Hernandez v. Robles (2006) rejected any reliance upon the Loving case as controlling upon the issue of same-sex marriage, holding that:
“ [T]he historical background of Loving is different from the history underlying this case. [...] But the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind. The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. We do not so conclude.

Marriage—the word—means a union of man and woman. That's what the word means, and has virtually forever (and in the long history of marriage, "interracial" marriage has in fact been common—I'd argue that laws limiting it by race occupy a shorter time frame than the rest of the history of marriage. That's why I think a new word makes more sense.

"Indeed. If we're to let white people marry Negroes, what's next? People will be marrying cows, and children, and sheep! It's a slippery slope, I'm telling you!"

My argument was not a slippery slope fallacy. In US Constitutional law, the rationale for the decision matters. If a COURT creates a "right to marry who you LOVE" out of thin air, then the love bit has force of law, which can absolutely lead to a challenge by a brother wishing to marry a sister, etc. Ditto group marriage since having it be just 2 people is similarly arbitrary. That's the trick if it becomes a RIGHT, since arbitrary limits on natural rights make no sense.

In effect the legal system can create slippery slopes where none should exist. To avoid unexpected consequences, AND to protect civil unions from future courts messing with it, it would be better to change the law the right way, through the legislature.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by tater

It's not at all the same.

That's very interesting. I always thought the courts would use Loving vs. Virginia as the basis for a gay marriage case. I don't agree with their rationale as I think it does fall into the "appeal to tradition" fallacy, but it's very interesting nonetheless.

And they're wrong anyways - gay marriage existed in the Roman empire.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by tater

Marriage—the word—means a union of man and woman. That's what the word means, and has virtually forever (and in the long history of marriage, "interracial" marriage has in fact been common—I'd argue that laws limiting it by race occupy a shorter time frame than the rest of the history of marriage. That's why I think a new word makes more sense.

Dictionary definitions change from decade to decade. The dictionary doesn't tell us what a word should mean, it tells us what the contemporary meaning is. Because a word has been used to define something in the past doesn't mean that it will continue to do so in the future, or that it should.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Dictionary definitions change from decade to decade. The dictionary doesn't tell us what a word should mean, it tells us what the contemporary meaning is. Because a word has been used to define something in the past doesn't mean that it will continue to do so in the future, or that it should.

But isn't it what the majority sees the word as meaning what defines it?

But isn't it what the majority sees the word as meaning what defines it?

No.

Which is it?

He is spot on. He is hitting the point exactly and validly.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Aramike

But isn't it what the majority sees the word as meaning what defines it?

Only if you believe in tyranny of the masses.

I see two antagonistic concepts here:

1. Marriage is a contract between the state and two people, designed to force a couple to stay together to ensure that the children have two parents of differing genders, which does indeed require that it be between a man and a woman. One problem I have with that is that in a truly enlightened society the concept of what it takes to properly raise children has changed. Another is the question of how, as has been pointed out, that affects opposite-sex couples who cannot, or will not, have children. The 'tradition' itself has changed over the centuries.

2. A religious ceremony uniting two people "under God". If your church subscribes to the biblical injunction that homosexuality is "an abomination" then your church will refuse to perform such ceremonies for same-sex couples. If not, then same-sex couples should have the same priveligdes as others, and the State should stay out of it.