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On June 24 2013 02:53 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:51 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:46 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:44 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:42 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:37 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 24 2013 02:31 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 23 2013 19:20 Talin wrote:
[quote]
Since the dawn of civilization, those partnerships have been made official with religious rituals of some sort, usually performed by the priesthood of said religion.
It was a mistake to ever introduce the term marriage into legislation and keep it for this long, at least for societies that truly want the separation of state and church (which United States don't really, but that's a different issue). Marriage has been a legal concept since the Code of Hammurabi, which is (I believe) the oldest legal record that exists. That's something like 3500 years. Using legal history as an argument for state sanction of marriage is a spurious approach. Law hasn't been separate from religion for most of that 3500 years - the concept of separating church and state didn't occur until the Renaissance, and its execution didn't occur until the Enlightenment. If you want to separate the Church from the State, then you drop state endorsement of marriage - instead, states can endorse civil unions for tax purposes; marriage becomes something that is privately defined, between either the people involved or them plus their social community. My point is that why is marriage a religious matter first instead of a legal matter first? Damn near every culture has/had some concept akin to marriage and it almost always has/had some kind of legal connotation. I'm failing to see why religions get to forcibly take the term. Because marriage is a cultural and social compact as opposed to a legal one. Consider the concept of "friendship". Would you want the state to define who you can and cannot be friends with? On the other hand, would you want the government to offer some stamp of approval that you and somebody else are "officially friends"? I fail to understand how you can say that marriage is not a legal term. There are laws defining marriage, seems like a pretty big clue if you see what I mean... From my POV, the existence of those laws is more a demonstration of legal inertia than any sort of rationality. It's the government attempting to regulate/define something that it lost the mandate to do so when it gave up authority over religious affairs. Is every marriage a religious marriage in the US ?? If you define marriage as a religious concept, then yes, every marriage to you will be religious. If you don't, then no, no marriages are religious. What I'm saying is that the government has no right to define marriage, since it's inherently a subjective concept Is there something such as a civil marriage yes or no ? Does marriage in the US have legal consequences yes or no ? If yes to any of those questions, then I'm sorry for you, but marriage is already a legal term, and you can't do anything about it.
Actually, I'm sorry for you, since you seem to be confusing the difference between a normative and a positive question.
What I have been arguing for is a normative consideration - laws should adhere to some sort of ideal concept of the State, and should not exceed the legitimate powers of that State.
What you are arguing is a whole host of positive statements - that laws, as they are today, imply legal authority over the definition of marriage.
We are arguing two sides of the same coin here: yes, today, laws try to define marriage. We both agree on that. I'm simply going one step further and saying that no, in an ideal State, laws ought not to define marriage.
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On June 24 2013 02:51 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:46 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:44 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:42 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:37 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 24 2013 02:31 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 23 2013 19:20 Talin wrote:On June 23 2013 19:05 Boonbag wrote:
I actually believe the total opposite, as human beeing partner since dawn of time, and the church copyrighting the marriage concept is basically a fraud. Since the dawn of civilization, those partnerships have been made official with religious rituals of some sort, usually performed by the priesthood of said religion. It was a mistake to ever introduce the term marriage into legislation and keep it for this long, at least for societies that truly want the separation of state and church (which United States don't really, but that's a different issue). Marriage has been a legal concept since the Code of Hammurabi, which is (I believe) the oldest legal record that exists. That's something like 3500 years. Using legal history as an argument for state sanction of marriage is a spurious approach. Law hasn't been separate from religion for most of that 3500 years - the concept of separating church and state didn't occur until the Renaissance, and its execution didn't occur until the Enlightenment. If you want to separate the Church from the State, then you drop state endorsement of marriage - instead, states can endorse civil unions for tax purposes; marriage becomes something that is privately defined, between either the people involved or them plus their social community. My point is that why is marriage a religious matter first instead of a legal matter first? Damn near every culture has/had some concept akin to marriage and it almost always has/had some kind of legal connotation. I'm failing to see why religions get to forcibly take the term. Because marriage is a cultural and social compact as opposed to a legal one. Consider the concept of "friendship". Would you want the state to define who you can and cannot be friends with? On the other hand, would you want the government to offer some stamp of approval that you and somebody else are "officially friends"? I fail to understand how you can say that marriage is not a legal term. There are laws defining marriage, seems like a pretty big clue if you see what I mean... From my POV, the existence of those laws is more a demonstration of legal inertia than any sort of rationality. It's the government attempting to regulate/define something that it lost the mandate to do so when it gave up authority over religious affairs. Is every marriage a religious marriage in the US ?? If you define marriage as a religious concept, then yes, every marriage to you will be religious. If you don't, then no, no marriages are religious. What I'm saying is that the government has no right to define marriage, since it's inherently a subjective concept
Yeah except it's never ever been like that ever in history. Whether you like it or not marriage as always been a legal concept with laws that regulate it because marriage has aways been a political affair, be it between the children of royalty and aristocrats or between farmers and fishermen.
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On June 24 2013 02:59 koreasilver wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:51 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:46 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:44 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:42 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:37 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 24 2013 02:31 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 23 2013 19:20 Talin wrote:
[quote]
Since the dawn of civilization, those partnerships have been made official with religious rituals of some sort, usually performed by the priesthood of said religion.
It was a mistake to ever introduce the term marriage into legislation and keep it for this long, at least for societies that truly want the separation of state and church (which United States don't really, but that's a different issue). Marriage has been a legal concept since the Code of Hammurabi, which is (I believe) the oldest legal record that exists. That's something like 3500 years. Using legal history as an argument for state sanction of marriage is a spurious approach. Law hasn't been separate from religion for most of that 3500 years - the concept of separating church and state didn't occur until the Renaissance, and its execution didn't occur until the Enlightenment. If you want to separate the Church from the State, then you drop state endorsement of marriage - instead, states can endorse civil unions for tax purposes; marriage becomes something that is privately defined, between either the people involved or them plus their social community. My point is that why is marriage a religious matter first instead of a legal matter first? Damn near every culture has/had some concept akin to marriage and it almost always has/had some kind of legal connotation. I'm failing to see why religions get to forcibly take the term. Because marriage is a cultural and social compact as opposed to a legal one. Consider the concept of "friendship". Would you want the state to define who you can and cannot be friends with? On the other hand, would you want the government to offer some stamp of approval that you and somebody else are "officially friends"? I fail to understand how you can say that marriage is not a legal term. There are laws defining marriage, seems like a pretty big clue if you see what I mean... From my POV, the existence of those laws is more a demonstration of legal inertia than any sort of rationality. It's the government attempting to regulate/define something that it lost the mandate to do so when it gave up authority over religious affairs. Is every marriage a religious marriage in the US ?? If you define marriage as a religious concept, then yes, every marriage to you will be religious. If you don't, then no, no marriages are religious. What I'm saying is that the government has no right to define marriage, since it's inherently a subjective concept Yeah except it's never ever been like that ever in history. Whether you like it or not marriage as always been a legal concept with laws that regulate it because marriage has aways been a political affair, be it between the children of royalty and aristocrats or between farmers and fishermen.
What you said could be true for the concept of freedom of speech or separation of church and state or even the concept of absolute natural rights until the Enlightenment.
Just because something has not happened or is not happening does not make it undesirable from a normative perspective, nor does it make it impossible from a positive perspective.
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On June 24 2013 02:59 Shady Sands wrote:
We are arguing two sides of the same coin here: yes, today, laws try to define marriage. We both agree on that. I'm simply going one step further and saying that no, in an ideal State, laws ought not to define marriage.
So marriage shouldn't have any legal consequence ? You seem to have very interesting conception of marriage, one that has little to do with reality.
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On June 24 2013 02:58 Fruscainte wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:51 SnipedSoul wrote:On June 24 2013 01:17 Fruscainte wrote:On June 24 2013 01:08 SnipedSoul wrote:
It has to be called marriage because that is what the state calls it when a man and woman get married. You don't sign a civil union certificate at your wedding, you sign a marriage certificate. Having a separate term for homosexual marriage can be argued as discriminatory since they're being treated differently due to their sexual orientation.
Imagine the fuss if men got degrees from university and women got purple elephants. It would be a big deal even if the documents were identical in every way but name. How are they being treated differently if they get the same exact rights? That's what I'm not getting here from your reasoning. Why change the definition of the word from what it has meant for the past 225 years of our countries legal history? There is not a single argument other than "you're hurting my feelings" if gay couples get precisely the same rights as straight couples. The governments job is not to regulate hurt feelings, their job is to make sure everyone is being treated the same under the law and each person is reserved their individual rights granted by the Constitution. No one is being treated differently at all, their union is just being called a different term. It's kind of pointless to create analogies because this is a completely unique situation, but I can do the same to you. If a hotel barred access to women, you wouldn't petition the government to change the definition of a woman to be the same as a man so the hotel lets them in you'd petition the hotel to change their policy so that men and women are treated equally. That doesn't mean you'd suddenly start calling men and women the same thing though, because they clearly aren't. So if a man got a degree in physics and a woman got a purple elephant in physics you'd have no problem with it as long as the underlying details are the same? I don't think that's a fair analogy because it would include redefining what a degree was. I see your point though, and I guess I see where you're coming from. I guess what I've been meaning to say is that while the name is important, it shouldn't be the focus of the argument. The focus should be on the rights, not the name. The name can come later. It would be like if women already received inferior degrees to men de facto and instead of worrying about making the degrees equal, women were focusing on making sure they were called the same thing first which I would find incredibly pointless.
If you convince someone that two things should have the same name then doesn't it naturally follow that they should be the same in other ways as well?
Arguing that gay marriage is the same as straight marriage automatically means that you want them to be identical in every way because you're calling them the same thing. If you thought they should be different then you would call them something different.
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On June 24 2013 03:06 SnipedSoul wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:58 Fruscainte wrote:On June 24 2013 02:51 SnipedSoul wrote:On June 24 2013 01:17 Fruscainte wrote:On June 24 2013 01:08 SnipedSoul wrote:
It has to be called marriage because that is what the state calls it when a man and woman get married. You don't sign a civil union certificate at your wedding, you sign a marriage certificate. Having a separate term for homosexual marriage can be argued as discriminatory since they're being treated differently due to their sexual orientation.
Imagine the fuss if men got degrees from university and women got purple elephants. It would be a big deal even if the documents were identical in every way but name. How are they being treated differently if they get the same exact rights? That's what I'm not getting here from your reasoning. Why change the definition of the word from what it has meant for the past 225 years of our countries legal history? There is not a single argument other than "you're hurting my feelings" if gay couples get precisely the same rights as straight couples. The governments job is not to regulate hurt feelings, their job is to make sure everyone is being treated the same under the law and each person is reserved their individual rights granted by the Constitution. No one is being treated differently at all, their union is just being called a different term. It's kind of pointless to create analogies because this is a completely unique situation, but I can do the same to you. If a hotel barred access to women, you wouldn't petition the government to change the definition of a woman to be the same as a man so the hotel lets them in you'd petition the hotel to change their policy so that men and women are treated equally. That doesn't mean you'd suddenly start calling men and women the same thing though, because they clearly aren't. So if a man got a degree in physics and a woman got a purple elephant in physics you'd have no problem with it as long as the underlying details are the same? I don't think that's a fair analogy because it would include redefining what a degree was. I see your point though, and I guess I see where you're coming from. I guess what I've been meaning to say is that while the name is important, it shouldn't be the focus of the argument. The focus should be on the rights, not the name. The name can come later. It would be like if women already received inferior degrees to men de facto and instead of worrying about making the degrees equal, women were focusing on making sure they were called the same thing first which I would find incredibly pointless. If you convince someone that two things should have the same name then doesn't it naturally follow that they should be the same in other ways as well? Arguing that gay marriage is the same as straight marriage automatically means that you want them to be identical in every way because you're calling them the same thing. If you thought they should be different then you would call them something different.
Gay marriage and straight marriage aren't the same thing. They deserve to be protected equally under the law and both should be granted the same natural rights that the other has but they are not the same. I think that is where our disagreement is stemming from and I dont' think that can really be reconciled on an internet forum, unfortunately.
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You might be interested to learn that Maryland was the first state to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. That took place in the 1970s, not the 1790s like you keep saying. The definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman has only been around for 45 years, not 225.
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On June 24 2013 03:04 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:59 Shady Sands wrote:
We are arguing two sides of the same coin here: yes, today, laws try to define marriage. We both agree on that. I'm simply going one step further and saying that no, in an ideal State, laws ought not to define marriage. So marriage shouldn't have any legal consequence ? You seem to have very interesting conception of marriage, one that has little to do with reality.
Yep - I don't believe that marriage should have any legal consequences.
I believe civil unions, et al should, insofar as the State wishes to utilize them for census and tax purposes, but the concept of what marriage should and shouldn't be - why should the State have a right to care in what unit or units I structure my romantic life?
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On June 24 2013 03:14 SnipedSoul wrote:
You might be interested to learn that Maryland was the first state to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. That took place in the 1970s, not the 1790s like you keep saying. The definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman has only been around for 45 years, not 225.
We follow a system of common law, which is based off of precedence. The precedence of marriage only being allowed between man and woman for our 225 year history is what defines it as being legally defined as a man and a woman. It doesn't have to be explicitly defined.
Perhaps that's a bit of a stretch 
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On June 24 2013 03:15 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 03:04 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:59 Shady Sands wrote:
We are arguing two sides of the same coin here: yes, today, laws try to define marriage. We both agree on that. I'm simply going one step further and saying that no, in an ideal State, laws ought not to define marriage. So marriage shouldn't have any legal consequence ? You seem to have very interesting conception of marriage, one that has little to do with reality. Yep - I don't believe that marriage should have any legal consequences. I believe civil unions, et al should, insofar as the State wishes to utilize them for census and tax purposes, but the concept of what marriage should and shouldn't be - why should the State have a right to care in what unit or units I structure my romantic life?
The state is in fact doing exactly what you want him to, just instead of calling something civil union, it calls it marriage, because it's been called like that for quite sometime. You just want marriage not have a meaning it has, and has had for a very very long time. Sorry, but your position is pretty fucking strange.
Esit : also it would be pretty cool if you could start to consider there are countries that exists outside of the US. I've made a counscious effort to bridge that gap, but you seem to take it for granted.
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On June 24 2013 03:04 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:59 koreasilver wrote:On June 24 2013 02:51 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:46 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:44 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:42 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:37 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 24 2013 02:31 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:
[quote]
Marriage has been a legal concept since the Code of Hammurabi, which is (I believe) the oldest legal record that exists. That's something like 3500 years. Using legal history as an argument for state sanction of marriage is a spurious approach. Law hasn't been separate from religion for most of that 3500 years - the concept of separating church and state didn't occur until the Renaissance, and its execution didn't occur until the Enlightenment. If you want to separate the Church from the State, then you drop state endorsement of marriage - instead, states can endorse civil unions for tax purposes; marriage becomes something that is privately defined, between either the people involved or them plus their social community. My point is that why is marriage a religious matter first instead of a legal matter first? Damn near every culture has/had some concept akin to marriage and it almost always has/had some kind of legal connotation. I'm failing to see why religions get to forcibly take the term. Because marriage is a cultural and social compact as opposed to a legal one. Consider the concept of "friendship". Would you want the state to define who you can and cannot be friends with? On the other hand, would you want the government to offer some stamp of approval that you and somebody else are "officially friends"? I fail to understand how you can say that marriage is not a legal term. There are laws defining marriage, seems like a pretty big clue if you see what I mean... From my POV, the existence of those laws is more a demonstration of legal inertia than any sort of rationality. It's the government attempting to regulate/define something that it lost the mandate to do so when it gave up authority over religious affairs. Is every marriage a religious marriage in the US ?? If you define marriage as a religious concept, then yes, every marriage to you will be religious. If you don't, then no, no marriages are religious. What I'm saying is that the government has no right to define marriage, since it's inherently a subjective concept Yeah except it's never ever been like that ever in history. Whether you like it or not marriage as always been a legal concept with laws that regulate it because marriage has aways been a political affair, be it between the children of royalty and aristocrats or between farmers and fishermen. What you said could be true for the concept of freedom of speech or separation of church and state or even the concept of absolute natural rights until the Enlightenment. Just because something has not happened or is not happening does not make it undesirable from a normative perspective, nor does it make it impossible from a positive perspective.
Except given how freedom of speech has to be upheld through law, and that the separation of church and state was realized through the cooperation between the Protestant reformers and political leaders, and that the concept of universal human rights is upheld by law (modern Europe didn't begin with the Enlightenment either, it began with the Reformation). Given that all the examples you gave all survive artificially, which is why they are knocked over again and again in history and today, and the fact that these concepts actually were new when they developed in Europe from the Reformation through the Enlightenment to today and that marriage as a concept is much more ancient and has always been regulated by law, I don't even understand what in the world you are trying to say.
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On June 24 2013 03:17 Fruscainte wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 03:14 SnipedSoul wrote:
You might be interested to learn that Maryland was the first state to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. That took place in the 1970s, not the 1790s like you keep saying. The definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman has only been around for 45 years, not 225. We follow a system of common law, which is based off of precedence. The precedence of marriage only being allowed between man and woman for our 225 year history is what defines it as being legally defined as a man and a woman. It doesn't have to be explicitly defined. Perhaps that's a bit of a stretch
They had to formally pass a law to prevent gay marriage from being recognized by the state. As far as the law is concerned, gay marriage only became illegal after those laws were passed.
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On June 24 2013 02:57 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:55 Fruscainte wrote:So explain again why you are allowed to draw the line at gay marriage but I'm not allowed to draw the line at polygamy or bestiality or straight marriage? How is it not also bigoted to say that I can't love multiple women and I shouldn't be able to marry them all? Also, it is not a word with the exact same meaning. Gay marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. That is not the same as a man and a woman. Would you like me to explain the biology behind that? My point from the beginning that focusing on the word is fucking pointless. If gay unions get the same exact rights from top to bottom as straight unions do, who the fuck cares what they decide to call it? The rights are what should matter, not what you're being called. I'm saying it's the bottom of the totem pole. But that doesn't mean it's justified to go around wantonly changing 225 year old legal definitions because of some hurt feelings. I love how every single post you post has subtle insults towards me by the way. You're very mature.  Specifics of this debate aside, historical precedent tells us that "separate but equal" in theory is almost always "separate and inequal" in practice.
I can definitely see where you're coming from, and I think I'm really teetering on the edge of that abyss with where I'm going with this, but my logic is this: The difference here between this and say "separate but equal" in the case of blacks and whites is that here it's not about giving gay couples different bathrooms or different portions of the restaurant. I don't personally see how a gay couple could be given an 'inferior' service of being able to see their partners in ICU or be able to write wills for their partners or have burial rights and the like. I like to think I'm not unreasonable, so I'm curious precisely where you think unequal treatment could come from this if gay couples were given the same legal protection but different legal names for their unions?
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On June 24 2013 03:26 koreasilver wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 03:04 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:59 koreasilver wrote:On June 24 2013 02:51 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:46 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:44 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:42 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:37 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 24 2013 02:31 Shady Sands wrote:
[quote]
Using legal history as an argument for state sanction of marriage is a spurious approach. Law hasn't been separate from religion for most of that 3500 years - the concept of separating church and state didn't occur until the Renaissance, and its execution didn't occur until the Enlightenment.
If you want to separate the Church from the State, then you drop state endorsement of marriage - instead, states can endorse civil unions for tax purposes; marriage becomes something that is privately defined, between either the people involved or them plus their social community. My point is that why is marriage a religious matter first instead of a legal matter first? Damn near every culture has/had some concept akin to marriage and it almost always has/had some kind of legal connotation. I'm failing to see why religions get to forcibly take the term. Because marriage is a cultural and social compact as opposed to a legal one. Consider the concept of "friendship". Would you want the state to define who you can and cannot be friends with? On the other hand, would you want the government to offer some stamp of approval that you and somebody else are "officially friends"? I fail to understand how you can say that marriage is not a legal term. There are laws defining marriage, seems like a pretty big clue if you see what I mean... From my POV, the existence of those laws is more a demonstration of legal inertia than any sort of rationality. It's the government attempting to regulate/define something that it lost the mandate to do so when it gave up authority over religious affairs. Is every marriage a religious marriage in the US ?? If you define marriage as a religious concept, then yes, every marriage to you will be religious. If you don't, then no, no marriages are religious. What I'm saying is that the government has no right to define marriage, since it's inherently a subjective concept Yeah except it's never ever been like that ever in history. Whether you like it or not marriage as always been a legal concept with laws that regulate it because marriage has aways been a political affair, be it between the children of royalty and aristocrats or between farmers and fishermen. What you said could be true for the concept of freedom of speech or separation of church and state or even the concept of absolute natural rights until the Enlightenment. Just because something has not happened or is not happening does not make it undesirable from a normative perspective, nor does it make it impossible from a positive perspective. Except given how freedom of speech has to be upheld through law, and that the separation of church and state was realized through the cooperation between the Protestant reformers and political leaders, and that the concept of universal human rights is upheld by law (modern Europe didn't begin with the Enlightenment either, it began with the Reformation). Given that all the examples you gave all survive artificially, which is why they are knocked over again and again in history and today, and the fact that these concepts actually were new when they developed in Europe from the Reformation through the Enlightenment to today and that marriage as a concept is much more ancient and has always been regulated by law, I don't even understand what in the world you are trying to say.
My understanding is that he's trying to say something akin to "I wish moon did not mean moon, but cauliflower instead". Why not, after all.
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On June 24 2013 03:28 Fruscainte wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 02:57 farvacola wrote:On June 24 2013 02:55 Fruscainte wrote:So explain again why you are allowed to draw the line at gay marriage but I'm not allowed to draw the line at polygamy or bestiality or straight marriage? How is it not also bigoted to say that I can't love multiple women and I shouldn't be able to marry them all? Also, it is not a word with the exact same meaning. Gay marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. That is not the same as a man and a woman. Would you like me to explain the biology behind that? My point from the beginning that focusing on the word is fucking pointless. If gay unions get the same exact rights from top to bottom as straight unions do, who the fuck cares what they decide to call it? The rights are what should matter, not what you're being called. I'm saying it's the bottom of the totem pole. But that doesn't mean it's justified to go around wantonly changing 225 year old legal definitions because of some hurt feelings. I love how every single post you post has subtle insults towards me by the way. You're very mature. Specifics of this debate aside, historical precedent tells us that "separate but equal" in theory is almost always "separate and inequal" in practice. I can definitely see where you're coming from, and I think I'm really teetering on the edge of that abyss with where I'm going with this, but my logic is this: The difference here between this and say "separate but equal" in the case of blacks and whites is that here it's not about giving gay couples different bathrooms or different portions of the restaurant. I don't personally see how a gay couple could be given an 'inferior' service of being able to see their partners in ICU or be able to write wills for their partners or have burial rights and the like. I like to think I'm not unreasonable, so I'm curious precisely where you think unequal treatment could come from this if gay couples were given the same legal protection but different legal names for their unions?
don't you see how incredibly unreasonable it is to style yourself as being in favor of gay rights but then to turn around and tell gay couples that they can't get married? you can tell them: "I know you want to get married, but because of some obscure reason I'm against that, so how about if you get a civil union, it's basically the same?" -- what if they respond with: "thanks, but we'd like to get married all the same" ? are you going to call them stupid for not seeing how obviously civil union and marriage is the same thing and they should be happy with what they got? don't you think that's a position entirely rife with toxic privilege? (after all there are historic reasons having to do with oppression of homosexuality that are at the basis for the historic definition) and if it's so obviously the same thing why this resistance to simply allowing them to get married? your argument falls apart under any sort of scrutiny and it seems entirely based on an arbitrary wish to adhere to a traditional (bigoted) definition despite the costs to other people. do words have that much value to you?
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My reason isn't obscure at all. I don't like redefining words over hurt feelings. It's not about being "basically" the same, it's about being "the same" at all. The point is that our Constitution is based around protecting the individual and natural rights of all people. I believe firmly that a gay couple and a straight couple should have the same rights protected under the law and the same rights ensured under the law. I also believe that to call them the same is the most wrong statement a person can make. A straight union is about procreation and love, a gay union is about love alone. Straight unions have another aspect to them that gay unions can never naturally have.
There is a distinct difference between being protected equally under the law, and being the same thing.
That's what I'm trying to get into your head here.
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On June 24 2013 03:39 Fruscainte wrote:
My reason isn't obscure at all. I don't like redefining words over hurt feelings. It's not about being "basically" the same, it's about being "the same" at all. The point is that our Constitution is based around protecting the individual and natural rights of all people. I believe firmly that a gay couple and a straight couple should have the same rights protected under the law and the same rights ensured under the law. I also believe that to call them the same is the most wrong statement a person can make. A straight union is about procreation and love, a gay union is about love alone. Straight unions have another aspect to them that gay unions can never naturally have.
There is a distinct difference between being protected equally under the law, and being the same thing.
That's what I'm trying to get into your head here.
Gosh, you wrote an argument !
To which I'm going to retort : do you need to be married to have children ?
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On June 24 2013 03:30 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 03:26 koreasilver wrote:On June 24 2013 03:04 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:59 koreasilver wrote:On June 24 2013 02:51 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:46 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:44 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:42 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 24 2013 02:37 Shady Sands wrote:On June 24 2013 02:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:
[quote]
My point is that why is marriage a religious matter first instead of a legal matter first? Damn near every culture has/had some concept akin to marriage and it almost always has/had some kind of legal connotation. I'm failing to see why religions get to forcibly take the term. Because marriage is a cultural and social compact as opposed to a legal one. Consider the concept of "friendship". Would you want the state to define who you can and cannot be friends with? On the other hand, would you want the government to offer some stamp of approval that you and somebody else are "officially friends"? I fail to understand how you can say that marriage is not a legal term. There are laws defining marriage, seems like a pretty big clue if you see what I mean... From my POV, the existence of those laws is more a demonstration of legal inertia than any sort of rationality. It's the government attempting to regulate/define something that it lost the mandate to do so when it gave up authority over religious affairs. Is every marriage a religious marriage in the US ?? If you define marriage as a religious concept, then yes, every marriage to you will be religious. If you don't, then no, no marriages are religious. What I'm saying is that the government has no right to define marriage, since it's inherently a subjective concept Yeah except it's never ever been like that ever in history. Whether you like it or not marriage as always been a legal concept with laws that regulate it because marriage has aways been a political affair, be it between the children of royalty and aristocrats or between farmers and fishermen. What you said could be true for the concept of freedom of speech or separation of church and state or even the concept of absolute natural rights until the Enlightenment. Just because something has not happened or is not happening does not make it undesirable from a normative perspective, nor does it make it impossible from a positive perspective. Except given how freedom of speech has to be upheld through law, and that the separation of church and state was realized through the cooperation between the Protestant reformers and political leaders, and that the concept of universal human rights is upheld by law (modern Europe didn't begin with the Enlightenment either, it began with the Reformation). Given that all the examples you gave all survive artificially, which is why they are knocked over again and again in history and today, and the fact that these concepts actually were new when they developed in Europe from the Reformation through the Enlightenment to today and that marriage as a concept is much more ancient and has always been regulated by law, I don't even understand what in the world you are trying to say. My understanding is that he's trying to say something akin to "I wish moon did not mean moon, but cauliflower instead". Why not, after all.
Except marriage has basically always been related to religion and the concept of a civil union, just for practical purposes, already exists. There's nothing so absurd about separating the religious and legal parts of marriage. Then everyone would be able to enjoy the same legal rights and "marriage" would be a completelly religious affair, so it would be up to each person and their religion to decide how that works out.
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On June 24 2013 03:41 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 03:39 Fruscainte wrote:
My reason isn't obscure at all. I don't like redefining words over hurt feelings. It's not about being "basically" the same, it's about being "the same" at all. The point is that our Constitution is based around protecting the individual and natural rights of all people. I believe firmly that a gay couple and a straight couple should have the same rights protected under the law and the same rights ensured under the law. I also believe that to call them the same is the most wrong statement a person can make. A straight union is about procreation and love, a gay union is about love alone. Straight unions have another aspect to them that gay unions can never naturally have.
There is a distinct difference between being protected equally under the law, and being the same thing.
That's what I'm trying to get into your head here. Gosh, you wrote an argument ! To which I'm going to retort : do you need to be married to have children ?
And how long can you be married without having children before your marriage is declared invalid?
Can a straight person who is infertile get married? What if you only find that out after you're already married? Are you obligated to get divorced since you can never procreate?
How does adoption fit into this? Is a straight couple adopting a child a valid reason for marriage? If so, why doesn't it apply to gay people?
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On June 24 2013 03:41 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2013 03:39 Fruscainte wrote:
My reason isn't obscure at all. I don't like redefining words over hurt feelings. It's not about being "basically" the same, it's about being "the same" at all. The point is that our Constitution is based around protecting the individual and natural rights of all people. I believe firmly that a gay couple and a straight couple should have the same rights protected under the law and the same rights ensured under the law. I also believe that to call them the same is the most wrong statement a person can make. A straight union is about procreation and love, a gay union is about love alone. Straight unions have another aspect to them that gay unions can never naturally have.
There is a distinct difference between being protected equally under the law, and being the same thing.
That's what I'm trying to get into your head here. Gosh, you wrote an argument ! To which I'm going to retort : do you need to be married to have children ?
But sir, I've written plenty of arguments already!
Of course not. However, why do you think straight couples get tax breaks? Because living together is such a horrible thing and the government feels sorry for them? No, it's because it's expected when you get married children are going to be on the way shortly after or are already there and you'll need financial assistance since the child can not work to pull his weight and one of the partners will need to stay home with the child likely to take care of it.
I can already feel the hate coming about how I think gays should get unequal tax breaks, I think that straight couples shouldn't get these tax breaks either if they dont have children and I think gay couples should get these tax breaks too if they adopt children.
It's not about the legality of it at this point though, it's just a logical one. A straight couple is biologically not even close to the same as a gay couple. That doesn't mean one is better than the other, it just means they are different and to call them the same is disingenuous imo.
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EPT
