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That sounds politically dumber. "Marriage" has been normalized for centuries/millennia but now you think you can just quickly normalize another term before we s

That sounds politically dumber. "Marriage" has been normalized for centuries/millennia but now you think you can just quickly normalize another term before we solve this equal rights thing? You know, just a quick errand before we restore equal rights: change the prevailing culture and change definitions throughout a complex set of laws. This is exactly the junior developer mindset described in the thread parent: restoring equal rights to gay people is a problem but first let's spin our wheels inventing a different terminology and taxonomy for marriage and upending legal precedent and existing case law about marriage.

maerF0x0 5y ago
I'm just trying to be pragmatic that one side doesnt seem to be willing to cede any ground, we could just simply move the fight elsewhere. it is both equal rights if "everyone/anyone can get married" or "no one can because it's not defined" (in the eyes of the government). If people aren't willing to accept the 2nd case then I'm guessing they dont actually want equal rights so much as public(governmental) recognition of their status.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  Yeah I'm saying it's not pragmatic, it's the opposite of pragmatic. Of course people want governmental recognition, many hetero married couples want it and already rely on it. Gay couples also want equal rights on top of that. They want both. This is cutting the proverbial baby in half and redefining the legal institution so no one gets what they want, that will go well in a democracy /s
  - maerF0x0 5y ago
    I think what seems really off is just that we've legislated a single concrete version of something instead of it's abstraction (a person capable of making good choices). It makes sense to give people a way to indicate they intend to give a person legal rights, but it doesn't make sense to imply (by the concrete choice of "marriage") that it's basically going to be a person that you're having sex with, or monogamous with, or that they're of a certain set of sexual pairings (ie heterosexual)... And before you suggest it's not about monogamy, see that in many states have laws around adultery and fault/no-fault divorce... I should be able to extend the same set of privileges (like can make decisions for me if I am unable to) to my grandmother, or roommate, neighbor, priest, or whomever I choose. It makes little sense how we've constrained the solution w/o adding any value by those constraints. This maybe just the software engineer in me, but we've codified the concrete instead of the abstraction. This is actually something of high importance to single people too -- something like 30-40% of households are single person and do not have a simple way to elect a person who can make legal decisions for them besides a relatively expensive and difficult power of attorney... So I see it as win:win:win to distill todays "marriage" into a legal common ground and give that right to _all_ people. Then anyone, gay or otherwise, can claim "marriage" because there will not be a legal definition (kind of like "natural" in food labelling). Christians wont be able to claim a monopoly on an undefined term.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      The people who fought gay marriage argued that expanding the institution to include same sex pairings would demean what they consider sacred and what they think all of their countrymen should consider sacred too. A common meme was "next you'll be saying we can marry X" with the clear implication that we should not be able to just marry X. But your idea of a win-win compromise is "let's expand it even further so I can include not just same-sex couples, but my grandmother or random roommate too"? Of course it's about monogamy. Of course it's about who you have sex with. Why do you think we have laws around adultery and divorce? Our democracy wanted to govern adultery and divorce so much that it enshrined it into law, but also lol it should be easy to get support for repealing the whole thing because I don't think it makes sense /s Fight for it if you wish, I think this can of worms is just about the furthest thing from a politically & legally pragmatic solution that you could possibly come up with in a Western democracy like majority Christian USA. I'm reading your "software engineer" description of concrete vs abstraction as if that's remotely relevant to the law & politics of helping gays rightfully access a beneficial institution and I'm just thinking "holy shit if this is kind of attitude that crypto folks promise to bring into the political institution of finance, PLEASE KEEP THEM AWAY FROM IT".
      - maerF0x0 5y ago
        i think somewhere along the conversation i either misrepresented myself or you missed something though... The compromise is to cede the word "marriage" from a governmental legally defined word to a word that can be used by each person for their contextual meaning -- which is the only globally true usage of "marriage" -- marriage hasn't meant exactly one woman and one man in a literal monogamous pairing in basically any culture. Even in America it's at best serial monogamy. This would nullify the christian argument that we have to stop X group from "marriage" because it wouldn't be about _that_ anymore, by removing the terminology and insinuations they're concerned about it would become no different than a license to drive and afaik there aren't any christians arguing to remove drivers' licenses from X groups. Anyways I cant help but feel like there is a lot of bad faith or miscommunication happening here, time will tell how it all get's solved, I do think we'll land on something that gives all groups of people a governmentally recognized status which gives basically powers of attorney and maybe financial responsibility (alimony)

maerF0x0 5y ago

I'm just trying to be pragmatic that one side doesnt seem to be willing to cede any ground, we could just simply move the fight elsewhere. it is both equal rights if "everyone/anyone can get married" or "no one can because it's not defined" (in the eyes of the government). If people aren't willing to accept the 2nd case then I'm guessing they dont actually want equal rights so much as public(governmental) recognition of their status.

themacguffinman 5y ago
Yeah I'm saying it's not pragmatic, it's the opposite of pragmatic. Of course people want governmental recognition, many hetero married couples want it and already rely on it. Gay couples also want equal rights on top of that. They want both. This is cutting the proverbial baby in half and redefining the legal institution so no one gets what they want, that will go well in a democracy /s
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  I think what seems really off is just that we've legislated a single concrete version of something instead of it's abstraction (a person capable of making good choices). It makes sense to give people a way to indicate they intend to give a person legal rights, but it doesn't make sense to imply (by the concrete choice of "marriage") that it's basically going to be a person that you're having sex with, or monogamous with, or that they're of a certain set of sexual pairings (ie heterosexual)... And before you suggest it's not about monogamy, see that in many states have laws around adultery and fault/no-fault divorce... I should be able to extend the same set of privileges (like can make decisions for me if I am unable to) to my grandmother, or roommate, neighbor, priest, or whomever I choose. It makes little sense how we've constrained the solution w/o adding any value by those constraints. This maybe just the software engineer in me, but we've codified the concrete instead of the abstraction. This is actually something of high importance to single people too -- something like 30-40% of households are single person and do not have a simple way to elect a person who can make legal decisions for them besides a relatively expensive and difficult power of attorney... So I see it as win:win:win to distill todays "marriage" into a legal common ground and give that right to _all_ people. Then anyone, gay or otherwise, can claim "marriage" because there will not be a legal definition (kind of like "natural" in food labelling). Christians wont be able to claim a monopoly on an undefined term.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    The people who fought gay marriage argued that expanding the institution to include same sex pairings would demean what they consider sacred and what they think all of their countrymen should consider sacred too. A common meme was "next you'll be saying we can marry X" with the clear implication that we should not be able to just marry X. But your idea of a win-win compromise is "let's expand it even further so I can include not just same-sex couples, but my grandmother or random roommate too"? Of course it's about monogamy. Of course it's about who you have sex with. Why do you think we have laws around adultery and divorce? Our democracy wanted to govern adultery and divorce so much that it enshrined it into law, but also lol it should be easy to get support for repealing the whole thing because I don't think it makes sense /s Fight for it if you wish, I think this can of worms is just about the furthest thing from a politically & legally pragmatic solution that you could possibly come up with in a Western democracy like majority Christian USA. I'm reading your "software engineer" description of concrete vs abstraction as if that's remotely relevant to the law & politics of helping gays rightfully access a beneficial institution and I'm just thinking "holy shit if this is kind of attitude that crypto folks promise to bring into the political institution of finance, PLEASE KEEP THEM AWAY FROM IT".
    - maerF0x0 5y ago
      i think somewhere along the conversation i either misrepresented myself or you missed something though... The compromise is to cede the word "marriage" from a governmental legally defined word to a word that can be used by each person for their contextual meaning -- which is the only globally true usage of "marriage" -- marriage hasn't meant exactly one woman and one man in a literal monogamous pairing in basically any culture. Even in America it's at best serial monogamy. This would nullify the christian argument that we have to stop X group from "marriage" because it wouldn't be about _that_ anymore, by removing the terminology and insinuations they're concerned about it would become no different than a license to drive and afaik there aren't any christians arguing to remove drivers' licenses from X groups. Anyways I cant help but feel like there is a lot of bad faith or miscommunication happening here, time will tell how it all get's solved, I do think we'll land on something that gives all groups of people a governmentally recognized status which gives basically powers of attorney and maybe financial responsibility (alimony)