6 ms·

Equal rights? sure. But is it really that much of a big deal to just call it something other than 'marriage'?

by axod 18y ago

josefresco 18y ago
Separate but equal huh? I think I've heard that one before. The racists of the 60's called, they'd like to work with you and your brilliant ideas.
- axod 18y ago
  They aren't equal. They can never have children naturally. They should have equal rights in terms of their union, but in terms of procreation and furthering the species etc, how can they? Racism doesn't really have such an argument does it. I just don't see why the word matters all that much. Surely as long as you are equal in the eyes of the law, why not have a different word to mean same sex marriage? Then if you say "joe is married" you don't have to ask "to a woman? or another man?".
  - Retric 18y ago
    Two women could have children from their own DNA with a little genetic engineering or just cloning. Plenty of heterosexual coupples can't have children do you want to forbid them getting married? How about if they decide not to can they get married? PS: I honestly just get creeped out when people start talking about labels as if a word by it's self means something.
    - axod 18y ago
      A father and his daughter could probably have a healthy child with a bit of help from science, but that wouldn't make it a good idea would it.
      - Retric 18y ago
        Ok, that's creepy, but if they are 30 and 50 what's the problem? My point is just because I don't like something does not mean I get to stop people who are not hurting me from doing it. There was some story about people who where both adopted got married and then found out they where siblings. And yea it's creepy, but while I would be ok forbidding them from having children (for the public good) I don't see the value in forcing them to break up. And, even forbidding something on genetic grounds becomes a slippery slope problem because it's one step from their to sterilizing people.
    - redrobot5050 18y ago
      Yeah. I'm all about the 'traditional marriage' myself. You know, where my lord's regent picks my wife from one of the other serf's, pays her father a small dowry, lets my lord enact Prima Nocte, and then unloads her onto me, where she's my property to do what I wish with. (NOT).
  - redrobot5050 18y ago
    So should my parents marriage be invalidated, seeing as my mother has undergone menopause, and thus, they can "never have children naturally" anymore? What about anorexia survivors? Malnutrition plays hell with uterine linings. Should we deny them the right to marriage? Is an eating disorder more or less of a 'a choice' than homosexuality in your eyes? Alan Turing was gay, and never had children. He developed the code-breaking machines that allowed the Allies to win world war 2. Don't think for a second that Churchill being able to read Hitler's mail before Hitler read it didn't "tip the balance". So it sounds like gay people can further the species without procreation. In fact, I'd argue that smart people (gay OR straight) are better off not having children until their career has 'peaked'. For the truly brilliant -- the Turings and Einsteins of the world -- a child is not going to be "their greatest accomplishment". Seriously, a gay man basically did more for Western civilization than you or I or any Veteran still alive has. He was shamed into killing himself because of his sexual orientation. You'd really object to his happiness? sigh. I'm going to stop here before I pull a Godwin.
    - axod 18y ago
      You're starting to distort everything I said. I don't care if gay people wish to have even more rights than me. Fine. Just don't mess about with a word that has been defined clearly for a long time.
      - redrobot5050 18y ago
        They're NOT messing with a word that's been defined for clearly a long time. I don't think they'd define the pleas for equality before the law to be considered "messing" or "trouble making". You DO realize that the definition of marriage has changed several times, right? Women are no longer property owned by their fathers until transferred into the possession of another Man. Being of different race no longer means you can't get married, either. Furthermore, we re-define words all the time in the computer field. Think about how the definition of "fast" gets redefined every 18 months to to years. And how what was "fast" is now "slow". Hands down you cannot string a rational argument against gay marriage because there isn't one. Its based on cultural fears, and intolerance. You're on the losing side of history, next to the Mississippi state police that physically assaulted my father and his friends for helping black people register to vote in early 60s. Next to KKK. And the confederates, and so on. Have fun explaining to your children or your children's children, who will grow up with gay marriage, how you were the bigot.
  - astine 18y ago
    'Equal,' or 'identical?' The former implies an equation in terms of absolute 'goodness,' while the later merely implies a concurrence of kind. If you are going to rag on same sex 'marriage' as not being truly 'marriage' for any of the reasons you state, then you also have to discount many heterosexual 'marriages' as well. The problem is that for one half of our society, the meaning of the term has changed radically over the past century and for the other half it hasn't changed a wit. As a result, the laws have grown confusing and contradictory and there is no longer any easy way to reconcile the terms.
  - natch 18y ago
    Interracial couples can never have pure-race children naturally. So would you say that makes them different enough that they should not be eligible for marriage?
  - dgordon 18y ago
    So instead of marriage, let's call it...butt-buddies. Besides, why do you care so much whether Joe is married to a woman, a man, a genderless entity, or no one at all?
- Maktab 18y ago
  Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of the parent's argument, your comparison is facile. So-called 'separate but equal' legislation never provided for anything close to legal equality. Civil unions, on the other hand, could provide the same legal rights as marriage. But that's besides the point. The real story here is that Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy. As a block, American-Americans tend to vote against gay rights and gay marriage issues, and so the high turnout was what swung the ballot in favour of Prop. 8. The lesson here should be that the gay community of the US has not done enough to reach out to the African-American community in order to gain greater acceptance and understanding. Despite all the advocacy against white religious conservatives and high-profile court campaigns, there has been precious little effort in convincing voters why they have nothing to fear and why gays should have the right to marry because that would be fair and just. Until that happens, gay Americans are going to have to be content with winning brief victories through the courts while fearing each and every time the general public is given the chance to have their own say on the issue.
  - sethg 18y ago
    _Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy._ Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com points out that first-time voters voted against Prop. 8 by 62-38, while experienced voters favored it by 56-44. Therefore, if Obama's candidacy had not boosted turnout, Prop. 8 probably would have passed by an even higher margin. Yes, black voters voted 70-30 in favor of Prop. 8, but they were only 10% of the electorate, and lots of other demographic subgroups favored it as well. (E.g., 22% of the voters attend church weekly--I bet that 22% includes the vast majority of the black voters--and they favored Prop. 8 by 82-18.) So I think treating the black vote as the reason for Prop. 8's passage is unfair.
    - Maktab 18y ago
      Fair enough, I had not seen Nate Silver's analysis yet before you alerted me to it. But even if the black vote was not pivotal in this case, Silver's analysis still validates the chief point I was trying to make, which is that support for gay rights amongst African-Americans is frighteningly low and that the gay community's advocates are not doing enough to understand and get the support of the only community in the United States that truly understands what it means to be denied rights that others enjoy. It doesn't have to be this way.
- mynameishere 18y ago
  I suspect that, in general, homosexuals had better prepare themselves for some retrenchment. Their opposition is solidly "multicultural" in flavor, but all of their tactics are essentially of the same sort used against Southerners, viz, to call them "bigots". This will not work against blacks and hispanics, the two groups that will be increasingly important in the future. Word to the wise: The purpose of the "civil rights" movement is to weaken national unity and destroy traditional culture. That has been its purpose since day one, and the actual rights of man per se do not enter into strategic consideration. When the ruling class has to decide between alienating gays, alienating blacks, and alienating hispanics, it will do the first. When this becomes actual policy is difficult to say, since it isn't a straightforward headcount issue.
  - aswanson 18y ago
    The purpose of the "civil rights" movement is to weaken national unity and destroy traditional culture. That has been its purpose since day one, and the actual rights of man per se do not enter into strategic consideration. When the ruling class has to decide between alienating gays, alienating blacks, and alienating hispanics, it will do the first. When this becomes actual policy is difficult to say, since it isn't a straightforward headcount issue How did you come to these conclusions?
ivankirigin 18y ago
The way to phrase your suggestion: marriage is a cultural institution, not civic. There shouldn't be laws about cultural institutions. People should just do whatever they want.
- axod 18y ago
  Yeah it's all well and good to say you should be able to do what you want, but you have to take responsibility for society as a whole. Is poligamy valid in law? not here and rightly so I'd say. Also, it's just not very nice to hijack words. It's like people who call HTML a programming language.
  - Retric 18y ago
    What's wrong with poligamy? I am all for protecting the young, but WTF do you care what three forty year old people do in their own home?
    - axod 18y ago
      Sorry perhaps I should have been clearer. I think there is something wrong about "marrying" multiple people at the same time. What you want to do in your own home is up to you.
      - abstractbill 18y ago
        I guess I'm not seeing what impact marriage has on society as a whole - can you elaborate?
        axod 18y ago
        Well I'd say to abolish marriage would be a big mistake for society. For me the main function of marriage is to provide the optimum situation for bringing up kids, as well as promoting monogamy and faithfulness which are IMHO good for society. I think hijacking the word to mean other things muddies and confuses things for society, when there's actually an opportunity to use a new word to mean marriage between a same sex couple.
sethg 18y ago
Saying "a same-sex couple should be allowed all the privileges of a married couple, but please don't call it 'marriage'" is like saying "a woman should be allowed to attend medical school and receive a degree and be licensed to see patients and prescribe medicine and collect insurance reimbursements, but please don't call her a 'doctor'".
- axod 18y ago
  No, it's not. Female doctors can carry out the same tasks as Male doctors (Give or take). Gay couples cannot carry out the same tasks as Heterosexual couples.
  - swombat 18y ago
    Of course they can. Unless you mean that the sanctity of marriage is based on the ability of one party to stick their thing in the other and produce a baby. What about a marriage between a man and a woman who adopt a child? Are they allowed to be married? Or are you implying that heterosexual couples raise their children better than homosexual couples? That'd be a pretty tough claim to support.
    - axod 18y ago
      Not all heterosexual couples can conceive, but a large number can. 0 homosexual couples can conceive. I'd also say yes heterosexuals are sure to raise kids better. What could be better than getting both a woman and a mans point of view on the world? :/ Wouldn't you worry if you sent your son to a school where all the teachers were women? I'd say he would be missing out on something.
      - swombat 18y ago
        0 infertile couples can conceive. Should infertile couples not be allowed to marry? 0 post-menopausal women can conceive. Should post-menopausal women not be allowed to marry?

Equal rights? sure. But is it really that much of a big deal to just call it something other than 'marriage'?

by axod 18y ago

Equal rights? sure. But is it really that much of a big deal to just call it something other than 'marriage'?

Separate but equal huh? I think I've heard that one before. The racists of the 60's called, they'd like to work with you and your brilliant ideas.

axod 18y ago
They aren't equal. They can never have children naturally. They should have equal rights in terms of their union, but in terms of procreation and furthering the species etc, how can they? Racism doesn't really have such an argument does it. I just don't see why the word matters all that much. Surely as long as you are equal in the eyes of the law, why not have a different word to mean same sex marriage? Then if you say "joe is married" you don't have to ask "to a woman? or another man?".
- Retric 18y ago
  Two women could have children from their own DNA with a little genetic engineering or just cloning. Plenty of heterosexual coupples can't have children do you want to forbid them getting married? How about if they decide not to can they get married? PS: I honestly just get creeped out when people start talking about labels as if a word by it's self means something.
  - axod 18y ago
    A father and his daughter could probably have a healthy child with a bit of help from science, but that wouldn't make it a good idea would it.
    - Retric 18y ago
      Ok, that's creepy, but if they are 30 and 50 what's the problem? My point is just because I don't like something does not mean I get to stop people who are not hurting me from doing it. There was some story about people who where both adopted got married and then found out they where siblings. And yea it's creepy, but while I would be ok forbidding them from having children (for the public good) I don't see the value in forcing them to break up. And, even forbidding something on genetic grounds becomes a slippery slope problem because it's one step from their to sterilizing people.
  - redrobot5050 18y ago
    Yeah. I'm all about the 'traditional marriage' myself. You know, where my lord's regent picks my wife from one of the other serf's, pays her father a small dowry, lets my lord enact Prima Nocte, and then unloads her onto me, where she's my property to do what I wish with. (NOT).
- redrobot5050 18y ago
  So should my parents marriage be invalidated, seeing as my mother has undergone menopause, and thus, they can "never have children naturally" anymore? What about anorexia survivors? Malnutrition plays hell with uterine linings. Should we deny them the right to marriage? Is an eating disorder more or less of a 'a choice' than homosexuality in your eyes? Alan Turing was gay, and never had children. He developed the code-breaking machines that allowed the Allies to win world war 2. Don't think for a second that Churchill being able to read Hitler's mail before Hitler read it didn't "tip the balance". So it sounds like gay people can further the species without procreation. In fact, I'd argue that smart people (gay OR straight) are better off not having children until their career has 'peaked'. For the truly brilliant -- the Turings and Einsteins of the world -- a child is not going to be "their greatest accomplishment". Seriously, a gay man basically did more for Western civilization than you or I or any Veteran still alive has. He was shamed into killing himself because of his sexual orientation. You'd really object to his happiness? sigh. I'm going to stop here before I pull a Godwin.
  - axod 18y ago
    You're starting to distort everything I said. I don't care if gay people wish to have even more rights than me. Fine. Just don't mess about with a word that has been defined clearly for a long time.
    - redrobot5050 18y ago
      They're NOT messing with a word that's been defined for clearly a long time. I don't think they'd define the pleas for equality before the law to be considered "messing" or "trouble making". You DO realize that the definition of marriage has changed several times, right? Women are no longer property owned by their fathers until transferred into the possession of another Man. Being of different race no longer means you can't get married, either. Furthermore, we re-define words all the time in the computer field. Think about how the definition of "fast" gets redefined every 18 months to to years. And how what was "fast" is now "slow". Hands down you cannot string a rational argument against gay marriage because there isn't one. Its based on cultural fears, and intolerance. You're on the losing side of history, next to the Mississippi state police that physically assaulted my father and his friends for helping black people register to vote in early 60s. Next to KKK. And the confederates, and so on. Have fun explaining to your children or your children's children, who will grow up with gay marriage, how you were the bigot.
- astine 18y ago
  'Equal,' or 'identical?' The former implies an equation in terms of absolute 'goodness,' while the later merely implies a concurrence of kind. If you are going to rag on same sex 'marriage' as not being truly 'marriage' for any of the reasons you state, then you also have to discount many heterosexual 'marriages' as well. The problem is that for one half of our society, the meaning of the term has changed radically over the past century and for the other half it hasn't changed a wit. As a result, the laws have grown confusing and contradictory and there is no longer any easy way to reconcile the terms.
- natch 18y ago
  Interracial couples can never have pure-race children naturally. So would you say that makes them different enough that they should not be eligible for marriage?
- dgordon 18y ago
  So instead of marriage, let's call it...butt-buddies. Besides, why do you care so much whether Joe is married to a woman, a man, a genderless entity, or no one at all?
Maktab 18y ago
Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of the parent's argument, your comparison is facile. So-called 'separate but equal' legislation never provided for anything close to legal equality. Civil unions, on the other hand, could provide the same legal rights as marriage. But that's besides the point. The real story here is that Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy. As a block, American-Americans tend to vote against gay rights and gay marriage issues, and so the high turnout was what swung the ballot in favour of Prop. 8. The lesson here should be that the gay community of the US has not done enough to reach out to the African-American community in order to gain greater acceptance and understanding. Despite all the advocacy against white religious conservatives and high-profile court campaigns, there has been precious little effort in convincing voters why they have nothing to fear and why gays should have the right to marry because that would be fair and just. Until that happens, gay Americans are going to have to be content with winning brief victories through the courts while fearing each and every time the general public is given the chance to have their own say on the issue.
- sethg 18y ago
  _Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy._ Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com points out that first-time voters voted against Prop. 8 by 62-38, while experienced voters favored it by 56-44. Therefore, if Obama's candidacy had not boosted turnout, Prop. 8 probably would have passed by an even higher margin. Yes, black voters voted 70-30 in favor of Prop. 8, but they were only 10% of the electorate, and lots of other demographic subgroups favored it as well. (E.g., 22% of the voters attend church weekly--I bet that 22% includes the vast majority of the black voters--and they favored Prop. 8 by 82-18.) So I think treating the black vote as the reason for Prop. 8's passage is unfair.
  - Maktab 18y ago
    Fair enough, I had not seen Nate Silver's analysis yet before you alerted me to it. But even if the black vote was not pivotal in this case, Silver's analysis still validates the chief point I was trying to make, which is that support for gay rights amongst African-Americans is frighteningly low and that the gay community's advocates are not doing enough to understand and get the support of the only community in the United States that truly understands what it means to be denied rights that others enjoy. It doesn't have to be this way.
mynameishere 18y ago
I suspect that, in general, homosexuals had better prepare themselves for some retrenchment. Their opposition is solidly "multicultural" in flavor, but all of their tactics are essentially of the same sort used against Southerners, viz, to call them "bigots". This will not work against blacks and hispanics, the two groups that will be increasingly important in the future. Word to the wise: The purpose of the "civil rights" movement is to weaken national unity and destroy traditional culture. That has been its purpose since day one, and the actual rights of man per se do not enter into strategic consideration. When the ruling class has to decide between alienating gays, alienating blacks, and alienating hispanics, it will do the first. When this becomes actual policy is difficult to say, since it isn't a straightforward headcount issue.
- aswanson 18y ago
  The purpose of the "civil rights" movement is to weaken national unity and destroy traditional culture. That has been its purpose since day one, and the actual rights of man per se do not enter into strategic consideration. When the ruling class has to decide between alienating gays, alienating blacks, and alienating hispanics, it will do the first. When this becomes actual policy is difficult to say, since it isn't a straightforward headcount issue How did you come to these conclusions?

ivankirigin 18y ago

The way to phrase your suggestion: marriage is a cultural institution, not civic. There shouldn't be laws about cultural institutions. People should just do whatever they want.

axod 18y ago
Yeah it's all well and good to say you should be able to do what you want, but you have to take responsibility for society as a whole. Is poligamy valid in law? not here and rightly so I'd say. Also, it's just not very nice to hijack words. It's like people who call HTML a programming language.
- Retric 18y ago
  What's wrong with poligamy? I am all for protecting the young, but WTF do you care what three forty year old people do in their own home?
  - axod 18y ago
    Sorry perhaps I should have been clearer. I think there is something wrong about "marrying" multiple people at the same time. What you want to do in your own home is up to you.
    - abstractbill 18y ago
      I guess I'm not seeing what impact marriage has on society as a whole - can you elaborate?
      - axod 18y ago
        Well I'd say to abolish marriage would be a big mistake for society. For me the main function of marriage is to provide the optimum situation for bringing up kids, as well as promoting monogamy and faithfulness which are IMHO good for society. I think hijacking the word to mean other things muddies and confuses things for society, when there's actually an opportunity to use a new word to mean marriage between a same sex couple.

sethg 18y ago

Saying "a same-sex couple should be allowed all the privileges of a married couple, but please don't call it 'marriage'" is like saying "a woman should be allowed to attend medical school and receive a degree and be licensed to see patients and prescribe medicine and collect insurance reimbursements, but please don't call her a 'doctor'".

axod 18y ago
No, it's not. Female doctors can carry out the same tasks as Male doctors (Give or take). Gay couples cannot carry out the same tasks as Heterosexual couples.
- swombat 18y ago
  Of course they can. Unless you mean that the sanctity of marriage is based on the ability of one party to stick their thing in the other and produce a baby. What about a marriage between a man and a woman who adopt a child? Are they allowed to be married? Or are you implying that heterosexual couples raise their children better than homosexual couples? That'd be a pretty tough claim to support.
  - axod 18y ago
    Not all heterosexual couples can conceive, but a large number can. 0 homosexual couples can conceive. I'd also say yes heterosexuals are sure to raise kids better. What could be better than getting both a woman and a mans point of view on the world? :/ Wouldn't you worry if you sent your son to a school where all the teachers were women? I'd say he would be missing out on something.
    - swombat 18y ago
      0 infertile couples can conceive. Should infertile couples not be allowed to marry? 0 post-menopausal women can conceive. Should post-menopausal women not be allowed to marry?