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Culturally we make no distinction between religious marriage and civil marriage. The majority of people aren't even really aware of the difference. So long as

by learc83 14y ago

Culturally we make no distinction between religious marriage and civil marriage. The majority of people aren't even really aware of the difference. So long as this is the case there will be opposition to any legally allowed civil marriage that doesn't follow the traditional definition. Do you want to have this fight every time a new type of union wants the legal protections of marriage? My solution is a compromise, the alternative is to have this fight for the next few years, and then a few years later start it all over again for poly-marriages. >There's no reason to change the name of the legal agreement known as "marriage" to "civil union" other than to pacify the superstitious. Since the "superstitious" make up a large percent of the country you might want to find a way to "pacify" them. If we can compromise so that the majority of people are happy and no one's rights are violated, where's the problem? Unless you just don't want to "pacify" the "superstitious" out of spite.

rayiner 14y ago
> Culturally we make no distinction between religious marriage and civil marriage. The majority of people aren't even really aware of the difference. Yet there it is, in black and white, in every statutory code in the country.
imgabe 14y ago
So, we write our laws based on reason and justice, unless some religious group threatens to make a really big stink then we just do whatever they want? Is that a reasonable way to run a country? The statistics I was able to Google up show support for gay marriage at 43% of the US and against 47%. So it's not like it's some tiny percentage who are for it, and it's not even a majority who are against it. Personally, no, I don't want to have this fight. I also don't want to have to fight about evolution being taught in schools. Unfortunately some members of the population render this a necessity.
- learc83 14y ago
  >So, we write our laws based on reason and justice, unless some religious group threatens to make a really big stink then we just do whatever they want? No, we write our laws based on reason and justice, but there is nothing wrong with taking people's preferences into account as long as those preferences don't violate the rights of other people. Assuming you were for a single payer healthcare system. Would you object to a president pushing for a single payer socialized healthcare system, but calling it something else in order to appease people who hate the word "socialized"?
  - imgabe 14y ago
    Your preferences are only relevant insofar as they relate to your life. Your preferences for how other people live their lives do not matter. What about the preferences of gay couples who wish to identify their relationship as a marriage? Why does your preference about what to call their relationship matter more than theirs?
    - learc83 14y ago
      You do understand that the compromise is that everyone is free to call their relationship marriage, and that gay and straight couples would both enter into a civil contract that has a different name than marriage? A word only has a meaning insofar as a culture decides to use that meaning. So yes, the preferences of individual members of the culture taken collectively are by definition relevant to the debate. So hopefully we can agree that the current definition of a word is solely about preference. We are having a problem coming to a consensus over the meaning of the word "marriage." Group A says it means "one man and one woman" Group B says it means "two people" Group C says it means "any group of consenting adults" If you are in Group A, using the word marriage in a legal document, in the context of "any two people", means you think the government sides with the preferences of Group B, and vice versa. Two (or more) sides disagree, so a compromise is proposed--we don't use the contested word, we create a new word that everyone can agree on. Imagine if 2 groups argued about the definition of the word "planet." Group A says a planet "is spherical" Group B says a planet "must clear its neighborhood" The governments starts using the Group B definition, but almost half of the people still use the Group A definition. In order to avoid a huge fight we compromise and come up with a new word that includes objects that fit both definition, solely for use in legal documents.
      - imgabe 14y ago
        That assumes that the people opposing gay marriage would even consent to the notion of equal civil unions, something that even Mitt Romney (not exactly a fringe political figure) has stated he's against. So it's really a moot point. The name of the civil contract is obviously important to people on both sides of the issue. As you've pointed out, many people have trouble distinguishing between the legal definition and the religious one. Those people are no doubt going to be upset that the government is telling them they aren't "married" anymore, but only "civil unioned" ("civilly united"? There's another problem, it doesn't verb well). Even if this compromise would be acceptable, the government has no business rewriting laws to cater to certain religions. That's pretty much exactly the thing America was founded NOT to do. We even wrote it into the first amendment. Should we make a law making it illegal to draw pictures of Mohammed, since that offends some people's religious sensibilities?

by learc83 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago

> Culturally we make no distinction between religious marriage and civil marriage. The majority of people aren't even really aware of the difference. Yet there it is, in black and white, in every statutory code in the country.

imgabe 14y ago

So, we write our laws based on reason and justice, unless some religious group threatens to make a really big stink then we just do whatever they want? Is that a reasonable way to run a country? The statistics I was able to Google up show support for gay marriage at 43% of the US and against 47%. So it's not like it's some tiny percentage who are for it, and it's not even a majority who are against it. Personally, no, I don't want to have this fight. I also don't want to have to fight about evolution being taught in schools. Unfortunately some members of the population render this a necessity.

learc83 14y ago
>So, we write our laws based on reason and justice, unless some religious group threatens to make a really big stink then we just do whatever they want? No, we write our laws based on reason and justice, but there is nothing wrong with taking people's preferences into account as long as those preferences don't violate the rights of other people. Assuming you were for a single payer healthcare system. Would you object to a president pushing for a single payer socialized healthcare system, but calling it something else in order to appease people who hate the word "socialized"?
- imgabe 14y ago
  Your preferences are only relevant insofar as they relate to your life. Your preferences for how other people live their lives do not matter. What about the preferences of gay couples who wish to identify their relationship as a marriage? Why does your preference about what to call their relationship matter more than theirs?
  - learc83 14y ago
    You do understand that the compromise is that everyone is free to call their relationship marriage, and that gay and straight couples would both enter into a civil contract that has a different name than marriage? A word only has a meaning insofar as a culture decides to use that meaning. So yes, the preferences of individual members of the culture taken collectively are by definition relevant to the debate. So hopefully we can agree that the current definition of a word is solely about preference. We are having a problem coming to a consensus over the meaning of the word "marriage." Group A says it means "one man and one woman" Group B says it means "two people" Group C says it means "any group of consenting adults" If you are in Group A, using the word marriage in a legal document, in the context of "any two people", means you think the government sides with the preferences of Group B, and vice versa. Two (or more) sides disagree, so a compromise is proposed--we don't use the contested word, we create a new word that everyone can agree on. Imagine if 2 groups argued about the definition of the word "planet." Group A says a planet "is spherical" Group B says a planet "must clear its neighborhood" The governments starts using the Group B definition, but almost half of the people still use the Group A definition. In order to avoid a huge fight we compromise and come up with a new word that includes objects that fit both definition, solely for use in legal documents.
    - imgabe 14y ago
      That assumes that the people opposing gay marriage would even consent to the notion of equal civil unions, something that even Mitt Romney (not exactly a fringe political figure) has stated he's against. So it's really a moot point. The name of the civil contract is obviously important to people on both sides of the issue. As you've pointed out, many people have trouble distinguishing between the legal definition and the religious one. Those people are no doubt going to be upset that the government is telling them they aren't "married" anymore, but only "civil unioned" ("civilly united"? There's another problem, it doesn't verb well). Even if this compromise would be acceptable, the government has no business rewriting laws to cater to certain religions. That's pretty much exactly the thing America was founded NOT to do. We even wrote it into the first amendment. Should we make a law making it illegal to draw pictures of Mohammed, since that offends some people's religious sensibilities?