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Of course there is. Being against State privileged marriage automatically makes you against State privilege gay marriage. I don't know if that's the case for E

Of course there is. Being against State privileged marriage automatically makes you against State privilege gay marriage. I don't know if that's the case for Eich, but it is at least a counter-example to your claim.

eropple 13y ago
"Nobody should have it, but especially they shouldn't" is what that functionally boils down to in the world of the real. That's a really bad position to hold, too.
- burntsushi 13y ago
  > "Nobody should have it, but especially they shouldn't" The way you've phrased it specifically makes it look like the stance is targeting gays. That's disingenuous. Here's another phrasing: "Governments should not be involved in marriage. Increasing their involvement in marriage will only make matters worse." This is clearly not anti-gay. This is a sufficient counter-example to your claim even if you think it's a "bad position" to hold. (I don't think it's a great position to hold either. I don't think governments should be involved in marriage, but I'm pragmatic about it and think they should open the doors to whatever kind of cohabitation people want. This includes polyamory.) Basically what I'm saying is that being against State privileged gay marriage doesn't have to be anti-gay. It can be anti-State. I grant that most people who advocate from this position are hypocrites and are probably using it to mask more sinister motivations, but that doesn't make this reasoning invalid.
  - eropple 13y ago
    To be completely honest: I don't believe anyone has that position in good faith.
    - burntsushi 13y ago
      I certainly know people who do. But then again, I travel in voluntaryist circles, so I'm predisposed to exactly the kind of people who might have that position. There aren't many.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      Well, you're just wrong about that. I'm personally aware of people who do.
    - anonymoushn 13y ago
      I oppose all marriage, but I am willing to be pragmatic about this, and will vote for both legislation that liberalizes marriage and legislation that bans it.
      - eropple 13y ago
        Sure, and that's a rational, coherent viewpoint that doesn't require you to want to keep gays as lesser citizens. The viewpoint espoused by burntsushi requires it. I don't care if you think the state institution of marriage should be abolished--I even kind of agree--but if your idea of "holding the line" is "nah, fuck those people", you have jank in your worldview and I suspect very much I can identify it.
        burntsushi 13y ago
        > The viewpoint espoused by burntsushi requires it. I don't hold that viewpoint. I was merely demonstrating that one can be against gay marriage without being anti-gay. > "nah, fuck those people" Uh, no. I'm not doing it to those people. Government is. Virtually every law regulating social behaviors (whether it's created or repealed) requires oppressing some class of people. In the case of State privileged marriage, it oppresses everyone who can't or won't marry but still want benefits only available to married persons.
        eropple 13y ago
        Yes, you are saying "these people should not have the same rights as these other people." You can, and given your posting I am sure will, continue to represent otherwise. You are unconvincing, and somebody who votes, or donates money, in the method of your stated position is an asshole. Because making the perfect the enemy of the good and ignoring that you hurt people in the process is wrong.
  - npizzolato 13y ago
    The intersection of people I've met who actively fund and promote laws to deny gay people the right to marry and the people I've met who actively fund and promote laws to remove government from all marriage has been exactly zero people. I would love to be proven wrong about that, and I'm not saying your argument is incorrect, but I have personally only seen that argument used as an excuse to deny gay people the rights already given to heterosexual people.
    - burntsushi 13y ago
      You're most likely to find such people among principled libertarians. By their very nature they: 1) Don't care what consenting individuals do. 2) Want the power and influence of the State reduced. Some of us are reasonably pragmatic and acknowledge that the State isn't going away any time soon. Therefore, we prefer that the State be as egalitarian as possible. Others are less tolerable of pragmatism and do not support any expansion of State power. This has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation and is easily applied consistently. Moreover, libertarians are very unlikely to even acknowledge marriage as a right. It's only meaningful in our society as a "right" precisely because governments grant special privileges to married couples. This discriminates against ALL unmarried people---not just gays. If governments weren't involved in marriage, ALL of this would be a non-issue. People could choose to celebrate or signify their union in whichever manner they choose. To an anti-State ideologue, claiming that "well governments are involved so you might as just give them more power" is just a non-starter. I get that participating in a lynch mob can be fun. But my only point here is that there are legitimate arguments for the other side that don't require bigotry. (Since other commenters were claiming this to be impossible.) This is an inconvenient fact for a lynch mob acting on limited information.
      - npizzolato 13y ago
        The important part of my comment was "actively fund[ing] and promot[ing] laws". I have no major problem with the argument that the state should be out of marriages entirely. That seems fully reasonable (at least to the extent I've thought about it). My problem is that no one is actually trying to remove government from all marriages, as this argument would seem to imply. This argument is only used to defend removing gay rights, as with Prop 8.
  - chipotle_coyote 13y ago
    Basically what I'm saying is that being against State privileged gay marriage doesn't have to be anti-gay. It can be anti-State. While I think this is a perfectly rational position, I'm dubious that it's a very good basis for opposing gay marriage rights. I've noticed that libertarians and leftists both tend toward a passionate hatred of compromise and "half-measures," and this reasoning strikes me as one of those cases. If you really don't think the State should be involved in marriage at all, then you don't want the state recognizing gay marriage because you don't want it to recognize any marriage. But on a practical level, that's not going to happen any time soon. Extending gay marriage rights arguably reduces the State's ability to dictate who can and can't be married and thus increases individual freedom. Isn't that clearly preferable from a libertarian standpoint?
    - burntsushi 13y ago
      I clarified in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7461745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7461745 But to succinctly answer your question; no I don't think it is unequivocally libertarian. But it depends on who you talk to. > I've noticed that libertarians and leftists both tend toward a passionate hatred of compromise and "half-measures," and this reasoning strikes me as one of those cases. You mean compromise with respect to the expansion of the State. This is usually the distinction between a moderate and a radical. > I'm dubious that it's a very good basis for opposing gay marriage rights. Here's the problem: you're presupposing that marriage is a right. I appreciate that marriage (along with a myriad of other things) is listed as a right in the UDHR, but that really isn't why gays---or others like polyamorous cohabitants---want marriage in the first place. They want it because of State granted privileges bestowed upon married couples. Those aren't rights. Unfortunately, some of those privileges restrict the rights of all unmarried persons. Particularly with respect to hospital visitation. Everyone---including unmarried people---should be allowed to control such things about their lives. Other privileges include tax breaks and the like. I won't go down that road... With that said, you're basically telling me that I oppose something that I don't think even exists in the first place. To me, rights are much more fundamental than constructs like marriage. The problem is that the debate is framed in terms of gay marriage. One's position against marriage in general can subsume one's position on gay marriage. But the lynch mob lacks perspective and can only imagine that being against gay marriage means being against gays. Once you finally recognize that, "oh gee whiz, yeah, being against marriage in general is cool, but still, you aren't pragmatic enough for me." OK. Now we're done. Before I was a bigot. But now I'm just not being pragmatic. That isn't a lynchable offense. So, we good now? (Not talking to you specifically, but in general.) Disclaimer: I don't vote and don't contribute to any political causes/campaigns because there are none that exclusively support voluntary interaction. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to vote, I'd vote in favor of more egalitarian laws every time. Sorry for being a windbag, but in this kind of topic, it's just way too easy to take short responses that aren't precise in bad faith.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  "I have no chance of achieving my overreaching goal of abolishing marriage for everyone, but by teaming up with religious bigots and homophobes, who I agree with about preventing gay marriage, but disagree with about preventing straight marriage, at least I can achieve a small part of my unattainable goal by perpetuating discrimination against a small minority of historically oppressed people, because they have less power to defend their right to marriage than the general population."

eropple 13y ago

"Nobody should have it, but especially they shouldn't" is what that functionally boils down to in the world of the real. That's a really bad position to hold, too.

burntsushi 13y ago
> "Nobody should have it, but especially they shouldn't" The way you've phrased it specifically makes it look like the stance is targeting gays. That's disingenuous. Here's another phrasing: "Governments should not be involved in marriage. Increasing their involvement in marriage will only make matters worse." This is clearly not anti-gay. This is a sufficient counter-example to your claim even if you think it's a "bad position" to hold. (I don't think it's a great position to hold either. I don't think governments should be involved in marriage, but I'm pragmatic about it and think they should open the doors to whatever kind of cohabitation people want. This includes polyamory.) Basically what I'm saying is that being against State privileged gay marriage doesn't have to be anti-gay. It can be anti-State. I grant that most people who advocate from this position are hypocrites and are probably using it to mask more sinister motivations, but that doesn't make this reasoning invalid.
- eropple 13y ago
  To be completely honest: I don't believe anyone has that position in good faith.
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    I certainly know people who do. But then again, I travel in voluntaryist circles, so I'm predisposed to exactly the kind of people who might have that position. There aren't many.
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    Well, you're just wrong about that. I'm personally aware of people who do.
  - anonymoushn 13y ago
    I oppose all marriage, but I am willing to be pragmatic about this, and will vote for both legislation that liberalizes marriage and legislation that bans it.
    - eropple 13y ago
      Sure, and that's a rational, coherent viewpoint that doesn't require you to want to keep gays as lesser citizens. The viewpoint espoused by burntsushi requires it. I don't care if you think the state institution of marriage should be abolished--I even kind of agree--but if your idea of "holding the line" is "nah, fuck those people", you have jank in your worldview and I suspect very much I can identify it.
      - burntsushi 13y ago
        > The viewpoint espoused by burntsushi requires it. I don't hold that viewpoint. I was merely demonstrating that one can be against gay marriage without being anti-gay. > "nah, fuck those people" Uh, no. I'm not doing it to those people. Government is. Virtually every law regulating social behaviors (whether it's created or repealed) requires oppressing some class of people. In the case of State privileged marriage, it oppresses everyone who can't or won't marry but still want benefits only available to married persons.
        eropple 13y ago
        Yes, you are saying "these people should not have the same rights as these other people." You can, and given your posting I am sure will, continue to represent otherwise. You are unconvincing, and somebody who votes, or donates money, in the method of your stated position is an asshole. Because making the perfect the enemy of the good and ignoring that you hurt people in the process is wrong.
- npizzolato 13y ago
  The intersection of people I've met who actively fund and promote laws to deny gay people the right to marry and the people I've met who actively fund and promote laws to remove government from all marriage has been exactly zero people. I would love to be proven wrong about that, and I'm not saying your argument is incorrect, but I have personally only seen that argument used as an excuse to deny gay people the rights already given to heterosexual people.
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    You're most likely to find such people among principled libertarians. By their very nature they: 1) Don't care what consenting individuals do. 2) Want the power and influence of the State reduced. Some of us are reasonably pragmatic and acknowledge that the State isn't going away any time soon. Therefore, we prefer that the State be as egalitarian as possible. Others are less tolerable of pragmatism and do not support any expansion of State power. This has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation and is easily applied consistently. Moreover, libertarians are very unlikely to even acknowledge marriage as a right. It's only meaningful in our society as a "right" precisely because governments grant special privileges to married couples. This discriminates against ALL unmarried people---not just gays. If governments weren't involved in marriage, ALL of this would be a non-issue. People could choose to celebrate or signify their union in whichever manner they choose. To an anti-State ideologue, claiming that "well governments are involved so you might as just give them more power" is just a non-starter. I get that participating in a lynch mob can be fun. But my only point here is that there are legitimate arguments for the other side that don't require bigotry. (Since other commenters were claiming this to be impossible.) This is an inconvenient fact for a lynch mob acting on limited information.
    - npizzolato 13y ago
      The important part of my comment was "actively fund[ing] and promot[ing] laws". I have no major problem with the argument that the state should be out of marriages entirely. That seems fully reasonable (at least to the extent I've thought about it). My problem is that no one is actually trying to remove government from all marriages, as this argument would seem to imply. This argument is only used to defend removing gay rights, as with Prop 8.
- chipotle_coyote 13y ago
  Basically what I'm saying is that being against State privileged gay marriage doesn't have to be anti-gay. It can be anti-State. While I think this is a perfectly rational position, I'm dubious that it's a very good basis for opposing gay marriage rights. I've noticed that libertarians and leftists both tend toward a passionate hatred of compromise and "half-measures," and this reasoning strikes me as one of those cases. If you really don't think the State should be involved in marriage at all, then you don't want the state recognizing gay marriage because you don't want it to recognize any marriage. But on a practical level, that's not going to happen any time soon. Extending gay marriage rights arguably reduces the State's ability to dictate who can and can't be married and thus increases individual freedom. Isn't that clearly preferable from a libertarian standpoint?
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    I clarified in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7461745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7461745 But to succinctly answer your question; no I don't think it is unequivocally libertarian. But it depends on who you talk to. > I've noticed that libertarians and leftists both tend toward a passionate hatred of compromise and "half-measures," and this reasoning strikes me as one of those cases. You mean compromise with respect to the expansion of the State. This is usually the distinction between a moderate and a radical. > I'm dubious that it's a very good basis for opposing gay marriage rights. Here's the problem: you're presupposing that marriage is a right. I appreciate that marriage (along with a myriad of other things) is listed as a right in the UDHR, but that really isn't why gays---or others like polyamorous cohabitants---want marriage in the first place. They want it because of State granted privileges bestowed upon married couples. Those aren't rights. Unfortunately, some of those privileges restrict the rights of all unmarried persons. Particularly with respect to hospital visitation. Everyone---including unmarried people---should be allowed to control such things about their lives. Other privileges include tax breaks and the like. I won't go down that road... With that said, you're basically telling me that I oppose something that I don't think even exists in the first place. To me, rights are much more fundamental than constructs like marriage. The problem is that the debate is framed in terms of gay marriage. One's position against marriage in general can subsume one's position on gay marriage. But the lynch mob lacks perspective and can only imagine that being against gay marriage means being against gays. Once you finally recognize that, "oh gee whiz, yeah, being against marriage in general is cool, but still, you aren't pragmatic enough for me." OK. Now we're done. Before I was a bigot. But now I'm just not being pragmatic. That isn't a lynchable offense. So, we good now? (Not talking to you specifically, but in general.) Disclaimer: I don't vote and don't contribute to any political causes/campaigns because there are none that exclusively support voluntary interaction. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to vote, I'd vote in favor of more egalitarian laws every time. Sorry for being a windbag, but in this kind of topic, it's just way too easy to take short responses that aren't precise in bad faith.
SimHacker 13y ago
"I have no chance of achieving my overreaching goal of abolishing marriage for everyone, but by teaming up with religious bigots and homophobes, who I agree with about preventing gay marriage, but disagree with about preventing straight marriage, at least I can achieve a small part of my unattainable goal by perpetuating discrimination against a small minority of historically oppressed people, because they have less power to defend their right to marriage than the general population."