I use the term veneration very much aware that it can amount to an overstatement if one takes it to mean a level of approval that is extremely high, of the sort that one would view something not merely with approval but with reverence, virtually a religious belief or view. But the meaning of veneration does I think fit with what most societies at least claim to view the institution of marriage. I was just at a wedding over the weekend, and the way it is described as a sacrament, the essential connection between love and the way that love leads not only to procreation but later the raising of children, who are the future of society, I don't think veneration is too strong a term. Those who support the gay agenda of course do not say what they want is veneration, but if they say they want to be viewed as approvingly as straight marriage, it amounts to the same thing. Demanding veneration in explicit terms would come across as arrogant. But that is in fact what they want. Make no mistake about it, that is why civil unions with full benefits is not enough for them. the word marriage implies more than merely approval, it implies a very high level of approval approaching veneration. Hobbes, I doubt we come to this point of rare agreement for the same reasons, but I understand your reasoning. Mine is more that I draw a huge distinction between static characteristic bases of discrimintion, which have no rational basis, and "discrimination" involving behaviors in areas where, I think, society has a collective right to speak to and regulate. The rhetoric of the right is currently opposed to the notion of governmental regulation, but that both goes in cycles (it was not too long ago the right was all about upholding law and order) and papers over what is really going on. But in a democracy does the majority have a right to regulate behaviors it wants to encourage and discourage and not be overturned by the rulings of unelected judges? Absent some clear consitutional basis for doing so, I believe in majority rule.
I agree, but it also makes you wonder why they think they need society's approval so much. Perhaps because they do not really believe they are equal themselves? For the most part I don't give a flying F what "society" thinks about me or what I do as long as they leave me alone. The reason the gay groups want more than tolerance means they want more than to be left alone. They look at it differently, quite obviously.
You're not answering the primary question BB, or are just merely avoiding it. Marriage may have started as a religious institution, but it no longer solely is, and hasn't been for a long time. Is my marriage less of a marriage because I wasn't married in a church?
I'm also not aware of anything in the traditional Christian wedding vows that isn't directly applicable to a same sex couple; love, hold, honour, cherish, obey, richer or poorer, sickness and health? All seem fairly gender neutral to me. Indeed, if we want to go a little further, I'd say that one of the most commonly used marriage blessings seems to have been written with a same sex couple in mind: Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him."
Here's the thing - Why should people need any reason at all? As long as the law is changed through a democratic process, then the reason doesn't matter. People can choose to stand against gay marriage just because they don't approve of the gay lifestyle. Nobody needs a reason except the government; and even then, it doesn't even need to be a very good reason. I think there has only been one state to put the issue of gay marriage on the ballot, and it lost. In a very liberal state. That's very telling. Those people who voted - they didn't need a reason. They didn't want gays to marry. 'Nuff said. End of issue. Until the next court challenge, of course. Two other states have passed gay marriage through the legislature. A couple others had it imposed on them by their courts - but even in those cases, the decisions were based on their own state constitutions, which were more liberal than the US Constitution. But 40-plus states have decided, either by action or inaction, that they don't want gay marriage. And that's enough.
BB, What I was referring to was the fact that 75% of the respondents believe that there will always be a difference, between CU's and Marriage, which is of course incorrect. Legislation can be made to accommodate any set of circumstances let alone terminology. I was lead to the underlying argument ( the right to 'self define...etc...) by a lib friend of mine (yes...I do have them :wink She's a Poly Sci prof. And back when N J was working on CU's we were debating over this issue of Marriage vs. C.U. I agree with KB that given the nature of the word, it's traditional definitions and so on, makes that word in and of itself a protected commodity....But...I believe that any two people that choose to build something together should be able to do so, and should not e discriminated against (especially from a governmental standpoint) I think the arguments that go beyond being given the same 'rights' and extending to bowdlerizing a word with a specific meaning (and whose metaphysical nature extends to religious sacrament for a large swath of the aforementioned) is a bridge too far.
Do you think it is? The answer to that question seems to be the point of this whole argument. If you are happy with your marriage and do not think it is any less than anybody else's then it is not. It seems gay people think that if their union is not called a "marriage" than it is less of a union than anybody else's when it is what they make it. Just like mine is! The answer to jonny english's question is simple: It's because gays want to use the term "Marriage" to be vendictive to those in society who do feel the word is sacred and defined as "a union between a man and a women".
That's a legal position though. I'm not arguing the law with you, especially as I think you're probably a lawyer - I'm arguing a position of morality. I'm fairly sure that if they'd held a referendum in 1830 in England then the vote would have been in support of slavery - sometimes it's the responsibility of the state to exercise its power to impose a change in the law that is right, irrespective of how the general public feels. The general public is often too ill-informed, too ignorant, too self-centred or all three to make the right decision, that's why we give elected officials and the judiciary the power to make decisions for us.
Americans want to use the term "football" to refer to a sport that isn't football, isn't played with the foot, doesn't have anything like the popularity of football, and is considerably younger than football. I could get upset about your appropriation and misuse of the term, or I could accept that both uses have equal merit in their appropriate context, neither harms the other, and I can get on with enjoying both. (Not that I'm considering marrying another bloke, you understand, there my analogy falls down!) It's a daft argument, but it's no more daft than yours.
Is there a proper name for Football over there? I always thought it was really called soccer and the slang is football? Hell if I'm right then why not legally call it civil union and they can slang the word marriage for their self esteem. I know you are basically telling me to get over it but why? What does it hurt gays if their union is called a "civil union" and not marriage (with they have the same legal rights)?
It's not a legal point as much as it is a point on the democratic process. I don't care where the morality in this issue resides. If gay guys want to marry gay guys and lesbian chicks want to marry lesbian chicks - then fine. As long as their wants and needs don't trample on the wants and needs of others who, with their own preferences, would absolutely have to abide by a fair process. It probably isn't fair that fat chicks get bought fewer drinks, and I feel sorry about that; but I'm not all that keen on a law being passed to level that playing field. Not everything is fair. In 1830's America, there were a handful of states that outright ignored the Constitution, and refused to return escaped slaves to their slave-state owners. If a voting plurality of their citizens thought that was a bad idea, they could have ordered their elected officials to change that policy. At least in principle. But they didn't, and eventually, their attitude on that issues gained traction and more states joined. Reached a point where, eventually, war started. Then, after war, the law was changed. Aside from the 600,000 dead soldiers, the process worked pretty well on that one. This is another discussion for another day, but that red part is my big problem with progressivism - this notion that there are some people who need to be saved from themselves. The seedy underbelly of that concept is also the implication that some citizens are innately better than others. If each individual gets to choose good/bad for themselves, I'd trust that a thousand times moreso than if the government gets to choose. Recognizing, of course, that the government makes choices like that every single day.
i think you are confusing me with someone else. I don't recall having spoken about the religious aspect of this issue, at least not recently. Having said that I disagree with your implicit assumption that the subject need either be religious or, being civil in nature, is not religious. Think of the concept of murder. that violates both religious law and the penal code. the concept found in religion in fact informs the understanding of the penal code. As to whether a marriage outside of church is "less" than one in, it's certainly different, and in the eyse of the state no less valid. But for a religous person it would always be "less" to be married outside of church.
So, they're too ill-informed, too ignorant, too self-centerd to make the right decision, but the elected officials they are manipulated into putting into power aren't ? Interesting...Two Questions? Have you seen the President...? Are you sure you're English? I've long admired the verbal acuity evinced by our friends across the pond...you're seriously making me rethink that....
Hey, I know it's not perfect. It's just that we have to put our faith in someone, right? Unless we're going to hold a public referendum on every single decision made on our behalf, then all we're arguing is the demarcation point of where the power of elected officials ends and the will of the people should start. I'd see the decision to allow same sex couples to marry to be comfortably within the remit of the former.
Yes, I've seen the President. I'm not sure where you're going with that one..... I'm guessing you don't like him. It's a rare thing to find a leader that everyone likes, though. I'm not sufficiently clued up on US politics to hold a sensible and rationally argued position as to why he's good, bad or indifferent. The only two things I'm sure of are that you did a better job with this one than you did picking the last, and that the alternative to this one was considerably less palatable from my perspective as someone who isn't a US citizen. As for my Englishness, I'm sorry that you've allowed yourself to labour under such a false impression of my country. I think you're missing my point somewhat, though - of course there's a contradiction if you're going to take what I say from a literal point of view. I'm too ignorant and ill-informed to fix my own furnace, but I'm still going to choose who I ask to do it. Is that contradictory?
I was figuring that came out worse than it was intended. True, though. We do need to put our faith in elected officials and we HOPE that they do good in our name. And this is why I said this is a discussion for a different day and a different thread. In the context of gay marriage, the movement has impatiently decided that it can't be bothered with enacting change the way everyone else would have to do it. I want to illustrate what I'm talking about with a real-live example. As we speak, there is pending a handpicked federal case, with handpicked plaintiffs, in a handpicked Federal Court (San Francisco), in a handpicked Federal Circuit (9th Circuit). If that same case were filed in the Federal Court in Utah and in the 10th Circuit, would it get the same hearing? One would hope so, but one also hopes that Cracker Jax would go back to the cool prizes we used to get. Just ain't gonna happen. Is it fair that the preferences of one community (San Francisco, CA) are exploited so that the preferences of another community (Salt Lake City, Utah) get diminished? Of course it isn't. So, the only fair thing would be to allow both sub-communities to make their own fair set of rules through some process with a popular election behind it. But that's not good enough for the gay marriage proponents. But it should be, because it is the fairest for all parties. And it doesn't matter one whit why Utah doesn't like gay marriage. Maybe they like polygamy better, and maybe Californians aren't too keen on that. We don't even need to get to the question of 'why'. Doesn't matter. They're San Franciscans or they're Utes (or Utahnian or whatever). That's what they do and who they are.
OK, I'm probably going to demonstrate my lack of knowledge of the US legal system here so I'll apologise in advance, but is the sensible argument not that the Constitution should be amended, and that the right of marriage for all irrespective of gender should be enshrined within Federal law? My view is that a right whose exercise does no actual harm to others, and can easily be shown to potentially do much good, surely has no reason not to be protected?
If that were done, it would be through a democratic process. And, yes, that would be perfectly fine. But that's lengthy and involved, and the gay marriage movement lacks the patience. Polls right now suggest that gay marriage is opposed by people middle-age upward, but is either dead-even or even favored among young people. So, it could very well be that gay marriage will be very popular in less than a decade. And all of those people will (or should) be voters. So the likelihood of change, if you have patience, is pretty good. ETA: I spoke of polling. There's tons of them, but here's one:
That seems reasonable; these things are rarely achieved overnight. Is it fair to say, though, that the way in which change is achieved is not historically with one monumental push, but rather with a series of cases, events and movements that each get a little closer to the tipping point before one day the desired result is reached? In which case, the argument that the gay marriage lobby is attempting to circumvent due process by trying test cases in some locations but not other is probably at least in part a recognition that the momentum is building towards the inevitable collapse of the status quo. After all, in order to continue progress towards the desired end one must continue to make the issue relevant to those who will make the decision; people won't be motivated to change that which they don't care about. Those test cases in sympathetic courts and states create awareness of the issue, they demystify and explain the arguments, and they create knowledge on which people can build their own view. In my experience, there's none so noisy as a thwarted bigot - except possibly the single issue zealot. Bringing the two together into public awareness allows for enlightened decision making.
