Give it up
Sebastian is correct, most people don’t really care about the whole gay cooties issue. KAG, noting everything happening today, can’t believe that the one issue some people pick is gay marriage.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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May 30th, 2008 at 10:46 am
This shouldn’t be a deal-breaker issue, but nor should it be trivialized. Gays constitute 2-3% of the population, and the percentage of gays that actually want to marry is very small. We’re talking about redefining and overturning an institution that’s a societal cornerstone for the sake of a minute fraction of the population. One has reason to view this with suspicion.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Huh? This is where you guys lose me. And the first person to bring up marrying dogs loses.
So, no equal rights for left handed red heads?
May 30th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Once you start assigning multiple definitions to something, it begins to lose all meaning. It’s happened in Europe, where marriage is a defunct institution, and it’s actively happening in Canada where gay marriage has led to a push for legitimizing polygamy. The latter amuses me all to heck, because the same progressives who wanted gay marriage are realizing much to their horror that once you open the door to let one thing through, it’s really hard to shut it on anything else. Polygamists are (rightly) arguing, that if you can alter the definition to suit one group, then on what basis can you deny it to other groups? It becomes completely arbitrary.
So, no equal rights for left handed red heads?
What equal rights are we talking about here, Uncle? Gay men can marry women, and vice versa, just like anyone else. But if you’re talking about the legality of creating a social contract with whomever you like, and labeling that marriage, there’s no such right.
Do you ever wonder why civil unions aren’t enough for the people who are really pushing gay marriage? If it were really about the right of gays to associate and make contracts with whomever they choose, it makes much more sense to skirt the big political landmines by forgetting about marriage and lobbying for a legal union that recognizes a gay partnership. Especially when such a small fraction of gays actually want this. But because the most practical, logical, simple approach is not being seriously considered, that means something else is going on. There’s some other motive.
Why gay marriage? Because the people who are really pushing this are actively trying to undermine the traditional family, and the people who go along with it or who are trying to be broad-minded and persuade everyone that it’s not a big deal don’t understand the consequences. Marriage is dead in Europe, and with it went the family, because marriage is the bedrock of the family. The unintended consequence of this is that people stopped reproducing at a meaningful rate. I don’t think progressives foresaw this — what they were hoping for was Plato’s Republic, but what they got was a dying society. Now the only group that is experiencing population growth in Europe is the one that still places societal importance on family — Muslims. The Europe that we’ve known for centuries will be gone in our lifetime, and it’s because progressives actively undermined the concept of marriage and family. This is what concerns me with any attempt to redefine marriage in the U.S., because at its root it’s just a sneaky attempt to define marriage out of existence. As with all other failed progressive notions, we can see the disastrous results in Europe, but that never seems to deter anyone here.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
The issue does not assign any definitions.
The right to have their relationship with who they love recognized by the state and afforded all rights or privileges that entails (survivorship, make medical decisions, etc.)
So? They also have a right to stick spikes in their heads too but it’s useless to them.
Why does it matter if they call it marriage or civil union?
May 30th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Really don’t care about the issue. Should come under religious freedom. If some religions allow marriage between gays, the state has no real ground to stand on. I can’t even see how the state forbids polygamy when it’s part of religious doctrine. “Free exercise of religion” and all that.
However i am for it just to see some of the real drama queens go through divorce proceedings. Hell, they oughta televise that!
May 30th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
In order to survive and expand, the GOP can’t define itself as white, Southern, heterosexual, and fundamentalist Christian. (Not that there is anything wrong with being any of those). The downside is that the GOP will keep trying to appeal to liberals, and thus we will keep getting candidates like McCain.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
as of yet, i have not seen any credible studies that show that homosexuality is a medical or genetic condition… therefore i have to believe that it is a choice… as such, why are we giving it protected status?
gender, race, age, etc are all pathological in origin, and thus should be protected from discrimination… but for some reason everyone wants to include a chosen behavior in the same group…
May 30th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
The right to have their relationship with who they love recognized by the state and afforded all rights or privileges that entails (survivorship, make medical decisions, etc.)
Right, so call it a civil union.
I’m curious: what’s your view on polygamy? If one man and several women want to marry, do you see it as a similar denial of rights to outlaw such a thing?
Anyway, I’m not sure you got my point, which is that, given the freedom we have in this country to associate with whomever we wish, it still doesn’t mean there’s a right to redefine something to mean something it isn’t. The great social scientist Thomas Szasz pointed out that in the animal world it’s eat or be eaten, but in the human world it’s define or be defined. Definitions are extremely important, so it matters a great deal what we call something. This is quite often how mass slaughters are justified — we all agree it’s always horrible to kill humans, but if you can redefine someone as “subhuman,” then slaughtering them is not such a problem. Conversely, there is a group in Europe that want to define apes as humans so that we can extend human rights to them. But just because we change the definition, does this mean that apes become human?* Or does it just cause confusion and make us less able to assign meaning to things?
Why does it matter if they call it marriage or civil union?
It matters for reasons I explained at some length above. Like I said before, if it doesn’t matter to you or gay marriage proponents what we call it, but it matters a great deal to other people, then why not just call it a civil union and forget the marriage thing? Isn’t that the most expedient thing to do? Since that is not what’s being done, logically there is some other motivation behind the push to call it marriage, and I explained what that was above.
[* Please, for the love of God, do not assume that I am trying to argue that gays are subhuman. I’m using an absurd example to get my point across.]
May 30th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Chris
I’ve seen some quasi-credible studies — a group of male siblings are more likely to be of the same sexuality than a group of random people off the street, for example, and there are some neurological differences in the hippocampus (particularly INAH-3 cluster) that suggest that the medical makeup of gay individuals tends to differ from heterosexual ones. For me, sexuality is a choice, but a good number of gay, lesbian, and straight individuals I’ve asked swear they could not choose to go the other way.
But that’s not particularly relevant. We provide protected status to a lot of different things that are known to be choices, and refuse protected status to those that are not usually seen as choices. We protect a vast number of viewpoints (the right to freedom of thought) and of medical differences that resulted from choices (such as an individual who needs a ramp after a parachuting accident). We don’t protect a good number of neurological conditions known to be genetic, a vast number of easily transmitted diseases, ugliness, or a million other things. You can quite legally completely refuse to serve someone with Asperger’s in your facility as long as they don’t want to be labeled disabled, where an individual who lost their legs in an unfortunate and unsuccessful suicide attempt can raise Cain over a lackluster ramp alone. A governmental policy may refuse to hire the former, but god forgive them if there’s evidence of systemic bias against atheists.
The question is, more relevantly, whether a) any systemic protection is acceptable in the first place, b) if the discrimination is severe enough to require it, c) if the discriminated group needs it, and d), if the necessary political capital required is worth the effort. There are a lot of reasons to oppose gay marriage on each of these grounds (gay marriage discrimination amounts to little more than a paper slip, could be dealt with legislatively, and really isn’t worth the amazing amount of political capital that’s been tossed after it), and just as much for the support of gay marriage, but those are a good deal more useful questions than the matter of choice or non-choice.
ATLien
The current laws do not prevent gay marriage ceremonies or for two male or two female individuals to claim they are married to non-governmental officials. Ohio, last year, had a mass gay marriage ceremony despite a constitutional amendment that blocked gay marriages themselves.
That’s the part a lot of people miss. This isn’t about acts, or two guys screwing or living together, or even those dorky marriage ceremonies with two overpriced tuxes or gowns rather than the conventional 50/50 split. It’s about simple government recognition.
Saysuncle
Try the other one — it’s got bells on.
Let’s face the music, Saysuncle. Massachusetts went from massive public support for popular gay items like joint gay adoption, to seriously considering a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. People care. You can consider it as irrational as you want, but the only rational public policy decisions require the revelation that a good portion of the common man aren’t rational. Irrationality works for them.
May 31st, 2008 at 5:39 am
Well, unfortunately, this is one of the issues I do occasionally care about, in that marriage is a religion-laden term with the definition involving the joining of a man and a woman in what used to be considered a sacrament (and still is by some people). Given that we cannot ignore the histories and roots of words when attempting to assign new definitions to them, this is someting that should be left to the governing bodies of the various religions/sects/churches here in America, not the American secular government.
Of course, I also believe the government should have never gotten into the marriage/civil union business, but that is probably just me…
May 31st, 2008 at 6:06 am
Ok, since someone else has brought it up. Just what is the problem with polygyny?
Look if some guy is dumb enough to want multiple wives, well he’s basically digging his own grave. On the flip side if some woman wants multiple husbands, that too is fraught with problems. But heck, if all parties are willing and above the age of consent, why does anyone care?
Or is it that whole puritan thing, though I’m not sure just how much fun would really exist…
May 31st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Gregg, if we start doing that, then the rich guys will hog all of the chicks, as happens in Arabia, and at least one weird Alternative-Mormon enclave in Texas. A scaryingly large number of women don’t seem to mind things like that.
One woman married to one man is the foundation of Western Civilization.
You need to read more of what Steve Sailer writes. And John Derbyshire, too.
June 1st, 2008 at 4:54 am
Justthisguy,
Somehow I doubt that will happen. Please note that in the Arabian culture women rank as barely more than property, arguably they rank as property. We have a different view of women’s worth in the West.
Please also note that the Greeks and Romans, many claim as the progenitors of Western Civilisation, had many “lovers” of both genders. While they may have utilised marriage as one male to one female in order to simplify continuity of the bloodline and inheritance, many partook of the pleasures of the flesh with lovers of the same sex or opposite sex. Somehow I doubt that you support that type of extra-marital affair.
OTOH, my ancestry does come from the Celts, which had its very own odd, yet brilliant, set of marriage options.