The most incredibly stupid ignorant hateful thing I've read Follow

No, he keeps repeating "That would be giving special privileges to homosexuals," again and again, but it keeps being wrong.

1. It can't possibly be a special privilege because everyone would have it.
2. It's not a privilege given, it's restoring a freedom specially denied to a specific group. Straight men don't marry women just because they are women, they marry the person they love, who happens to be a woman. In the same way that a straight man wouldn't marry just any woman off the street a gay man doesn't want to marry just any woman off the street. Straight men want to marry the person they love, and gay men want to marry the person they love as well.

Saying a gay man has the same rights as you do is saying that he doesn't really care who he marries so long as it is a women. So the same must be true of straight men, it shouldn't matter who a straight man marries so long as it is a woman. Love must have nothing to do with marriage then.

The only way your point would be consistently logical would be if you were fine with only allowing straight marriages and it would be ok if no one ever married who they loved. Any straight man can marry any woman he wants, just not the one they love. Any gay man can marry any woman he wants, just not one he loves.

Edited, Nov 8th 2008 11:13pm by Allegory

Can I invent my own law and then just refer to it when people violate it?

gbaji's law: Thou shalt not present an exact point that's already been addressed in the thread you're in without at least acknowledging that it's already been answered.


In case you didn't get my hint. I already replied to this.

Actually, no, they weren't nearly that far spread. Here's the breakdowns:

By sex
Men: 53/47
Women: 52/48

By age
18-29: 39/61
30-44: 55/45
45-64: 54/46
65+: 61/39

So clearly the demographic that is the most strongly opposed to gay marriage is the one that's going to be dead in 10-20 years. The demographic most strongly in favor of gay marriage is the youngest, and those in between? Well, they're opposed, but just barely. I'm willing to bet the bulk of those were swayed by the outright false claims being made in the ads for Prop 8 (which would seem to be supported by the fact that the 30-44 or "parent age" demographic was slightly more opposed than the 45-64 "empty nest" demographic) and had Prop 8 proponents not taken extreme liberties with the truth, it's quite possible it would have ended up not passing.



Edited, Nov 5th 2008 8:19pm by Ambrya

Obviously you are wrong, as evidenced by the millions of people who do separate them.

No. I keep saying that it would be granting special benefits to same-sex couples. That's not the same thing. Your wording makes it appear like it's about homosexuals. It's not. Two straight women can't qualify for those benefits anymore than two gay women.

It's not specifically about the sexual orientation of the people. It's about the combination of sexes represented by the two people in the couple. You may think that's not relevant, but it really is.

Let me present you with an analogy:

Let's say that the government decides that hybrid vehicles are a great idea. So they create a subsidy program for them to encourage people to buy them. In order to qualify for this subsidy, I have to buy a car that fits the criteria for a "hybrid" car.

Now. Let's say I like my big ol V8 chevy and I want to buy it. But I want the subsidy. Can I argue that the government is discriminating against *me* because I'm not allowed to buy the car I want to buy? I'm forced to buy the one that I don't like if I want the subsidy? How is that fair? So people who like hybrids get a benefit for something they'd buy anyway, but I only get it if I buy something I don't want and I don't get one for what I do want.

Honestly. That's about how I view the gay marriage movement on this particular issue. Gay marriage in principle. Fine. Social institution? Absolutely. Civil contracts. Definitely. But to change the legal status qualifications? Absurd. Exactly as it would be absurd to change the requirements to call a car a "hybrid" purely because you believe it's discrimination to not provide the same benefits to people who buy other types of engines. Sorry. It's just that silly...



Yes. That's the point. The benefits cease to have value if everyone gets them. Don't they? Exactly as if everyone got to park in the blue spaces, they'd have no meaning or value (other then costing more).

And you were sooooo close!



Er? Excuse me? When did we historically grant these benefits to gay couples and then take them away? You've got that one backwards.



And yet. If they weren't women, there'd be no need for marriage. Maybe you didn't get this when I said it earlier. If humans reproduced by asexual budding or something, we would never have invented the thing we call "marriage". It's only because when men and women have sex, they will statistically produce children and a need to manage that process within a society, that the institution was created.

Men choose to spend their lives (or just some time) with a woman because he loves her, or just wants sex. Historically, men marry women for two reasons:

1. He wants to ensure that any children she has are his to ensure his inheritance and biological reproduction.

2. If he doesn't, the womans father will come after him.


Seriously. That's why. The institution we have today is the descendant of that basic concept. Lots of stuff added over time, but that's basically it. We marry to secure biological reproduction for the man, and to secure support with raising of children for the woman. The institution is enforced by the community because it is the most efficient manner to handle the production of offspring within any large society (beyond small clans).

Every single large scale community has developed essentially the exact same institution for the exact same reasons. This is not accidental. It's a pretty clear case of biological necessity driving sociological construct.




It's not about what you want. It's about a sociological need to manage the production of children. That's really it. What's so funny is that as we've experimented with expanded definitions and social roles, we've seen the very statistic that marriage is designed to prevent grow. Rates of births to single mothers has skyrocketed over the last half century. That's not a coincidence. It's the exact result of all the tinkering being done to social institutions by people who are sure they don't really serve any purpose and can just be changed willy-nilly without consequence.

Funny.




No. Straight men are encouraged (strongly in many cultures) to marry the woman they have sexual relations with. For exactly the reasons I've illustrated above. Gay relationships simply don't enter into the picture. It's not about discrimination against homosexuality. It's a simple recognition that homosexual relationships don't require marriage to be non-damaging to society.

The ancient Greeks were probably one of the most tolerant cultures when it came to homosexuality. Yet, if you'd suggested the concept of gay marriage, they'd have looked at you like you were crazy. You didn't marry your gay partner(s). You loved them. You spent time with them. You helped them out financially and got them trained into a craft (depending on your age relative to theirs). Or you just plain dallied with them. But a man married a woman. And it was entirely about having children. There certainly was love there too. But the point was that it never occurred to them to institute something like gay marriage. The whole concept was absurd. Marriage was about establishing paternity and inheritance. Why would you force that on someone for any other reason?



I can't even start with how lame this argument is... Let's just skip this.



No. I'm saying he can marry anyone he wants. But he's not going to receive government funded or mandated benefits unless he marries a woman. Exactly as the guy who decides he's rather drive the V8 doesn't get the hybrid subsidy.

Get it? You still get to choose. Are you saying you can't love your partner or commit your life to that person unless the government pays you? Seriously?




It really doesn't. The government doesn't care if you love the person you marry. Some edge cases where they suspect immigration fraud aside, of course. What it cares about is creating an incentive for people who may produce children to marry. It's really that simple. Traditionally, there were massive social and legal penalties for men and women who had sex outside of marriage. I think we should agree that creating incentives instead of stoning people to death is a better way, right? But it doesn't change the basic purpose of this involvement. We've changed a punishment for not risking pregnancy outside of marriage with incentives designed to avoid it. That's a kindler gentler way of accomplishing the same thing. But let's not pretend that this means that the benefits should be given out to anyone for any reasons. There's still a reason for them, and gay couples just don't apply.

Married couples are much more likely to adopt children than single parents. It's not much of a stretch to assume that gay couples seeking to have children would be more likely to adopt then straight couples, being they have fewer options to do so. Children who live with married parents tend to have higher grades, are more likely to attend college, and experience lower rates of unemployment.

With that in mind, would allowing gay marriage as an "incentive" to increase the likelyhood of adoption be enough of a reason to allow it.

That's horrible logic.

First off. It's just plain wrong. You're arguing that if two things are done for the same reason that one need not exist, or can be changed at will. So since I can drive my car on a road or a highway, there's no reason for roads? Or we change the definition of hiways to include pedestrians? Um... This is just silly.

Secondly, the two things do different things. Marriage is an incentive. It occurs before children enter the picture. That's by design since the objective here is to get people to marry *before* having children. Not afterwards. The child benefit is after the fact. It does not accomplish this. In fact, as I argued earlier, it actually does create an incentive for single women to have children because it provides them with some benefit regardless of whether they're married.

The main point is that this is something most conservatives also disagree with, so using it as an argument in this case is a slippery slope. You're saying that since you already managed to add direct benefits to dependents regardless of marriage status, that this somehow removes the connection between marriage and support for dependents so there's no reason not to further change things.


At the risk of being obvious, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who'd argue that children are better off being raised by a single mother. That's the benefit of marriage. The fact that we've already added some things that weaken that benefit isn't a great argument for weakening it further on this point.



Yes. That's what I've been saying for the last 5 pages. The marriage benefits exist as a set of incentives to get opposite-sex couples to marry. Hopefully before having children.



You'd need to explain "should have". This may be a problem with liberal to conservative translation, but to me no benefit is something anyone "should have". It's something we've decided to give to a group for some reason. It's not a right. It's not a requirement. The reasons for the benefit may vary, but it's always something we decide to do. I think this is one of the big confusions on this issue. Most liberals approach the issue as though benefits are handed out because some group "needs" them or "deserves" them. That's not it at all. We should be providing benefits if the gain in some way outweighs the cost. Ideally, that is. That's not to say we can't hand out benefits because we think it would be a nice thing to do. But let's not think that it's a requirement to do so, nor that the underlying reason is the "need" of the recipient. That may be why we decide to do it, but ultimately it's because the people decided to spend the money on that thing, nothing more.

To be more direct to this issue. The benefits themselves don't have to have a darn thing to do directly with raising or producing children. Most of them do, but they are a set of incentives. If handing out free plushy Cthulhu's generates incentive for people to get married then that's a potentially valid benefit to attach to the status of marriage as granted by the state.



Well. Happy day for you! :)


Ok. Folks. I'm outta here. Gotta head home. Feel free to discuss among yourselves. I hope to see some more intelligent discussion. And please. No repeats. If you feel an aspect of the issue hasn't been discussed sufficiently, don't just repeat the question or position. Acknowledge that it's been discussed but that you're not happy with the answer/response/whatever. Doing otherwise is just annoying because I have to repeat myself answering the same 5 arguments over and over. It's kinda hard to make progress when you have to do that...

This is a logical fallacy. No one has the right to marry more than one person who is an adult. Why would this change?



So how do you make an "incentive" a legally binding thing under the constitution? That doesn't seem to be in line with how our justice system works.

Oh right, The "we" I was talking about was the Western World. (North America, Britain, Ireland, Europe, Australia, New Zealand) Less culturally progressed countries scoff at a lot of Western practises. I'm hoping you wouldn't specifically vote against a female president because say the Iraqis would secretly despise her for her sex? After all, they'd have to openly admit she had the military power to flatten their country if she chose, like America did in the first Gulf War in 1990 over Kuwait.

Current nations with female elected/appointed heads of state or heads of government (not hereditary Monarchs): Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Ireland, Ukraine, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, India, Philippines, Liberia, Haiti, Mozambique and Moldova.

Muslim nations with past female leaders: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Indonesia.

Female emancipation is very varied across the nations of Asia, South America and Africa, and of course is only just beginning in some places in the Middle-East. There are still some horrific instances of female oppression in the Middle-East and Africa, and yes, Islam is often connected with many of those cases.

I must mention that while some averages can hold very true, it's wrong to totally equate Islam with female oppression, though. Female Genital Mutilation (permanently sewing shut the ****** until marriage, and cutting off the ******** and sometimes the entire *****) is practised by Christians, Jews and Muslims throughout northern Africa. It's a geographical-cultural thing, that has permeated religious practices there.

There are also many Muslim states that now have many women in powerful and influential positions In some Middle-Eastern Muslim states where most women are still wearing the hijab and there are separate rooms for men and women at work and at school, yet half of their judges are women, including Supreme court judges, and many women own and operate large corporations. Their female workers are in their own rooms, but many have responsible managerial jobs. Collectively the society there seems willing to hand large amounts of power to women as long as they are sexually "pure". It might not be total freedom or equality, but it's certainly extensive freedom and equality.

Islam is world-wide, and there are believers at all cultural stages. Indonesian Muslims are very different culturally from Afgani Muslims. And I bet you wouldn't even recognise a Sufi as Muslim if you knew what they believed in or how they lived. While there are large pockets of Muslims still living in medieval times, they are matched in numbers by their sisters and brothers living in the West who after one or two generations of residence are virtually indistinguishable from Christians and Atheists, except for head-scarves on many-but-not-all of their women, and the guys wearing jeans in Summer instead of shorts.

Edited, Nov 6th 2008 4:00am by Aripyanfar

I'm probably in a minority here but what the hell.

I think Gbaji makes very good points that I both understand and can to a limited degree associate with, I don't think his opposition is bigoted or particularly unreasonable.

That said I am prepared to pay for the additional benefits, sometimes it is right for the system to be slightly tilted in the direction of minority groups so they are allowed to receive benefits that where designed for other purposes.

Yes mariage benefits where designed to encourage child production, but in my view that is no longer what Mariage is defined by so it's time to recognise that imo and extend those rights to homosexuals.

I just feel that it's very wrong to dismiss someone arguements as bigotry just because you don't happen to agree with them.

Wait, Maggie Thatcher was a woman?

In what universe would Maggie be called war mongering? Just for the record Argentina attacked us not the other way around.