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Anna can usually tell when I'm joking, so I think it'll be OK.

Wow! You guys really are afraid of rational debate I guess...




This is equivalent to the fact that not everyone gets to receive foodstamps. See. In order for me to receive foodstamps, I'd have to do something I don't want to do (lose my job and go broke). For a gay guy to receive benefits for marrying, he'd have to do something he doesn't want to do (marry a woman instead of a man).

Do you see how those are, in fact, equivalent?



The second. Again. You're confusing marriage with a set of benefits we grant to some people who marry. The fact that the label for this set of benefits happens to be "marriage", and that up until recently the only people who attempted to qualify for it met the physiological conditions is what's confusing you.


Can a gay couple rent a hall? Yes. Can they invite all their friends and family to attend? Yes. Can they partake in a marriage ceremony? Yes. Can they take vows without some special government force showing up an arresting them? Absolutely.

Their "right" to marry is intact. The only thing they can't do is file a marriage license. But that isn't a permission slip to get married, it's an application for a set of state funded and/or mandated benefits. You don't need that to be married. You just need that if you want to get the benefits.

Those are two different things.



My logic is perfectly sound. Once you separate the freedom of individuals to act and the government providing benefits to citizens for some actions they take, you'll understand what I'm talking about.


Not being rewarded for doing something is *not* the same as being denied the right to do that thing. The government does not give me a tax break for skydiving, but that does not mean that the government has infringed my right to skydive. Get it?



I'm not preventing gay couples from marrying. I'm saying that their marriages should not qualify for special state benefits. Again. Those are two different things.



Again. I'm not preventing gay couples from taking vows. I'm not preventing the m from forming those bonds you speak of. Are you saying that two people cannot commit themselves to share their lives together unless the government gets involved?

I'll ask again. Is it illegal for a gay couple to say vows? Because unless it is, then their right to marry is not being denied.



Irrelevant. No answer I give will satisfy you.




Open your darn mind and maybe you'll find something out too.

If you aren't married in law, by culture and custom you aren't married at all. And if you don't have a marriage license, you aren't married in law. Oh sure, before 1800 you could shack up and call yourself married if the rest of your village liked the two of you and decided to accept the relationship. They'd even call you Mr and Mrs. Or rather Master and Mistress. Otherwise you needed a parish license or you were in big trouble.

But as soon as the middle class happened, and they could mostly afford lawyers, most people took an extraordinarily dim view of coupling up without a license. It was an exile worthy event.

Now the cultural revolution happened in the 60s, and you don't get exiled from society, friends and family for De Facto relationships. In fact the law and society covers all sorts of rights and acceptances now in the case of De Facto relationships. But wait! I don't think homosexuals are covered under De Facto laws either!

Damn, screwed both ways legally, and just one way socially. Because at least in most social cases a homosexual relationship will be socially recognized as a De Facto one.

Since when?

And for the bonus question, aside from determining inheritance and parental responsibility, when did this ever matter? Do you see how "the law" portion only matters to heterosexual couples?

One could easily argue that gay couples don't need a government record of their marriage for exactly the reason that one of them isn't going to get the other one pregnant and then maybe bail on her or something if there wasn't some official document saying he has to take care of her children.

Do you see why a society might have a vested interest in getting same sex couples to do this, but not care one way or another if gay couples do?




They took a dim view of this long before the rise of the middle class. As you pointed out though, it was generally just handled by the local "government" (ie: the town you lived in tracked who was married to whom).

The rise of the middle class largely gave rise to the use of contracts not directly related to child-raising in conjunction with marriage (cause more people actually had property to care about). Um... But all of those contracts can be done outside of marriage, so one doesn't really affect the other here.



Rights and benefits are two different things.

Honestly, this is probably the single most fundamentally misunderstood concept in modern socio-political thought. And that lack of understanding causes massive confusion and mis-application of law when it comes to issues like gay marriage. I keep hoping that maybe if I repeat this enough times, maybe the light will go on in some people's heads and they'll get why so many modern social arguments aren't so much "wrong" as just mis-phrased.

Denying a group of people benefits is not the same as denying them rights. Even after I've painstakingly explained how the only thing being denied to gay couples is the benefits, you continue to respond with talks about rights. Would you please just stop and comprehend what I've written? Pretty please? :)

Edited, Feb 23rd 2009 5:22pm by gbaji

The legal rights that any other couple has?

Since always, really. Not many examples of people saying "Sure, the law says they're not married but everyone else says they are".Not likely. Most people are smart enough to laugh when they hear "Just because the government says you can't get married doesn't mean you can't get married if you just wish really hard and never ever let the government know that you're secret-married!" as an argument.

Those aren't technically rights. They are powers/authority you posses in specific situations. You don't naturally get to tell doctors what sort of medical procedures to perform on someone else, do you?

However, Power of Attorney gives you this. You don't need marriage. So gay couples are not denied the ability to gain this power over each other if they want.



That's not a right either. When do you have a right to receive compensation if someone else dies? Seriously? Um... But for the record, if you are listed as a beneficiary on someone's life insurance, you get it, married or not.



Yup. Those aren't rights. But neither were the other things you listed. Hence, why I keep saying the real problem is that you (and most people) don't know what rights are.

Let me give you some examples:

A "right" is something you can do on your own (technically, that's a liberty, while a right is a specifically protected liberty). So, the right to sleep in your own house without someone coming inside without permission. The right to jump up and down and wave your arms if you want. The right to hang out with your friends (assuming they want to, since they have the right not to hang out with you if they want). The right to speak what you want.

Jointly, a couple would have a right to live together if they want. They have a right not to have the police come into their home and arrest them for having sex. They have a right to share their property and lives with eachother. Note, that this only extends to things they own jointly. You don't have a "right" to be placed on your spouses medical coverage, since someone else pays part of that. You *may* be included, but that's a benefit your employer may provide, not a right.


The second there's a third party involved, you don't have a "right" if it includes forcing them to do anything. Thus, extending insurance coverage is not a right. Gaining tax cuts is not a right. Getting medical survivor benefits is not a right. We may choose to provide these things, but those receiving them do not have a "right" to them, no matter how often that word is used incorrectly to describe what's going on.



There are no rights being denied them.


The argument for why benefits may be denied them is a separate part of the issue. But I'm not going to go there until you can first understand which things are rights and which aren't. Want to know why? Because I'll start listing off reasons why gay couples shouldn't receive X or Y benefit, and you'll turn around and say that by denying them those things, we're infringing their "rights".


Until you understand what a right is, you can't understand the argument I'm making. You'll continue to assume that by denying some set of things from gay couples that we're denying them "rights", and therefore are just mean poopoo heads or something.

And if you don't know which things are rights and which aren't dramatically increases the odds of you spending all your time defending those that aren't, while losing those that are. Just a thought to ponder...



Nice. Try googling "rights" next time. You might get a bit closer to what we're talking about here.



Grammatical errors aside I have no clue what you were trying to say.

Let me also be clear. When the position I'm opposing is based solely on semantics (the use of the word "rights", specifically the phrase "gay rights" or "marriage rights"), it's perfectly valid for me to argue based on the meaning of the word(s) being used. Those who argue that by denying marriage licenses to gay couples, we are infringing their "rights" are making the assumption that receipt of a marriage license is a right. I am simply challenging that assumption by attempting to define what a "right" is in this context, and asking whether the things a couple gains as a result of being granted a marriage license from the state are rights or benefits.


How else am I supposed to proceed? Seems like determining whether the exact things at stake are rights would be relevant to determining if someone's rights are being infringed, wouldn't it?

Why is gbaji assuming that marriage is a privilege or a benefit given by a benevolent state to eligible heterosexual and not a right given to two adults to join in a legally bound union? Where does it say legally that it is a privilege or a benefit? He's making definitions without back them up. For instance a spouse doesn't legally have to testify against their spouse-- that's not a benefit and it's a right not available to unmarried partners.

It seems as if he's ************ around--I bet gbaji would say that voting is a privilege and an entitlement too.

Edited, Feb 23rd 2009 11:26pm by Annabella

This is why I keep saying that people don't understand the difference between a right and a benefit:



The ability for two people to take vows and share their lives is a right.

The granting of a marriage license, which provides a set of financial benefits is *not* a right.

You are conflating the two.




I've already explained this. The second a third party has to provide you something, it's a benefit, not a right. If your spouses company has to put you on the medical insurance it provides, that's a benefit, not a right. If that employer chooses to provide pension benefits to you as a spouse even though the person who actually worked for them has died, that is a benefit, not a right.


What part of "third party has to do something for you" did you not get the first 3 or 4 times I explained it?




I've provided massive amounts of back up to my arguments. How much more do you want? I'm starting with some basic definitions and applying them logically. What are you doing? Aren't you just making assumptions?



What's funny is that you've hit upon the *only* thing that can almost sort be called a right that is relevant. Um... How many times has the gay marriage argument been made on the ability to take the 5th? I'm usually the one to bring this one up in a gay marriage thread, specifically because it's the one thing that can actually be argued, but almost never is.

I'd also still call that a benefit and not a right, but it's kind of an edge case. You technically can always refuse to testify (you have a right not to speak), but can be punished for it when due process compels you. There's a complex relationship between rights and due process. The fact that the government wont punish you for refusing to testify under a situation where it would normally compel said testimony is technically a benefit of marriage as well.


But at least it's a good argument to make. Just repeating insistence that we're violating people's rights over and over just gets old after awhile...

The problem Anna is that the laws you are referring to actually made it "illegal" for people of different races (typically white and anyone not-white) to marry. As in, the police could show up and arrest you for being married (even common law, which basically meant they'd arrest the black guy if he shacked up with a white woman). If you attempted to have a wedding, you could be arrested and jailed. Those laws were not restricted to just not granting marriage licenses to couples of different skin colors.


Tell you what. Find me an example of a gay couple posting their wedding in the newspaper, having it publicly in a church or hall, attended by their friends and family, and if someone tells the police, they'll show up and arrest them for it. If that's not happening (and it's not), then the case you quoted simply doesn't apply.

Again. You're confusing the act of marriage with the legal status of marriage.


There are other reasons why race should not be a determinant for granting marriage licenses, but a "right to marry" isn't one of them.

Oh and Perez Vs. Sharp also says that marriage is a right and did not have anything to do with the arrest of the two parties but specifically was about the prohibition against granting two people of different races with a marriage license.