Same sex marriage is a constitutional right for all USAians, regardless of the homophobic, religiously-motivated bigotry in 14 state legislatures.
Chief Justice Kennedy writing the 5-4 decision:
“The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of a person,
… under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, couples of the same sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.
.. The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry,
… [They] ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. </blockquote>
And Antonin Scalia displays his usual regressive Catholic assholishness: <blockquote>The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,
Suck it, Popey-boy.
HT: Chris Clarke, image, and Ophelia Benson
Edit: Should have been Justice Kennedy, not Chief justice Kennedy. Thanks for the reminder, Kantian Naturalist :).
So does the bigotry in your words when you repeat your false claim that homosexual persons are not inherently equal to heterosexual persons in respect of the Fourteenth Amendment equality clause. So does your ignorant view that the untermenschen should be grateful for “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” or whatever sop they would be given by the bible-bangers in lieu of actual equal treatment in society.
That’s fair. I’ll try and be more restrained in subsequent posts, and keep my true feelings to myself.
The fact that nobody else has any sensible definition at all is quite telling. “Sensible” meaning such that it doesn’t inadvertently include trivial friendship or one-night stands.
Infertile couples can marry because commonly the way you discover infertility is by getting married.
How is Enlightenment itself at stake here? Are you smitten by belief in eternal progress and therefore, because the redefinition of marriage is Change, it’s also Evolution and therefore a Good Thing?
I am in very good terms with Islamic philosophy from a thousand years ago. The marked characteristic of those philosophers is that hardly anyone says anything about Sharia. The one who speaks about it most, as far as I have read, is Ghazali, and he gives it a Sufi twist. Islamic state, however, gives Sharia a straightforward literalist fundie interpretation, just like radical Christian extremists who have more affinity with the Law instead of the Gospel.
Haha. Of course that would mean that if one knows in advance the marriage would be disallowed. You’re funny.
Fuzzy penguins are adorable. 🙂
And Elizabeth is everything including fuzzy! 😉
Erik, you’re babbling again. Marriage has always included unions being possible for “trivial friendship’ and “one night stands”
Anyone who has a “trivial friendship” with a person of the opposite sex plus 99 dollars can get married tonight in Las Vegas, no questions asked.
Oops, the 99 dollars is the price for the simplest ceremony and photo op at The Wedding Chapel of Las Vegas (similar price and packages available at several other chapels in town). But first, you and your “trivial friendship” partner have to get a marriage license in accordance with state law.
Make it even faster and more convenient. Use your smartphone and the casino hotel’s wifi to complete the “paperwork” in advance
Did I forget to mention:
NO WAITING PERIODS!
Yeah, that sounds like a major committment! Sounds like I have to promise that the only reason I want to get married to my friend is to protect our (not yet) mutually-conceived children, because that’s how marriage is defined, doncha know. Gotta have those children! Err, no you don’t, all you have to have is an Express Window license pick-up and 159 dollars total.
Hell, I’d marry one of my “trivial” friends in Las Vegas tomorrow just to piss you off, Erik.
In fact, I’m planning to be in LV sometime this year. I won’t even need to meet a friend there. I’m pretty sure I can hire a sex-worker to get married to me as long as I promise to divorce them the next morning. 🙂 God only knows why that’s totally legal and acceptable, but allowing same-sex marriage is somehow going to bring god’s wrath down on us.
Erik, why are you here ranting at us decent folks about devaluing marriage instead of ranting at the Las Vegas tourism bureau and their Chamber of Commerce for allowing those degenerate Wedding Chapels to cheapen the institution of marriage beyond repair?
Why are you picking on me and my friends at TSZ when we’ve only ever married for commitment and true love, never for casual sex or “trivial friendship”?
Why aren’t you picking on the other straight folks who are the true enemies of traditional marriage?
It must be ‘bigotry’ because I thought I was intelligent enough to spell.
homosexual persons are inherently equal to homosexual persons
and
heterosexual persons are inherently equal to heterosexual persons
A = A.
Sure thing, Gregory. Just keep spewing that illogical nonsense.
Homosexual persons are inherently equal to heterosexual persons.
A = A
Because, duh, PERSONS.
No one but their sexual partners (if any) have a right to know what their genitals are. Nor any reason to care. Except ingrained bigotry.
I don’t care what’s in your pants. I don’t care what gives you a boner as long as it’s only something between consenting adults. You have the human right not to be treated unequally merely on the basis of what makes your junk warm.
You’re still a PERSON and you still deserve equal rights, legally and morally, no matter how much I dislike your ilk.
Well, thankfully that is now said and agreed. The subsequent ‘but’ doesn’t bother me because that concession itself is meaningful (if you really meant it, which is still fuzzy cuz of the claim maker). Just because it would be difficult and cost more, doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. Many people around the world outside ‘the west’ of course agree.
There are far too many people in this discussion trying to make equal what is unequal already and far too many atheists here at TSZ to make this dialogue space ‘fair’ to theists. The word ‘bigot’ flies too fast coming from atheists these days. Elizabeth’s ‘good faith’ rule is compromised b/c hotshoe simply cannot fathom how a religious person could speak in ‘good faith’ about ‘marriage’ and not be a ‘bigot.’
Let’s not live under the naive illusion that atheists are innocent and that religious people (mainly Christians) are ‘bigots.’ One example showing intolerance by TSZ-like anti-religious folks: http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/yes-gay-marriage-hurts-me-personally/
It is significant that you made those vows on that day in a Catholic church, not just to each other, and not just to society (witnesses), but also to your Creator. Unless, do you say now that you didn’t ever make such vows? Does this mean you no longer consider your marriage to be ‘holy matrimony’ as when you made your vows, Elizabeth? Do you only honour the ‘civil union’ aspects of the vows, but not the ‘holy matrimony’?
In countries where civil unions are kept distinct from holy matrimony (e.g. you’ve got to do it twice, if you also go for holy matrimony, as a ‘citizen’), people understand more easily the different significance.
That’s a big ‘if’! Do you really want to compare ‘vows’ between the religious and atheists?! Are you really suggesting that marriage vows are ‘the same’ in churches, synagogues and mosques as they are in ‘notary public’ offices or at secular wedding halls or in gardens, etc.!?
Well, because you’re the founder of this site, of course. If you didn’t like the leadership role, then you shouldn’t have taken it upon yourself. People listen to you here more than others and not just about IDism. By revealing plainly your apostate views the truth becomes easier to see.
By definition, Elizabeth, you are an ‘apostate.’ This neither ‘misrepresents’ nor ‘trivialises’ who you currently are; it rather identifies you (categorically) for who you actually are & what you represent with your ‘ideas/arguments’ here (as much as that can be understood in on-line ‘chatting’ based on what you’ve written about yourself, specifically in this case, wrt your de-conversion from Christianity and now anti-religious statements and attitude).
The term ‘apostasy’ has a clear and well-understood sociological meaning, which for your case seems to be both appropriate and accurate: “renunciation, abandonment or neglect of established religion”. Is that not you, Elizabeth? If you are not an apostate, then please make a case here otherwise.
Whether or not you ‘like’ being called that does not matter to sociologists because we (choose to) use terms that properly apply to people in societies according to characteristics they display or express themselves. Don’t blame us for the character you have chosen to be and the story you’ve chosen to tell to the world here at TSZ!
Is this just another example of Lizzie ranting against definitions that are inconvenient for her (neo-)liberal ‘cognitive chaos’ political ideology and atheist worldview? Does she sincerely not want to be an apostate because she somehow thinks she is above categorisation, really just unique as a single human being, whose worldview has never before been held? These things don’t matter in the end.
What does “something more atheistic” mean, Elizabeth? To me, it looks like your worldview is a flailing mess with no anchor other than your own small (1/7,000,000,000) ego. ‘Marriage’ is now just a relative term to you, vows are just ‘social’ and you’ve already suggested that ‘groups’ could qualify for ‘marriage’ too.
Yet in a glimmer of clarifying hope, you’ve also expressed sympathy for several creeds and (as you call them) denominations (e.g. Quakers), without actually committing yourself in a basic way, e.g. monotheist, atheist, polytheist, animist, etc.
Since you claim that you once were a Catholic, your ‘evolution’ into apostasy should identify specifically why you think Jesus was not the Messiah. That’s the main point. (If you had previously been Muslim, the question would have been about the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.) Personally, I am not convinced that you ever were actually a Christian; even though you went through the rituals, your heart doesn’t ever seem to have been really in it, that you ever had ‘faith’. This has not yet been shown from how you speak of your vows of ‘holy matrimony’ now in hindsight.
So what if ‘religions’ are complex institutions with various dogmas and doctrines and mixed records in the history of politics and charity? To be a Catholic Christian means to believe that Christ died for your sins and the sins of humankind (including LGBTs, who too should be loved) and that you have fallen short in your own life as a person following Jesus.
What ‘realisation’ made you reject that belief, Elizabeth? Simply ‘evolution?!’ All of this other socially & politically relativist ‘equality’ talk is rubbish compared to the importance of cosmogony & theological (worldview) anthropology.
Are you familiar with the BYU Islamic Translation Series?
Gregory, if when I die I indicate that I’m dying for your sins will you pray to me* and think that everybody in the world ought to follow you in doing so?
The reason I ask is that you suggest above that Elizabeth should remain a Catholic if she continues to believe that Jesus died for our sins. And I don’t really believe that you think that is sufficient. A lot of folks have done that, and you don’t attack those who don’t pray to them and whine about it if no-one makes a religion about each of them. What I suggest you believe isn’t just that Jesus was a fine fellow but that he could beat Superman in a one-on-one.
*And I don’t mean anything like “pray for the salvation of my soul” here (you being such a sweet sort, I already KNOW you’ll do that! I mean make petitionary prayers and other suchlike.
This thread, Elizabeth, follows in the path of those who don’t believe in ‘sins’ at all. (walto is just an easy example of a self-righteous ‘analytic’ atheist who thinks he is above such ‘religious’ notions.) Jumping into homophilia or homocentrism isn’t an actual solution to apostasy at all, but rather merely a diversion into a kind of fuzzy ‘politically correct’ nihilism.
This thread is mainly about celebrating secularisation and secularism (disguised as atheism), due to one SCOTUS ruling in the USA. It was posted by one of the angriest anti-religious members of this site, whose superficial enmity against religious people and religion is constant, repetitive and by his own admission, ‘mean-spirited’ by intention. Basically, the guy knows he’s a jerk and likes to rub it in peoples’ faces and that’s just fine according to Lizzie’s ‘atheist-friendly’ rules about ‘good faith’ by the faithless.
To have faced the triumphalist wrath of atheists here, after the recent SCOTUS decision regarding same-sex civil unions called ‘marriages’, Erik has shown bravery and conviction. The TSZ secularizers otoh have behaved as cowards showing little respect or tolerance.
Why not openly admit that TSZ is pro-SSM largely because it is also majority atheist? Majority theist sites are more likely anti-SSM and certainly anti-SSM in terms of ‘holy matrimony’. As an alternative source where religious voices are more prominent, one could look at First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/06/after-obergefell-a-first-things-symposium
Or here: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/catholic-bishops-bulletin-insert-gay-marriage-ruling-threatening
Refresh my memory here. In which account of the crucifixion does Jesus claim he is dying for someone’s sins?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Words_of_Jesus_spoken_from_the_cross
mung, I hope you were directing your question to Gregory. I was replying to this remark of his:
I’ll leave it to him to “refresh your memory” on this (no doubt crucial) matter.
Thank you, Gregory! I’m so glad you noticed!
My work here is done …
Err, oops. Erik has shown a bizarre inability to admit when he’s mistaken about the facts, history, and relationship between legal marriage, genitals, and procreation. He’s shown plenty of abysmal stupidity in his convictions, but that’s hardly something you should propose admiration for.
TSZ is largely pro-marriage-equality because TSZ is largely humane, rational, and not deluded by narrow regressive propaganda. But then, the majority of faithful christians in the US are also pro-marriage-equality, so being atheist or being theist has nothing to do with it. Can’t claim it’s a special virtue of being atheist and being on the right side of this issue. Have to share the credit with all our loving decent christian brothers and sisters.
All of us would be happy if you and your ilk keep “holy matrimony” for yourselves and your approved churches. Please do! Even “jerks” like me believe in Freedom of Religion for what occurs within the church buildings.
Stay the fuck out of our Fourteenth Amendment equal protection constitutional right. We’ll get along just fine as long as you keep your sanctified inequality amongst consenting adults, in private, where it belongs.
I don’t think I have used that word at all. It seems inappropriate in a rational debate, and presupposes motivations.
On the other hand, I’m failing to see your point, particularly in light of your non-rational and emotion filled attack on Elizabeth in the message to which I am responding.
walto, on the matter of addressing the appropriate party I direct your attention to the following post:
As far as your other comment, if you are going to mock Christianity it’s best to get your facts right [at a minimum]. Else you’ve done nothing to differentiate yourself from any other “new atheist” who doesn’t know what they are talking about.
This has been responded to dozens of times already. But once more, “for the record”. 🙂
You already know that heterosexual couples who can never procreate are still allowed all the benefits (and responsibilities) of legal marriage and of “holy matrimony” as well. We have never discriminated against the infertile couples, never called their marriages inherently “unequal” to fertile ones — that is, not until the regressives started reacting against the success of equal rights for gays.
Granted the Catholics preach against sterilization, but a man who is known to have had a vasectomy is not forbidden from marriage within the Church. It’s fascinating to note that a man who is totally and permanently impotent cannot contract a marriage in the Church’s view. Ha ha. Mere sexual penetration is critical for Catholic marriage but actual procreation is not.
Heterosexual couples are never required to demonstrate that they have the ability to “biologically” have children before being allowed to legally marry. If it were actually as vital to the definition of marriage as you try to claim, there would be no marriage at all unless the prospective bride gets knocked up first. On the contrary, there’s never an examination to verify that the woman has reproductive organs to begin with, much less functional ones.
Just as known infertility is no barrier to marriage, it’s also not legal grounds for a divorce anywhere in the US. Procreation is simply not part of the definition of marriage, no matter how many times you try to repeat that it is.
For centuries, even before effective birth control, the percentage of couples with no biological children has been between 10 and 25 percent. Of course, given the heterosexual propensity for adopting/fostering children, the percentage of couples who never had children living in their homes is much smaller.
Therefore, it is beyond absurd to continue to claim that same-sex marriages should be legally or socially disadvantaged because they’re not “equal” in reproductive potential. Since producing a mutually-conceived child has never been a church requirement nor part of the legal definition of marriage, it’s revoltingly hypocritical to suddenly propose it as an excuse why marriage needs to be reserved for the (hypothetically fertile, but actually childless) straights.
And as the Supreme Court notes, refusal to grant the dignity of marriage equality to same-sex marriages does irreparable harm to the children of gay men and women. By your own argument for the primal importance of procreation, you have to admit that at least those gay couples who have produced a child must be granted equal status with any opposite-sex marriage who have also produced a child. Think of the children, Gregory! Think!
Be careful what you wish for, boyo. If the world went your way, the only people who would be important enough to society to get to vote would be the married-with-children people. I’m married and I’ve procreated (having them in wedlock, even) so my opinion counts for three times as much as yours. Yeah, we can agree to disagree, now that your side has lost the legal battle in the largest first world nations and is losing the social battle all around the world.
#LoveWins
Sorry, mung. My mistake, I meant to type “erik.” I don’t know what a “new atheist” is, but I guess you could truly say that I didn’t know what I was talking about when I typed “mung” instead of “erik.”
I do indeed mock, but when I’m doing it, at least I’m not also simultaneously making any pretense about being a good Christian. I’m no angel. I could definitely be more considerate of others’ feelings, but after reading a half-dozen assholish comments, I just can’t hold my tongue any longer. And, although I’m obviously not impartial, it seems to me that my mocking is fairly gentle compared to some of the other crap that gets thrown around here.
I’ll for sure grant you that!
In a quick glance, I read this as assholster. 🙂
I’ll second that.
Not with the series itself, just that I have a few books from it on my shelf.
It’s irrational to even try to claim that a fertile couple and an infertile couple are inherently equal. This is precisely how they are NOT equal. They can be legally equal in the sense that their difference is overlooked, but law does not make an infertile couple fertile.
Historically, infertility has been one of the rare justifications for divorce. This only makes sense if marriage is irreducibly about founding a family. It’s not about love or sex for fun (these are a nice bonus for the lucky ones), it’s about founding a family. When the family is forgotten, everything about the purpose of marriage falls apart and what remains is not “right to marriage” but essentially “right to have a sex relationship”, which everybody already had. And if you want to add inheriting rights to it, just write your will and testament accordingly; everybody already had this right too.
Moreover, you are obviously construing this as an individual right. So, absolutely anyone has a right to get married? Are there no requirements or qualifications? Isn’t it so that as a minimum, there has to be another person willing to do it with you? So it depends on the other person, not on you. Therefore, quite plainly, it’s not an individual right, if it is a right at all. It’s like the “right” to drive a car – you have to qualify for it, then you can drive, until then – no. So, it’s properly not a right, but a permission, a privilege that comes with obvious inherent responsibilities.
And if you were rational, I would not have to be telling this to you, but even the majority in the supreme court got confused on this point. I would not feel proud at all to have a bunch of old fools on my side.
Moved one post to guano, because violated the assumption that the OP had posted in good faith. Several others are borderline.
Well, if your “blog-voice” is the one you use here, I would wish you would use your “non-blog voice” instead. And to be clear: I’m not an “anti IDist”. If someone were to put forward a decent argument that inferred a divine Intelligent Designer from some feature of the world, I’d be happy to consider it. And clearly I’m not against the idea that one can infer design from the patterns of things – “design detection” – I know we can.
But it’s certainly nice to read words from you that aren’t laced with insinuations about me. With which I will deal in my next response….
The vows were made TO each other, Gregory. They were made BEFORE witnesses.
I have not changed in my understanding of what those vows meant. They did not have “two aspects”, they had one, which was our promises to each other to love and to cherish each other, come what will, till the death of one of us.
There is no difference. The vows are the same as those I would have made in a registry office.
Of course.
Yes, if the words are the same.
OK. But let me be clear: I did not start this blog to lead anyone except in the rules that govern their posting. I provide a space, not a role model.
OK. If that is all you mean by apostasy is that I no longer believe what I once did, then fair enough. Although I should point out that I have made statements criticising religion, including my own, all my life.
Well, renunciation, not abandonment nor neglect. And not “sociologically” – my beliefs are personal, not social.
I have no problem, and blame nobody,for calling me something I am – someone who no longer believes in a benign creator God. What I blame you, specifically, for, Gregory, is your incessant sniping at my moral and intellectual integrity
exemplified by the above.
It means moving from a concept of God as a pre-existing benign creator deity to a concept more akin to pantheism, a concept adopted by people who often also call themselves atheist.
Yes, I know it looks like that to you, Gregory. Frankly, yours does to me. But I do not incessantly tell you so.
I don’t know what you mean by a “relative term”. If you mean that people could be “slightly married”, then, no, it isn’t. And no, it isn’t “just social” – it’s personal – a vow two people make to each other.
I have also specifically noted that “other groups” (i.e. groups of more than two consenting adults) would need a different kind of contract. I
Not sure what you mean by this. Quakers, famously, do not have a creed. I was, formally, a member of a Quaker Meeting (which is how it works). I did not join subsequent Meetings when I moved. I have called the religious groups to which I have belonged, “denominations” because they all were denominations of Christianity. I have never formally belonged to a non-Christian religion. And yes, I was committed to monotheism, and specifically, to Christianity, until the age of 55. So you seem to have the wrong end of the stick you are attempting to beat me with, Gregory.
I claim that I was “once a catholic” because that is what I was, and according to the catholic church, still am. I did not “evolve” into “apostasy”. I came to the conclusion that what I had believed was no longer justified. That is not “evolution” in any but the most trivial sense of the word, and a poor metaphor for what happened, which was rapid. What you are personally convinced of, with regard to my beliefs and sincerity is not worth a row of beans. And is, as it happens, bullshit.
OK. Although I should say that I was never a fan of substitutionary atonement. Fortunately, neither was the Benedictine who instructed me, nor were the Dominican Thomists whose church I attended for many years.
Whut?
Are you answering your own question, or do you actually want to know? And why should “‘evolution?!'” be the answer? As I said, I did not “evolve” into “apostasy”. I simply concluded that my previous beliefs were not justified. It was also a rapid process, not slow – it occurred as a result of reading a specific book. It has also nothing to do with evolution as in “the theory of evolution”, which, as you will know, is regarded as perfectly compatible with catholicism.
Well, you are entitled to your view as to what is “socially & politically relativist” and whether it is “rubbish” or not. But you do not persuade me that I should adopt it. And as far as the topic of the OP is concerned: it seems self-evident to me that the opportunity have a contract between consenting adults to love and cherish each other, for better or worse, until parted by death, recognised legally, should not, in justice, be withheld from people whose life-partner happens to be of the same gender as themselves. It does not make marriage “relative”; it does not introduce some factor (biological fertility) into the concept of marriage that was absent before; it does not include more than two people; it does not involve lack of consent. In other words covers no more, nor less, than the previous definition of marriage did, and is just as binary (married gay couples who wish to split up will have to seek a divorce just as married straight couples do).
Elizabeth seems to struggle more with the concept of civility only when barbs get thrown back in her or her supporters direction.
All her praising of the sites open nature is pretty stupid when it comes down to it. Did she not say that being nice is not a necessity on this site? Is there a policy against not attacking other posters? Gee that’s new.
There is a good reason why other sites moderate and prevent people from being abusive. Is Lizzie just learning that reason now? I
I thought it was ok to call people faggots, and homos and bigots, and retards and dumb fucks-you know so long as it is relevant to the topic or at least fitting to show ones emotions?
There are many things I would have enjoyed calling you but exposing your vacuity by demonstrating your inability to defend your own arguments is an elegant sufficiency.
Well, no, phoodoo. If you look in Guano you will see that it’s a pretty equal ops policy. And, if anything, if a “barb” is “thrown” directly at me personally, I am less, not more, inclined to move it.
Gregory, you use “analytic” “atheistic” and “non-religious” above to demean, as if they were insults. FWIW, I’m not embarrassed being any of those things. Some years ago, I wrote a book on meditation, mysticism, sadhana, etc. You likely would have considered it all of those awful things above, but I now consider that my religious period. I think a large part of it was based on a confusion between a belief (i.e., something truth-functional) and what’s sometimes called “the tetris effect.” That is, the guru in the book (which is quasi-fictional) encouraged meditation because it leads to belief of a certain kind, and those sorts of beliefs are beneficial to believers’ well-being. He objected to religious arguments (because they’re all bad), but thought religious experiences are valuable in getting us to happier lives. I now think that’s wrong. I still think that some people can get from the meditation to the happier life and encourage them to do so, but I don’t think the “religious experience” needs to be in there at all. Something like the “tetris effect,” which is purely psychological, even if it may require some sorts of beliefs, doesn’t seem to me to require that any of them be even a little religious.
Finally, with respect to your remarks about sin, if you mean wrong- or evil-doing, I DO believe in those. I’m not a subjectivist with respect to ethics. My views on that also are a bit complicated, however, and I think also are likely quite different from your own.
In any case, the most blatant difference between us seems to me to be that you are extremely sure that everything you believe is right and good, while I have no such faith. And, while you think being analytic is a bad thing, I often wish I could be more so. You also seem to think that insulting people either is extrinsically good in that it will make people reconsider their views and perhaps come to share some of your (‘better’) ones, or intrinsically good because, well, it’s just a good thing to insult baddies. I believe each of those positions are mistaken and would be so even if some version of Christianity were true.
Elizabeth,
Is that your scientific conclusion? How many posters here are supporters of you as opposed to detractors? Shouldn’t the supporters be overwhelmingly targeted by you, simply because of sheer numbers?
Erik,
So, should people who are known to be infertile be denied the legal right to ErikMarriage ™?
Should heterosexual couples that include a woman past menopause be denied the legal right to ErikMarriage ™?
hotshoe_,
I am not sure what bigotry means from a materialistic perspective. Isn’t it a bit hard to defend such a concept without ignoring that your worldview suggests Darwianian evolution favors whatever thoughts people have?
Gregory,
On what basis do you assert that the love and commitment between a same sex couple is not equal to that between a heterosexual couple?
Yes. The commitment is to your future life partner. The venue is immaterial.
Gregory,
This is probably true. It clearly demonstrates that opposition to same sex marriage is based only on irrational beliefs. The legal definition of marriage in a secular country like the U.S. cannot discriminate against same sex couples just because some religious people want them to.
Yet another case for Lizzie’s ‘good faith’ filter as defined & controlled by atheists (if there is a theist moderator at TSZ, tell us who?). To Patrick, *all* theists are ‘irrational’ (except for those very rational theists who are masters at chess & who lead the Human Genome Project, build companies like Microsoft & head the NIH, etc.). Therefore, they cannot possibly post in ‘good faith’ at TSZ. According to this ‘logic’, atheists like Patrick who are faithless, somehow magically *can* post in ‘good faith.’ Slow learners…
The simple point was made right at the beginning. ‘Civil unions’ differ categorically from ‘holy matrimony’. Primitive USAmericans own no control over recognising or illogically refusing to recognise this. SCOTUS has passed a decision for the secularisation of ‘marriage’ in USA. You folks have a lot of learning to do in which the ‘advanced’ world is already years ahead of you. Slow learners…
phoodoo,
Darwinian evolution does no such thing. How many more times before you get it?
Erik,
Then let’s revisit my friends’ son’s marriage. He is married to another man and they are raising two children. Each child is genetically related to one of the fathers. The children were gestated by a surrogate mother.
How does this not meet the definition of ErikMarriage ™?
phoodoo,
No, name calling is not within the site rules. I’ve crossed the line a couple of times in this thread (sorry, Lizzie) by referring to another commenter as a bigot (with evidence). Henceforth I’ll phrase my comments as “That’s a bigoted statement because…”. I suppose “That’s a dumb fucking thing to say because….” fits in the rules, but I don’t see how “faggot”, “homo”, or “retard” could be acceptable.
Awww … Prince George was christened and Princess Charlotte will be christened today. Isn’t that sweet? 🙂
Are you gonna make a USAmerican lawsuit against the Anglican Church that USAmerican parents should be legally able to Anglicanly ‘christen’ their children even if they are personally atheists just because they (self-contradictorily) think it gives some kind of mysterious ‘dignity’ to their childrens’ lives? Otherwise it’s just not ‘fair’, it’s just not ‘equal’, right? 😉
phoodoo,
From Merriam-Webster:
bigot: a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc. : a bigoted person; especially : a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group (such as a racial or religious group)
There are commenters here who refuse to accept the members of a particular group, namely homosexuals, as having equal rights to heterosexuals. That refusal constitutes bigotry.
Gregory,
That’s not what I said. To be clear, I consider many religious beliefs to be irrational, most definitely including those that assert that homosexuals are less deserving of civil rights than heterosexuals. Those beliefs should not be enshrined in secular law.
You’re peddling antagonistic views to a significant minority then. Abrahamic theists in countries where SSM has been nationally ‘legalised’ for a decade or less have already accepted the ‘civil rights’ of homosexuals to ‘wed’ in front of ‘secular’ courts. Get out of the stone age if you don’t know this, gringo!
Now your turn to answer. Since you’ve said “I consider many religious beliefs to be irrational,” which ‘religious beliefs’ do you actually consider to be ‘rational’? Please make at least a list of 5. Otherwise, your ‘many’ talk is just hot air parading as ‘all’.
Thank you Gregory for the excellent analogy. Although, unsurprisingly, you haven`t thought it through.
The appropriate analogy would be if the heterosexual majority enacted legislation to deny birth certificates (and therefore, passports, social security, UB, etc) to the children of homosexual couples. According to ErikLogic(tm), these rights would also be denied to adopted children.
Nice.
How was it withheld? Was there no opportunity for gays to sign contracts, any contracts between themselves? Did they have no right to “love and cherish each other, for better or worse, until parted by death”? If none of this was denied except in name, then it was withheld in name only. But if the name was withheld because gays are excluded by definition, then really nothing was withheld, just like circularity is not withheld from squares – squares have nothing to do with circularity by definition.
Let’s see. It does not introduce some factor, you say. Marriage was between man and woman so they could be pronounced husband and wife, but now it’s redefined to include two men or two women… Nothing introduced? Nothing taken away? Nothing essential changed?
The words “wife” and “mother” must mean to you something expendable and inessential to marriage and family, because otherwise you could not ask what you just asked.
Thanks for raising the ‘artificial children’ topic!
What is ‘social security’ – is that an insecure exceptionalist USAmerican thing?
Even L.N. Tolstoy (“all good families”) would likely be disturbed by your distorted disenchanted self-righteous heterodoxy re: ‘marriage’ and ‘civil union’. (“Huh, wazza? I’m a ‘Americun,’ stupid, I dunno nothing ’bout those other people on same planet with differing opinions. We’re only right or we’ll bomb you!”) (As a US military fighter plane flies outside for ‘peaceful’ purposes 😉 )
I don’t get this one. I don’t see how it violated that assumption. Don’t go getting too fuzzy on us. 🙂
DNA Jock
This comment points out the different universes we live in. To a person of faith a marriage license is nothing like a secular birth certificate it is much more like a Baptismal certificate. The analogy would never occur to us.
A birth certificate is mealy a legal document. A person is still “alive” even if he does not have birth certificate. The document is just a government registration.
If you were only trying to instill legal equality to homosexual unions the way to go about it would be to do away with government issued marriage licenses and instead issue civil union certificates to all interested couples regardless of their configuration then let the Church Mosque or Synagogue issue the marriage certificate
Get the government out of the marriage business all together it does not belong there.
That libertarian course of action would have been welcomed by folks on my side of the divide.
The mistake was not in a particular restriction governments chose to place on marriage the mistake was government ever getting involved in an institution like marriage in the first place. Governments regulate it’s what they do.
There are always winners and there are losers when it comes to government sanction . This week the focus is on gay couples next week it will be on adult incest or polygamy.
The high rates of divorce is conclusive evidence that government will eventually mess up anything it touches, including marriage. Homosexual unions will fare no better than heterosexual ones in this regard. “We are the government and we have come to help”
If I wanted to destroy homosexual unions the best approach I could think of would be to place them under government regulation.
Then again the lawsuits against wedding cake suppliers demonstrate that the gay marriage debate was never about legal equality it was about silencing those who will not celebrate this particular sexual union.
peace
Well, women are not expendable. Only a pervert would say that. Of course, you’re not a pervert, that’s not what you’re saying. But the presence of a “wife” or a “mother” has never been an essential part of family.
Only idiots think that “family” means one male, one female, plus at least one child, but no other arrangement.
That has never been true any time in human history.
Families with a configuration other than one male, one female, plus child(ren) may be somewhat more rare, but not rare enough to be treated as a meaningless exception.
Human ingenuity coupled with our natural empathy and ability to care for children not of our own biological bloodline (something that most anti-gay marriage fanatics seem sadly lacking in) has always since the dawn of time resulted in families which don’t meet your bizarrely narrow definition.
They are not “lesser than” or “defective” or “by definition” unequal to “real families” no matter how much you keep sputtering and choking. The real world doesn’t accord with your irrational procreation arguments so you just bang the desk with your shoe. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
You’re wrong about everything. You’re wrong about all your so-called facts of history and human culture. I can only hope that some night, the still small voice of your conscience wakes you to the knowledge that you have done wrong by trying to lock same-sex families out of the dignity of making a legal, public marriage commitment to each other. But even if you never do redeem yourself, no matter. We’ve still won and there’s no going back now on official recognition of gay marriage.
Not separate. Not unequal. Not “civil union” for gays and “real marriage” for straights. Not merely a will-and-contract legal settlement meant to compensate for unequal civic treatment of those homosexual partnerships compared to the heterosexual ones.
The decent people, the loving people among both theists and atheists, among people of all genders and orientations, won’t accept less than real equality anymore. We’re the majority. Too bad for the H8ers.
#LoveWins