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 :).
Teh Roolz
Assume all other posters are posting in good faith.
For example, do not accuse other posters of being deliberately misleading
What ought the impact be of this decision on churches/mosques/synagogues/etc. (and dictionaries) here in the US?
What if other nations refuse to recognize this redefinition of marriage adopted by the US?
That was a paraphrase, Gregory (not sure you know what those are–if you ask I can explain it). I believe it reflects roughly what you wrote. If you’d like to go back and find your actual quote, please do so. If its sense is significantly different from my paraphrase, I’ll be happy to retract.
Looking forward to this!
Heh. Online dictionaries are already up to date (probably have been updated years ago. Same-sex marriage is not a completely new thing by now.)
Merriam-Webster
1 a (1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2) : the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage [same-sex marriage]
b : the mutual relation of married persons : wedlock
c : the institution whereby individuals are joined in a marriage
2: an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities
I expect the print dictionaries will choose to follow suit as soon as practicable. They generally see their function as descriptive, not proscriptive, so why wouldn’t they update the social and legal usage?
As for churches etc, I don’t see any impact. Those that hate gays will still hate gays, and (in the USA) are legally allowed to do so. Cynically, I would say they’re even encouraged to do so: there are buckets of money to be made by selling hate to one’s flock, and the government is forbidden to tax any of it. Nor can we regulate the conduct of the churches and its employees in public, not just within the sanctuary walls. May be just a “benefit” of the rule of Free Speech / Free Association, but somehow the christian right wing always has more Free Speech than everyone else. They have all the loudspeakers they need to continue promoting their message of irrational hatred.
And those that don’t hate gays, well, they still won’t. They’ll go on welcoming gay parishioners to worship, perhaps perform gay wedding ceremonies (and perhaps do so even against the dictates of their parent denomination) and generally act like the true children of a loving god they claim themselves to be.
There are a handful of people who are going to find themselves between two stools. The County Clerk who is legally responsible for handing out marriage licenses while moonlighting as a rabid anti-gay deacon might have to choose. MIght have to choose between doing the job they’re paid to do, or a deluded allegiance to a badly-interpreted scripture.
Tough. Coddling them because they’re “religious” and have “religious objections” to marriage is as stupid as coddling some Muslim wanker who wants to work in a pet store but refuses to feed the dogs or clean the puppy cages because “dogs are haram”. No, it’s even worse, because we as a society, as taxpayers in general, would be paying for the County Clerk’s illicit refusal, while who cares what excuses the private business owner is will ing to put up with from their private employees.
But they will need to update that to say that same sex marriage isn’t just “like” that of a traditional marriage, won’t they? That sounds too much like “separate but equal.”
Excuse me while I go read that Kipling poem Patrick linked to.
So? what was your exact quote, Gregory? How have I misrepresented your comment?
I just don’t see them as being against equality for same-sex partners. I don’t see them arguing against according the same rights and privileges to same-sex partners.
If in fact marriage is being redefined, and that seems to be the general consensus here according to both sides, then the dispute is over whether that redefinition is a “good” thing or a “bad” thing. I assume most folks here thinks it’s a good thing and Erik and Gregory think it’s a bad thing. But near as I can tell none of their arguments have anything to do with any particular bias against LGBT persons, including according to them the same rights and privileges under the law that are accorded to married [in the traditional sense] couples.
Personally I despise the bigot word because it’s entirely too easy to toss around and is too often simply a disguise for bigotry on the part of the accuser.
Now what I do see coming is same-sex partners who want to get married having available to them some places where they can be married and others where they cannot be married. And if that’s not “separate but equal” I don’t know what is.
Whites get married here. Blacks get married there.
Further, will this site now allow posting of porn, or is awaiting a new definition of porn by the Supreme Court of the United States first? Will members here boo or cheer when that happens? Will Joe G be welcomed back? Is there some “essential quality” to porn that will always and forever make it porn?
Mung, why do you think Erik and Gregory believe that broadening the concept of marriage is bad thing, if not because of religion, homophobia, knee-jerk anti-liberalism, or some combo of those?
Do you really think it’s just them being persnickity about words? I mean, did they make a stink when the concept of lawn mower was broadened to include John Deere riding thingies or “cooking” began to include turning on the microwave? Please.
What? Of course there are other nations which refuse to recognize this “redefinition” of marriage. There are plenty of nations which define marriage as “one woman one man”. They didn’t change when gay marriage became legal in Canada 10 years ago. They didn’t change when gay marriage became legal in Ireland in May. Why would they change just because it became legal in all 50 states of the USA on Friday?
States in the USA are constitutionally required to recognize as valid a marriage from another state (part of the Full Faith and Credit clause) although in practice there was no compliance for inter-racial marriages pre 1967; states are never required to recognize other states’ common law marriages, domestic partnerships or civil unions; and the DOMA statute guaranteed they could not be forced to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state (prior to Friday). That was one of the reasons the issue had to go to the Federal courts, because the patchwork of which states accepted and which states refused to respect gay marriages meant that a couple could be ‘married” in one state, drive across a state line and suddenly be “unmarried” drive across yet another state line and be “married” again. Crazy! Much much better now.
But the US nation and other nations have never had such mutual recognition in international law. Sovereign nations each have their own laws. Even within the European Union, not all nations have mutual recognition of each other’s marriage laws. There is some movement for the European Parliament to draft legislation which would require member nations to recognize all legal marriages and civil unions from other member nations. In the meantime, they have the same crazy problem the US had until last week. A couple traveling from country to country could find themselves “married” and “unmarried” twice a day. Crazy!
You’d hope that the majority of them would see the light and move to follow the US’s sensible example.
That isn’t something the US can push, just proudly display that we are (finally!!) an example of freedom, happiness, and equality for all, as we have always preached. Cynically again, it’s not as if we’re going to hold up a trade treaty or an arms deal unless the other nation agrees to recognize same-sex unions. There’s neither carrot nor stick to change them, just hope that the popular swell of support for equality will eventually force all national governments to do the right thing.
So what.
That’s not a problem with gay people or gay marriage. That’s a problem with religiously-based bigotry of all kinds.
Are you advocating that your fellow christians should mend their ways?
There have always been places I couldn’t get married. I couldn’t get married in a Catholic church no matter who my proposed spouse was. The church has an unlimited right to discriminate against me, against whomever it chooses to discriminate against, for any reason or no reason at all. There is not and has never been a law which forced a church to marry a black couple when the church only believed in marrying white couples. If a previously white church decided to start accepting black couples, that was a matter of social pressure, or perhaps a profit motive (larger pool of attendees means more total donations, possibly) or maybe even because the denomination came to a genuinely loving christian stance. But not because we forced them. This has not been changed in any way by the Supreme Court decision.
From the majority decision, protecting religious “rights”:
Now, I happen to think that their inherent and irremediable discrimination is a reason why all church property should be stripped of the illegitimate tax exemptions our society has granted them. And there are a handful of people who agree with me on that issue. But that’s not gonna happen, not in this century. There’s not even a hint that this will be a direction our democracy is going to agree to. Yeah, I think “separate but equal” sucks, and I think it especially sucks because the churches are so much more “equal” than everyone else. But preferential deference to religious sensibilities is a cornerstone of our culture that’s not going to change.
Gay people know this. Gay lawyers know this. Non-gay lawyers representing gay people know this. No one, really no one, is going to spend their lifetime wanting to be married in a church that hates them and suing the church because it didn’t let them get married in the hate-filled sanctuary. Not in our lifetime, anyways.
I have spent the evening more productively, watching Jurassic World. I come back here and things are pretty much as I left them.
The movie dinosaurs are more fun.
Glad you enjoyed your movie. I dunno how much money you’d have to pay me to get me watching Jurassic Park. 🙂 But I’m looking forward to seeing “Inside Out” this week with my family. Aren’t we lucky!
First, I disagree with your characterization of their argument. They are not opposed to a “broadening” of the definition of marriage as you say, but rather they say such such a “broadening” is incoherent. A “broadening” of a definition that replaces the original definition is a “broadening” in name only. In reality, it’s a replacement of the original definition.
Admittedly, that’s my interpretation of their argument.
You seem to be the only one here arguing that it was a broadening or an expansion of the original definition.
Second, it is exactly that sort of motive mongering that I find to be an irrational response to what they actually say. Why would they said that if they were not bigots!? Seriously?
Why not accept their word for why they object? Is that against the rules here?
It’s hard for the boy child to resist dinosaurs. I have two eyes for the first time in about six years. Had to see what 3D is all about.
i am canadian. Yet my answer is the same . The people, and so the citizen each, are being denied their right to rule themselves which is the reason for consent to be ruled in the first place.
Its a profound and deep loss of a peoples rights. Plural. The right to rule thier nation and not be ruled by dictators. the right to say what is right and wrong. ONLY agreeing to lose by the consent to a vote of the people or the legislature which is also a vote.
The right to see God has decided what is right. Not be told god is wrong or non existent. Its a complete and unworkable denial of historic mankind’s moral claim to rule themselves and to the institution of legal marriage.
Its a loss of right to see marraige as only created to recognize the special relationship of man/woman. That came first then legal marraige to enforce its boundaries.
it stripps every person, now and in the past, of their identity of a sex in relation to the opposite sex in a special union.
its absurd to say the people have nothing to say about it.
By the way. since its not the peoples moral or legal decision then those supporting it are also breaking this rule. you can’t say its right since its implies you can make such a moral decision or seek a legal result.
only the jUdges can decide this. Absurd.
Its just what poorly selected liberal Judges want on behalf of a liberal establishment.
No, walto is most definitely not the only one here who thinks it’s a “broadening” or “expansion” of the original definition (leaving aside the question of who is an authority on what the “original” definition was, partly Elizabeth’s argument against Erik’s gawdawful idiocy).
I don’t think I’ve explicitly used the word “expansion” of definition in this thread, but clearly that’s exactly what same sex marriage is: an expansion of marriage to be more inclusive, larger, pertaining to more total people and more subgroups of people than before. If that’s not an expansion, nothing ever would be an expansion. Okay, I could go for “broadening” if walto prefers.
The very fact that someone thinks the correct word to describe what happened is “replacement” rather than a joyous “broadening”, a welcome “expansion”, is in itself a sign that there are bigoted thought processes at work.
Words matter, and choosing to think that your definition of marriage is being “replaced” (against your will) (or against The Will of the People!!) by gays (and their “diabolical” atheist-liberal allies!!), is choosing to indulge yourself in fantasies motivated only by a bigoted sense of the icky / dangerous Others. It’s out of touch with reality. Clearly, that’s what both Erik and Gregory have been doing, although slightly different in expression.
Why? Because every single reason either one of them has given for why they object is totally irrational. Sure, I accept that they probably believe it themselves while they’re saying that irrational shit. But then I look at the known reasons why people get motivated to post irrational shit on message boards and blog posts. The only reason – that has ever been shown – why people argue against broadened human happiness and expanded freedom which harms no one is because they’re giving vent to internalized bigotry.
Balance of probabilities, both Erik and Gregory are bigots of some stripe or other.
I don’t know how anyone could reach any other conclusion based on the disgusting things they have said to us. It will in fact take more than just you saying “Welp, I don’t see it” to convince me that I don’t correctly observe the same type of behavior and wording here that I’ve spent four decades observing elsewhere.
You NOT seeing bigotry in action is a data point towards a completely separate argument. Some other thread. Or maybe not.
Mung;
What if? You can’t be serious, Mung.
Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014:
And you know what husband and wife is, right? Kids know what mother and father is. Do you? Yes, you do, but you think it’s somehow “evolution” to look past the fact that it takes a male and female to produce babies.
You never gave the real reason why they might want to get married, as opposed to “bond” in a civil union or whatever. Is it about “love”? What is stopping them to love without any contract? Lots of people are doing it, in fact, if not most, so what’s the deal? We already established that the “benefits” argument was bullshit. If there were benefits, people would be rushing to get married, but they are not.
Let’s disregard that this is false (you are implying that matrilineal considerations never existed) and focus on the main thing instead. You are emphatically saying here that marriage was bad, like slavery. Yet you for some weird reason want to keep the word “marriage” active and current, different from slavery. What gives?
You know that it’s physiologically impossible for gays to have babies, right? So, they do not “have babies” in the relevant sense. Conclusion: Sciences matter when they make the point against traditional concepts, but when they happen to confirm traditional concepts, then sciences don’t matter. This is so simple that I got it already in my first comment in this thread.
Like the rights of cars to drive on highways would not be affected one jot by the rights of pedestrians to walk on car lanes, right? And the “rights” of bachelors do not change one jot whether we define them as married or unmarried.
Thanks for making this abundantly clear.
Erik, you entwined Marriage with childbirth when of course it isn’t. You don’t have to be married to have kids, nor does being married require children. So you are reaching for a thing that is empirically untrue.
but for that good old-times biblical marriage:
“When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.”
Loos like some Darwinian Atheist put them up to it..
Erik, honey, I’m sure you think you’re on the side of the angels and all that, but your perverse fascination with procreation is starting to look a little bit uinhinged.
True, a woman can only make babies with a sperm donation, and given the real world – not future lab science – that means a human male had to ejaculate somewhere in the vicinity. But you must know that except for the sperm itself, woman have been making babies without any other need for men for all of human history (and likely deep into our primate ancestry, as well). It doesn’t matter one bit to the potential baby if the woman is in a committed loving relationship with another woman. It doesn’t matter one bit if the sperm provider is the woman’s loving husband, or their gay best friend who they choose because he seems to be uniquely blessed by the gods.
A gay woman and a gay man can make a baby exactly as well as any heterosexual man and woman. And an actively heterosexual couple can fail to make a baby exactly as sadly as any homosexual couple. That’s why there is not, and never has been, a fertility test required for marriage in western society.
Getting pregnant (the potential to get pregnant) is not part of the essential definition of marriage. Never has been. You imagined that – or you absorbed it from someone else who made it up and you foolishly decided to vomit it all over this thread. You should stop insisting that marriage must be about heterosexual fertility just because you think gay sex is icky.
Wait, what? Your analogy is beyond stupid. Yes, we can all imagine ways in which the “rights” of cars would be affected by pedestrians walking in “car lanes”. It’s not a problem with the dictionary definition of “car lanes” — when it’s a problem, it’s a problem with physical bodies colliding with hard objects and being harmed. But what’s that supposed to signify for marriage equality? How does a gay woman marrying the woman she loves interfere with your lane? How, exactly? It’s not a problem with the dictionary definition of marriage! If it’s a problem, it’s a problem with physical bodies doing something in the real world. How are they either harmed or harming you? Be specific or I’ll assume you don’t have any answer beside it kills your boner.
*Deleted Stuff*
If we were to construe it your way, we could reason from the fact that not all murderers are in jail and not all sick people have access to medical care to that it’s empirically untrue that murder requires punishment and that sickness requires medical care.
I construe it this way: Murder has its empirical characteristics and should have a punishment as per social convention – and all this is part and parcel of the definition. Sickness has its empirical characteristics and should be accompanied by medical treatment as per social convention and all this is part and parcel of the definition. Similarly, family has its empirical characteristics and should be accompanied by marriage as per social convention and all this is part and parcel of the relevant definitions.
Marriage has a specific traditional purpose that is central to its definition. By disregarding what both traditionally and definitionally belongs to it, you are not talking about marriage. In this free world, you are of course at liberty to redefine things as you wish, but I am at equal liberty to point out the consequences that the redefinition entails.
So, if it doesn’t matter who ejaculates where, who breeds the baby and who is committed to who, then marriage doesn’t matter. I am beginning to see things your way. Ain’t it fantastic!
The colliding objects are of course a problem, but the problem was already predicted by the definition of “car lanes”. Pedestrians should stay away precisely because they are car lanes.
We are here at cross purposes. According to you, it doesn’t matter who ejaculates into anyone’s spouse, who breeds anyone’s babies, and who is committed to who or whether anyone is committed at all. Whereas according to me, all this matters and is entailed by the word “marriage”.
Remember, the other analogy I brought was the definition of “bachelor”. To you maybe it doesn’t matter if bachelors are married or not, but to me it makes a world of difference. If he’s married, he’s not a bachelor. Note that I am not banning bachelors from getting married. It’s just that when they get married, they cease to be bachelors – by definition.
Similarly, whatever form of cohabitation gays have, it’s not marriage and cannot be. Legal authorities may announce a different opinion, but this doesn’t make it true. The Patriot Act has nothing to do with patriotism, “No Child Left Behind” act leaves children behind, etc. Happens all the time.
No, you have not already established that the benefits argument is bullshit. The argument that because some people who want babies don’t want to marry therefore some people who don’t want babies do is nonsense.
It doesn’t even make sense to say that because some people don’t want marriage, therefore nobody does. It’s like saying that because some people don’t like wine, wine should be abolished.
The reasons for marrying, i.e. entering a legal partnership for life with a person you love are multiple, many of them to do with complex legal rights and protections. The bottom line is that there is absolutely no rational reason for denying that opportunity to gay people.
Frankly, you sound bitter – as though you think that there’s no point to marriage apart from “procuring” children. Well, there is.
Let me remind you of some traditional marriage vows:
See anything about “procuring children” in there?
No, I thought not.
Oh please do.
Oh, wait – there are none, except to allow gay people to marry the person they love.
At one point I am going to report you so you can guano yourself, Elizabeth. Stop misrepresenting my arguments.
I didn’t say nobody wants to get married. I said that since marriage is statistically on sharp decline, the supposed benefits attached to it are evidently not benefits. Therefore the benefits argument is bogus.
When this misrepresentation is cleared away, the rest of what you say does not follow.
And again you make the same error: more and more people don’t want marriage therefore it has no benefits. Compare: more and more people don’t want to read books therefore reading books has no benefits.
Lots of gay people don’t want to get married. Lots of straight people don’t want to get married. But a lot of both gay and straight people do. The fact that others don’t has no bearing on the question as to whether the right of gay people to do so should be withheld, and granted only to straight people.
And of course a big part of it is to be recognized by society equally, as having the same worth. Erik, history is going to look back at you with the sad eyes reserved for bigots*
*Actually, it wont. You’ll be forgotten.
Hey Erik – why don’t we have this traditional version on marriage any more. Have we devalued the institution? Should we return to it?
unsupported assertion. Value is relative and it is easily falsified by gay people wanting it. Perhaps you are using an overly narrow version of “benefits”.
For people who can’t read, there’s no benefit to be had from reading books. They have to learn to read first. It’s hard to learn to read. Some people suffer stress when they are made to learn stuff. So, the benefit we are talking about becomes a matter of checks and balances, a matter of perception.
The first time I gave this argument, I said as clearly as possible that evidently the benefits you are talking about (some of them are, in some contexts, pretty substantial benefits, I acknowledge) are not perceived as benefits by the majority.
The majority likes an easy-going life where it doesn’t matter who f*cks who and who raises their babies, a la hotshoe. Commitment, fulfilling the spousal and parental duties is unpleasant to them. People like that really do not see the benefit of marriage, and they happen to form the bulk of the population.
So, you were halfway there getting rid of misrepresenting my argument. I can see you tried almost honestly. Thanks.
What is “the” benefit?
Is there only one?
How do you know this?
Which is irrelevant, clearly, seeing as the “minority” (actually I dispute your figures, but let’s go with them) include gay people.
So? Even if true, why should that get in the way of allowing gay people who (like many straight people) do see a benefit from accessing it?
Your “bulk of the population” argument is completely irrelevant to the issue as to whether gay people who do want to marry should be able to do so.
Sez who, you? Tee hee. You wish you had the power to enforce your hateful regressive definition on the new loving society, and now you’re just frothing. Poor baby. Go on, throw some more toys out of your pram:
Umm, hate to break it to ya’ kid, but since marriage is a legal institution, when the topmost legal authorities “announce a different opinion” then by definition they’re right. You can’t appeal to any higher authority than the Supreme Court — unless you figure on asking god, and last I heard, he’s been silent since before ancient Israel fell to the Romans.
Go back to junior high school and pay attention this time in your history and civics classes.
Yep, I just as I expected, I see that you specifically did NOT answer my questions. Just your meaningless rot about how “all this [heterosexual procreation] matters and is entailed by the word ‘marriage’ ”
Sorry that the idea of two women not wanting a man, loving each other and raising children in their committed family relationship kills your boner, dude.
You’d probably be much happier in Uganda.
Don’t be more of a hateful toad than you have to be, Erik.
That’s not what I said, and if you can’t read for comprehension, ask someone for help. If you did read for comprehension and you chose to be a toad about it anyways, then you owe me an apology.
P.S. the word is “fuck” not “f*ck”. What a smarmy wiener you appear to be when you refrain from spelling out the word fuck but you say vomit-inducing things like:
That typical conduct of yours is worse than any obscenity.
I said that marriage is statistically on decline which indicates that people see no benefit in marriage. You say “minority include gay people”. Clearly, your retort is irrelevant by any standard.
I have no opinion on whether it should be allowed or not. People may get into their heads that they want to marry their dildos because they love them so. Let them do what they want, but it’s not marriage. Marriage is not whatever you want it to be. We might allow people be forced to work without pay for months and legally prohibit calling it “slavery”, but sorry, it is slavery.
I prefer to name things as they are, not what sounds more cute. And I prefer to keep rationally established concepts as they have been established.
Doubly so, because the bulk of the population in the USA is now firmly in favor of gay marriage. It’s up to almost 70 percent in favor now. Most people cheer on a love story. The majority realize that gay men and women want to marry for love, just as they themselves had wanted to marry for love, and they support extending the hope of lifetime love and happiness to everyone.
Cynically yet again, it’s wonderful if gay marriage becomes a thing right at the time when heterosexuals are delaying their own marriage commitments. Good for the economy, good for florists and hotels and caterers and vendors of all kinds of celebratory accompaniments.
SO on every grounds, on 14th Amendment Equality grounds, on moral grounds, on happy-ever-after love story grounds, and on economic grounds, it’s irrational to deny marriage rights to gay couples.
Naughty, naughty, Erik. IF you actually had no opinion on whether or not gay marriage should be allowed, you wouldn’t have spent two days hissing and spitting in this thread like you have.
Ha. Marriage is EXACTLY what I want it to be, because what I want it to be is exactly how it’s defined in the dictionary:
Love wins. You lose, sorry.
We both know this means keeping the rationally-established concept of constitutional law as your foremost authority. But somehow, that’s not really your preference, is it.
We note of course gay marriage doesn’t actually disadvantage you in any real way. I mean, you have indeed lost the case for anti-gay-marriage bigotry being “rational”, but that loss doesn’t harm you in any functional way, so who cares. Hurts your pride to lose? Pride is a sin, Erik!
But then, you’d have to actually be rational, to notice that gay marriage does no harm to you and increases the overall happiness of your fellow humans, and therefore it’s rational to accept it.
Please do feel free to prove me wrong about your irrationality by retracting your anti-gay-marriage rants and adopting Mung’s rational attitude “Oh, gay marriage is a thing now? Okay.”
Or don’t. Whichever you prefer. Irrational as you are, or not.
Out of interest, where is the canonical definition of marriage?
I’m off to stand on a street corner and yell “that’s not a tablet!!!” at anyone I see toting an iPad.
If it can be done without hijacking this thread, I’d be interested in hearing (my fellow) consequentialist petrushka indicate how *HE* would deal with the concerns about majority tyranny I mentioned above) and then punted myself).
Also, for a somewhat related OP, I’m wondering if it’s possible to upload a pdf file here.
Sorry for the interruption.
Even after the supreme court decision, Wikipedia looks quite “canonical”: “Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a socially or ritually recognized union or legal contract between spouses that establishes rights and obligations between them, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage
This is the content that the word always had for me. I don’t share Elizabeth’s distinctly feminist impressions.
Erik,
I don’t see anything in there that bolsters your position over others’. What’s a spouse?
I first heard of the idea of same sex marriage somewhere around 1980, give or take a few years. I didn’t have a strong opinion. It was more a matter of “WTF is this all about?” But if there had been a state referendum at that time, I would have voted against it.
Since then: The arguments from the LGBT community have been pretty good. And the arguments from the religious right have been horribly bad.
I’m not quite sure whether it was the effectiveness of the LGBT arguments, or the inability of their opponents to come up with a sensible argument. But, one way or another, I accepted the idea of SSM.
My advice to the religious right: Give it up already. You lost. You do not have good arguments. Why not graciously accept the change, and then get on with life.
I had a similar evolution. I was, like Obama then and Gregory now, in the civil union camp. And the lesbian couple I owned a two-family with were entirely uninterested in getting married–though they’d been together for 20 years by then. “Who cares about marriage?” we agreed. Just give everybody the same visitation and insurance rights, etc.
But it turned out that they and I were not the last word on this and that “separate but equal” was not popular among the gay and lesbian community and was not going to fly as a fair resolution. I realized that *MY* not caring about “marriage” was irrelevant: it was what the majority of the affected community wanted that mattered. So I changed my position.
(BTW, Neil, did you see my question about pdfs above?)
Well, if that’s your only objection, I guess you’ll get over it. After all what is signified by a word changes all the time. Look at the word “library” for instance.
OK, I finally found the Gregory remark that I above paraphrased as ““Why would you think anybody would understand these technical terms here?”
His actual words were:
Sorry if my paraphrase didn’t accurately reflect his sentiment. I think it’s pretty close, myself, but I agree that it’s better to use posters’ actual words if possible.
What’s a spouse? What’s a child? What’s a family? What’s a husband? What’s a wife? What’s a mother? What’s a father?
You don’t know these words, yet you know your views about marriage are right, but mine are not. Or what? Are you sure you know even this much?
Erik, can you give one good reason why gay couples shouldn’t marry?
Erik,
The question was rhetorical. The Wiki defined marriage in terms of ‘spouses’, which does not say that the roles be mixed-gender in any pairing, and so does not support your position. But if it makes you feel superior to suggest that I don’t know anything, by all means go with that.