quote:"You need to stop spending so much time on Hatrack and attend RL").
This is not the statement of a loving God. You can safely ignore it as clearly originating from the Devil...or that deprogrammer your parents hired.
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quote:And that's the biggest barrier to "surrender" for me. That I couldn't trust myself under those circumstances to secretly push the "calling" in ways that only I really intended.
quote:Yes, Leto, and we are talking about BIGOTED LEGISLATION against polygamy. Your point is totatlly lost on me. The comparisons are the same.
No, they are not, because no firm basis has been given to show how they are the same except that they are both not allowed. Murder is not allowed as well, is that accurately comparable? Stealing is not allowed either, is that equally comparable to homosexual marriage?
According to some arguments I've heard on this forum, I seriously wouldn't be surprised if people here said "yes."
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I have seen people use Leto's exact argument against homosexual marriage instead of polygamous marriage as he did. They were promptly condemned for it.
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Leto, so is it safe to say you think that outlawing polygamy is not bigoted? Then how is outlawing gay marriage bigoted?
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Homosexual Marriage and Polygamus Marraige ARE the same tho in many regards.
1: They both involve consenting adults (unless you are talking about the statutory rape we sometimes hear about in Colorado City)
2: They both involve taboo sexual liasons by societies norms.
3: They both deal with the institution of marriage.
Given these three factors, I think it is safe to group them together for discussions sake. Murder does not involve consensual sexual relations. Statutory rape does not include consent because we determine minors cannot consent to any adult, especially one who has power over them.
The major difference is that homosexuality is considered innate and Polygamus is considered a choice. But since my heterosexuality is considered innate and I can choose to marry, then polygamy and homosexuality (whether innate or a choice) should have that same choice. And I think it is safe to group them together when talking abour marriage rights.
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>> I understand - what I'm saying makes sense only with regards to people who have resolved a whole lot of issues in a particular way. My explanation was responding to Tom's statement about how people of faith clarify issues of right and wrong. <<
Ah, okay.
>> The major difference is that homosexuality is considered innate and Polygamus is considered a choice. <<
Polygamy also involves more than two people. That's a pretty major difference, and one that – in my mind – precludes an analogy with homosexual marriage.
There's also a difference between an open marriage and polygamy. I'd say that people who want to be polygamous could probably be content with an open marriage rather than marrying more than one person.
And what about homosexual polygamy? Or bisexual polygamy? Say, for instance, that the Gateses married the Ellisons and, with their combined financial clout, simply bought the rest of the world outright? Would that be okay?
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quote:Polygamy also involves more than two people. That's a pretty major difference, and one that – in my mind – precludes an analogy with homosexual marriage.
I agree this turns out to be the dispositive difference. But if you're going to ignore one aspect of the traditional definition of marriage (man/woman), you need to be able to explain why other aspects of that tradition (such as number) should not be questioned.
quote:I'd say that people who want to be polygamous could probably be content with an open marriage rather than marrying more than one person.
The same way some have said that homosexuals would be content with some contractual arrangement that gave most of the benefits of marriage? I don't think this argument flies very well.
quote:Leto, so is it safe to say you think that outlawing polygamy is not bigoted?
No. But I have no power to make you not believe that. In fact, I have every inclination that no matter what I say, you will believe that.
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>> I agree this turns out to be the dispositive difference. But if you're going to ignore one aspect of the traditional definition of marriage (man/woman), you need to be able to explain why other aspects of that tradition (such as number) should not be questioned. <<
As I've said in this thread and others, because tax laws for polygamous marriage would be unworkable. I don't think state-recognized polygamy is legally feasible, and I think that reason is enough to dismiss it from the argument, especially given that it isn't even what the argument is actually about.
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Because taxes would be more problematic doesn't seem like a very good reason for not allowing people to marry as they wish.
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So it's a pragmatic perspective. So what? As an agnostic heterosexual serial monogamist, what else can I base my perspective on? I honestly don't think I should even have a say in whether or not homosexuals can get married as far as my country is concerned, since I'm not homosexual.
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If somehow they did legalize multi-partner marriages, I am *sure* that the government would find a way to tax them.
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What if, say, the ten richest people in the world all decided to get married to each other? How do you deal with that? What if an entire company decides that every single one of the company's employees is to be united in matrimony? Is the company a company, or is it a family? Or both? Does everyone have visitation rights with everyone else's children? What about divorces? Who gets compensated, and from whose funds, if damages are merited?
Basically, I don't think polygamy is worth considering by itself, especially given that this debate is about homosexual marriage. There's a chance of legalizing the latter. There's no chance of legalizing the former, so why bother arguing about when it's tangential at best?
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Oh, I'll grant that it would take a lot of doing. But impossible -- that's a claim that I just cannot swallow.
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As far as I'm concerned, it's so close to impossible that the difference is negligible. But then, I'm in engineering.
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If you work under the assumption that bisexual polygamy would be allowed, with any mix of genders and any number of people (because how could you define a limit?), it becomes so complex as to be essentially impossible, in my view.
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quote:The more I think about this, the more it scares me to think that there are people out there who are willing to ignore their own sense of right and wrong for the sake of commands they don't understand. It's even scarier to think that these people are perhaps in the MAJORITY.
So I'll go back to thinking that people rationalize their faith, because it makes me happier than being consciously aware of mass sociopathy....
I just comprehended this. So when faced with an uncomfortable truth, you'd rather lie to yourself than change your world view?
*frustrated* Truth is usually uncomfortable! If you're really looking for a testimony, that almost always means changing your mind about things and abondoning the theory that a newly discovered has rendered obsolete.
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kat, the alternative would be to lose respect for and faith in a large element of humanity. Some people choose to believe in God because they find the prospect of a world without one cold and uncomfortable; I, for my part, choose to believe in people.
Now, of course, intellectually I'm aware that there are obviously people out there who will do something they feel to be wrong because someone they believe tells them it's right. I simply won't ever behave in a way that acknowledges this fact.
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But you'd still rather lie to yourself than deal with a truth. Can it be a sincere search for truth if you reject what you do not already believe?
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quote:Truth is usually uncomfortable! If you're really looking for a testimony, that almost always means changing your mind about things and abondoning the theory that a newly discovered has rendered obsolete.
Truth is never uncomfortable unless one is so welded to one's preconceived notions.
Truth is beautiful in that it can be relied upon and built upon. And it usually leads to new questions or discovery of additional implications.
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quote:unless one is so welded to one's preconceived notions.
Most people are welded to their pre-concieved notions. It is the only way action is possible - without that confidence, we'd be eternal Hamlets and Prufrock's, the native hue of resolution sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, and we'd lose the name of action.
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kat, would you really WANT me to become an evangelical atheist? I'm pretty tolerant of religion right now, but burning with the conscious recognition that a good portion of "faith" is currently being defined in a sociopathic way would make me very unpleasant.
quote:Most people are welded to their pre-concieved notions. It is the only way action is possible - without that confidence, we'd be eternal Hamlets and Prufrock's, the native hue of resolution sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, and we'd lose the name of action.
I totally disagree, kat. I wouldn't trust any person who either claimed certainty in their decision-making or, conversely, couldn't make decisions under uncertain conditions.
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Read Tom's first landmark, and you can see why he'll quite possibly never write another, though I'm still hoping he times things well enough to hit a landmarkish number very shortly after his child is born, and feels impelled to share some thoughts.
Tom, I'm not going to agree or disagree with you in regard to the topic, but I think you're unfairly using the term "sociopathy" to score some emotional points. It could reasonably be argued that believing in one's own sense of right and wrong, regardless of what anyone else (including authority figures of various types) says, is more in line with the definition of sociopathic behavior.
Pop, I've actually been struggling to come up with a term that DOES fit. As you've pointed out, sociopathy isn't quite it; it's not that religious fanatics believe that no one else matters besides themselves, after all. And it's not psychosis.
It's the belief that nothing, not even one's own reason and perceptions, matters more than an external set of commandments that are trusted, in the majority, based on personal vibe reinforced by familial tradition. I can't think of a term for that. But it IS scary, and it's remarkably unhealthy, and I think it poses a clear danger to both individuals and society.
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Dana says you are both really cool. Can't wait to meet you.
And Christy, of course! Has she recovered from fondling me at the Midwest clump gathering?
I haven't!!!
(oh, and Papa Moose, I'm not leaving you out, but I've already met you so I know you're cool based on my own observational study.)
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Kat, you’re just so cool that he couldn’t tell from talking to me that we’ve never met in RL. But interactions by snail mail and parcel post should count for at least partial “real” points.
Bob is pretty cool too, for those of you who didn’t know. Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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As Mark Twain observed, a wise and benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government. But an evil or incompetent dictatorship is the worst.
And since you don't actually know what kind of dictator you have until he gets into office, the potential benefits of the rare benevolent dictatorship are outweighed by the costs of the more commonly evil ones. Consequently, Twain argued, democracy was overall the best form of government, even if other forms were capable of individually greater things.
By the same token, the dangers of behaving irrationally based on blind faith so outweigh the benefits that I can't see a legitimate argument for that behavior.
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