posted
I thought it was funny, but very silly. You aren't going to get the message through to people that gay marriage is cool by insulting them and mocking them.
This video makes everyone who is anti-gay marriage paints a lot of people with the brush of ignorance, stupidity and prejudice. As if there is no real argument against gay marriage. So is this video a moral booster for people who already support gay marriage? Or is it meant to convince people?
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Okay, seriously? I hadn't seen the original that these were parodies of. Here it is. Honestly, I think it's as wildly over-the-top as the parodies. In fact, had I not known that it was for real, I would have thought that it was also a parody of same-sex marriage opponents.
The parodies were totally unnecessary. The original parodied itself.
(But my favorite comment was "OM NOM NOM OM NOM NOM!")
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These are secular arguments and they look "real" to me. Unless by real you mean "arguments you find compelling" you are over stating your case.
Honestly, if your goal is persuade people to support equal rights for same sex couples, you don't do yourself any favors by overstating the case or mocking the opposition. It may feel good but ultimately it hurts the cause. Most of the people I know who oppose same sex marriage aren't evil or stupid, they aren't hateful or paranoid. The cause would be far better served by making an honest effort to understand where your opponents are coming from than by demonizing them.
[ April 22, 2009, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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Seriously? The first one is stating that gay people shouldn't marry because they cannot reproduce in their union, or if they can, that being married has no impact on whether or not they can reproduce.
There are sterile straight people out there. Should we therefore require all heterosexual people to have fertility tests before we allow them to get married? After all, marriage is a costly union with no benefits if the couple in question cannot reproduce.
Or at least that's what the article linked to under "secular arguments" is claiming.
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Do the costs of the fertility tests outweigh the cost of extending benefits to a sterile person? With the current infertility drugs and treatments, is it even possible to know for certain that a couple are infertile?
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quote:Originally posted by andi330: Seriously? The first one is stating that gay people shouldn't marry because they cannot reproduce in their union, or if they can, that being married has no impact on whether or not they can reproduce.
There are sterile straight people out there. Should we therefore require all heterosexual people to have fertility tests before we allow them to get married? After all, marriage is a costly union with no benefits if the couple in question cannot reproduce.
Or at least that's what the article linked to under "secular arguments" is claiming.
I never said I found the arguments compelling, I said they looked real. I didn't post them because I agree with the arguments, I posted them because I thought it would be useful for people to know what the arguments are.
I get the impression that the proponents of same sex marriage have no interest in actually understand the people who oppose the idea.
Its not nearly as fun to understand people as it is to mock them.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Do the costs of the fertility tests outweigh the cost of extending benefits to a sterile person? With the current infertility drugs and treatments, is it even possible to know for certain that a couple are infertile?
Absolutely, there are women who are born with no eggs. This is something that can be determined by testing. If you have no eggs, you cannot reproduce, at least not without outside help just as a gay or lesbian couple would need outside help to get pregnant. Should a woman with no eggs be prevented from marrying in a heterosexual union because her marriage will have no bearing on her ability (or lack thereof) to reproduce? I don't think so. But the articles above are essentially using the inability to reproduce without outside assistance as the reason why gay people shouldn't marry. The same argument can then be made for heterosexual couples.
And I expect that over the lifetime of a marriage and all the tax benefits that go along with it, it would be cheaper to test for fertility beforehand and deny the marriage than it would be to allow a couple who will never have children to get married and get those benefits. I have no data to back up that claim, but I would be willing to expect it would be cheaper in the long run.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I never said I found the arguments compelling, I said they looked real. I didn't post them because I agree with the arguments, I posted them because I thought it would be useful for people to know what the arguments are.
I get the impression that the proponents of same sex marriage have no interest in actually understand the people who oppose the idea.
Its not nearly as fun to understand people as it is to mock them.
Uh. Rabbit, there's no way you think the true reason why people oppose homosexual rights is because they can't reproduce. I think Jhai does understand these people.
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quote:Uh. Rabbit, there's no way you think the true reason why people oppose homosexual rights is because they can't reproduce. I think Jhai does understand these people.
Thank you for proving my case by providing a grossly simplistic parody of the arguments being made.
Start with this question: Why should society provide legal status and benefits to people who are married?
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quote:Uh. Rabbit, there's no way you think the true reason why people oppose homosexual rights is because they can't reproduce. I think Jhai does understand these people.
Thank you for proving my case.
You're not serious. By extension, opponents of homosexual marriage would have to at least try to deny marriage to old, infertile, and unreproductive couples. Can you name a single example of any of these?
Reproduction's one of the funnier excuses I've heard, and there's no way you think pretending it's a legitimate argument gleans more "understanding" than seeing it for what it is.
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By "real" I mean a logically sound argument - i.e. one where the premises are true and the conclusion follows from the premises listed.
There isn't a secular argument created that meets the required conditions of a logically sound argument. A series of statements that don't lead to a valid argument are worthless, and every argument that rests on untrue premises - like all of the secular arguments I've ever seen - does not reflect reality, and thus isn't what I consider "real".
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"[H]omosexuality is highly relevant because it precludes procreation..." Oh, come on! And what kind of socialist tripe was this? People are not game pieces, to be pushed around a board for the "betterment of society".
"Furthermore, there is no prospect of children from such a union..."
So that's a "real argument"? Rabbit, that isn't just a bad argument, it's as ludicrous as "gay married people are going to rain out of the sky". We celebrated my daughter's ninth birthday last Sunday. So how can I even address this piece of tripe seriously? "But, such cases really do not distinguish themselves from the case where a single person adopts a child or a single woman has a child without being married." An assertion is not an argument. This blog entry doesn't give a secular argument against SSM. On the contrary, it's simply a series of baseless assertions against it. In the case of that last one, the assertion is that a child that results from a same-sex union is like a single person having a child. Circular reasoning of the worst kind. As though Tova losing either me or my partner would be any less traumatic than the child of an opposite-sex couple losing one of his parents. Feh.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: same sex marriage.
<blink> A secular argument? From the Catholic Education Resource Center? This was a joke, right?
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: These are secular arguments and they look "real" to me. Unless by real you mean "arguments you find compelling" you are over stating your case.
I'll grant you that the first link you gave is an argument, albeit a bad one. The second one is not an argument at all, but only a string of assertions, and the third one isn't secular.
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Lalo, Thank you once again for proving my case.
Presuming your opponents are lying about their concerns is not a productive and persuasive strategy. Your arguments demonstrate that you have made no attempt to understand the reasoning this people present.
Once again, start with the same question they start with. Why should society grant legal privileges to married people?
If there isn't a good reason, then marriage itself is discriminatory and the solution isn't to let gay people get married it is to do away with marriage benefits.
But If there is a good reason for society to grant benefits to married people and we are considering extending that benefit to others we should be certain that the same reason for granting benefits applies.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Start with this question: Why should society provide legal status and benefits to people who are married?
It shouldn't. But if it does, the reasons why are irrelevant. You can't have the government say, "Okay, you and you and you, you can get married. You? Not so much."
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Before this argument gets too heated it might be worth waiting for someone who actually wants to argue against SSM, rather than going after Rabbit who merely pointed out that there are arguments that don't invoke religion (also Rabbit is pro-SSM if memory serves).
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Start with this question: Why should society provide legal status and benefits to people who are married?
It shouldn't. But if it does, the reasons why are irrelevant. You can't have the government say, "Okay, you and you and you, you can get married. You? Not so much."
Why not? If marriage is about incentivizing a certain lifestyle, then of course it is about choice. That is why the government provides benefits to a union of two people instead of giving marriage benefits to an individual (tax stuff, etc.).
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Why not? If marriage is about incentivizing a certain lifestyle, then of course it is about choice. That is why the government provides benefits to a union of two people instead of giving marriage benefits to an individual (tax stuff, etc.).
But if marriage is about incentivizing a certain lifestyle, why does it give incentives to people who get married but still don't hold to the lifestyle?
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Pay attention. The Rabbit didn't say they were good arguments or that she agreed with them. She just said they existed.
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But, as Lisa said, the non-religious arguments are flimsy to the point of sillyness and given that they are almost exclusively advanced by people with religious motives for opposing SSM, their character is more of post-hoc reasoning than genuine secular concern.
Put another way, people aren't against SSM because of these arguments; rather they have created these arguments because they are against SSM.
It's like using a "pigs have parasites" argument to try to ban pork. Oh, and the majority of the people pushing for the ban are Muslim.
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I pretty much agree with Jhai. An argument is only "real" if it actually follows logically from true premises.
That said... honestly I didn't think the parodies were that funny (except the Colbert one, which wasn't linked yet).
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Start with this question: Why should society provide legal status and benefits to people who are married?
It shouldn't. But if it does, the reasons why are irrelevant. You can't have the government say, "Okay, you and you and you, you can get married. You? Not so much."
To me, it makes no sense to argue that society should not be granting any privileges to married people and then at the same time to argue those privileges should be extended to a larger group. Two wrongs do not make a right. If there you believe that there are no valid reasons for society to grant privileges to married people, then you should be working to do away with those privileges for everyone not trying to expand the privilege.
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quote:If there you believe that there are no valid reasons for society to grant privileges to married people, then you should be working to do away with those privileges for everyone not trying to expand the privilege.
I don't see any problem with working towards both goals or focusing on the one that you consider to be the greater injustice or the easier one to address in the near term.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Start with this question: Why should society provide legal status and benefits to people who are married?
It shouldn't. But if it does, the reasons why are irrelevant. You can't have the government say, "Okay, you and you and you, you can get married. You? Not so much."
To me, it makes no sense to argue that society should not be granting any privileges to married people and then at the same time to argue those privileges should be extended to a larger group. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Actually, sometimes two wrongs do make a right. Or at least a lesser wrong. The perks that are being given to opposite sex couples aren't coming out of a vacuum. I pay taxes. Part of those taxes go to "incentivize" people like Britney Spears and Kevin Federline.
If my money is being distributed by the government, then it can damned well be impartial about it so that I can receive part of my own money back. Until sanity prevails and it gets out of the wealth redistribution business altogether.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: If there you believe that there are no valid reasons for society to grant privileges to married people, then you should be working to do away with those privileges for everyone not trying to expand the privilege.
Wrong. I am working to get the government out of the meddling business, but I'm not holding my breath, either. I'm not the martyr type, Rabbit. I'm not about to give up what's mine as a matter of principle while I wait for the grabby hands to get out of my bank account. That's not principled; that's dumb.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: But If there is a good reason for society to grant benefits to married people and we are considering extending that benefit to others we should be certain that the same reason for granting benefits applies.
To play along, let's say the government has a compelling interest in encouraging stable partnerships and families. How is this, in any way, a concept limited to heterosexuals?
You still haven't answered my question, btw. By extension of the reproduction argument, opponents of homosexual marriage would have to at least try to deny marriage to old, infertile, and unreproductive couples. Can you name a single example of any of these?
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: But, as Lisa said, the non-religious arguments are flimsy to the point of sillyness and given that they are almost exclusively advanced by people with religious motives for opposing SSM, their character is more of post-hoc reasoning than genuine secular concern.
Put another way, people aren't against SSM because of these arguments; rather they have created these arguments because they are against SSM.
This is true, of course. But I still think you have to respond to the argument- it's no good saying "but you really mean this..." Just as proponents of evolution successfully shot down CD arguments such as the mouse-trap argument, even though CD is a front.
I also suspect that if one was not a discerning reader familiar with some sophistry one might not find the first argument flimsy (which, of course, it is).
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Sometimes you allow exceptions to a rule in the name of the rule itself. It would be humiliating to provide incentives to some and not others on this basis.
Let's say civil marriage is an incentive of a lifestyle that promotes children and families. Coupled with the already existing notion of religious marriage - civil marriage took on a persona that was more than just economic incentive. It became something of a societal recognition. We do not deny societal recognition to the old and infertile.
But it could be argued that homosexual couples are different. That they as a group are not an exception to a rule, but an entirely different category. While I think it is simply unkind for society not to recognize them as a couple, there is an argument against the economic incentives.
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Armoth: even though they have children by other means?
Even though, in my straight marriage, we don't have kids?
Gay families are not a different category. Gay families are families. They're families if they have no kids, they're families if they have a dozen kids. Just like straight families.
Adoption, Artificial Insemination, Surrogacy and Custody from previous relationships. Heterosexuals can have kids by mistake (and often do.) Gay people's children are all generally children they had to work for. They're all wanted children. That's the only difference.
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Personally, I think that a family conceived by natural means, will, on the whole, be more successful than unnatural means. Not because its "unnatural", but because there are ties that bind the family together in both the physical and emotional realms.
And on the whole, most straight marriages produce children. Saying gay families are families too does not erase the obvious distinctions.
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As for those videos, why is gay marriage such a storm when there are issues like domestic violence and abuse that REALLY hurt families and society that they don't even bother to address.
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Armoth - I didn't realize you had made your argument. It's not enough simply to say that because gay couples are different they can be denied the economic benefits of marriage; you have to make an argument for why this difference is relevant to whether or not the economic incentives are granted.
"Personally, I think that a family conceived by natural means, will, on the whole, be more successful than unnatural means. Not because its "unnatural", but because there are ties that bind the family together in both the physical and emotional realms." - this is not a secular argument.
"And on the whole, most straight marriages produce children. Saying gay families are families too does not erase the obvious distinctions. " - but is this a relevant distinction? This emphasis on the actual production of children seems overstated; surely the relevant feature is whether the home is a place conducive to the healthy development of a child. I know of no study suggesting that gay families are any less likely to provide this than hetero-families.
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Here is where I made my arguments. They are from a secular standpoint. And I have no idea why you think physical and emotional realms are not secular arguments either.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Presuming your opponents are lying about their concerns is not a productive and persuasive strategy.
It's not a presumption, its a conclusion based on evidence.
People who genuinely cared about marriage including non-reproducing couples would be opposing infertile married couples, and would have been doing before gay marriage was even on the radar.
But no one does. Hence, no one is actually motivated by this reasoning.
quote:Your arguments demonstrate that you have made no attempt to understand the reasoning this people present.
The argument is eaily understood, but since ssm opponants show by their actions that they don't actaully find it compelling, what's the point in dealing with it?
Find the argument that ssm-opponants actually buy, as evidenced by their accepting all, or nearly all the conclusions that follow from it, and that's worth adressing. Anything else is just rationalizations.
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Here is where I made my arguments. They are from a secular standpoint. And I have no idea why you think physical and emotional realms are not secular arguments either.
Your argument, or so it seems to me, isn't so much wrong as it is incomplete.
The heterosexual family unit IS the most successful family unit...at creating more heterosexual family units.
Now you have to justify why the heterosexual family unit is better at anything other than propagating itself.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Personally, I think that a family conceived by natural means, will, on the whole, be more successful than unnatural means. Not because its "unnatural", but because there are ties that bind the family together in both the physical and emotional realms.
That's crazy. Tova was in the emergency room on Sunday. Yesterday, my father called (again) asking, "How is my granddaughter doing." There's absolutely no difference between Tova's status in my family, even my extended family, and the status of any of my nieces and nephews.
I think you want to imagine that ties are weaker in gay families because it would support your argument (not much, but a little). I don't think it's ever actually occurred to you to look at it from the POV of someone in such a family.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: And I have no idea why you think physical and emotional realms are not secular arguments either.
I'm assuming that when you say 'emotional' you actually are meaning something more like 'spiritual'. Perhaps it would be helpful if you described these 'ties that bind the family together in both the physical and emotional realms' that are deficient for "unnatural" families.
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: The heterosexual family unit IS the most successful family unit...at creating more heterosexual family units.
Actually, I don't know about that. I grew up in a heterosexual family unit. Most gay people I know did so as well.
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: The heterosexual family unit IS the most successful family unit...at creating more heterosexual family units.
Actually, I don't know about that. I grew up in a heterosexual family unit. Most gay people I know did so as well.
Agreed. But the vast majority of family types that come from hetero family units are hetero families.
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Getting a bit off-topic - this is an interesting article from the economist about a mystery involving homosexuality and genetics. Basically, given the genetic component in homosexuality and the fact that (presumably) gay people (historically) are less likely to have progeny, one would think that the rate of homosexuality would have declined. Anyway, this is an attempt at answering this mystery: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12465295Posts: 644 | Registered: Sep 2008
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Lisa, you are absolutely correct. I have not seen it from the perspective of someone in a homosexual family. My views, and perhaps the views of other Americans would change if this were demonstrated.
I am arguing from theory, and from my exposure to male homosexuals. The gay couples I know would not, in my opinion, raise children as well as heterosexual couples would, on the whole.
(I hope Tova is okay)
Mystic: No. Not spiritual. Emotional. See the posting I referred you to and read the back and forth I had there. It isn't terribly long. I think the gender role of male and female need both be present. (Anyone who reads that sentence and wants to respond to me - please do not until you read the aforementioned post in context)
Javert: I don't follow. If you are asking why I think it is important that a child have both the male and female gender roles in his life, and why that makes a child better prepare for life? It seems logical to me that the balance of the male and female perspectives is a good thing. The strong but kind, physical and emotional, challenging and nurturing.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Javert: I don't follow. If you are asking why I think it is important that a child have both the male and female gender roles in his life, and why that makes a child better prepare for life? It seems logical to me that the balance of the male and female perspectives is a good thing. The strong but kind, physical and emotional, challenging and nurturing.
I'm asking why you disagree with scientific studies that show children of homosexual families to have no significant differences, positive or negative, from heterosexual families.
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