posted
Interesting, John, that you chose only to respond to the part of my post that I labeled as an emotional, snarky reaction that did not represent my actual position. Clearly, you believe emotional venting is appropriate behavior on an internet forum, so I don't see how you can fault me Note that the rest of my post was not built on any of the things I said in the initial, offensive paragraph.
Now, are you capable of addressing my real argument, or are you simply content to hold your fingers in your ears and shout "Bigot! Bigot!" at the top of your lungs like a child?
The best part, though, is your Amazing Zambini act ...
quote:Why not be up front with your wanting to pass immediate judgement on others because your faith disagrees with them? At least the "God Hates Fags" crowd is being honest with their hatefulness.
Aha. So I go to the fruitless effort of explaining my beliefs to you in a way that hopefully will help you understand that it's possible to believe that heterosexual marriages have some unique features without hating gays ... and you are content to respond by claiming to read my mind.
"Sure, Geoff, you SAY all that stuff about your faith, but I know through my magical powers that no matter what you say, you're REALLY just looking for an excuse to hate gay people, so THERE!"
Dude, if you can't show at least the slightest tolerance and open-mindedness towards people with different backgrounds and worldviews than your own, then how in the world can you expect other people to have any respect for yours?
Let me try an analogy, to see if I can crack through your prejudice. The Irish are more prone to sunburn than Native Americans. That's just a fact. Does saying so mean that I hate Irish people, or think they are somehow less worthy than Native Americans? No. It's just the truth. It's a challenge that the Irish have to face on the beach every summer.
Similarly, heterosexual intercourse has the potential to create human offspring. Homosexual intercourse does not. Again, stating this fact shows no bigotry whatsoever. It's just the truth. Homosexual couples who wish to have children must, universally, turn to other means besides sex with each other to do so.
And so again, similarly, heterosexual marriage is tied into the Mormon view of eternal life in a way that homosexual marriage is not. That doesn't mean that the people involved are more or less worthy of happiness, or that I hate one group more than the other. It's just the truth. It's a natural law to Mormons, as immutable as the functioning of the human reproductive system, or the functioning of melanin in the skin. I can have any amount of good feelings toward the homosexual community, and this fact will remain unchanged.
It shows a deep contempt for people of faith that you can equate this benign doctrine with "God Hates Fags" hatemongering. You presuppose that we simply invent our beliefs in order to justify feelings that you have already magically divined us to have.
Let me tell you something. Presupposing that all religious people are bigoted, blinded hatemongers, and refusing to even consider listening when we attempt to tell you otherwise is PRECISELY as offensive and bigoted as a religious person presupposing that all gay people are in it because they love to sin. The difference between you and me here is the fact that I do not hold any such bigoted view of gays, while you hold plenty of bigoted views about me. If you want to fight bigotry, spend a few days locked in a room with a mirror.
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posted
First off, Mack I read your essay like I promised. I’m still processing it… but what response do you want exactly? And I’m sorry if you thought I was ignoring you, I really wasn’t.
quote: Hobbes, when you say that you would do away with government-operated marriage and replace it with civil unions which any two people could enter into and leave it to churches to do actual marriages. To me, this devalues my parents' marriage. They aren't just two people who want a list of certain legal rights. They chose to spend the rest of their lives together, to love each other in sickness and in health and so on. But they didn't include religion in that. That doesn't mean it's less worthy of the status of marriage.
RRR, In my opinion what makes your parents special and valuable is what you already describe in there. “They chose to spend the rest of their lives together, to love each other in sickness and in health and so on”. They don’t have to include religion, in my solution it wouldn’t be a legally defined word at all that has to be done at a Church, it’s all about vows, and if they’ve made those vows they would call them selves married. That seems more valuable than the government attesting that they’ve had their blood checked.
quote: What about not recognizing marriages legally at all? Perhaps a credit could be given to households with dependents.
Exactly what I was saying Jenny.
quote: That's really why I think the government should just stay out of the marriage contract altogether. If people want to register a union for legal purposes, that's something the government can get involved in. It would actually help for things like insurance, inheritance, and medical decision-making. Those ARE real issues that need to be dealt with by any solution we arrive at. I propose that we simply limit. Every person is allowed to form a personal union with exactly one other person. The other person must of legal age and mentally competent at the time the union is made.
It sounds to me like you’re agreeing with me here Bob. Is that true?
quote: There still isn't a sure answer. However, unless a person belongs to a religion that espouses that gayness is a temptation, there is no right to deny homosexuals the rights that other people can exercise.
As with you Mack, do you agree with my solution?
quote: Implying it does is highly bigoted, and comparing homosexual marriage with polygamy is implying it does
John, do you have any studies that show that polygamist families are any less healthy, or that the children they raise or less adjusted? If not, I hope you can see why the slippery slope argument makes sense in this case. I’ve heard lots of people say that it’s a ridiculous argument because polygamy is so different and why would anyone worry about it? Because it seems that the case is if you can’t come up with sociological studies to prove a law is bad, then you must pass the law, and I have to admit, I doubt I could come up with a single sociological study that would show polygamy as being damaging to anyone.
quote: Why not be up front with your wanting to pass immediate judgement on others because your faith disagrees with them? At least the "God Hates Fags" crowd is being honest with their hatefulness.
I just lost at least one friend recently because she thought exactly that John. Why is everyone assumes I’m incapable of holding a moral opinion on homosexuality and still be able to like, and not judge someone engaged in homosexual acts? Why is that if I say I think it’s a damaging choice everyone tells me I’m in tolerant? You just said that no one’s trying to stop religions from having an opinion on the matter, and then you attack religious opinion on the matter.
quote: You'll notice that calm, rational discussion hasn't worked either. A few of us have had posts ignored entirely despite the knowledge contained within. As with you, Bob, my posts also go unanswered.
I’m sorry both of you, I’m trying, I really am. Do you forgive me?
quote: Change will happen, despite the reluctance of anyone. The pendulum is swinging. Let them cry out against it. They are powerless to stop it.
posted
Oh hey Bob, sorry you've gotten the impression that I'm avoiding you. I just have a bad habit of skimming everything I ever read, and I miss a lot of important bits ...
quote:1) There's no objective criteria for deciding when we have ENOUGH study. And what TO study is a problem too. Many of the people I've heard advocate this position are talking about longitudinal studies of children's outcomes raised under varying conditions. The ethical problems with actually conducting such studies aside, there's a fatal flaw. Children raised by people who are denied some of the same advantages as others are at a disadvantage to begin with. You'd have to level the playing field first to make a decent study even possible.
We do have some localities where gay marriage is now permitted. There will probably be a few more sometime soon. Let's just put on the brakes before going national with the policy, and see if we can determine some results.
But honestly, my caution approach is aimed at a wider picture than simply gay marriage. I think we really screwed up when we started tearing down the social requirement of marriage-before-sex, the need for legitimacy, and the responsibility of parents to stay in an imperfect marriage for the sake of the children.
I also think we're straining intellectual honesty when we start treating a psychological phenomenon as being equivalent to a race or a heritage. The human mind is a very difficult thing to predict or understand. You can't assign a single, sweeping cause to homosexuality, nor can you with any honesty or confidence prescribe a single answer to those who experience some degree of homosexual feeling.
Yet our culture is very quickly bisecting the gender definitions to create cultural subgenders defined by shocking levels of prejudice. If a young man ever experiences a homosexual feeling, or if he likes dance and theater, or if he speaks with an effeminate manner, or if he doesn't like sports, or if he cares "too much" about the hygiene of his nails, he is told by the supposedly open-minded establishment that the only way for him to be honest and happy with himself is to embrace his obvious gayness. Regardless of whether or not he is actually gay.
We even created the word "metrosexual" to explain the shocking incidence of a heterosexual man who dresses well and uses gel in his hair. What offends me is the fact that the word "heterosexual" has now apparently become so narrow and specific that it includes a man's hair styling habits.
A heterosexual man should be able to do whatever the hell he wants without worrying about being mislabeled as a homosexual, and certainly, if gays feel that they have been unfairly pressured to act straight, they ought to understand that it would be similarly harmful to pressure a straight man into redefining himself as gay.
I say we need to put on the brakes because we're careening down a road that could make a lot of people very unhappy in the future. We've made a lot of progress in seeking to eliminate physical mistreatment of and scorn for homosexuals, but the worldview that we are replacing that prejudice with is similarly, if not as threateningly, flawed. We are indoctrinating one another with beliefs about sexuality that have very little merit, and untimately, someone is going to regret it.
quote:2) Nobody should have to wait for fairness. With Congress getting ready to craft legislation that actually makes things worse -- by codifying nationally what is now a state-level issue -- one could argue that the push to change is being fueled by the conservative religious movement's attempt to see if they have the muscle to push through this agenda item. Far from there being a gay agenda on this issue, the Conservatives are the one that seem to want to push it NOW.
People should have to wait for fairness when we are not yet sure what fairness entails. Are you saying that our immediate response to any request from a minority should be to instantly grant it in the interest of fairness, and then find out later whether or not what we did was a mistake? If we grant universal gay marriage throughout the country, there is NO GOING BACK. While it seems politically difficult to instigate the change right now, it will be politically impossible to ever, ever take the slightest step in the other direction. So if we're ever going to be careful and analytical about this, and if we're ever going to catch a warning sign and reconsider a portion of our plans, we have to do it NOW. There will be no other opportunity.
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quote:Civil disobedience: “a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the same of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government’s authority.” (Bleiker, 2002).
Using Rawls’s definition, the mayor of San Francisco acted within the bounds of civil disobedience.
By Rawles definition, so did the folks who sat in the doors of schools, forbidding black children to enter. Non-violent, conscientious objection.
Still illegal.
This isn't Walden-- and the mayor of San Fran isn't Thoreau.
quote: For the chicken littles who object to the legalization of civil marriages to same-sex couples, other radical changes have occurred in the past years that have had the same chicken little reactions yet brought nothing of the “sky is falling” effect: 1) Uncontested divorce, 2) the end of restrictions on interracial marriage, 3) establishment of women’s equality and end to married women’s loss of legal identity, property, and rights 4) the civil rights acts of the sixties. (Wolfson, 2003). While each change has brought about its positive and negative effects, none has brought society crashing down.
I don't have much of a complaint on anything in this passage except for the idea that uncontested divorce has not yielded terrible effects on society.
Your essay even gives a nod to the fallacy of this idea-- at the end, where it talks about how children of gay parents are better adjusted than the children of divorced parents.
quote:22 percent of gay/bisexual couples are raising children as compared to 23 percent of married/heterosexual couples.
Somehow this statistic just seems wrong to me. That's an awfully low number of heterosexual married couples with kids. This means that 77% of married couples do not have children. It just seems inaccurate.
quote: Another study done by Carole Jenny determined that 94 percent of molested girls and 86 percent of molested boys were abused by men. Of those, 74 percent were abused by an adult male in a heterosexual relationship with the mother. However, these statistics are not taken into account in custody battles where a father is seeking the physical custody of the child.
Why is this included in your essay? You must certainly be aware that fathers are usually on the losing end of child custody cases. Honestly, and I hope you aren't proposing this, this little tidbit implies that every father that wants to keep his kids after divorce should be screened for pedophillic tendencies.
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quote:Interesting, John, that you chose only to respond to the part of my post that I labeled as an emotional, snarky reaction that did not represent my actual position.
Because I already addressed your position. You say that if the gays would stop trying to take away religion's value of marriage—which they are not, and which has no legal bearing on the privileges heterosexual marriages currently enjoy—that everything could be worked out. That's not saying much, and I already pointed out the flaws with Hobes' first post.
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quote:You say that if the gays would stop trying to take away religion's value of marriage—which they are not, and which has no legal bearing on the privileges heterosexual marriages currently enjoy—that everything could be worked out.
So, apparently, I'm saying that if "the gays" would stop trying to take away my religion's value of marriage, everything could be worked out. Wow, I had no idea I felt that way. Thanks, Amazing Zambini!
Hm. No, wait a minute [reads back] ... What I'm clearly and repeatedly saying is that my political views on gay marriage are quite moderate, but my offense that John L treats my religion with willful blindness, bigotry, and contempt is quite serious. I believe him to be the worst kind of bigot, who has merely taken the liberal stance as a politically-tenable means of promoting his own brand of self-righteousness, prejudice, and hatred. If he is otherwise, he merely needs to make some attempt to demonstrate that fact, as I have done repeatedly for him.
Yet he continues to ignore my own protestations of injustice and bigotry, while expecting other people to listen to his. Strange world that he lives in.
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posted
Scott R, the 22/23 percent of couples raising children was likely defined as: Parent has dependent listed btwn 0-18 or so.
Married couples do get old and stop producing children. Lets say the average couple lasts 40 years. Maybe for 25 of those years, a couple is raising a child. Okay, so 15/40 years they're not.
Then there are the many couples who do not have children. I refer you to this site which links to many communities devoted to the voluntary childless marriage.
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posted
Ironic that I'm a conservative who wants as many hands out of government as possible. Ironic that I'm the same John (different name) that has defended not only your faith, but all Christian faiths on this very forum from those just out to damn the religion(s).
No, wait... that's not ironic. That's just being consistent when it comes to wanting individual liberties equally available across the board.
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posted
Sun-- I think you'll find that the Canadian statistic I linked to points to a much more realistic number (it was taken by the Canadian census, I believe), of 44% or so. Ages 0-24.
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quote: This isn't Walden-- and the mayor of San Fran isn't Thoreau.
I'm not sure what your statment specifically means, other than you don't agree that what's happening in SF is civil disobedience, but the question that occurs to me is, is there a place for civil disobedience in society, and what is the place and time for it? Isn't this one of those times?
The logical reply, that people should work through the democratic process, is understandable. The question is, if any gay person that is alive today ever wants to get married by the state and have it called marriage, what are the odds that they will be able to do so, given the current political and cultural climate? I think a case can be made that the chances are not good.
If this is true, then it seems to me that we might be able to conclude that the democratic process is not an option for gay couples, and that they have two choices. Either they can not get married (marriage here meaning married by the state) or they can get married in the fashion that they are now.
Please ignore what you think marriage means in your reply and understand that, apparently, to many gay people, marriage really only has validity if it's done by the state and called 'marriage'. Maybe they're really patriotic? Or maybe they just don't want to tell people they meet that they're 'civil unioned' when they flash their rings.
Anyways, two questions. Generally, when is civil disobedience warranted? Specifically, is it warranted in this case?
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posted
My problem on this issue is that I'm sensitive to both sides, that I simultaneously feel I'm holding both positions (or moderate versions of each). My inclination against normalizing homosexual marriage is based on a problem that all social revolutions must overcome: our complete inability to predict the ramifications of any change, especially one that calls into question the beliefs of so many millions of people, pitting the government against what a good number of world religions consider morally correct. So while on the one hand I want my gay friends to be able to enjoy the freedoms and rights that my wife and I are conceded in our own marriage, I simultaneously am made very nervous by the possible ripples, fluctuations, complex loops and so forth that could lead us as a society down paths we can't at present imagine and that we may eventually bemoan. Of course, this is the case with all systemic shifts, and what must be weighed is the likely immediate benefit against the unknown future detrimental effects.
I am, I repeat, very torn as a result. But I have a feeling there's no stemming the tide, so I just kind of stand to one side and let it rise.
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I was watching a news report the other night about what's happening in SF. They included a shot panning down the long long line of people waiting to get a marriage certificate. One of the people was a woman, middle-aged, who had obviously dressed up for the occasion, holding a single lily of the valley. She looked so happy, she was glowing, even in the brief glimpse you got as the camera moved by her.
I was surprised to find myself choked up after seeing this. I've always supported and seen gay marriage as a civil rights issue, but it really hit home that moment. We're not talking about hordes of depraved young gays wanting to give societal norms the finger. These are good, everyday people who just want a chance to make the committment and receive the legal protections that every other adult American can. It broke my heart.
posted
Yeah. I feel the same way, Ayelar. I've always supported gay marriage on principle, and because I've never seen anyone give me a good reason why gay people shouldn't be able to marry, but seeing the pictures of those couples in, whose thread was it here? you or lalo's thread?, and then they have a photo series on time.com, it really brought home to me in a very visceral way the importance of being able to engage in a basic part of society as fully recognized members of society is for many gay people.
edit: can't make the sentence scan right. screw it.
posted
Storm-- 'Civil disobedience,' by Henry David Thoreau.
Snarkiness doesn't work so well if you have to explain it. . .
Generally, I can accept civil disobedience when it is on the part of the PEOPLE against the government. But for the government to turn against the will of the people (the large majority of Californians are against the mayor's actions, according to some reports) and thumb its nose at legislation that was passed by popular vote just a couple years ago-- yeah, that's not civil disobedience in my book.
Civil disobedience on the part of the homosexuals IS warranted in this case. Certainly, they feel they are not able to take part in common society-- and that is what, in the end, the gay marriage debate is really about. Normalizing the gay life style and finding general societal acceptance for it.
Which is exactly what those protesting this DON'T want, and why civil disobedience will be the result of legalizing gay marriage.
Getcha comin' and goin.'
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posted
On a side note, its worth pointing out that Thoreau made a number of his more famous "real life experiences" up.
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Then why not reduce it to a personal level? Not a matter of politics or religion but just about 2 people who want the right to bind themselves to another person they care about. (Who knows, maybe I'll find a woman who for some reason would want to marry me) And how about if churches reserve the right to refuse to let gays marry if they want to? Marriage doesn't always have to take place in a church and there are plenty of churches (See the NYC gay pride parent) that support gays and lesbians. I'd like to start a topic about religion and gayness and why would anyone want to join a church that is against their existence?
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posted
I was struggling to find a right way to say that. I have been involved in this debate online since around 96 and also with family members.
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posted
Most Christian denominations phrase it as "sexual actions outside of marriage is a sin." Based on their definition of marriage as being between a man and a women, all homosexual actions are sinful. Just as pre-marital sex is sinful.
Obviously, this has different effects, since someone only attracted to same-sex partners will have no "legitimate" sexual outlet. But the core prohibition is the same.
If you're interested in learning the reasons behind the doctrine, you might want to start a thread about it requesting information. I generally won't participate in such threads because I've found them to be fairly useless. The sexual morality of Christianity is not "core" doctrine and is in some sense "derived" from the more central tenets of the faith.
I'd contribute to such a thread as long as people are genuinely seeking information about how the homosexuality doctrine fits in with the rest of Christianity. I won't participate in an argument about whether homosexuality is right or wrong, because it's not important to me outside the confines of Christianity.
posted
Geoff, thanks for responding. I was getting a complex!
you said:
quote:Yet our culture is very quickly bisecting the gender definitions to create cultural subgenders defined by shocking levels of prejudice. If a young man ever experiences a homosexual feeling, or if he likes dance and theater, or if he speaks with an effeminate manner, or if he doesn't like sports, or if he cares "too much" about the hygiene of his nails, he is told by the supposedly open-minded establishment that the only way for him to be honest and happy with himself is to embrace his obvious gayness. Regardless of whether or not he is actually gay.
We even created the word "metrosexual" to explain the shocking incidence of a heterosexual man who dresses well and uses gel in his hair. What offends me is the fact that the word "heterosexual" has now apparently become so narrow and specific that it includes a man's hair styling habits.
Hmm...I look at this differently. Young men, especially, are often unsure of their sexuality. I mean, raging hormones and the frequency of erections regardless of WHAT external stimuli are present in the environment can lead to all sorts of confusing cognitive processes. Openness in discussing things of this nature would, I believe, only serve to help them understand that what they think of as unique, weird and perhaps even "gay" in themselves is really just normal and that things settle down eventually.
What this has to do with what you posted is this: I think most of the people who put pressure on adolescent males regarding "being gay" is other adolescent males. It is a subculture right out of Lord of the Flies, IMHO.
What's really needed is maturity in who the kids talk to and in our society in general. And frankly, I do NOT see that happening. I think our repression of all talk of sexuality makes us somewhat sex-obsessed as a nation and certainly unrealistic in our understanding of what is normal.
I do think that there's a religious overtone to taht repression as well. But it has become more than just the legacy of our "puritan ancestors." I think we Americans, as a culture are far too concerned about the "norm" and as a result anything that's not considered the norm is automatically labelled as wrong, bad for America, sinful, and so on.
Then there's this:
quote:I say we need to put on the brakes because we're careening down a road that could make a lot of people very unhappy in the future. We've made a lot of progress in seeking to eliminate physical mistreatment of and scorn for homosexuals, but the worldview that we are replacing that prejudice with is similarly, if not as threateningly, flawed. We are indoctrinating one another with beliefs about sexuality that have very little merit, and untimately, someone is going to regret it.
Who? For what reasons? What "indoctrination" are you talking about?
Again, I think there's too much of the school yard and too little of just plain common sense and decency in America's attitudes about sex, sexuality, and homosexuality in particular. Anything that replaces that kind of thing with actual information is good as far as I'm concerned. And hundreds of years too late in the offing.
Finally,
quote: People should have to wait for fairness when we are not yet sure what fairness entails. Are you saying that our immediate response to any request from a minority should be to instantly grant it in the interest of fairness, and then find out later whether or not what we did was a mistake? If we grant universal gay marriage throughout the country, there is NO GOING BACK. While it seems politically difficult to instigate the change right now, it will be politically impossible to ever, ever take the slightest step in the other direction. So if we're ever going to be careful and analytical about this, and if we're ever going to catch a warning sign and reconsider a portion of our plans, we have to do it NOW. There will be no other opportunity.
I'm not actually advocating gay marriage, but rather the change that would do away with civil marriage altogether and replace it with civil union.
That aside, however, I think that what's implied in the first sentence above -- that we ought to wait until "we're sure" what fairness means is worse than doing nothing. Frankly, the people living under this discrimination and bad public policy aren't likely to want to wait and I don't think they should have to. Basically, if you agree that SOMETHING ought to be done, then it ought to have been done long ago. To recognize the need and then ask for patience while we, as a society, come to grips with it is too intellectualized an approach. There are real people suffering and their needs should matter more than the possibility of maybe making a mistake.
Change in society ALWAYS happens later than it should. It happens after the fact, when it just becomes untenable NOT to change. I know that's how this will also play out. But frankly, I think the sign of a mature culture in America would be when we can intellectually understand that an issue is real, that the problem should be worked on, and then bring all sides together to work on it in real time...not future time, or "when we're sure..." time.
We're never sure.
You tell people you want to wait until you're sure, you are telling them "nope, we're not going to act." At least that's what they'll take it to mean. That their lives and happiness aren't important enough to America to deal with the issue NOW, while it could do them some good.
That's a raw deal. And by rights, we ought to give them all at least a 15% discount on their taxes if that's what our decision is.
'Cuz their feeling like 85% citizens.
(NOTE: I made those numbers up...but I'm sure people get the point).
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quote: Generally, I can accept civil disobedience when it is on the part of the PEOPLE against the government. But for the government to turn against the will of the people (the large majority of Californians are against the mayor's actions, according to some reports) and thumb its nose at legislation that was passed by popular vote just a couple years ago-- yeah, that's not civil disobedience in my book.
I don't think whether civil disobedience is performed by a government official changes whether something is civil disobedience? Honest question.
I also don't mean to imply that I definitely support what the mayor of SF is doing. I'm on the fence.
quote: Civil disobedience on the part of the homosexuals IS warranted in this case. Certainly, they feel they are not able to take part in common society-- and that is what, in the end, the gay marriage debate is really about. Normalizing the gay life style and finding general societal acceptance for it.
No. I believe this is incorrect. Seeking to be an equal member of society is not the same as seeking society's approval to engage in something which is, from one perspective, your right as a citizen and is important to you. I don't think the gay people who got married today seriously give a rat's patootie about those who don't accept them.
quote: Which is exactly what those protesting this DON'T want, and why civil disobedience will be the result of legalizing gay marriage.
Thank you for being honest that there is a segment of the population who do not (will never?) accept gay people. It makes the whole 'convince the people argument' a little harder to follow through with. I agree that there will probably be civil disobedience. There already has been on the part of a Christian group that tried to block people from getting married. :/ Also, I am curious what the gay lifestyle is? Is that like the lifestyles of the rich and famous but with less money?
I agree with you that there is going to be civil disobedience whether or not gay marriage is accepted.
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posted
I think many of the aspects and ramifications of legalizing homosexual marriages have been well touched on here, however there is one argument which I have heard anti-homosexual marriage politicans use quite frequently that I think is inaccurate. This is the concept that marriage is a longstanding tradition of binding together a man and woman so they may experience the greatest love possible, short of the love of God, of course. AvidReader reitereated this in his post early in this thread stating "He[God] has given us marriage as the closest we can come on earth to experiencing His love with another person."
I think this is a lovely ideal of what marriage should be, however historically, marriage between a man and a woman because they are in love/ love one another very much is a fairly recent phenomenon. Since the emergence of Christianity (and before as well) marriage has been almost predominantly for either economic, political, or social gain. Rulers of countries married their sons and daughters to form alliances, peasants encouraged their sons and daughters to marry someone with more livestock or higher social standing than their family because marriage was the essentially the only way to move up in the stagnant class system of the times.
Though I am unsure of the exact dates, I believe that only since the industrial revolution have the majority of couples really had the sanction (by family, community, etc.), ability, and opperunity to marry and form neolocal partnerships/families based on love and that alone. As, I have demonstrated marriage has not traditionally been about love but was performed for various socioeconomic reasons.
Therefore, I fear that I must disagree with Hobbes' main point that started this thread (that the word "marriage" in the political arena should be eliminated entirely). The term "marriage" has long been used to describe the legal union of two people, and in fact this is the primary definition of the word found in The American Heritage Dictionary. The secondary definition denotes a "wedding", which the same dictionary defines as: 1)To take as a spouse; marry. 2)To perform the marriage ceremony for; join in matrimony. 3)To unite closely: a style that weds form and function. 4)To cause to adhere devotedly or stubbornly: He was wedded to the idea of building a new school. I don't find any of these definitions to be particularly religious in nature, and are certainly not specifically Christian.
In my opinion it seems totally unecessary to change the word we use to discribe a legal marriage. I think that using the term "civil union" would be demeaning to both homosexual and heterosexual couples, because culturally it is seen as an inferior partnership to marriage. Marriage now refers to the union of two people, either legally or in the eyes of God, and it seems to be that definition would still fit perfectly well if homosexuals were given the right to legally marry, as they could marry legally even if not in the eyes of God.
Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, and and other religions places of worship have every right to select whom they will marry within their own place of worship, but they should not be able to influence who is legally married outside of their institution. I sincerely hope that the people of America, will remember their constitutional garentee of the seperation of church and state while evaluated this issue.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Feb 2004
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Note that the rest of my post was not built on any of the things I said in the initial, offensive paragraph.
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
