quote:This is a circular argument. It boils down to "Gay marriage weakens marriage because it weakens marriage", unless you* explain how it weakens marriage more so than anything else that could be legislated against.
The reasons being touted for allowing gay marriage are generally the package of rights and benefits denied homosexual couples by their lack of access to the civil institution of marriage. This is the reason I favor it, for example.
However, for that to be a compelling reason, an unspoken assumption is required: that this package of rights, responsibilities, and benefits is all that marriage is. It it ths view that is seen as an attack in marriage, not the fact that there are some gay couples getting married.
That's why the rhetorical question "How do two me being married harm your marriage?" doesn't mean anything in this debate. It's not about harm to a particular marriage; it's about harm to Marriage as an idea, an institution.
My solution to the dilemna was a frank look at the state of civil marriage. It is just about those rights, responsibilities, and benefits now. It's a shorthand way to provide a socially and legally useful set of default rules that help integrate natural groupings (families) into the artifical groupings of society.
Civil marriage as it exists today is so far from my understanding of the sacrament of marriage that short of outlawing or somehow burdening it, government can have no effect on it. In a sense, my position results in a surrender of the concept of unity between Marriage and civil marriage. I have come to believe that someone wanting to live up to the ideals of Marriage must necessarily reject at least some of the elements of civil marriage.
It is critical to understand this if you want to change people's minds on the subject. Some people are not willing to make that surrender.
quote:But the gays in question want to get married in the traditional sense; they want to spend the rest of their lives together in a committed, monogamous relationship.
If this turns into a spitting match, I'm going to drop out, but I'll answer your polite question.
It is impossible for two gays to get married to each other in the traditional sense(or what I view as the traditional) , as a traditional marriage is between one man and one woman.
1) Some churches believe that two men or two women in love are recieving the same gift of love from God that a man and a women recieve. They believe that those two men or two women should recieve the sacrament of marriage. If you disagree, fine. But if you make it illegal for that church to have that wedding, then you are discriminating against that church, and setting up your own as one sanctioned by the government.
2) I believe we do need to define Marriage. Is it a religious/mystical combining of two souls? Is it the goal of Love? Or is it a license to produce children?
Too often I have heard that the Man/Woman argument is justified because only a combo of Man and Woman can produce children, and that is what this is all about.
In my wedding vows the words Family or Children were not mentioned. There was sickness and health, and death do us part. Its a good thing it wasn't mentioned. My wife and I can't have children. If we disqualify gay couples because they are ultimately barren, do we disqualify infertile couples?
(Sure we could, and have adopted. But so can gay couples)
What this boils down to is Sex.
Is sex for fun or is it for procreation.
No one who has sex for fun is suggesting that everyone must have sex for fun. However, some who believe that sex is just for procreation are trying to mandate that it should only be used for that.
3) The Republican Political supporters of banning Gay Marriage don't want a constitutional amendment. They want state laws that will get overturned in court, so they can make a case for problems with the present "activist Court system" and so get a mandate from the people to change judges into elected officials, so that these same very gifted politicals can take over that branch of government.
4) I am not afraid of the hype about the Marriage Amendment. I refuse to be afraid any more. I won't let the Democrats or the Republicans, the Liberals or the Conservatives try and scare me into voting for or against them. Scream, shout, level lies or names or accusations. Research will produce the truth.
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quote:1) Some churches believe that two men or two women in love are recieving the same gift of love from God that a man and a women recieve. They believe that those two men or two women should recieve the sacrament of marriage. If you disagree, fine. But if you make it illegal for that church to have that wedding, then you are discriminating against that church, and setting up your own as one sanctioned by the government.
Just because a church believe X doesn't mean that we have to allow it to be legal. Some religious beliefs that are held by some but which are still illegal include polygamy, illegal drug use, and murdering infidels.
quote:Is sex for fun or is it for procreation.
No one who has sex for fun is suggesting that everyone must have sex for fun. However, some who believe that sex is just for procreation are trying to mandate that it should only be used for that.
It is not a binary state, nor are these the only two options. My personal views on sex do not fit into either of those slots.
quote:3) The Republican Political supporters of banning Gay Marriage don't want a constitutional amendment. They want state laws that will get overturned in court, so they can make a case for problems with the present "activist Court system" and so get a mandate from the people to change judges into elected officials, so that these same very gifted politicals can take over that branch of government.
While we are free to disagree on some issues, I do want to make one thing perfectly clear. The people I labeled "Republican Politicals" do not include you are any person who bases their arguments against Same Sex Marriage on their faith in Jesus, the Bible, or for that matter the Torah, Koran, or any other religion or religious text.
I am refering to those I call Wovles in Shepherds Clothing, those politicians who try to use and possibly abuse people of faith for their own political ends. (And I know they come in both red and blue flavors).
I have a lot of respect for those who have faith and are willing to stand up for it.
I have none for those who abuse the faith of others for their own ends.
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Well, since I am republican, and since I am against gay marriage, I naturally assumed that I was a member of "Republican Political supporters of banning Gay Marriage".
But now I understand what you are saying. Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Just because a church believe X doesn't mean that we have to allow it to be legal. Some religious beliefs that are held by some but which are still illegal include polygamy, illegal drug use, and murdering infidels.
The reasoning for making the murdering of infidels illegal is a secular reason (informed by morality, I suppose).
This makes sense, as the government is a secular body, not a religious one. Your examples are completely separate from the issue at hand because the primary arguments to prevent gays from marrying are religious.
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I notice that you ignored my other two examples, because they didn't fit into your refutation.
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quote:...include polygamy, illegal drug use, and murdering infidels.
I'm not sure exactly, but I think both polygamous marriages and drug use are illegal for reasons other than morality as well.
Drug use: I can't think of any religious reasons that have been the basis for drug policy. I've always thought of this as a very secular area, as far as government control goes.
Polygamy: I believe Dagonee already mentioned one or two secular reasons for not allowing polygamy. There is some religious basis for this, but I think the secular reasons against polygamy are far stronger than the non-religious reasons to ban homosexual marriage.
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Religions generally oppose drugs because they are illegal. They also get quite a few of the former addicts, and see the possible negative effects of use. (Or is that prohibition?) The major exception to this is alcohol, which is one of the oldest and most widespread drugs, as well as one of the hardest. Those without much experience with illicit substances tend to generalize a bit unfairly from the most prominent example. Three quarters of a century ago, religion was a main factor in the Volstead Act and the 18th amendment, but their efforts have been focused on other vices since they lost that battle.
Some religions do use illegal drugs, and at least one is allowed to. Members of the Native American church are allowed to use peyote in a bona fide religious ceremony. Sadly, peyote is endangered due in large part to its illegality. Recently, the Brazil-based O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, with it US headquarters in Santa Fe, has been fighting a court battle to use ayahuasca as part of their beliefs. The Tenth Circuit Court upheld the injunction against government interference with the church before the case goes to trial. The Supreme Court refused to let the government appeal the injunction. Hopefully they win the trial as well.
As for polygamy, I doubt the LDS or the Muslims liked the ban very much. In Western society, the practice is generally not officially recognized. Why pay alimony to more than one person? Has it ever been legal here? I think most members of American society see it as a fringe behavior no matter what their faith, and go with their gut feelings in condemning, tolerating, or accepting it.
quote:In all fairness, I think we should be able to simply re-write or add to the Constitution. It's an old document, and isn't always applicable. Most of our updates to it have been fairly important.
It's only since we allowed the federal government to have too much power over our daily lives that we've started trying to write that kind of niggling, legalistic control into the Constitution; that's the problem, not the amendment process itself.
Exactly.
quote:That's why the rhetorical question "How do two me being married harm your marriage?" doesn't mean anything in this debate. It's not about harm to a particular marriage; it's about harm to Marriage as an idea, an institution.
Correct. A threat to the IDEA of marriage. And of course since marriage is tied up with religious dogma for a government to recognize it would mean another blow to people's faith in that religion. Just like the heliocentric model of the solar system did back in the day. Philosophy that creates rules on behavior becomes a religion. That's part of the problem when religious dogma absorbs a certain observation...because if that observation was wrong then it takes a long and bloody struggle to change it within church doctrin.
quote:My solution to the dilemna was a frank look at the state of civil marriage. It is just about those rights, responsibilities, and benefits now. It's a shorthand way to provide a socially and legally useful set of default rules that help integrate natural groupings (families) into the artifical groupings of society.
Civil marriage as it exists today is so far from my understanding of the sacrament of marriage that short of outlawing or somehow burdening it, government can have no effect on it. In a sense, my position results in a surrender of the concept of unity between Marriage and civil marriage. I have come to believe that someone wanting to live up to the ideals of Marriage must necessarily reject at least some of the elements of civil marriage.
TOTALLY! The way I look at it is that all marriages today are, in the eyes of the Government, are civil unions. It is the state recognizing a contract. The marriage part is the religious stuff on top of that. And I don't mind the churches and religions keeping that title to themselves. That's cool. I want the contract.
quote:It is impossible for two gays to get married to each other in the traditional sense(or what I view as the traditional) , as a traditional marriage is between one man and one woman.
Then let's not have it "traditional". It wouldn't be traditional anyway. I don't want a priest and a church and a religion telling me it's ok. If they don't want to...that's fine. I'm not part of them anyway. All I want is the state acknologing my contract with my partner.
The problem I think is that people keep thinking that marriage is religious. I don't think it is. It is a fact of life that religion chose to absorb into it's rituals way back when. People create religion, religion re-creates the people (same thing with art or law or whatever).
The arguments against gays comes from thousands of years ago when the key to power and survival was the size of your family/clan/nation, just like in OSC's "Homecoming" series. If you weren't breeding all the time you were not doing your civic duty to the survival and dominance of your people. Thus "be fruitful and multiply" is in the Bible. I'm sure this is still a tactical issue in the modern world (look at Europe with a platue of growth...all this panic about loosing the European gene pool to the Africans or the Arabs or what have you, of course there couldn't be a population explotion in the 3rd world without the support form the 1st world and our technology), but we have 6 BILLION people now. I think we don't have to worry about us dying out. Actually we have to worry about us breeding ourselves into oblivion. So less kids is better at this point.
I think the biggest reason for "average" people to be against gay unions is cognitive dissonance. As I said above...since religions have adobted marriage as part of their dogma, to show that gay marriage might be ok would be shaking the foundation of what so many people hold on to for comfort in a chaotic universe.
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Hmm. . . I'll give you 'Socially Recognized Union with Benefits' if you give me 'Protection of Unborn Citizens.'
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Deal, Scott. Now how do we make that official?
I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out, once again, that gays already have access to the religious aspect of marriage. There is a growing number of pastors, priests, priestesses, and churches that will sanction marriage between any two committed people, regardless of gender. In fact, I don't think a constitutional ammendment will even be able to stop the growing practice of extending religious marriage to gays.
The battle to protect "traditional marriage" (as if the word really means anything) has already been lost. The idea of one man and one woman joining together for a life-long commitment does not exist in any legal sense, and will not even if alarmists win the day and are able to rob gays of the right to partner civily. The legal sense of marriage has no clause of permanence. It can be disolved fairly easily, regardless of whether there are children involved. Now you may argue that this is a bad thing, and I might even agree with you, but you certainly can't blame gays for the problems marriage faces today.
The fact is, gays can adopt in some situations. Denying them the right to marry in these cases actually harms the children some "traditional marriage" proponents claim to want to protect. Gays can live together. Gays can already get health insurance benefits in many corporations. (Mine grants them and Chris and I enjoy the benefit). Gays can take some legal steps to try to insure visitation rights, and some legal steps to try to insure inheritence rights, (though those can be successfully challenged in many cases). Gays can quietly pledge devotion to one another and vow to live as a couple 'till death do they part, if they so desire. We can own a house together, sit on our front porches together in full view of impressionable children and mortified "traditional" moralists. We can walk down the street holding hands, snuggle at the movies, and proudly shout our love and commitment from the rooftops if we're brave enough to do so. The only reason to deny us the legal benefits of the whole marriage package (call it civil unions or whatever) is so that a small cadre of religious bigots can console themselves in their failure to properly shepherd their flocks by scapegoating homosexuals. "Well, marriage may be failing, but at least we kept the gays out" they can tell themselves.
The hypocrisy of our society is underscored with every vote in favor of a gay-marriage ban.
I'll use my company as an example, since I'm sure that state and federal laws have shaped these policies. Feel free to provide evidence to show where my example can't be extrapolated to the business world at large.
My company provides healthcare benefits. It does this by subsidizing the cost of health care insurance plans, charging the employee a relatively small fee (compared to other companies I've known) and paying the rest as a benefit. An employee is able to add dependants to this benefits package, but the amount the company subsidizes for dependents is much less than their subsidy for the actual employee. So the employee essentially pays a larger portion of the cost for dependants than he has to pay for his own benefits. Additionally, the employee is taxed on the portion of the cost that the employer pays to subsidize the benefits for dependants. In other words, the cost to the employer to insure a spouse and kids is included in the employee's taxable income figure. In my company, these rules apply regardless of whether the insured dependant is a legal spouse or simply a declared domestic partner.
Therefore, it is highly unlikely that extending marriage benefits to gays is going to make a significant negative impact on employers, health plans, or insurance companies.
And if additional dependants on employer-provided benefits were a significant drain on the economy, you should fear the co-worker with 4 kids much more than the gay co-worker, who on average is less likely to add more than one additional dependant.
And all that said, I think that making a public policy decision based on the assumption that you might have to share the additional costs of a benefit you already enjoy is vile and selfish. I gladly subsidize your (theoretical) children's education. Should gays be exempted from those costs since we're not going to be adding children to the roles?
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I think that in large part, all laws aimed at preventing homosexual marriage are very heavily influenced by a portion of the population that responds to homosexuality with a visceral, immediate denial that it could ever be acceptable in any way. They then support this feeling with bibilical passages, arguments that traditional marriage and the family are under attack, etc., etc.
I know that some people believe firmly in the supports and not in the underlying visceral response; moreover, I'm not saying that anybody here is necessarily advocating that (though it seems a few of our newer posters may lean in that direction). I just think a lot of people have that immediate reaction and then look for ways to back it up that don't sound like, "But...I don't LIKE it!"
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quote:Religions generally oppose drugs because they are illegal.
Not mine.
quote:
quote: It is impossible for two gays to get married to each other in the traditional sense(or what I view as the traditional) , as a traditional marriage is between one man and one woman.
Then let's not have it "traditional". [Smile] It wouldn't be traditional anyway. I don't want a priest and a church and a religion telling me it's ok. If they don't want to...that's fine. I'm not part of them anyway. All I want is the state acknologing my contract with my partner. [Smile]
If you look back at the context of when I said that, I was replying to the statment that gay marriage would be traditional marriage.
quote:The arguments against gays comes from thousands of years ago when the key to power and survival was the size of your family/clan/nation, just like in OSC's "Homecoming" series. If you weren't breeding all the time you were not doing your civic duty to the survival and dominance of your people. Thus "be fruitful and multiply" is in the Bible.
Some of us believe that it is there because that's what God said. Some of believe he has never rescinded that command.
quote:I think the biggest reason for "average" people to be against gay unions is cognitive dissonance.
There is truth to that.
quote:The battle to protect "traditional marriage" (as if the word really means anything) has already been lost.
I am afraid that you are right, but I am not willing to surrender yet.
I would not be surprised if in 50 years people view the idea of denying marriage rights to same-sex couples the way most people now view Prohibition -- that it's an out-moded idea that was a bad idea in it's day.
I personally think that prohibition was a good thing, and would support it if I could. But it appears that that fight is over (for now), so I have pretty much given up.
The day very well might come where I give up on the topic of same-sex marriage. But that day is not today.
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quote: I am afraid that you are right, but I am not willing to surrender yet.
. . .
The day very well might come where I give up on the topic of same-sex marriage. But that day is not today.
My point in saying that the fight to save "traditional" marriage has already been lost was to underscore that it didn't lose the fight to gay rights. The problems with marriage today are the fault of the participants in it, namely heterosexuals. I, personally hope you don't give up the fight to fix the problems that plague marriage. I, myself, am a defender of marriage and family. It's one of the great ironies of the debate that gays are fighting for marriage as the great and desirable institution it should be, yet are being denied it while so many heterosexuals treat it as no more than a civil contract while decrying gays as a threat to its sanctity.
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Gay marriage, civil unions, whatever... these are not the things that waeken the Idea of marriage.
Heterosexuals getting drunk off their @$$es and marrying at 3am in front of Elvis impersonaters, the very fact that phrases like "Baby-daddy" and "starter marriage" have entered popular language, and romance novels with idiotic "they effed happily ever after" endings, now THOSE things weaken the Idea of marriage as a stable, loving bond between two people committed to staying together throughthick and thin, caring for each other.
I think the contoversy has more to do with the more visceral "EW!" factor that most people seem to have about [certain non-reproductive sex acts which can honestly be part of a hetero relationship, too] sex. There. I said it. Feel freee to ignore me.
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I wonder, sometimes, where our priorities went astray. Why is it that we cannot hold our beliefs as sacred, without trying to inflict them on others.
The issue of "gay marriage" shouldn't even be an issue. Honestly, folks, what are we afraid of? If gay marriage is legalized, will there be a mass-migration, so to speak, of formerly hetero-sexual married couples converting to the new hedonistic "gay marriage"? Are your marriages so fragile that this is a concern? Or can you truly say that your religious convictions are so strong that they should be applied to every citizen of our free country?
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quote:Heterosexuals getting drunk off their @$$es and marrying at 3am in front of Elvis impersonaters, the very fact that phrases like "Baby-daddy" and "starter marriage" have entered popular language, and romance novels with idiotic "they effed happily ever after" endings, now THOSE things weaken the Idea of marriage as a stable, loving bond between two people committed to staying together throughthick and thin, caring for each other.
I think that you're preaching to the choir on this one.
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THT, I honestly am not all that concerned about gay marriage becoming legal. I am far more concerned about the bigger issues--high rates of divorce, abuse, and children born out of wedlock being very high on that list.
But I do fear that as homosexuality becomes more supported by society as "good" and "right" more of the rising generations will choose to follow their own same-sex attractions. Gay marriage becoming legal is only part of that general shift in society. (The request to have gay marriage legal is only now coming to a head. Why not in years past?) The shift has been happening for a long time. And while I think that ridding ourselves of prejudice, violent, and otherwise unkind behavior is a good thing, I still do not like the idea of a society that would encourage my children to experiement with homosexual desires--considering I believe most people to possess such desires to some extent. (Of course I like far less that this society already encourages our youth to experiment with promiscuous sexuality to begin with.) This, of course, is based on my religious beliefs, which as someone so aptly stated, are as intrigal and intimate a part of me as gender-attraction.
But this is why I have my reservations about gay marriage. But I figure it is a losing battle and things are going to continue shifting whether I like it or not. I will do what I can in my small scale of influence.
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Is the gradual degradation of marriage as an institution over the past four decades being caused by some super-secret gay agenda? Or is it that as our culture evolves (or devolves depending on your view) the institution of marriage is no longer as important to people? How do you save something when the people who would be getting married have no desire to get married at all?
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If saving marriage is the rallying cry, who is marriage being saved for? Many of my friends will probably never be married. They much prefer their semi-permanent relationships. Not suprisingly, even the most religious of my friends have no problem with gay-marriage. The general sentiment seems to be 'let them get married if they want to, because I sure don't want to'.
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Of course there is no super-secret gay agenda. It's actually the Super-super-mostly-secret-homosexual-plan (The SSMSHP)
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quote: If saving marriage is the rallying cry, who is marriage being saved for? Many of my friends will probably never be married. They much prefer their semi-permanent relationships. Not suprisingly, even the most religious of my friends have no problem with gay-marriage. The general sentiment seems to be 'let them get married if they want to, because I sure don't want to'.
This is my opinion: We are saving it for our future generations and the general pattern of society. There are those of us that believe that the pattern of traditional family values is an optimal pattern for society and are loathe to see that pattern degrading. So many people I talk to of this generation don't want to get married or have kids because their family life SUCKED.
Would so many family's have sucked this last generation if things weren't already degrading? My opinion: No.
There will always be "bad eggs". But I think that there don't need to be near so many as there are--and there wouldn't be--if traditional values were, well, more widely valued.
I cannot prove any of this. But I do believe it.
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Please describe for me what traditional values are. Where do these values begin and end? Who decides when today's traditional values become yesterday's archaic views? My understanding of values in general is that they change from generation to generation, with each generation lamenting the loss of their "traditional" values as new values replace them. The notion that civilization will crumble without our "traditional" values and current social structures can be disproven just by reviewing history. The act and sanctity of marriage in particular has taken some interesting twists and turns througout history, and yet we managed to survive, living on so that we can debate values with strangers on a message board.
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Whether one calls them traditional values or "archaic views" depends on whether or not they agree with them. It is as subjective as defining what an extreme liberal or conservative is.
quote: The act and sanctity of marriage in particular has taken some interesting twists and turns througout history, and yet we managed to survive, living on so that we can debate values with strangers on a message board.
I would hope that as a society and as individuals we would strive for nobler goals that simply "survival". I do think that when we abandon traditional values, the quality of life suffers because of it. I believe some of this is easily demonstratable, while other aspects are not. I believe some of the effects are spiritual in nature and not to be understood without the religious aspect.
I'm sure you could pull out many historical practices that *I* would label "archaic views" rather than traditional values. Why? Because I believe the practices were not good for those societies. They may not have led to their downfall, but they could easily effect the quality of life without us knowing one way or the other. How do you gather statistics on a historical people? Do you know what percentage of the people in ancient Rome rated their lives satisfactorally? And do you know all the factors that went into it? Can you even know all the factors that go into our own daily satisfaction? Impossible. These things are far too complicated for science to measure. I don't see how you can possibly argue that my perspective is "wrong". Feel free to disagree with me, though.
After all the facts, incomplete as they are, are given and analyzed, we all have to come to our own conclusions based on our beliefs, whether we are religious or not.
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Beverly, I'm not insisting that you're wrong, or even questioning your perceptions and views. However, you've made part of my point for me. Tranditional values only apply at the moment they're invoked. I bet that if you asked 100 people what traditional values are, you would get 100 different answers. Ask the same 100 people in five years what traditional values are, and you would probably get a different set of answers. I understand that you can't remove your religious views from your value-set, but you also can't apply your traditionalist value set to other people.
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My point is just this: we all have ideas about what we think is good for society. We work to bring those ideas about. People will disagree with us. It is a subjective issue. I simply explained how it looks to *me*. That is all.
Edit: I lied. That is not all.
People talk about this gay marriage issue saying that we are taking away something unspeakably horrible from those who seek gay marriage, but that their getting married has no negative effects on others whatsoever.
While I really am not all that concerned about gay marriage being legal, it gets my hackles up when people imply that gay marriage will not negatively impact others *at all*. I have stated how I think it will negatively impact *me*. It is not a direct impact, but the impact is still there.
Is the hurt to gays (not being legally allowed to marry) greater than the hurt to others (if it were legalized here)? I cannot judge this very well from what little I know. I have remained ambivalent about it. I just want people to be aware that the issue is not as simple as they tend to think it is.
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BookWyrm, that comment is not productive unless you are trying to insult others and shut down communication. Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Opponents of gay marriage trouble me because they are not addressing the real problems facing families these days. Things like abuse, divorce, parents staying together for the sake of the children, but practically wanting to kill each other, poverty, people not being able to make ends meet, domestic violence. Why don't they address these things? If there's any reason why many people don't want to get married or have children it's because their own families have been so screwed up that perhaps they are afraid of passing it on to another generation. Which reminds me of a line from a book I read that destressed me.
MPH, That was a reality of marriage in the past... It really hasn't been sunshine and romance, there's no reason to end it though, but it's something to think of.
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Beverly, We both believe that there are values that are important to us. I guess the only way we disagree is in how those values should be interpreted and shared with others. I believe that you should try to instill your values in your children, and that's it. Leave adults to their own values and morality. If that means letting two men live together in a loving, committed relationship, then that's their business.
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quote: Opponents of gay marriage trouble me because they are not addressing the real problems facing families these days.
They aren't? Are you *sure*? 'Cause I don't buy that at all.
quote: MPH, That was a reality of marriage in the past... It really hasn't been sunshine and romance, there's no reason to end it though, but it's something to think of.
Interesting. I remember taking some academic test a long time ago and one of the reading comprehension essays left a big impression on me. It talked about how the ideal of romantic love has existed far back into written history, especially among cultures where arranged marriages were common. We were asked to draw a conclusion from this. The conclusion was that these people believed that romantic love could be found within arranged marriages.
I personally don't have much problem with arranged marriages. I wouldn't arrange them for my kids or anything, but I remember being young and single and finding a certain romantic element to it--assuming both participants came from a culture where that was the expected norm and they both approached the marriage with a desire in their hearts to do their best to be good to each other. I think our current ideas of romantic love rather silly, actually. If we believe the movies, we must find our perfect soul mate. If your relationship seems mediocre, leave your lover! Find someone exciting and new! I think this is a very dangerous value for our society to be developing.
Sooo... Bookwyrm asked what sort of traditional marriage I speak of. I speak of the tradition of a man and woman coming together with the intent to stay together and build something that would stand for as long as they two live. *That* is the part that is dying most of all. For whatever changes marriage customs may have seen over time, the majority of them approached marriage with the idea of life-long commitment.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: Beverly, We both believe that there are values that are important to us. I guess the only way we disagree is in how those values should be interpreted and shared with others. I believe that you should try to instill your values in your children, and that's it. Leave adults to their own values and morality. If that means letting two men live together in a loving, committed relationship, then that's their business.
So you don't believe that there are certain values that if adopted by society at large the world would be a better place?
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:No, I asked that as a multipart question. Don't presume to know my motives unless you can read my mind. I have a direction in mind for asking such a leading question.
EDIT: Are you implying that that was NOT the tradition of marriage at one point?
quote:MPH, That was a reality of marriage in the past... It really hasn't been sunshine and romance, there's no reason to end it though, but it's something to think of.
Those who favor a return to traditional values are not advocating a return to All Things Past.
It's really easy to combat "traditional" ideas by equating them with 1950's appliance commercials or victorian corsets or medieval princesses being sold to abusive barons. "The past" is no more cut-and-dried than the present. No one wants to go back to "the way things were."
There are, however, differences in the happiness of family life that we can chart in recent years. Our grandparents' generation, with which we have direct contact, illustrates the consequences of living by more traditional values. There is less poverty, less abandonment and less heartache among our grandparents than there is among our parents, who had corresponding increases of immorality and family breakdown to deal with. By pointing this out, I'm not saying we should go back to the 1940s and start segregating the water fountains again. That generation did have problems that we've overcome. I don't think those problems are related to the higher societal acceptance of moral values.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Bookwyrm: What is the significant difference between Commitment and Devotion? I think all three of those words are closely tied together. And I do think that our society's current ideas of Love are flawed.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I think that Devotion has always been a traditional value, but that that doesn't mean it has been practiced. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I have answered your question. I defined what *I* am talking about: the commitment to a family unit that lasts as long as the parents live. This is the tradition. Love, Commitment, and Devotion are ideals that have often not been reached in the reality of living the tradition. But I think those things were still "valued".
The tradition of life-long commitment to a family unit has been followed well by most historical societies I am aware of. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I don't know of any historical society abandoning the idea of lifelong commitment to a family unit to the extent of the society in which we live. Do you have information that states otherwise?
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: I think the contoversy has more to do with the more visceral "EW!" factor that most people seem to have about [certain non-reproductive sex acts which can honestly be part of a hetero relationship, too] sex. There. I said it. Feel freee to ignore me.
Olivetta, I totally agree. I said the same thing; I'm wondering if it's just something people aren't willing to address.
Oh, and MPH...congrats on your 5k! Dare we expect a landmark soon? Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Bookwyrm, I really don't have a problem with anything you said there. But again, I feel that my point was not acknowledged in all that.
You know, honestly the idea of gays being allowed to marry appeals to me on several levels. That doesn't mean I don't have issues with it.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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