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Author Topic: Interesting essay on the unraveling of marriage
Puppy
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Jane Jacobs makes a very good case for the idea that children are more effectively civilized when they live in an environment where many adults are available to supervise and react appropriately to their behavior, so that they gain a sense of responsibility, not just to a couple of people that they can easily evade, but to EVERYONE they meet in society.

However, the need for a strong community does not automatically reduce the need for a strong and effective core family environment. Both may be equally necessary, for different purposes.

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dabbler
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For those of you interested...
Reproduction in same sex couples: quality of parenting and child development. Current Opinion in Obstetrics & Gynecology. 17(3):309-312, June 2005. Greenfeld, Dorothy A

abstract of a review of papers on same sex couples and their children. You need to buy the article or get it through an institution to read the full one (this is common for research articles, for those of you unfamiliar with them). I could probably snag a copy the next time I'm on campus, but that won't be for several days.


The main problems with current studies is that they are small sample sizes, and generally focus on lesbian parenting teams. I believe this is because there are more lesbian parenting teams. I don't know enough about similar research questions to know if the sample size is too small, though obviously the larger the sample size the better.

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Dagonee
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Dabbler, when you say "through an institution," does that mean from anywhere on a University's network? This is how HeinOnline works, and I can VPN in to get articles from there. Would the same thing work on this type of paper? Or does one generally have to log in?
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MrSquicky
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quote:
But do not pretend that you have a scientific or rational reason for this preference while your opponents do not. This is simply not the case.
Then what is it? 4 years I've been reading debates on it on Hatrack and I've yet to see an actual, legitimate case put forward. Mine is very clear. I think that marraige is a good arrangement that provides great benefits to the peopel in it and the society around them. Certainly this is an accepted thing I think on both sides of the debate. I think that extending marriage to gay couples will allow many of the same benefits we as a society gain from allowing straight marriage. And the science supports this idea , as so so many responsible organizations who study it have attested to.

Maybe I'm missing the solid arguments of the other side Jacare. Perhaps you could tell them to me. Because what I've seen rarely rises above the level of your assertion that a child needs both father and mother. And usually it's much worse.

---

Geoff, it was aimed right at you.

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dabbler
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Many institutions automatically subscribe to certain journals. If you use the institution's portal webpage for PubMed, for example, then PubMed knows you're at that institution (I think it checks your incoming IP as well) and provides automatic access.

So, you can try it [Smile] . If you click on FullText on that link while on a university IP, the journal might check for your IP and automatically let you in, too.

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Dagonee
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Cool, I'll try it tomorrow night. That could be a very helpful thing to know. [Smile]
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dabbler
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So Jacare, to follow up, is this true?

As a generalization men have certain qualities which women lack which are necessary for meeting the standards of parenting.

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Jacare Sorridente
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quote:
This may be true. However, I sincerely believe that expectations and inculcation of gender roles has more to do with this than biology. It's like learning a language; most people speak the language of the country they grew up in, but that doesn't mean that they had to. Women can and often do take on supposedly "male" attributes when they are needed, and vice versa. I think adult men and women are often very different, but that is a great in part because we have chosen to expect different things from them.

In other words, I believe that an intelligent, responsible human being can figure out or be taught how to do just about anything, even if it isn't in their traditional gender role description.

Certainly there are many things we associate with gender which are completely due to societal expectation. Nonetheless, I find it extremely likely that men and women are generally wired differently. Recent studies seem to bear this out, with women and men generally applying completely different strategies in things like how they remember how to get somewhere (eg landmarks vs abstract maps).

quote:
I don't believe it's 'the family' so much as 'families'. Everyone worked together to bring in crops. Even in mercantile families, there were large extended kinships that tied large groups of people together. Because of the constant threat of war, people would band together for security as much as possible. So, children wouldn't have been raised by one family, even during the very brief period of time when children were children.
Again, it is all a matter of how you choose to view it. The very fact that the concept of ownership accompanies agriculture would generally work to discourage cooperation beyond closely related family. Certainly there was generational mixing- when I refer to family I don't mean necessarily "nuclear family". Nonetheless, in all of the societies we have discussed it is interesting to note that to the best of my knowledge they all included a strong division of labor between men and women.

quote:
So, it doesn't matter if the same man and woman stay together as long as there is a man and woman around to 'raise' the child?
Strictly from the standpoint of general sexual dimorphic characteristics I would say no, it doesn't matter. However, there are other matters which are also important.
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dabbler
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Dagonee: Brown makes theirs available through their Library information page on their website. It's on a page called Electronic Resources. Yours might have something similar.
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MrSquicky
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quote:
onetheless, I find it extremely likely that men and women are generally wired differently. Recent studies seem to bear this out, with women and men generally applying completely different strategies in things like how they remember how to get somewhere (eg landmarks vs abstract maps).
No, they don't. Most of the studies of the differences between genders have shown that, while there are certainly differences in biological structure, there is a very, very strong role played by socialization. This is especially well borne out by cross-cultural comparisions.

You don't get to just say stuff and thus it makes it true. There are biologicla/neurological differences between men and women, but to imply that they dominate in the very wide context we're talking about here is not at all in line with the literature.

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katharina
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quote:
Certainly there are many things we associate with gender which are completely due to societal expectation. Nonetheless, I find it extremely likely that men and women are generally wired differently. Recent studies seem to bear this out, with women and men generally applying completely different strategies in things like how they remember how to get somewhere (eg landmarks vs abstract maps).
I believe that. When it comes to parenting, however, I don't that there are some things only a female could do, and some things only a male could do. I've seen too many warm, supportive, nurturing men and practical, cum-high-expectations, evaluating, independence-instilling women to believe that. I think that parents who love their kids and are willing to learn can learn how to do whatever it takes to fill their needs.

I still believe in the value of having a mother and father (among other reasons, they are valuable as role models for what they are, and no person of the opposite gender could model the same thing), but I don't think that men and women are each only biologically capable of being a certain kind of parent.

Often by the times they have reached adulthood they have internalized the expectations of them to such an extant it is hard to learn other skills and characteristics, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't. Human beings have intelligence and have learned how to survive in a thousand different ways. Surely we can learn how to be the kind of parent needed, even if it isn't in the gender description.

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dabbler
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Oh and if it bothers you that I haven't voiced that much of an opinion yet...

Anecdotally, I can't imagine that there is much of a commonality in fathers and how they raise their children. Or mothers. And I have seen an amazing breadth of experience in being raised and the kinds of parents and parenting people have had. Yet these people turn out similarly functional and content. Therefore I find it hard to believe that a child is missing something by not having a father. I can see the case much more clearly that a child needs two parents. After all, there are simple concepts of time management and having a cooperative (or maybe not so cooperative) management team in the parents.

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Jacare Sorridente
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quote:
I think that marraige is a good arrangement that provides great benefits to the peopel in it and the society around them. Certainly this is an accepted thing I think on both sides of the debate. I think that extending marriage to gay couples will allow many of the same benefits we as a society gain from allowing straight marriage. And the science supports this idea , as so so many responsible organizations who study it have attested to.
There are many possible human combinations for societal constructs. For example, Ursula LeGuin's construct where the men hang out and fish and the women stay in clan groups in cities and raise the children, with the two groups only interacting when it is time to mate. There is the tribal idea where everyone in the group lives together and the men provide food while the women provide clothing and raise children. Society could be structured with solely homosexual relationships with men and women only reluctantly joining in order to have children.

These are just a few possibilities.

So tell me, which one is the scientifically supported one? Why should I prefer your model over any other one which is available?

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Puppy
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Squick, you seem to have a habit lately of reading the most combative, one-sided possible interpretations into all of my posts.

In this case, I saw that people were arguing over the "original purpose" of marriage, an argument which I saw as irrelevant. I made a post to that effect. And you freaked out like I had personally insulted you and your entire "side" in this debate, when my post was aimed at BOTH sides, equally, and wasn't even all that terribly critical. In fact, it probably benefits YOUR side more, because it is usually the opponents of gay marriage that first drag the "original purpose" concept into the fray (though once it arrives, both sides are equally capable of making irrelevant and unfounded assertions about it).

If I seemed to show preference to the idea of losing survival value (versus gaining survival value) through a change to the institution in my final statement, it was only because I assumed that no one would even suggest a change unless they saw a clear and obvious benefit. It is the potential losses that usually need to be examined after the idea of a change has been proposed. But I specifically included the parenthetical "(or gain)" so that people would not take it as a partisan rebuke.

But I guess if you put enough effort into taking offense, you can accomplish it under just about any circumstances.

[ July 05, 2005, 06:49 PM: Message edited by: Puppy ]

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dabbler
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Jacare, I'd prefer that society not prefer either homosexual or heterosexual couples over the other. Especially since they seem to be relatively similar in the things that matter to the abstract society (stability, ability to parent, economic viability).
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Kayla
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quote:
But I guess if you put enough effort into taking offense, you can accomplish it under just about any circumstances.
Actually, when you get really good at it, it's no effort at all. [Wink]
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Jacare Sorridente
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quote:
No, they don't. Most of the studies of the differences between genders have shown that, while there are certainly differences in biological structure, there is a very, very strong role played by socialization. This is especially well borne out by cross-cultural comparisions.

You don't get to just say stuff and thus it makes it true. There are biologicla/neurological differences between men and women, but to imply that they dominate in the very wide context we're talking about here is not at all in line with the literature.

Oh really?
http://www.newhorizons.org/neuro/diamond_male_female.htm
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/heshe.html
http://www.uwm.edu/~neuropsy/fmri.html
http://www.sfn.org/content/Publications/BrainBriefings/gender.brain.html
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html

You don't just get to say stuff and that makes it true. But to imply that there are no differences in the context we are discussing is not at all supported in the literature.

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Jacare Sorridente
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quote:
Jacare, I'd prefer that society not prefer either homosexual or heterosexual couples over the other. Especially since they seem to be relatively similar in the things that matter to the abstract society (stability, ability to parent, economic viability).
Society can support a lot of different structures, but the simple fact is that groups which believe similar things will clump together to form communities, and those communities generally want to do things the way they think is right. When there are enough dissimilarities between communities then they inevitably split.

Now whether homosexual marriage is likely fodder for that split or not I can't say, but I don't believe that any society will exist for very long which includes huge differences in social customs between communities. The set of shared beliefs simply dwindles at some point and the different societies can no longer agree.

I'll take this discussion up again tomorrow, if it is still around.

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Puppy
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Subcultures and countercultures with different customs CAN exist and survive for a very long time within larger communities (as Mormonism, for example, proves), but this survival seems to be contingent upon the smaller society maintaining a couple of things ...

1. They have to have a strong, unique identity as a subculture that they value at LEAST as much as their identity as members of the larger culture.

2. They have to see the larger culture as pliable, and at least marginally accepting of their subculture. IE, Mormons could not exist as a part of the United States until the irresoluble conflict over polygamy came to an end. But after it DID, the relationship became friendly and accepting enough that Mormons could live within the United States and consider themselves both Mormon AND American.

The case of gay marriage is interesting because, unlike Mormons around the turn of the century, the pro-gay-marriage camp seems completely unwilling to alter their expectations about their marriage customs for the sake of belonging to a larger society. According to the party-line position, the only way to come to a friendly resolution is for the larger culture to change in response to the subculture's demands. The equivalent would be for the United States to have legalized polygamy in 1896 in order to bring Utah in as a state without altering its existing culture.

I support the idea of civil unions (in theory, at least), because it allows the gay-marriage camp to live within America as a subculture and obtain all the legal rights and privileges that heterosexual couples receive, while allowing the larger, dominant culture to retain its identity. This way, members of both cultures can feel like they have preserved their way of life, without having to destroy or permanently alter the other in the process.

People often react to this idea like I'm suggesting "separate but equal" schooling or something, which I don't understand at ALL. What is so terrible about belonging to a subculture with different customs from the larger society? I think it's awesome, and I belong to a subculture that most people think is weird [Smile] I have just enough in common with the rest of America to feel like a genuine citizen, and yet there is ALSO something special about my marriage and other customs that makes me stand out. And MY subculture even GAVE UP a treasured marriage practice before becoming a part of this country.

[ July 05, 2005, 06:53 PM: Message edited by: Puppy ]

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King of Men
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quote:
The equivalent would be for the United States to have legalized polygamy in 1896 in order to bring Utah in as a state without altering its existing culture.
That would indeed have been the right thing. Just because a wrong was committed a hundred years ago doesn't mean we have to make the same mistake now.
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jebus202
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You know what? I think people who hold marriage as a deeply sacred union should take offense at the trivialising of it by making the argument all about the name.

The name doesn't matter shit. The name isn't what makes marriage marriage and it boggles me that people hold it to such a high degree of importance.

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Diana Bailey
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Perhaps Roman Catholic canon law can shed some light on Chris Bridge's first question about hetersexual marriage, as well as provide some support for OSC's contention that children are fundamental to marriage. One of the few grounds for declaring a marriage invalid under canon law is if a couple decides not to have children;a couple must be open to the possibility of having children (the church is considerably - and far more controversially - less clear about whether a couple must at all times be open to conception).That does not mean that a couple who cannot have children is not married, or that marriage between persons past child-bearing age is not allowed. In fact, the Church assumes all marriages are valid unless one partner challenges that assumption after a divorce.But it does mean that children are considered one of the blessings of marriage,and a couple who decides from the beginning not to have any children, or if one partner does, that marriage can, when reviewed by the Catholic tribunal, be declared invalid. This does not deny the reality of the relationship that existed. It simply concludes that one element considered by the Catholic Church to be essential for a lasting, indissoluble union was missing.
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Puppy
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King, I think people who favor legalizing both gay marriage and polygamy at least have the distinction of being consistent [Smile] Right now, I lean towards thinking that while both can be handled in a positive and beneficial way, that doesn't automatically make it the best idea to incorporate them into mainstream society.

Jebus, there is much more power in the naming of things than you would like to admit. This debate is as much about two conflicting cultures learning to live at peace with one another as it is about legal privileges. If a name helps to accomplish that, then don't poo-pooh it.

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beverly
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This is the guy who thinks swear words should carry no offensive weight. After all, they're just words, right?

Jebus is young and has much to learn.

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TomDavidson
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"This debate is as much about two conflicting cultures learning to live at peace with one another as it is about legal privileges."

I disagree. I think it's about one conflicting culture and one culture with which it believes it's in conflict. The "gay culture" doesn't threaten mainstream culture in any perceptible way.

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jebus202
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Hoohoo, I'm young with much to learn. Better then being old and knowing nothing, I suppose.

Oh sorry, arrogance is so ugly.

quote:
This debate is as much about two conflicting cultures learning to live at peace with one another as it is about legal privileges. If a name helps to accomplish that, then don't poo-pooh it.
I agree and ultimately if it comes down to civil unions for gays or nothing, I will completely support civil unions.

But that doesn't change the fact that the point of marriage, the holy part of marriage, the sacredness of marriage isn't its name. To bring the argument to a point where you just want to secure a name is ridiculous. If you think what someone else is doing isn't marriage, then it isn't marriage to you, and it shouldn't matter what they call it because you know in your heart that it's not really marriage.

quote:
This is the guy who thinks swear words should carry no offensive weight. After all, they're just words, right?
Oh and no, that's not what I said. I said swear words shouldn't carry any intrinsic offensiveness.
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MrSquicky
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Geoff,
If you didn't mean to imply that the question of what the society could lose or gain was one that isn't a central concern to the pro-gay marriage people, than I mistook what you were saying. It sounded to me like the whole "Well, we don't have any idea what will happen and we need to wait to see." charge, which I find both untrue and disrespectful. I'm probably a little too punchy. I'll try to rein that in.

---

Diana,
quote:
Perhaps Roman Catholic canon law can shed some light on Chris Bridge's first question about hetersexual marriage, as well as provide some support for OSC's contention that children are fundamental to marriage
I'm not sure why you would think that this is substantive. Are you asserting that we should be following Catholic canon law in this country?

---

Jacare,
I'm not sure how any of those links support your position. Could you explain how you think they do?

edit: Also, what the heck do you mean by this?
quote:
There are many possible human combinations for societal constructs. For example, Ursula LeGuin's construct where the men hang out and fish and the women stay in clan groups in cities and raise the children, with the two groups only interacting when it is time to mate. There is the tribal idea where everyone in the group lives together and the men provide food while the women provide clothing and raise children. Society could be structured with solely homosexual relationships with men and women only reluctantly joining in order to have children.

These are just a few possibilities.

So tell me, which one is the scientifically supported one? Why should I prefer your model over any other one which is available?

err...I was talking about there being scant evidence to suggest that homosexuals are depraved or that they'll be substandard parents or that they are incapable of partaking in the benefits of marriage. I'm not sure what this "Oh yeah, what social combination does science say is the best one?" thing is trying to prove.

[ July 06, 2005, 01:36 AM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]

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Danzig
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quote:
What is so terrible about belonging to a subculture with different customs from the larger society? ... And MY subculture even GAVE UP a treasured marriage practice before becoming a part of this country.
Good for them. Well, actually, bad for them. In any event, your sacrifices, be they wise or foolish, have no bearing on the issue at hand. Homosexuals are already part of this country. The terrible part about different customs is when you force them on your enemies. Your subculture gave up a treasured marriage practice, so somehow that gives you the moral weight to deny marriage entirely to another? Well, I have no problem with polygamy or homosexuality, so that gives me the moral weight to grant marriage to homosexuals.
quote:
If you think what someone else is doing isn't marriage, then it isn't marriage to you, and it shouldn't matter what they call it because you know in your heart that it's not really marriage.
Or you could turn that around, and refer to homosexual couples that have made a public commitment to each other as married. Some churches already marry them, and civil unions would seem to count as much as heterosexuals getting married by justices of the peace. To say nothing of the couples in Massachusetts. Nothing wrong with swearing, but words do have power. Time for the good guys to start using it.
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MrSquicky
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Also, this house isn't likely to remain divided against itself at these levels for that much longer. As long as the newer generation continues to be exposed to homosexuals as people more or less like themselves, I'm pretty sure contemporary anti-gay stuff is pretty much doomed. I think the people behind it know this, too. That's one of the reasons they're pushing so hard to create a culture war. As soon as they lose the might makes right angle, they've got nothing left.
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Diana Bailey
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Gracious! Who said anything about the desirability of America following canon law, MrSquicky? But given that religious and legal ideas help shape our views,it might be worth considering how one tradition looks at the issue of marriage.
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Dagonee
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Diana, your summary of canon law is why I'm comfortable with the idea of legalizing civil same sex marriage. Because the current state of civil marriage fails to reflect numerous aspects of things I consider central to marriage, I feel no "threat" from changes to the civil marriage institution.

My preference is to remove government from marriage pretty much altogether, replacing the legal/civil entity called marriage with the concept of a civil union. "Marriage" would be reserved for however the couple defines it. This would simply reflect the existing dichotomy between numerous cultural and religious marital traditions and the common (within each state, at least) legal elements they all share.

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The Rabbit
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Wow, a point that Dag and I agree on. Perhaps the world will end now.

But seriously, I am in complete agreement with Dag on this one. Marriage has both a legal and moral/religious component. Its time that they were formally separated.

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Jhai
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I like how Germany deals with the problem: one marriage by an offical in a court of law, and if you want to get married in a church, you're totally free to do that as well.

I think it's important to remember that Christianity does not have a copywrite on the word "marriage." There are plenty of other religions and cultures that also use the term marriage to define a relationship between two adults - and a male and female are not always required. For instance, in Hinduism gay people may be married, and it's called "a marriage."

Given that our country is founded on the principle of seperation between Church and State, I don't think that the state should use one religion's version of marriage over any other's. If you want to call one type of relationship a "marriage" and another a "civil union," then I think you ought to show how calling both a marriage is going to damage society in general.

And I don't think I've EVER seen a successful argument of that type that didn't bring in one religion's definition of marriage.

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Dagonee
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quote:
If you want to call one type of relationship a "marriage" and another a "civil union," then I think you ought to show how calling both a marriage is going to damage society in general.
That's why I don't want the government calling anything "marriage."
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Scott R
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>> Given that our country is founded on the principle of seperation between Church and State . . .

This is a smidgen of hyperbole. The US HAS a seperation of church and state, but it's not the founding principle. There is no one founding principle.

And thank goodness for that. . .

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Jhai
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How about it's "one of the" founding principles? [Smile]

Isn't anything in the Bill of Rights or the general Constitution (and maybe Declaration of Independence) typically taken as one of the principles made when this country was founded?

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Scott R
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Well-- let's keep in mind that separation of Chuch and State has been imperfectly practiced throughout America's history. The idea doesn't appear in the constitution as such-- only that the federal government shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion.

Seperation of church and state, as a philosophy that has carried through the generations, owes much more (in my understanding) to the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and his 'Virginia papers.'

But I may be off base.

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Jacare Sorridente
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quote:
Subcultures and countercultures with different customs CAN exist and survive for a very long time within larger communities (as Mormonism, for example, proves), but this survival seems to be contingent upon the smaller society maintaining a couple of things ...
Sure they can. My point is this: subcultures which are a sizeable chunk of the population and which have radically different values from the major population tend to come into conflict. The conflict can be resolved by compromise, one of the parties can be forced to change or a rift can form. Those are pretty much the choices.

In the case of the Mormons and polygamy it was no peaceful solution. The US government forced the Mormons to submit through the use of coercion. Our society is certainly more pluralistic than it was back then, but the question arises: how far can the differences stretch? Communities are formed on the basis of shared values. How many shared values are needed to maintain coherence?


quote:
I'm not sure how any of those links support your position. Could you explain how you think they do?
Those links clearly show neural sexual dimorphism and hint at the difference in the way information is processed, which is exactly what I stated earlier.


quote:
Also, what the heck do you mean by this?
OK- here is a summary of our argument: you seem to think that society should change marriage customs to allow gays to marry. You think that anyone who disagrees is a fool who cannot form a coherent argument to the contrary. You believe that your position is supported by science.

I said that societal constructs like marriage are simply a matter of culture and preference and hence the position that one construct or another is supported by science is absurd. These things are not quantifiable and hence your argument that no one can raise a coherent argument against your position is also absurd as you also cannot raise a coherent argument for your position except by an appeal to equally ephemeral societal constructs.

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