quote:Whether you support the decision they make is another question altogether.
Right - except that I am being asked to support it, because a vote has come up. To vote yes would be to support it. I don't support it. So I'm voting no.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
There is a difference between supporting someone's actions and supporting someone's right to those actions. Perhaps this is where we are stumbling. I absolutely do not support the KKK, for example, yet I do support their right to hold heinous opinions. I would vote against a law restricting those rights.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
If the government stopped recognizing my marriage for legal purposes I would not feel my rights had been violated.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
Perhaps in the long run, depending on what you believe. In the short term I rather doubt it.
quote:I do not consider marriage a right.
No? So you have no right to marriage and the government should feel free to deny you the ability to marry?
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes, as kmbboots mentioned, granting such things like freedom of speech does not mean that you have to support what everyone eventually decides to say. I don't agree with everything the government decides to spend money on, but I still support the government by paying taxes. I don't think my friend Laura should be getting married to Aaron, but given the choice, I would not take away her right to decide who she marries. I don't support her decision, but I do firmly support her right to decide.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maybe I am using "rights" in a different way. How about this? If the government allows/endorses the privledge of marriage to some, it should do so for all - assuming competance.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by jebus202: So you have no right to marriage and the government should feel free to deny you the ability to marry?
Yes. That is to say, the government should feel free to deny legal benefits currently recognized as marriage benefits. I have no inborn right to them.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote: That is to say, the government should feel free to deny legal benefits currently recognized as marriage benefits. I have no inborn right to them.
Let me just say that I find this a logically consistent opinion. However, I think it makes more sense to extend these benefits to everyone deserving than to withdraw them from all.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
The thread has strayed somewhat from my initial thesis which is that marriage, by definition, is about signalling a community's approval of a relationship. Rather than freedom of speech, I would compare it to the NEA. When the government takes it upon itself to indicate its (and, by representation, my) approval of specific art, it becomes my civic responsibility to make my voice heard in making that definition. I feel similarly with regards to SSM.
And no one answered my question about responsibilities of thread ownership. When I'm gone on vacation (T-minus 1 hour) do I have a responsibility to monitor a thread I started? If so, is there some way to lock it (since I won't be able to monitor it)?
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think I tried to address your original comment here:
quote: Part of the difficulty is the difference between "community" and "country/government".
Personally, I don't think the government should be in the business of distributing sacraments or giving symbolic approval of anyone's sexual relationship. Government can be in the business of validating contractual relationships. Since they do that for some people, they should do it for everyone.
Communities - churches, families, friends - can then bestow whatever sacramental or symbolic blessing they so choose.
Aloha, everybody. I'm going to Hawaii! Won't miss this MA weather at all.
And thanks for everyone's views. I really appreciate everyone's openness and politeness. I hope I didn't offend anyone. If so, it was unintential and if you point it out to me I will (likely) apologize.
quote: But the SSM question is not about that; it's about civilly accepting the validity of a particular relationship. Do you disagree with my premise? Karl has, and I'm sure others do. I'm trying to explain why I oppose it, not why someone else should.
I already made a post about why I thought the idea of 'freedom to' equates to 'support of' is false.
I agree with kmbboots. Like I need to ask tens of millions of people if I can get married before I do it? I know that perverts what you were trying to say a little, Senoj, but let me explore the logic of what you said.
It seems to me that what you are saying is that the general public is knowledgeable enough to say whether ssm is good or bad. Yet, I think this supposition is false. I challenge anyone here to predict accurately what the result would be if two men got married. I think most people casting their vote on ssm are voting in ignorance because ssm hasn't really existed, ever, so it is impossible to predict what will happen.
You might say, then, that we don't know whether any good will come from it, but this gets back to my point that the default position of a society should be that the individual should be free from state coercion unless there is some kind of necessity. I think that necessity should revolve around some kind of observable harm, in the absence of complaint from an individual, or redress to harm if an individual complains. That is, if people engaged in ssm complain to the state that it's harming them, the state can step in and help get them out of the situation, otherwise the state should do nothing unless pots and pans are being flung at heads.
Again, just because the state/public can doesn't mean that it should, or that there is evidence that it should.
Let me put it to you a different way. What evidence is there that the state's participation in marriage has had a positive effect on society? What need is there for it?
This gets back to kmbboots point regarding what we mean by community and state. When I say state, I mean the government. People in its employ.
When I say community, I mean a group of people who voluntarily stay together, or consider themselves a group, for some reason.
I submit that the benefits of marriage derive exclusively from the latter, and from the individuals involved. That the state's involvment in marriage has done, and will do, nothing to improve it, and can only make it worse because you are bringing in the opinions and wishes of people who don't know you, don't care for you, and don't, frankly, have any knowledge of the character of you or your significant other.
Do we want atheists determining what marriage means between Catholics or Mormons, or should those groups privately decide? I think those groups should privately decide because they know what is best for their community and their decisions don't directly harm themselves or other people. Though, King of Men might think otherwise.
You and others keep on restating your position that you believe that it is the state's function to aprove or disprove of marriage. Yet, I don't see that you've made a case that there is a need for it, or that it is a good idea.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ok. Back to the 1st question. You do not support the rights for two people of the same sex to marry because you do not wish the community to support thier relationship.
So what do we do with the couple?
Do we force them to change? Its been tried, with prisons and mental hospitals and lynchings. It has not been able to force them to chang.
Do we ignore them? That is apparently the community status quo. We ignore them as much as they let us and we hope they go away.
They haven't.
The whole SSM movement has been a cultural shift attempting to bring gays and lesbians into the community. Disallowing it puts up a great big stop sign, it reads "You are welcome no further into our community. You are and will always be an outsider until the time you can no longer be what you are."
If you do not allow their love into the community, calling it wrong, then you do not allow them into the community.
Lets try a different tact.
Most religions agree that premarital sex is immoral, and should not be condoned.
Many religions believe that the only true marriage is one that is consecrated by God.
To them, people married at a civil ceremony are not truly married--they are living in sin. Yet there is no movement to get such couplings not called marriages. What is the difference between that and SSM.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
For the first, what to do: Why do anything with them? What people choose to do with their lives is up to them. Their lives are their own stewardship and their own business. How I handle my life and stewardship is mine.
For the second, that doesn't describe my viewpoint, so I have no way to answer it. You'll have to ask someone who doesn't believe that any civil ceremony is valid.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
This is completely off-topic, but I just wanted to say that this is a pet peeve of mine. The actual saying is "let's try a different tack," as in "tacking a sail" -- which is what changes a sailboat's direction.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by katharina: What people choose to do with their lives is up to them. Their lives are their own stewardship and their own business. How I handle my life and stewardship is mine.
Why not allow homosexuals to have a civil ceremony that grants them the hospital visitation and other rights granted by the state to married couples then?
Same-sex marriages will not interfere in anybody's life, and by allowing homosexual people that opportuity you do nothing to validate their morals, other than agreeing that they should have the opportunity to be happy.
I don't even know if I want the state to recognize marriage at all, but if it does, it should allow anybody to marry anybody.
Research consistently shows that homosexuals do not choose to feel a same-sex attraction. I think that in light of this, there is any reason to deny them the chance to enter into a marriage contract with whomever they choose.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
