Citizens of the government are interested in marriage. And they are interested in equal rights too. They have no intention of ceding those rights to churches that might like to exercise their right to discriminate based on sexual orientation. Your religion's got you all twisted up in knots, man. You are reasonable on every other issue. It seems impossible to me that you can't see this blatant denial of equal rights. Churches can do whatever they want, within their parishes. They have no business telling people outside of their congregations how to live.
I'll take this a point at a time. We’re not just talking about Christianity, of course. Judaism, Islam, and almost every other religion I can think of defines marriage in a roughly similar way, a union between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation and raising a family. There are some variations and lots of qualifiers around that definition, of course, but in general terms that is what the word marriage means. Whether it originated with the Babylonians or not is not really relevant to the questions at hand. The point is that this is what marriage means in these traditions and it has meant this for a very long period of time. The point is that it is a very important and long standing tradition for a great many people, and they have a right to their traditions. Again, this is about tolerance and respect. And note that there are no conflicting rights here. You’re not taking anything away from anyone else by respecting the long standing traditions of these groups of people. What the old French or old English word for marriage was is not really important either. The tradition has been around in written form in the Catholic Church for about 1,000 years. In the Bible the references go back to Genesis, and those references will be similar for the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths. In eastern religions it may go back even farther. Ancient Egyptians also had a similar concept of marriage, etc. I don’t think anyone here is trying to make marriage a Christian word. I’m certainly not anyway. I’m pointing out that it is a long standing and very important tradition in many religions and cultures, and that these people have rights to their traditions, especially when these traditions don’t infringe on anyone else’s rights. Yes, the word marriage has become somewhat bastardized and ambiguous. That’s my point. My brother and his wife, for example, reject marriage, and yet they were legally married by a JP. What they are very deliberately and specifically rejecting is the religious definition of marriage, and what they wanted is the legal definition of marriage. These are two very different things. The solution to this problem is to stop using one word to mean two very different things. Since the government has no interest in marriage, and essentially inadvertently adopted the term, it should stop using it and pick a better term to describe in neutral legal terms the kind of relationship it is interested in, which is something very different than marriage.
Grizzled, when you say things like "especially when no one's rights are being infringed upon" it makes it impossible to take anything else you say on this matter seriously. That's just ridiculous. At least acknowledge the other side's argument.
Also, you are trying to co-opt a word that is in common use in America. (I don't know if this is different in Canada.) When people speak of being married here, religion is not the first thing on their minds. Marriage=permanent commitment to a romantic partner in the US. It's true that the law still denies same sex iterations of it, but the argument that the word "marriage" is thought of as only (or even primarily) a religious thing in this country is just silly. If you're so keen on having your own term (and by that I mean a term you can keep from gay people), use "religious marriage." "Marriage" is already taken.
Same sex couples don’t want marriage. They want equal rights, and they should be given equal rights. Equal rights, however, does not mean the right to appropriate terms from other religious and cultural groups. That I believe is fairly straight forward, but a key complicating factor in this issue is that the government has been using the term “marriage rights” when in fact the rights have nothing to do with marriage. They were originally given to married people, and that’s where the term comes from, but the government in fact has no interest in marriage. When a JP “marries” two people, for example, he is not marrying them. He is formalizing a contract that grants the couple certain legal rights and responsibilities. That’s not a marriage by any traditional definition, and those traditions had the word first and they have a right to it. The government does not need to use the word marriage. It isn’t using it accurately, and it only inadvertently slipped into the use of the word in the first place, and it should now stop using it.
First of all, of course same sex couples want marriage. And how dare you speak for them and say what they want? You are obviously the last person who knows. Second, are my married atheist friends "married?" Or do they not want marriage too? We had a Supreme Court ruling on the concept of "separate but equal" in this country. Look it up.
I think you are very much mistaken. Why was Prop. 8 voted down in California? Why are similar propositions going down to defeat all over the country? Polls in California showed that most people favoured granting equal rights, and I suspect they same is true in a lot of other places as well. I submit to you that the issue there was that many people who favour giving same sex couples equal rights do not believe that redefining the word marriage is just. A large percentage of the population of the US either comes from Catholic, or Jewish, or Muslim or, or eastern traditions that define marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman and generally for the purpose of procreating and raising a family. I suspect that a majority of these people want to give equal legal rights to same sex partners, but they see the attempt to redefine the word marriage as an attack on their tradition of marriage. If you don’t respect other peoples' rights they’re not going to give a lot of consideration to yours. Respect and tolerance have to go both ways. I’m out for the night.
Thanks for clearing that up. Perhaps you should just go explain that to all the gay people that are confused and think they actually want marriage.
What you are asking that the government not refer to any union other than what a faith tradition sanctions as marriage. Like the "kosher" example though that means that government is stepping in to enforce a religious practice and as noted under US law would go against the establishment clause. The problem with your argument is that you want to "marriage" to be reserved only for a religious traditions and you consider it affront that the government uses such term. The only way to enforce that is to have the government take action to protect that term. That is government regulation.
Again I think you are misunderstanding from the government's point of view what redefining marriage. You are stating this as active action of the government when action it is a passive action of the government. By removing the ban on homosexual marriage what the government isn't creating a new definition but backing off of a previous definition. Its like the "kosher" example where it was ruled unconstitutional for the government to define and enforce a definition of "kosher" but they could leave it up to individual establishments. In this case the government wouldn't be redefining marriage as private individuals and groups are still free to maintain there own definition of "marriage". In regard to the votes you are correct that at the moment a majority of Americans in those states don't want gay marriage that though doesn't address the principle of the issue. For much of US History a majority of Americans didn't want a lot of things that we would consider essential to US principles. Also its important to note that the votes are narrowing and it is very likely that sooner or later a vote will pass.
First response got it right. All these people who seem to care so much about the 'sacred institution', but don't seem to get too riled up to do something about the high divorce rate, the teens/young adults getting married on a whim, the children being born to young single parents after the split from said whim, or the multitude of other things that make that institution far from 'sacred'.
grizzled, you are making a hegelian argument and reserving the human right of marriage for specific groups at the expense of those you wish to dicriminate against. The object about which a contract is made, is a single external since it is only things of that kind which the parties' purely arbitrary will has in its power to alienate. To subsume marriage under the concept of contract is thus quite impossible; this subsumption - though shameful is the only word for it - is propounded in Kant's Philosophy of Law [§§ 24 - 7]. It is equally far from the truth to ground the nature of the state on the contractual relation, whether the state is supposed to be a contract of all with all, or of all with the monarch and the government. [Philosophy of Right, § 75. Cf. Hegel's similar argument in Realphilosophie I, 222.] and... The first moment of love is that I do not wish to be a self-subsistent and independent person and that, if I were, then I would feel defective and incomplete. The second moment is that I find myself in another person, that I count for something in the other, while the other in turn comes to count for something in me. Love, therefore, is the most tremendous contradictions. [Philosophy of Right § addition to 158.]
To be fair, most people who feel that way about it being a sacred institution probably do have a lot of problems with the divorce rate, teens getting married on a whim, etc.
Ditto. Batman...you have to realize that you are arguing on behalf of roughly 38% of the U.S. poplulation and that Grizzled is debating on behalf of a much higher percentage. You also seem disrespectful of the views held by the MAJORITY of U.S. citizens who are for equal rights and civil unions... but believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Sorry...no disrespect intended, just some honest views. No need for personal attacks.
I've criticized BJ for what I would consider personal attacks but I don't think he is doing that here. If anything he's gone to pains to emphasize that he frequently respects Grizzled. In regard to what is disrespectful or respectful I don't see how debating the issue in regard to language is disrespectful. Pretty much every poster taking an opposite position to the one Grizzled has has said that they want to allow religions to keep their definition of marrige just not impose that on the rest of society. How is that disrespectful? Are you saying that even challenging that position is disrespectful?
how can you say you want to provide them equal rights yet deprive them of one thing they want the most
He doesn't respect his views on this issue and has gone the route of trying to belittle him for holding those views. Calling someone and their viewpoint silly, ridiculous, on the wrong side, that you can't take them seriously, that their religion has them all tied up in knots, etc. are not vile personal attacks, but disrespectful nonetheless, especially when that viewpoint is held by the majority of the poplulation. [/QUOTE]Pretty much every poster taking an opposite position to the one Grizzled has has said that they want to allow religions to keep their definition of marrige just not impose that on the rest of society. How is that disrespectful?[/QUOTE] The problem with this is that there are many non-religious people who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and who have voted against same-sex marriage. Their vote doesn't count?
It's interesting: I don't know what to do with this "majority" issue. On the one hand, I don't want to disrespectfully say they are all "wrong" in a blanket statement, but on the other hand, the majority of humans used to believe that the sun circled the Earth. Whoops. Maybe more measures like the one in Washington state are on the way. Full and equal partnership rights, with everything but the all-important word m_______. (I am going to avoid using the term, since Mrs. B-Bob and I were m______ at city hall in a civil ceremony.)
