Massachusetts Court rules state cannot ban gay marraige

[mindseye]

[q]

Originally posted by Ned
I think that science is beginning to accept that homosexuality is genetic and not a mental disorder.

Jeez, Ned get with the times! In the US, it was officially dropped from the list of mental disorders thirty years ago! Good heavens, even in the friggin' PRC it is no longer considered a mental disorder, (The People's Daily noted that on this topic China was more socially advanced than some American states!)

In fact, there were exciting rumors here last year that the Peoples Congress was going to discuss the topic of legalizing gay marriage. It didn’t happen ("Chinese Whispers"!), but it raised the specter of China possibly surpassing the US in gay rights. If it happened, it would certainly change future dialogs with the US on human rights!

It will take some time for this attitude to change. If the Supreme Court again forces the issue by decision, this will again become another Roe v. Wade.

On a subject so central to one's life as marriage, I think you better have a d*mn good case before you decide that someone's discontent is more important than someone else's chance to marry.

The presumption is that the woman will stay at home to raise the kids and support her husband in his career. This model does not correspond in gay marriages even if gays can raise kids.

Huh? A lesbian wife couldn’t stay home and support her partner the same way a straight wife can?

While we allow single moms to raise kids by themselves, we as a society encourage father-mother families as the best for kids.

Do you think that whatever "enouragement" you are talking about is worth me being denied the chance to marry? I wouldn’t dream of denying you your chance to marry over some subjective call like that on my part.

What I am more curious about is that you think our society encourages male-female child-rearing couples. It seems to me there is now less pressure for a married couple to stick it out than ever before, at least in our country's history. And there certainly is no pressure at all on infertile couples not to marry, nor on those past child-bearing years. So why should gays be singled out?

We also do not encourage raising kids in "gay" families.

Because something hasn't been "encouraged" before, it should never be tried in the future? What kind of argument is that? Up until recently we also did not "enourage" interracial marriage. Should we have never allowed it? We certainly didn’t encourage it at the time the laws were changed.

Is it okay, as a society, to sometimes change our minds about what we should "encourage"?

Allowing gay marriage may signal such an encouragement where no such encouragement is intended.

It may? It may send ... a signal? Do you feel that any possible symoblic encouragement you can conjecture outweighs the personal rights of millions of Americans to marry?

Ned, would you be willing to give up your right to marry because I thought that it might somehow send someone a symbolic message that I personally objected to? I hope you would be willing to do that, because that's what you are asking me to do.

Mordoch, Why does the party who relies on thousands of years of history have to rely on studies? I would think the party proposing a change from the norm should provide the studies.

Who has the burden of proof? The party of change or the party of status quo?

Actually, there have already been some studies. Not many, but the ones out there show no unusual problem levels for children of gay couples. They also show no unusual rate of homosexuality for such children. I posted links to some studies about two years ago in a thread with Berzerker. I suppose there have been more studies since. Ned, you should try google.com and take a look. It's the least you could do after your belly-aching in that other thread for a link to the Ossuary dispute (which was all over the net and easily found).

[mindseye]

Oh, long ago I vowed to never again descend to a Berzerker-style cut-n-quote-fest, but this is an issue so very close to home - and heart - for me ...
(oils keyboard, pops knuckles)

both China and Europe have far-from-recent traditions of same-sex marriages.

Originally posted by Berzerker
Oh really? Feel free to post the proof...

In Same Sex Marriage in Premodern Europe (Villard Books, 1994), John Boswell documents the existence of rites for male-male unions in the early Christian(!!) church. China has a long history of male-male romance, including legal male-male unions in Fujian province during the Ming era. There is also evidence of female-female unions (in the Pearl Delta region IIRC). You can get the details from Bret Hinsch's Passions of the Cut Sleeve (University of California Press, 1990).

Not me, so since you're quoting me, address what I've said, not what others say.

Maybe you didn’t see that carriage return that separated the part you quoted from the direct response to your post. The carriage return didn't show up when you quoted me due to your tedious cut-n-paste line-by-line style of argument, however if you check the original post, you can see it there.

Why not? You seem to think marriage in one culture negates traditional marriages everywhere else.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that there has been a great deal of variation (both in time and location) in the definition of marriage. You keep referring over and over to some notion of unchanging "tradition" when in fact there has been a wide variety of practices called "marriage". In fact, I suspect it is you who is "negating" traditional marriages by implying that what we call marriage in 2003 USA is somehow a universal historic tradition.

Every culture has had "age of consent" limitations on the age of the people getting married, the fact life spans were so short and nature's design (puberty) led to marriages between young people is irrelevant, we have our age of consent,

That does nothing to change the fact that this was a fundamental change in marriage as practiced at the time in the US (and elsewhere in the west).

By the way, your "life spans so short" argument doesn’t hold much water given that this change was made only just over a century ago (people weren't exactly dropping at thirty in 1889). In a surprising number of countries, the age of consent is still quite low (Mexico, Chile - age 12; Spain, Japan, Korea - age 13; Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Peru - age 14) further illustrating the lack of a clear-cut universal tradition of "marriage".

This was not a tradition, it was a temporary and isolated law (...) outlawed in a few states.

Isolated? A few states? At one point inter-racial marriage was illegal in forty states, an issue which variously affected blacks, Asians and Native Americans. Hardly an insignificant number of people affected!

The fact is people of different races have always married even if frowned upon by some people and outlawed in a few states over a few decades.

The point is that the legal definition was changed. The government was seen to be unfairly restricting the rights of some to marry, based on an irrelevant reason the people in question had no control over. The legal definition was changed to reflect that. How is that different from the case of gays?

There certainly was no pre-existing "tradition" of inter-racial marriage in the US, so the "not traditional" arguments hold no water. The change was made to the law, groups unfairly excluded from marriage were allowed in, and those who opposed the move were proven wrong when our society easily handled the change (there are two such marriages in my own family - and I would like to add another).

What exactly is it about the word "marriage" that homosexuals need to be identified with?

That gay unions are every bit as valid and worthy of recognition in the eyes of the law as everyone else's. That the love of a gay person for their mate is every bit as legitimate as anyone else's, and that gays should not be singled out by the government as being somehow unworthy of marriage.

Don't give me that stuff about being a second class citizen, this is about a word and it's definition.

"Don’t give me that stuff" - what kind of argument is that? Yeah, I guess I understand you why you don't want any of that "stuff" about second-class citizen because it clarifies what your arguments are about - asking someone to accept a second-class status. Giving someone something identical to that of everyone else, but with another label implies that it is yet not equal. Imagine how blacks would feel if they were given rights equal to those of whites, but were called "members" instead of "citizens"? How do you think they'd feel about "citizenship"?

If homosexuals were really concerned about a word and the status it conveys, why don't they demand the government call them heterosexuals instead of homosexuals?

Uh, maybe because we only want to be able to get married, we don’t want to become heterosexuals.

Aren't homosexuals already accepting a word to describe themselves that sets them apart from most people?

Sure, in the case of a specialized word used to describe how our sexual habits are different.

Maybe single people think they're second class citizens too. Maybe they want the status of being "married" even though they aren't,

False analogy. Gay people do not seek the same status of married people. Gay people ask that their marriages receive the same status as straight marriages.

Can you point out any reason why they should not be? I haven’t seen you hit on a single one yet, other than your feeble "we must do nothing to ever change the definition of a word" argument (which strikes this language teacher's ear as particularly kooky).

if we're going to re-define "marriage" to include same sex relationships, why not re-define the word to include single people who are merely dating (or not dating)?

Because those aren’t life-mate-type unions. Besides, those people have little need of a definition change, they can already get married if they want to. Gays have no such option. The government won't allow them.

There is a reason words have definitions

Yet certainly the definitions of words change regularly, as I pointed out earlier with the examples such as "wonderful". This freezing of definition argument of yours is quite a stretch given the realities of linguistics.

Gee, I don't know. What percentage of the population does it take to re-define a word?

What was the percentage of the population seeking inter-racial marriages in 1967? I bet the number is smaller than that of potential gay marriages. Since the definition was changed for those seeking inter-racial marriage, why should it not be similarly changed for gays?

That "fundamental way" is the word used to describe the union between straight people - "marriage".

So you are admitting that the only fundamental way in which straight and gay unions are different is the definition of a word? Good, then I'm sure you'll agree it's time to change that definition once again to reflect reality, just as it was last changed in 1967.

Do homosexuals want us to call them heterosexual too?

I don't think so. After all, we don’t want to become heterosexuals, we just want to get married like anybody else.

"Marriage" is a word to describe a certain type of contract/union between men and women. Homosexuals, by definition, do not fit that description.

Yet that definition has changed repeatedly, even in recent history - even during my own life. In the 1880's a thirteen-year-old girl fit the definition of "wife". In 1967 a white woman did not, when the would-be groom was black. So, why the arbitrary freezing of the definition now?

Would you prefer a black rose and a red rose or will black and red people take offense now?

Yeah, that would be much less offensive, although it wouldn't suit your biases as well, I fear.

PC strikes again, now we have to watch the metaphors we use lest someone read an insult into our choice of words.

Why is it that so many right-of-center types love to trundle out the "PC" hobby horse when they are called on an insult? What is "PC" about resenting being likened to a pig? Face it, I called you on a low blow. There's nothing remotely "pc" about it.

Why do you find pigs offensive?

It's generally accepted in our culture that being likened to a pig is a negative thing (more clearly so when juxtaposed against a rose). If you don't understand that, try calling your mother "an old sow". This kind of speciousness trivializes your other points.

I like pigs more than red roses and I find your comment offensive.

Yeah, but this isn't your personal diary, is it? You are making a public argument in a public place, and therefore should reasonably expect that people will understand words as they are generally used in the current vernacular. Snide character attacks like this don't serve your arguments well.

I might have overlooked your comment had you not earlier in the same thread posted ...

For example, I don't call homosexuals "gay" out of respect for the people who are named "Gay"

... implying that being identified with gay people was somehow "disrespectful".

By the way, I noticed in another thread that you used the terms "black women" and "black men". What happened to your respect for those surnamed "Black"? After all, there was a time blacks were not known as "blacks". Or is your concern focused only on gays?

the concept of marriage preceded the current laws defining marriage and if the laws don't match the preceding concept, then the laws are a perversion of "tradition" and language.

This is just strange. Current laws defining "slavery", "divorce", and "voter" don't match the preceding concepts either. Are they "perversions of the language"?

You seem to be terribly selective in the "traditions" you draw upon for this definition.

Oh really? I can't wait for the proof you have to back that up.

Well, at the beginning of the thread I gave you historical examples of same-sex unions. Other "traditions" which you seem to be overlooking include the near world-wide age-old tradition that women were the legal property of their husbands. There's also the variations in age of consent, and laws against inter-racial marriage. And as recently as the mid-19th century, an American couple could only terminate a marriage due to a "marital crime", and woman had little chance of ending a marriage for any but the direst of reasons. Others (including you) have pointed out polygamy and polyandry.

Ancient and recent, these are all examples of variations at odds with your "tradition" of marriage. And of course, all of these were addressed through changes in US law. Arguing against change on the basis of some imaginary unchanging tradition just doesn’t jive with history or comtemporary laws governing marriage.

Ah, so your accusation of hypocrisy is based on your own unproven assertions about traditional marriages. Nice, I believe that's called "circular" logic.

First, I never accused you of hypocrisy, rather I pointed out your inconsistency by noting that you yourself had acknowledged variations in marriage traditions (e.g. polygamy). If you call that hypocrisy, so be it. Second, see immediately preceding response for proof of assertions. No circular logic, sorry.

So you believe a law banning Asian and black men from marrying white women passed by a tiny minority of the world's population in a tiny geographical area for a tiny part of mankind's history qualifies as a "tradition" that nullifies the rest of the world's traditions? That happens to be your argument...

Please stop fondling that strawman. My argument is that marriage as a tradition has changed a great deal across history and cultures. The notion of woman as legal property, for example, was anything but confined to a "tiny area for a tiny part of history". Since your argument against gay marriage seems to be based largely on an unchanging "traditional" definition of marriage, showing that the definition has in fact changed a great deal rather deflates your argument.

[Skyjack666]

Gwan, lets the gays get married so they can be as miserable as all of you hetero-married people!

Also, let them sue each other to hell like all the heteros!

Why should man/woman couples own the market on misery?

[mindseye]

And there was a word to describe the view that the sun orbited the Earth. A new idea came along that said the Earth orbited the Sun instead. Did the people who came up with that new view simply use the word to describe the previous view or did they come up with a new term?

No, but in a zillion other examples a definition was changed to reflect a change in thinking. Consider the legal definition of the word "voter", for instance.

I have 2 motivations, 1) preserving the meaning of words.

I wonder how many straight people here at Apolyton would be willing to forego getting married in order to preserve the definition of a word - and at that, a word whose definition has changed considerably throughout history! Would you, Berzerker?

I don't like it when liberals and conservatives re-define freedom to mean whatever they want it to mean, so obviously I don't like it when homosexuals try to re-define "marriage" to mean what they want it to mean.

How did you like it when liberals and conservatives changed the definition of "voter" to include women? Or, respecting slaves, the definition of "citizen"? Did you not like that?

2) Reducing government intervention in our lives, not increasing it.

It's shocking to me that you can call yourself a libertarian, yet wish the government to intrude upon something so personal as marriage! If you really were concerned about reducing government intervention in our lives, I should think you would be delighted in getting gov't out of the business of denying people the chance to marry.

(...) but people do get hurt when other words are re-defined to mean something else.

Who, pray tell, will be hurt by re-defining marriage to include gays? Please don’t bother with arguments about paying for benefits, as gay people aren't complaining about paying for straight couple's benefits.

Blacks were defined as non-people

True, and definitions for "citizen" and "voter" were later changed to address this unfairness. Do you have object to those changes to "traditional" definitions?

I want to know why homosexuals have this need to adopt a word referring to a certain kind of heterosexual contract/relationship

It's simple: R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the eyes of the law.

Once the law cares, then every business that affords benefits to married people will be compelled to afford those benefits to homosexuals...

Gee, that doesn't sound so unreasonable, given that gays don't choose to be gay.

I don't even want the laws we have now, so why on Earth would I want those laws expanded based on a politically motivated re-defining of the language?

Uh, maybe in the interest of spreading the benefits a little more fairly? Maybe you should consider the incremental added cost against the enormous importance to many people of having the opportunity to get married, something many people consider so very important, more important even than voting!

I wonder what price tag most straight people would put on their opportunity to marry? At what levels are "benefits" so high that someone should be asked to give up their chance to marry?

It will mean an expansion of government mandated costs onto the private sector which will result in a transfer of wealth from consumers to the political beneficiaries of the law.

Guess it matters what side of the trough you are on. What you consider an "expansion" looks to a gay person like a more equitable distribution of benefits. Why deny them to gay people? After all, gays are already paying for straights' benefits. Besides, considering the likely effect on the total number of marriages in the US, the degree of "expansion" does not appear too terribly great, certainly not great enough to warrant asking someone to forego marriage over it.

freedom of homosexuals to have government force the rest of us to accept their relationships as marriages with mandated benefits?

There are people in the US who don't accept inter-racial marriage. Well, that's their privilege. However, it's certainly no reason to deny marriage to those whose love crosses race lines.

The government certainly has never asked me whether or not I accept your relationship, or that of anyone else. Frankly, I would feel that your choice of partner was none of my business.

Their goal is to use government to compel the rest of us to accept their new definition of marriage and open the door to whatever benefits are now given to married people.

Berzerker, trust me on this: when gay people fight for their right to marry like anyone else, obtaining monetary benefits is not the prime motivator. It’s about respect and equality in the eyes of the law. It's about something that the majority of people in our society aspire to. It's about marrying the person you love.

Where I grew up, marriage was taken very seriously. Of my eight married sibs, there has not been a single divorce. F*ck the benefits, I just want the gov't to get out of the business of denying me a chance to marry like my siblings. I want the gov't to recognize that as far as the law is concerned, the love I feel for my partner is no different than that my brothers and sisters feel for theirs. It's really that simple.

By the way, are you married? I can hardly think so, considering the awfully low value you seem to put on it.

[Ramo]

There are maybe 50,000 people in this country who practice polygamy and there were more before the feds banned the practice. Then there are other parts of the globe where the practice is widespread, if not dominant. And then there's the history of polygamy which was widespread as well, so I don't know where you're getting the idea polygamy was not or is not a traditional practice wrt marriage.

I didn't say it wasn't or isn't a traditional practice wrt marriage. I said it isn't practiced very often here in the West. In the English-speaking world And in the vast majority of the English speaking world (where the word "marriage" actually means anything), polygamous relationships are almost universally taboo, while some 30 million people live in a society where gay marriage is not only commonly accepted, but legal.

The world.

But not Canada or the low countries apparantly.

A very recent phenomenon

Numerous societies, such as the classical Mediterranean civilizations had gay relationships. Before you say, they didn't have gay marriage, they didn't have straight marriage either. After all, they didn't speak 21st century English. What we call their marriages are extraordinarily different from what we call our marriages. As pointed out earlier, they were primarily intended to make kids or cement relationships between families. Not what marriage in 21st century USA is about.

created by pressure from special interest groups who seek to re-define the word.

No, broad segments of society agreed with the redefinition in Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands, such that their elected governments enacted their change in preference, not just "special interest groups."

That ain't a traditional form of marriage...

The horror!!! That tradition should be upset, that must never happen. Societies and languages should stay totally static. And we should all be speaking in Indo-European.

"Love marriages"? Don't matter to me if a married couple loves each other.

It doesn't matter to you, well TFB? Well it matters to virtually every traditional society. Why are you seeking to redefine words from their traditional meanings with government, you evil redefiner!

Ever been to the third world Berz? Marriage is generally not about love. A few centuries back, and love didn't matter at all in marriages. It was only with recent ideas of feminism that have transformed the idea that women were commodities. I didn't invent the phrase, I learned it from my family. My parents had what was basically an arranged marriage.

The government shouldn't be involved with marriage at all. Government's only concerns are enforcing wills and dealing with custody and inheritance when there is no will. That is not what government is doing, so I'm certainly not telling you anyone can get married without the state's consent.

So, why should the state be able to tell people that they can't get married? How, exactly, is this consistent with your libertarian ideology? Why can't mindseye or Boris freely make a contract with another man over arrangements over inheritance, legal rights over visitation, etc. and call it a marriage? It looks like you're redefining freedom.

Why should married people have special privileges?

I thought you agreed that married people should have special privileges - less hassle over inheritance, and the like. And in any case, why should gay people be denied these privileges when straight people have them?

What status? If I want the government to say I'm a black person, should government proclaim my new "status" and compel others to accept it?

If you want to call yourself black, that's your business. And I'm not the one using the gov't to stop people from calling themselves black.

I'm gonna skip all that about stealing/murder because the post is too long already, and I think I've made my point clear, if you don't mind.

Your analogy is illogical. Blacks were re-defined as non-persons by governments

They started out as non-persons by this government. It was forged with the idea that blacks were not persons. And actually, the racist society of the time created the definition of "person" to exclude non-whites, which was reflected in the nature of this gov't when it was formed, just as our homophobic society created the definition of "marriage" to exclude gays. Actions such as these aren't made in a vacuum, they reflect the common perceptions and prejudices of the day.

and you would have had to support that definition because according to you, government defines words. I would have rejected that definition because I reject the notion that governments get to re-define words... Now, marriage is a word that describes a situation...a certain kind of relationship between men and women. That just happens to be how the word is defined. Are we to argue that a broken leg is not a broken leg because someone with a broken arm, for God only knows what reason, resents the fact his arm is broken and not his leg?

By this same logic, since governments defined marriage in the same way that governments defined person, the definition of marriage that excludes gays is invalid.

As a semantic note, what's your philosophical objection to gov't "redefining" words? How is it against libertarian principles to redefine words?

Furthermore, practically, how exactly does a gov't not redefine words. I'll take person, for instance. If the gov't wants to change who has legal protections (say, it wants to expand abortion rights or intelligent aliens are discovered), it has to redefine person to include (or exclude, as the case may be) certain classes of life-forms. How does it deal with the multitude of legal terms? Like municipality or electoral college or parliament? The gov't agrees on forming or changing definitions of terms to prevent all sorts of crazy legal problems.

[Ramo]

And thanks mindseye.

[Berzerker]

Originally posted by Ramo
And thanks mindseye.

Ah, a romance at Poly is blooming.

[Ramo]

[David Floyd]

Looks like I'm a bit behind, here.

Berz,

Yes, that's why I said I have 2 reasons.

Then why bring up an irrelevant one?

No, I mean liberals. Government is the weapon being used, but those holding the weapon are liberals and conservatives.

Good, you acknowledged that conservatives are part of the problem, too. In any case, without government participation, neither group would be able to carry out their anti-freedom agenda. "Liberals" and "Conservatives" as groups are not to blame, but rather, liberals and conservatives in government.

Correct, but once "marriage" is expanded to include homosexual unions, other people will be forced to accept the new definition. Disney expanded it's benefits package to include homosexual unions which is fine with me, but other businesses that haven't followed in Disney's footsteps will be sued for discrimination if they don't. That's just one example...

Again, the answer is not to restrict the right to contract, the answer is to repeal anti-discrimination laws as they apply to private business.

But the reality is that homosexuals are not pushing for inclusion into marriage for the sake of being married, there is nothing stopping them from living together and calling their arrangement a marriage now. Their goal is to use government to compel the rest of us to accept their new definition of marriage and open the door to whatever benefits are now given to married people.

Interesting viewpoint. Of course, man-woman couples can ALSO live together without technically being married, so why does anyone get married? In some cases, you're absolutely right - it's for economic benefits (incidentally, I think that taking away the potential for government-mandated economic benefits would drive down the number of marriages for convenience, which would probably impact the divorce rate, etc.). Heterosexual and homosexual couples alike are/would be guilty of this. So either you should support laws prohibiting ANY marriage, in order to prevent ANY ill-gotten gains, or you should be in favor of eliminating the mechanism for receiving certain economic benefits - ie, anti-discrimination laws as they apply to private business, for starters.

However, I think that the motivation for marriage, in many cases, is more than an economic one, for both heterosexual AND homosexual couples. Possibly MrFun, Boris, etc., could provide a viewpoint here, but it doesn't really matter. The fact that not all heterosexual marriages are about money implies that not all homosexual ones would be, either.

Consider Aff Action, can a couple white guys get together and agree to a contract which says they are in fact black, not white, to obtain the benefits of AA? What if there were benefits given only to homosexuals and heterosexuals said they will make contracts re-defining the word homosexual to include them? Normally I'd agree with your argument, but there's more to it. This is not about the freedom to make contracts, this is about re-defining words and using government to impose those new definitions on the rest of us...

I dispute your generalization WRT motivation once again, and once again I can only point out that the moral solution is to eliminate government-mandated economic benefits and anti-discrimination laws as applied to private business, rather than restricting the freedom of certain people to contract together.

But those wanting these contracts are motivated by the stealing. They want a cut of the stolen goods...

That's not why my parents got married

Not when they can then sue businesses for discrimination based on their contracts.

So, it seems that the logical solution, and the one most in keeping with a truly FREE system, would be to eliminate the ability to recover damages when private businesses discriminate.

They can now, but it'll become coercive once they can claim discrimination.

OK, so now it comes down to it. You admit that it isn't coercive UNTIL they try to act to take someone else's money. I won't bother repeating the most logical solution to that problem.

I'm gonna skip the next few quotes, because my response would simply be more of the same.

And if that contract says "money" means "root beer", can you and Bob pay creditors in root beer?

No, but Bob and I can pay each other in root beer, which is the point. Whether or not I can pay creditors in root beer is really determined by the contract I have with the creditors.

[Drake Tungsten]

In fact, there were exciting rumors here last year that the Peoples Congress was going to discuss the topic of legalizing gay marriage. It didn't happen ("Chinese Whispers"!), but it raised the specter of China possibly surpassing the US in gay rights. If it happened, it would certainly change future dialogs with the US on human rights!

No it wouldn't. Only a complete moron would think that allowing gays to marry would suddenly make China superior to America in human rights. Good luck to the gays and all, but I and most other people are still more concerned about the political dissidents serving indefinite sentences and the Falun Gong members with cattle prods up their asses.

Also, gay marriage isn't a human rights issue.

[Berzerker]

Mindseye -

In Same Sex Marriage in Premodern Europe (Villard Books, 1994), John Boswell documents the existence of rites for male-male unions in the early Christian(!!) church. China has a long history of male-male romance, including legal male-male unions in Fujian province during the Ming era. There is also evidence of female-female unions (in the Pearl Delta region IIRC). You can get the details from Bret Hinsch's Passions of the Cut Sleeve (University of California Press, 1990).

Even if we can trust Boswell, these were "romances" and "unions". Do these qualify as "marriages" now?

Maybe you didn’t see that carriage return that separated the part you quoted from the direct response to your post. The carriage return didn't show up when you quoted me due to your tedious cut-n-paste line-by-line style of argument, however if you check the original post, you can see it there.

The carriage return didn't show up because I didn't quote the the first part of your response, I quoted the part I wanted to respond to. Now, you did respond to my argument with a commentary on what other people say about the issue. Their arguments are for them to defend, not me. Carriage returns

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that there has been a great deal of variation (both in time and location) in the definition of marriage. You keep referring over and over to some notion of unchanging "tradition" when in fact there has been a wide variety of practices called "marriage".

Then why did you cite the practice in the US of outlawing inter-racial marriage in response to my argument that the definition of tradional marriages extends far beyond US borders? And I never said tradional marriages are unchanging, just that the changes never altered the basic equation involving male and female.

In fact, I suspect it is you who is "negating" traditional marriages by implying that what we call marriage in 2003 USA is somehow a universal historic tradition.

Sheesh! I don't define marriage the way US law defines it today, I believe polygamy should be legal too.

That does nothing to change the fact that this was a fundamental change in marriage as practiced at the time in the US (and elsewhere in the west).

Allowing marriages at the age of 13 or 15 or even 18 is not a fundamental change in the definition of marriage.

By the way, your "life spans so short" argument doesn’t hold much water given that this change was made only just over a century ago (people weren't exactly dropping at thirty in 1889). In a surprising number of countries, the age of consent is still quite low (Mexico, Chile - age 12; Spain, Japan, Korea - age 13; Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Peru - age 14) further illustrating the lack of a clear-cut universal tradition of "marriage".

I was talking about life spans throughout history and pre-hsitory, not 1889. And even life spans in the 1800's were not much better than previous centuries. The fact is: life spans have nearly ~doubled very recently. This does not refute the argument that the shortness of life ~2 millennia ago had something to do with marriage including teens, puberty was the determinant. And many states still allow marriage at a very early age, so they are not that different than these other countries that also allow marriage at an early age. Trying to argue that differing age of consent laws in various places proves some fundamental change in the definition of marriage has occured thereby justifying a change in the definition to allow same sex marriages is ridiculous.

Isolated? A few states? At one point inter-racial marriage was illegal in forty states, an issue which variously affected blacks, Asians and Native Americans. Hardly an insignificant number of people affected!

It was still a local ordinance that does not negate the definition of marriage worldwide. That was your argument, that because inter-racial marriages were not allowed in some of the states, the worldwide tradition of male-female marriages doesn't count when defining marriage.

The point is that the legal definition was changed.

Not the tradition.

The government was seen to be unfairly restricting the rights of some to marry, based on an irrelevant reason the people in question had no control over. The legal definition was changed to reflect that. How is that different from the case of gays?

Because those laws violated tradition, which is what you advocate now.

There certainly was no pre-existing "tradition" of inter-racial marriage in the US, so the "not traditional" arguments hold no water.

Indians were marrying Europeans long before the US was even a country. The laws were recent and local and obviously not traditional...

That gay unions are every bit as valid and worthy of recognition in the eyes of the law as everyone else's. That the love of a gay person for their mate is every bit as legitimate as anyone else's, and that gays should not be singled out by the government as being somehow unworthy of marriage.

They are "unworthy" of "marriage" because the definition of "marriage" does not include same sex unions. It's no different than trying to argue that we should re-define heterosexuality to include homosexuality.

"Don’t give me that stuff" - what kind of argument is that?

Read the rest of the sentence.

Yeah, I guess I understand you why you don't want any of that "stuff" about second-class citizen because it clarifies what your arguments are about - asking someone to accept a second-class status.

Nonsense! It's about a word and it's meaning, nothing more, nothing less. Trying to piggyback your agenda onto the civil rights movement won't work...

Giving someone something identical to that of everyone else, but with another label implies that it is yet not equal.

It isn't "equal", homosexual "marriage" is an oxymoron.

Imagine how blacks would feel if they were given rights equal to those of whites, but were called "members" instead of "citizens"? How do you think they'd feel about "citizenship"?

The definition of "citizenship" requires excluding people based on race? The US has always had black citizens...

Uh, maybe because we only want to be able to get married, we don’t want to become heterosexuals.

But doesn't acceptance of the word "homosexuality" mean homosexuals are setting themselves apart from the vast majority? If y'all wanted to be accepted as heterosexuals, would y'all lobby for that word to be re-defined too?

Sure, in the case of a specialized word used to describe how our sexual habits are different.

And marriage is a specialised word to describe a certain kind of relationship between men and women.

False analogy. Gay people do not seek the same status of married people. Gay people ask that their marriages receive the same status as straight marriages.

A distinction without a difference.

Can you point out any reason why they should not be? I haven’t seen you hit on a single one yet, other than your feeble "we must do nothing to ever change the definition of a word" argument (which strikes this language teacher's ear as particularly kooky).

I've never said we must never do anything to change the meaning of marriage, just that we shouldn't re-define the word to allow for the drastic change y'all advocate.

Because those aren’t life-mate-type unions.

And same sex unions aren't marriages.

Besides, those people have little need of a definition change, they can already get married if they want to. Gays have no such option. The government won't allow them.

But if a single person doesn't want to get married, they are still treated differently. And homosexuals can be married, they just can't compel the rest of us to accept their attempt to re-define the word marriage. If you and your mate want to call yourselves "married" people, have at it, just don't complain when other people point out the word doesn't include same sex unions.

Yet certainly the definitions of words change regularly, as I pointed out earlier with the examples such as "wonderful". This freezing of definition argument of yours is quite a stretch given the realities of linguistics.

Of course definitions change, so what? They generally change when the weight of public opinion adopts the change, not when a small minority demands it. But even that does not oblige me to go along to get along.

What was the percentage of the population seeking inter-racial marriages in 1967? I bet the number is smaller than that of potential gay marriages.

I doubt it.

Since the definition was changed for those seeking inter-racial marriage, why should it not be similarly changed for gays?

Because the definition of marriage fails to make race a requirement.

So you are admitting that the only fundamental way in which straight and gay unions are different is the definition of a word? Good, then I'm sure you'll agree it's time to change that definition once again to reflect reality, just as it was last changed in 1967.

Nope, allowing inter-racial marriage requires no change in the definition of marriage.

Yet that definition has changed repeatedly, even in recent history - even during my own life. In the 1880's a thirteen-year-old girl fit the definition of "wife". In 1967 a white woman did not, when the would-be groom was black. So, why the arbitrary freezing of the definition now?

If I lived back then, I would have opposed laws prohibiting white women from marrying black men. While I don't know the age of consent laws in the various states, I do believe some states still allow marriage at a very early age.

Yeah, that would be much less offensive, although it wouldn't suit your biases as well, I fear.

Mindseye or Mindreader?

Why is it that so many right-of-center types love to trundle out the "PC" hobby horse when they are called on an insult?

Because it wasn't an insult.

What is "PC" about resenting being likened to a pig? Face it, I called you on a low blow. There's nothing remotely "pc" about it.

How do you know I was calling anyone a pig? I first thought of a pig and a donkey but decided to make a greater separation to highlight the greater change you advocate and chose an animal and a plant. Should married heterosexuals get mad at the metaphor of a donkey?

It's generally accepted in our culture that being likened to a pig is a negative thing (more clearly so when juxtaposed against a rose). If you don't understand that, try calling your mother "an old sow". This kind of speciousness trivializes your other points.

But I wasn't likening anyone to a pig, it was a metaphor designed to show that two things some want to equate cannot be equated. Obviously you're upset by the metaphor, I apologise. I suppose apples and oranges would have been better...but no insult was meant...

Yeah, but this isn't your personal diary, is it?

My mindset does matter if you want to accuse me of wanting to insult you.

You are making a public argument in a public place, and therefore should reasonably expect that people will understand words as they are generally used in the current vernacular. Snide character attacks like this don't serve your arguments well.

So it doesn't matter what I think, if you think it was an insult, then it was. But don't ascribe any intent on my part...

I might have overlooked your comment had you not earlier in the same thread posted ... ... implying that being identified with gay people was somehow "disrespectful".

Well now, according to your argument, since the majority - the current vernacular - at best tolerates homosexuality if not frowns upon it, does that mean your repeated use of the word "gay" constitute dis-respect for people named "Gay" even if you mean no dis-respect?

By the way, I noticed in another thread that you used the terms "black women" and "black men". What happened to your respect for those surnamed "Black"? After all, there was a time blacks were not known as "blacks". Or is your concern focused only on gays?

Black is a "color" too and has been for eons...

This is just strange. Current laws defining "slavery", "divorce", and "voter" don't match the preceding concepts either. Are they "perversions of the language"?

Sure they match the concepts. Strange indeed...

Well, at the beginning of the thread I gave you historical examples of same-sex unions.

No, you alleged their existence without proof. And I didn't ask for proof of same sex "unions", I asked for proof of same sex marriages. And I'm still waiting...

Other "traditions" which you seem to be overlooking include the near world-wide age-old tradition that women were the legal property of their husbands.

I'm not overlooking it, we just don't practice it anymore because we place more value on consent now.

There's also the variations in age of consent, and laws against inter-racial marriage. And as recently as the mid-19th century, an American couple could only terminate a marriage due to a "marital crime", and woman had little chance of ending a marriage for any but the direst of reasons. Others (including you) have pointed out polygamy and polyandry.

And these are minor changes that don't warrant re-defining marriage to include homosexuality.

Ancient and recent, these are all examples of variations at odds with your "tradition" of marriage.

I've never said the definition of marriage is the same everywhere and throughout time - that's your strawman.

First, I never accused you of hypocrisy, rather I pointed out your inconsistency by noting that you yourself had acknowledged variations in marriage traditions (e.g. polygamy).

Inconsistency = hypocrisy, but so glad to see you admitting I've acknowledged these variations when you keep accusing me of arguing that tradition and marriage are unchanging.

Please stop fondling that strawman. My argument is that marriage as a tradition has changed a great deal across history and cultures.

But it hasn't changed a great deal, the concept remains the same inspite of these minor changes.

The notion of woman as legal property, for example, was anything but confined to a "tiny area for a tiny part of history".

In patriarchical systems, but not worldwide or throughout our existence.

Since your argument against gay marriage seems to be based largely on an unchanging "traditional" definition of marriage, showing that the definition has in fact changed a great deal rather deflates your argument.

Please stop fondling that strawman. I've never said the definition of marriage is unchanging.

[David Floyd]

If it happened, it would certainly change future dialogs with the US on human rights!

Tell ya what, when the PRC gets rid of the One Child Policy, stops cracking down on Falun Gong, and gets out of Tibet, THEN we'll talk

[Berzerker]

Geez, I can't keep up with this pace

Mindseye -

No, but in a zillion other examples a definition was changed to reflect a change in thinking. Consider the legal definition of the word "voter", for instance.

Voter - one who votes. I say concepts and you say legal, notice the difference? The concept of a voter has not changed...

I wonder how many straight people here at Apolyton would be willing to forego getting married in order to preserve the definition of a word - and at that, a word whose definition has changed considerably throughout history! Would you, Berzerker?

The definition of the word includes straight people. If it referred only to homosexuals, then so what? The fact homosexuality excludes heterosexuality from it's definition doesn't make me want to change the definition...

How did you like it when liberals and conservatives changed the definition of "voter" to include women?

I don't know that they did change the word, obviously women have voted in other cultures and in the distant past so the law may have changed only to reflect tradition. Again, you're confusing legal definitions with concepts and I've already said laws that pervert the concepts for those laws are invalid. There is nothing about the concept of "voter" that excludes women...

It's shocking to me that you can call yourself a libertarian, yet wish the government to intrude upon something so personal as marriage!

I don't want government involved with marriage. That's your position...

If you really were concerned about reducing government intervention in our lives, I should think you would be delighted in getting gov't out of the business of denying people the chance to marry.

What happens when homosexuals are allowed to "marry"? Homosexuals start suing businesses for benefits afforded other married employees? Lawsuits galore, that ain't a reduction of government interference...

Who, pray tell, will be hurt by re-defining marriage to include gays? Please don’t bother with arguments about paying for benefits, as gay people aren't complaining about paying for straight couple's benefits.

Of course they aren't complaining, they want those benefits too.

True, and definitions for "citizen" and "voter" were later changed to address this unfairness. Do you have object to those changes to "traditional" definitions?

"Legal" definitions changed, the concepts of "citizen" and "voter" do not require excluding people based on race. This is the tradition, not the recent laws that perverted the concepts...

It's simple: R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the eyes of the law.

So homosexuals won't start complaining about the benefits afforded married heterosexuals if homosexuals can marry? HA! It isn't about respect, it's about benefits... It's about the employer who gives married employees certain benefits not being given to homosexual couples.

Gee, that doesn't sound so unreasonable, given that gays don't choose to be gay.

Ah, the real agenda is revealed. Not "respect", benefits...

Uh, maybe in the interest of spreading the benefits a little more fairly?

Don't you mean "respect"?

Maybe you should consider the incremental added cost against the enormous importance to many people of having the opportunity to get married, something many people consider so very important, more important even than voting!

This "importance" is not the opportunity to get married, it's the opportunity to use government to force others to provide benefits.

I wonder what price tag most straight people would put on their opportunity to marry? At what levels are "benefits" so high that someone should be asked to give up their chance to marry?

Since people were getting married long before a welfare state, I'd say no price tag. Your second question provides some insight, if NO benefits were involved, would homosexuals be as zealous?

Guess it matters what side of the trough you are on.

I'm on neither side.

What you consider an "expansion" looks to a gay person like a more equitable distribution of benefits.

And I'm not a socialist either.

Why deny them to gay people?

Because it ain't my money to "distribute" more equitably. David Floyd - are you reading this? I told you what this is all about and here is your proof.

After all, gays are already paying for straights' benefits.

And I oppose that too...

Besides, considering the likely effect on the total number of marriages in the US, the degree of "expansion" does not appear too terribly great, certainly not great enough to warrant asking someone to forego marriage over it.

The goal of homosexuals is the expansion of government, not "marriage". If the law said homosexuals could marry but be denied these benefits, would they agree to those terms? Nope...

There are people in the US who don't accept inter-racial marriage. Well, that's their privilege. However, it's certainly no reason to deny marriage to those whose love crosses race lines.

Nor is it reason to re-define marriage.

The government certainly has never asked me whether or not I accept your relationship, or that of anyone else. Frankly, I would feel that your choice of partner was none of my business.

But it would become your business if you were forced to provide me benefits based on my relationship.

Berzerker, trust me on this: when gay people fight for their right to marry like anyone else, obtaining monetary benefits is not the prime motivator.

Then support a law that re-defines marriage to include homosexuality while denying benefits.

It’s about respect and equality in the eyes of the law. It's about something that the majority of people in our society aspire to. It's about marrying the person you love.

It's about benefits, a "more equitable distribution" of other people's money.

Where I grew up, marriage was taken very seriously. Of my eight married sibs, there has not been a single divorce. F*ck the benefits, I just want the gov't to get out of the business of denying me a chance to marry like my siblings. I want the gov't to recognize that as far as the law is concerned, the love I feel for my partner is no different than that my brothers and sisters feel for theirs. It's really that simple.

You need the government to validate your love?

By the way, are you married? I can hardly think so, considering the awfully low value you seem to put on it.

So if I oppose re-defining "marriage" to include homosexuals I must place an awfully low value on it? That's funny, the religious folk who oppose your agenda make the same argument - that allowing homosexual "marriage" detracts from the institution.

[Berzerker]

David -

Then why bring up an irrelevant one?

They are both relevant.

Good, you acknowledged that conservatives are part of the problem, too.

My God, look at Bush's expansion of government,

In any case, without government participation, neither group would be able to carry out their anti-freedom agenda. "Liberals" and "Conservatives" as groups are not to blame, but rather, liberals and conservatives in government.

Liberals and conservatives in government wouldn't be there if not for liberals and conservatives who are not in government.

Again, the answer is not to restrict the right to contract, the answer is to repeal anti-discrimination laws as they apply to private business.

I'm not restricting a right to contract, homosexuals can make any contract they want, they just don't get to use government to impose that contract, with it's re-defined words, on the rest of us.

Interesting viewpoint. Of course, man-woman couples can ALSO live together without technically being married, so why does anyone get married?

Some people want a binding commitment for the sake of their children, you'll have to ask them. But marriage did not come about because government provided or required benefits to married people.

In some cases, you're absolutely right - it's for economic benefits (incidentally, I think that taking away the potential for government-mandated economic benefits would drive down the number of marriages for convenience, which would probably impact the divorce rate, etc.).

Yup. Conversely, expanding the number of marriages for the sake of acquiring benefits will increase divorce. But this is an aside, I don't care about the number of marriages or divorces except for the fact more divorces means more children traumatised.

Heterosexual and homosexual couples alike are/would be guilty of this. So either you should support laws prohibiting ANY marriage, in order to prevent ANY ill-gotten gains, or you should be in favor of eliminating the mechanism for receiving certain economic benefits - ie, anti-discrimination laws as they apply to private business, for starters.

I don't want government involved with marriage at all. Mindseye seems to think I want a law prohibiting homosexuals from marrying, I just don't want a law making demands on the rest of us. And you and I know very well that is the agenda being pushed, not "marriage".

However, I think that the motivation for marriage, in many cases, is more than an economic one, for both heterosexual AND homosexual couples. Possibly MrFun, Boris, etc., could provide a viewpoint here, but it doesn't really matter. The fact that not all heterosexual marriages are about money implies that not all homosexual ones would be, either.

True, but the reality is once homosexuals have the law behind their "marriages" the benefits will follow via lawsuits.

I dispute your generalization WRT motivation once again, and once again I can only point out that the moral solution is to eliminate government-mandated economic benefits and anti-discrimination laws as applied to private business, rather than restricting the freedom of certain people to contract together.

They can contract now, they just want the mandated benefits.

That's not why my parents got married

I wasn't referring to your parents, I was referring to homosexuals today who see a pot of gold at the end of the "marriage" rainbow called government. People have been getting married long before government began affording special benefits to married people.

So, it seems that the logical solution, and the one most in keeping with a truly FREE system, would be to eliminate the ability to recover damages when private businesses discriminate.

Yes, but that ain't gonna happen. So this will only expand government control, not restrict it.

OK, so now it comes down to it. You admit that it isn't coercive UNTIL they try to act to take someone else's money. I won't bother repeating the most logical solution to that problem.

You didn't acknowledge that they can "marry" now via contract, they just can't impose that contract on the rest of us.

No, but Bob and I can pay each other in root beer, which is the point. Whether or not I can pay creditors in root beer is really determined by the contract I have with the creditors.

Exactly! And that's where "marriage" and the courts enter the picture. Once homosexuals can "marry", they can use the courts to compel other people to pay them for being married via lawsuits.

[David Floyd]

Liberals and conservatives in government wouldn't be there if not for liberals and conservatives who are not in government.

Granted. Actually, I forgot what triviality we were arguing about here in the first place.

I'm not restricting a right to contract, homosexuals can make any contract they want, they just don't get to use government to impose that contract, with it's re-defined words, on the rest of us.

Actually, homosexuals CANNOT enter into a marriage contract, at least not one that is legally recognized. That's the whole point. And by "legally recognized", I'm not referring to economic benefits gained at the expense from others, I'm more referring to things such as child custody, joint property, inheritance, things of that nature.

Some people want a binding commitment for the sake of their children, you'll have to ask them. But marriage did not come about because government provided or required benefits to married people.

Precisely! Just because some homosexuals and some heterosexuals see a "pot of gold", to use your phrase, doesn't mean that they are all in it for that reason.

Mindseye seems to think I want a law prohibiting homosexuals from marrying, I just don't want a law making demands on the rest of us. And you and I know very well that is the agenda being pushed, not "marriage".

Well, in some cases, you are right, but in many cases, homosexuals just want to be able to enter into a legal contract, the same as heterosexuals. I would actually argue that economic benefits are not the main issue, for a great deal of homosexuals AND heterosexuals.

True, but the reality is once homosexuals have the law behind their "marriages" the benefits will follow via lawsuits.

Right, but if this is your argument, it seems only fair to abolish the institution of marriage altogether. Instead, though, you are saying that since repealing anti-discrimination laws isn't likely, and (I'll put words in your mouth here, but I think it's accurate) since abolishing marriage altogether isn't likely, we should just restrict the rights of homosexuals to marry, or rather, continue a prior restriction. This is kinda confusing to me, because on most issues you would take my position - repeal the immoral laws, not restrict freedom. The likelihood of something happening isn't relevant to the position you support - or if it is, then I wonder why you hold so many Libertarian beliefs. Repealing drug laws isn't likely, either, but I doubt you would say that it is moral to put people in jail for 1 year instead of 5 years as a punishment.

They can contract now, they just want the mandated benefits.

Really? Homosexuals can enter into a marriage contract now? In which state?

Yes, but that ain't gonna happen. So this will only expand government control, not restrict it.

Actually, one thing it WOULD do, which I think we can both agree is positive, is end, at least in part, government discrimination against a certain group of people.

You didn't acknowledge that they can "marry" now via contract

No they can't, at least not in the way that I can. Yes, two homosexuals can enter into an agreement, but for it to qualify as a contract there must be some way to enforce the agreement. That's the whole point of courts and contracts, which exist even in an ideal Libertarian society.

Once homosexuals can "marry", they can use the courts to compel other people to pay them for being married via lawsuits.

Actually, the true requirement for lawsuits is the existence of immoral laws. Get rid of the immoral laws, and you get rid of the lawsuits.