Fags are the new ******s.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by rah
I'll start with, I don't give a rats ass what's it called as long as they all have the same legal standing and rights. So if gays want to call it marriage, fine by me.

For this arguement though I go along with the if civil union has same rights don't worry about it. Let the bigots call it whatever they want as long as you get the rights. Nothing says you have to call it a civil union, you can call it a marriage and only people that you don't care about would bother to correct you. Once people get used to the concept and see that the world didn't end, most of them will stop caring about it and within a few years marriage will be the defacto term and there won't be any difference.

I believe the bigger fight you make on the terminology now will just forestall true progress in this area. Take what they give you now, it doesn't mean you won't get the rest later.

So you and I agree on something.

[onodera]

Re: Re: Re: Fags are the new ******s.

Originally posted by Asher


I'm hoping this is a joke.

If buggery was outlawed in Canada, what would your life be like, Asher?

[Asher]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Fags are the new ******s.

Originally posted by onodera

If buggery was outlawed in Canada, what would your life be like, Asher?

Clandestine.

More exciting.

It wouldn't stop me, anyway. The outlaw aspect has been tried. It still happens.

[chequita guevara]

It was outlawed in most of the world for most of history. Still happened.

[onodera]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles
It was outlawed in most of the world for most of history. Still happened.

I know it would still have happened. The question is of the scale.

[Asher]

Originally posted by onodera

I know it would still have happened. The question is of the scale.

You're crazy if you think laws dictate human sexuality.

Just because you'd **** men if ****ing women was illegal doesn't mean most men would.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Asher
What should happen is marriage should be purely outside of the realm of government. The government can provide Civil Union certificates which can form the basis for ANY and ALL legal issues, while churches can marry whoever they wish to...

[onodera]

Originally posted by Asher


You're crazy if you think laws dictate human sexuality.

Just because you'd **** men if ****ing women was illegal doesn't mean most men would.

Call me crazy. I've seen men, married men with children, come out of the closet when the old USSR penal code that included an article on buggery was abolished.

[Arrian]

The problem, onodera, wasn't that they came out of the closet. It's that they had to be in the closet in the first place.

-Arrian

[Asher]

Originally posted by onodera

Call me crazy. I've seen men, married men with children, come out of the closet when the old USSR penal code that included an article on buggery was abolished.

It is possible for gay men to force themselves to marry women and have children.

These men end up with massive mental problems and are genuinely unhappy. Look at all of the republican closet cases that've been coming out...

[Arrian]

One of my high school teachers, married with kids, ended up hanging himself. He was gay (we all knew this - he was the only teacher in the school who had style). Good guy, good teacher... I remember being so shocked and sad when I heard the news.

Too bad the guy couldn't just keep living the lie, right?

-Arrian

[Blaupanzer]

Re: Re: Fags are the new ******s.

Originally posted by onodera

1) When a bi-curious child knows that being a homo is worse than being a hetero, he'll stick to liking opposite sex and form a heterosexual family if he's lucky. It's not like you are born with a huge switch in your head set to one of the two positions with no intermediate settings that cannot be adjusted.
2) When a closet homosexual or a lesbian marries a member of the opposite sex to avoid being identified as one, they can have sex and have children.
By legally oppressing homosexuals you are forcing more people into heterosexual relationships, improving (probably only slightly, but still) your demographics.

This is absolute nonsense. 1) Most bi-curious children experiment, the difference in their experience based in part on how others react if they find out. If he is gay then he is NOT "lucky" to have a hetero family when he prefers male companionship. 2) People do not marry to improve the gene pool and the national demographics. (This kind of talk shows you need to get out of Russia, that is twisted reasoning.) Forcing people into closets twists their psyche and breaks down society's authenticity. Incidentally, homosexuals in this country used to pair up, male and female, to enter into phony cover marraiges. You can imagine how much those marraiges helped society.

Let each of us choose our own partners and get a licence for a legal union from the state to swap fluids. As noted above, let religions use some ritual to turn these legal unions into "marraiges" if they choose.

[Elok]

Just curious, Asher: do you mean that there is historical precedent for gay marriage? All I can think of is one of the Roman emperors (Claudius? Nero? One of them, I always get them mixed up for some reason) marrying his slave with Caesar in the role of the bride. And that was an aberration. Was there a society in premodern times which accepted marriage between same-sex couples? I know there were plenty which accepted homosexuality, at least under some circumstances.

This is purely a matter of historical interest to me, of course; IMO people should have the ability to grant rights to one another without bothering over who's boning who, if any boning is happening at all. If somebody wants to file taxes jointly, etc. with anyone at all--even a random guy he just met on the street, whatever--it's no skin off my back. I'm opposed to civil "marriage" for anyone because the idea that there's something sacramental about a government contract is somehow both creepy and comical, and should be discouraged.

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by Asher


The agenda of equality is not an evil one.

If you read my entire post you would have noticed I said that just because an agenda was moral and good doesn't mean that every tactic in an attempt to promote that agenda is correct or wise.

To me it seems the problem here, assuming equal benefits etc., isn't so much with the law but with the English language. You want the law to change the definition of a word. My point is that equality under the law is whats important. Marriage is a word with a definition. What you seek is a legal and an equal recognition of a homosexual union as a heterosexual one. That's fine and I agree with you. That doesn't mean we should change the English language to accommodate that noble goal.

Men and women should have equal rights but we didn't change the English language to accommodate this. We don't call women "men". Nor did we outlaw both terms (men and women) and replace it everywhere with "person". Furthermore we have different names for substantially the same organization based on whether they are male or female. The reason for this is simply to more accurately describe it, not to discriminate against it

Consider the following:

1) Is it sexist or wrong to call a sorority a sorority instead of a fraternity? No.

2) Should we insist that both organizations be called fraternities? No.

3) Is it sexist for a university in its charter to have language that describes a fraternity as a male organization and a sorority as a female organization but gives them the same rights, benefits and privileges? No

4) Should we strive to change the meaning of the word fraternity to accommodate a noble cause - equal rights amongst men and women? No.

5) Should men and women have equal rights? Yes.

6) Should their organizations have the same benefits and rights as each others? Yes.

7) Do we have to change the English language and name them the same things to accomplish equality? No.

8) Can a sorority refer to itself as a fraternity or vice versa, and can their members refer to themselves as frat boys or frat girls? Sure.

9) Should the sorority demand the university rewrite it's charter to omit the term sorority and demand female organizations also be called fraternities? No.

10) Should sororities or fraternities demand universities ensure that both have equal rights and benefits? Yes

Now take the 10 questions above and substitute Straight for men/male, Gay for women/female, Fraternity for Marriage, Sorority for Civil Union and sexist for homophobic and maybe you will understand my point.
.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Deity Dude
That's a good point but it is different for a few reasons.

Marriage, regardless of race has a generally accepted definition.

You fail right out of the gate. The point was that, at one time, interracial couplings were NOT considered part of that accepted definition.

So explain to me again why a black/white couple should have been satisfied with a term such as "interracial union" or whatever to refer to their relationship while other people got to have the term "marriage." What they sought, after all, was a redefinition of what constituted the word "marriage" in their place and time.