Hello everybody

[notyoueither]

Because no one discussed it last time (or I missed it, this thread has too many posts to read), religion/politics are not the most highly correlated with being pro-gay marriage, but rather education. And education is one of the sociological factors that makes a person more pro-change.

"
One of the more interesting pieces of data is that the variable with the least impact is religion. For every extra percentage point of a county's population that is religiously adherent, there is only a 0.1-point change we would see in support for marriage bans.

Education, it turns out, is far more important at accounting for the differences between county votes in favor of same sex marriage bans. When holding religious adherence and Obama support constant, we would expect that the percentage of support for same-sex marriage bans to drop by 0.8-0.9 of a point for every extra 1% of a county's population that has at least a bachelor's degree.
"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/10/gay-marriage-three-key-factors-voting-bansface

(I wanted to close that tab, so wanted to be sure that people read my point before I did so)

Education is the answer. Not 'bigots' or 'douchebags' or '*******s'. And saying 'change' is not education.

JM

The fact that educated people are more liberal on social issues has zero relevance to your ridiculous claim that me calling Ben a bigot will lead to more hate motivated crimes.

[Aeson]

I am not asserting that support for this policy is rising.

Your statement was that trying to legislate for gay marriage would be like trying to "turn back" the tides. The tide is obviously surging towards allowing gay marriage, and so your analogy was clearly applied incorrectly.

I am asserting that the mere passage of a law is not going to do much to effect social acceptance.

You were doing far more than that. You were promoting an analogy that would suggest that popular support against gay marriage is surging, rather than the opposite truth of the matter.

Nevermind that you are incorrect ... the rule of law is a reinforcement to those things it enforces. It may not overcome all other factors, but it certainly helps to have the law on your side. This can be seen over and over throughout history. It's not like discrimination against African Americans disappeared with the Emancipation Proclamation, but it was a huge boon to the cause.

Yes, there will always be bigots. But when they can't hide behind the law to discriminate against others they lose most of their power over others. This has many other affects on society. You have the law saying "discrimination is not right" which is a positive reinforcement, you have removed the negative reinforcement of "discrimination is right", you have removed the draw of power that is granted to some people over other people, you have added protection against application of bigotry. These are much more important factors than you are giving them credit for. Without these changes, the cause is retarded. With them, it is accelerated.

Nor is it the proper purpose of a law to certify that we love, hate, distrust, like, or enjoy one another's presence or company.

That has nothing to do with whether gay marriage should be treated equally to heterosexual marriage. We have already decided that the purpose of the law is to make marriage a legal institution. The question now is whether we should discriminate based on sexuality or not. (Since "get government out of marriage altogether" is not being discussed seriously yet.)

I understand that there are other arguments in favour of gay marriage and I don't pretend otherwise.

You ignore all the valid arguments offered in this thread, misconstrue them, and then discard them in favor of your strawmen.

One of the difficulties of forum thread arguments is that, on the one hand, you're arguing with specific people and you've made specific points before. On the other hand, other people simply read your latest post and assume that a particular statement is all you have to say.

I addressed your analogy specifically, I pointed out why it was not properly applied. You are just throwing up strawmen to try to avoid accepting the mistake you made. Whether or not legislating for gay marriage is "trying to turn back the tide" or not has nothing to do with other statements you've made in this thread. It clearly stands on it's own two feet as the tide is obviously moving towards allowing gay marriage. It is very simple. You were incorrect to refer to the tide as moving against allowing gay marriage.

No, I don't make any such pretence. Anyone can see that there are other arguments in favour of gay marriage, whatever their merit. You're engaging in mind-reading and making assumptions about my views that aren't founded in what I've written in this thread. You're simply assuming that because I've pointed out the illogicality of the "marriage is about love" meme or the "it's inevitable" meme that I'm wholeheartedly against, or unaware of (or both) any argument in favour of gay marriage. In short, you're not so much attacking my views so much as what you would imagine or prefer my views to be.

Again, you are being a hypocrite. It is you who are conjuring an argument to (badly) address, mindreading as it were, rather than address what was said.

Look at what MikeH said:

"Are all conservatives really too stupid to understand that a person might love another person and want to marry them, and that the person might feel that being denied that right when others are allowed it is unfair?"

To which you inapplicably replied:

"I understand why they might feel that way perfectly well. They want social acceptance and validation."

You completely ignored the sentiment expressed in MikeH's statement that it was unfair to be denied the right by law. Instead you chose to make the sentiment into something completely different about "wanting social acceptance". They want to have rights so that they have rights. Not so that some redneck will think better of them. Then you start ranting about how people are only giving arguments for gay marriage that are the arguments you've conjured yourself and stating that you aren't ignoring the other arguments even though you obviously are ignoring them.

I disagree. For example, bad laws, once implemented, can accelerate disfavour towards those laws, once people see their actual effect.

It is not a bad law. The idea that bigots don't discriminate against people except if the discriminated against people get protection from the law is absurd. Especially when the argument is actually not about discrimination from bigots, but rather discrimination by law.

I'm not a hypocrite.

Yes you are. You are mindbogglingly hypocritical in this thread. Every argument you make seems to be a direct contradiction to something you previously said or did in this thread. You misconstrued MikeH's statement, then claimed the response was misconstruing your statement by keeping to the context of what you were replying to. You conjured your own strawman to argue against, then whine about how people are conjuring arguments against you(when in reality they are simply addressing the initial argument rather than your strawman. You offer a silly analogy about turning back the tides, when it is actually your position that is trying to turn back the tide.

Majority support for or against a given policy doesn't make it the right policy.

Another strawman from you. No one said majority makes it right. I said the tide is obviously moving towards a majority supporting gay marriage, to counter your implication that the tide was moving in the opposite direction.

It doesn't matter to me whether gay marriage is likely to receive popular support; it matters to me if that support is based on sound thinking and common sense. It may well be that most people will take a pro-gay marriage view in future but that doesn't make it right.

You said that it was not possible to tell which way support was moving. It is blatantly obvious it is moving towards supporting gay marriage. Of course rather than acknowledge statistical evidence offered to support that claim, you pretend the claim is something entirely different and then hypocritically whine about how your position is being misconstrued.

It's funny how voicing the slightest objection to anything but full-on support for every argument in favour of gay marriage policy creates a lightning rod for thoughtless assumptions and projection by some of its proponents. Suddenly this isn't a good faith-argument; rather I'm "pretending"--overtly, consciously lying to myself and others--that there's only one argument in favour of gay marriage, which happens, in my view, to be nonsense. The fact that I've expressly pointed out another argument in favour of some state-based recognition of gay parenting and custody laws, well, either you haven't bothered reading it or it's just plain irrelevant to you. Heaven forbid that I should point out that the "marriage is about love" meme is tired, brainless nonsense, because that wouldn't suit the 'gay marriage is inevitable' narrative.

The funny thing is how you keep tripping yourself up and then arguing against the tactics you yourself are using.

If you want intelligent and amicable discussion, you shouldn't lead off by misconstruing the arguments of others and attacking strawmen. You certainly shouldn't start insulting other posters for being able to stick to the context of the argument while you flail around in some delusional limbo you've created.

[Aeson]

So the main conclusion is that education is teaching people to support gay marriage ... It's clearly NOT unbiased, and liberal professors are overwhelmingly promoting their views on their students.

... or that as people become more familiar with the way the world actually is, they are more likely to realize that discrimination is not a good thing.

[Jon Miller]

Would that be like when pro-life people shout about baby killing and then clinics get bombed and doctors murdered?

I agree, words are indeed important.

I agree, murdering a killer does not always solve anything.

I personally still hold the view that violence isn't what is needed to change society. I do not support those who do so.

That does not mean that I think I or anyone else should back down and meekly go along with the slaughter of innocents

JM

[Jon Miller]

The fact that educated people are more liberal on social issues has zero relevance to your ridiculous claim that me calling Ben a bigot will lead to more hate motivated crimes.

Go ahead and call Ben a bigot. I do.

I am saying that everyone who does not agree with the argument that not extending marriage to homosexuals is discrimination is a bigot is wrong and harmful.

Education is a known sociological experience that makes people more accepting or in favor of change. There are genetic factors as well as sociologic. That is why it is relevant.

Please don't put words and arguments in my mouth. Particularly if they are ridiculously stupid.

JM

[notyoueither]

Go ahead and call Ben a bigot. I do.

I am saying that everyone who does not agree with the argument that not extending marriage to homosexuals is discrimination is a bigot is wrong and harmful.

Education is a known sociological experience that makes people more accepting or in favor of change. There are genetic factors as well as sociologic. That is why it is relevant.

Please don't put words and arguments in my mouth. Particularly if they are ridiculously stupid.

JM

I've been trying to get you to elaborate and clarify your ridiculous statements. You appear to be refusing to do so. I am left to make assumptions and to guess what it is you are on about.

The link between education and your unsubtantiated claims re the causes of hate motivated crimes remains to be made. Perhaps you should get on with establishing it.

[notyoueither]

The fact that education may make people more socially liberal does not lead to the conclusion that being harsh with people who demonstrate bigotry will cause more hate crimes.

[kentonio]

That does not mean that I think I or anyone else should back down and meekly go along with the slaughter of innocents

But gays should meekly go along with having their rights trampled on to make sure they don't offend any bigots?

[Zevico]

And there's that strawman again.

First off, "marriage is about love" was an argument put by Gribbler on this very thread, and more famously, Keith Olberman in a long winded rant. It is not a strawman to address an argument put by another.

I also understand that MikeH's argument concerned equality of treatment. I addressed that argument in a later post to the one you quoted. Best to read the whole thread before replying. See post 1041 above.

[Aeson]

How the **** am I supposed to read post 1041 before replying to you in post 1029? You act like I should have known what you were talking about even though you hadn't "clarified" it yet. Instead for some absurd reason I took your response to MikeH as if it were your response to MikeH and addressed it as such. What a crazy world we live in!

Not to mention that your post 1041 is completely useless. Marriage != have kids, no matter what Ben tells you.

Gay guy in Zev's fantasy world says, "Oh gosh ... I can't marry my male lover, so I guess I'll go get pregnant!"

Straight guy in Zev's fantasy world says, "Hurray! Gays can get married so instead of ****ing women I'm going to forgo that instinctual desire and all the pleasures associated with it so that I can marry me a man even though I'm not attracted to them at all!"

And of course artificial insemination, birth control, impotence/being barren, and surrogate mothers simply don't exist! All so we can continue to not feel guilty about discriminating against homosexual couples...

[Zevico]

I was replying to Kentonio, not you. Nothing personal. He just missed my post.

[giblets]

And there's that strawman again.

First off, "marriage is about love" was an argument put by Gribbler on this very thread, and more famously, Keith Olberman in a long winded rant. It is not a strawman to address an argument put by another.

No one actually addressed it in an intelligent manner, however.

[Aeson]

I was replying to Kentonio, not you. Nothing personal. He just missed my post.

I was the one pointing out how you wrongly replied to MikeH's post, not Kentonio. And yes it is a strawman to quote one poster and then respond to it by arguing against something someone else said.

[Zevico]

MikeH did not make this argument & I apologise for any confusion caused by not responding to his argument in the post referred to abov where I quoted him.

[MrFun]

Is a person who opposes blacks having voting rights, a bigot, or just someone who has a legitimate, different opinion?