The future of marriage

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Do you think you'll have an easier time arguing against polygamy?

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What do you want to bet that the reasons he gives against polygamy aren't applicable to two-person gay marriage? (Well, except for the standard argument, "I don't understand it, so it must be bad" argument.)

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But government...is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions. -- Bill Moyers (quoting John Schwarz)

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...there really is nothing wrong with it, other than it is offensive to tradition.

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Which is the same thing as saying that there is nothing wrong with it at all.

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But government...is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions. -- Bill Moyers (quoting John Schwarz)

Go out and count all the people who are in favor of legalized gay marriage. The count all the people who are in favor of legalized polygamy. I bet that lots more people are in favor of gay marriage than for polygamy. Just a guess, though. That is a more reasonable way to determine social priorities I think.

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But government...is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions. -- Bill Moyers (quoting John Schwarz)

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So it IS a matter of opinion then.

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Well, we are talking about right or wrong here. Morality and ethics, when you get down to it, are a matter of opinion. The main reason that we don't kill and eat our own children, for example, is that most of us have the opinion that it is wrong.Of course, it depends on whether these opinions form a consistent whole, or whether they stem from a self-consistent theory of morality. That is what the discussion of gay marriage comes about -- prohibiting gay marriage seems inconsistent with the Enlightenment ideals of liberal democracy that has developed over the last several centuries, and that we supposedly claim that we uphold.

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But government...is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions. -- Bill Moyers (quoting John Schwarz)

And, in fact, the 14th amendment, among other things, obligates the states to uphold the 1st amendment. There are many religious traditions that hold polygamy not only acceptable but desirable, so by not allowing polygamous marriages it would appear that a state is prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

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But government...is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions. -- Bill Moyers (quoting John Schwarz)

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Oh, I'm not bored by making fun of you.

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And neither am I. God, I missed you when you were gone, Dan. Oh yeah, topic! Uh, gays should be allowed to be married.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

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Well, for starters, it would mean that same-sexes can get "married." That's of a change, don't you think?

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I thought that the definition of marriage was two people who love each other wants to make a permanent commitment to each other?Anyway, I think you will agree that the definition of marriage has already changed at least once, namely from a formal contractual agreement between two families or clans to cement their alliance.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

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So you agree that "marriage" has tribal roots. The question here is about how far we should depart from our traditional roots.

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What the hell are you talking about? We have completely departed from our "tribal roots". "Marriage" is a completely, totally different institution than what was once practiced."Families" used to be the basic unit of production in society. People used to live on subsistance farms; as towns developed some people set up family run market stalls and craftsman shops. Literally family run. Children did a lot of the work in the business and were trained to work the business by the parents.Nowadays production and distribution in goods occurs in factories, offices, and stores that have nothing to do with the family. The parents will work in different locations run by different groups of people. Children no longer contribute to family income or societal production; their education and training also largely occurs away from the family. In fact, since many married couples now choose not to have any children and others decide to adopt non-blood related children, and there are many, many children being raised by single parents, the purpose of marriage is clearly not even to produce or raise children.Marriage used to be an institution that cemented ties between different clans and families. In some cases, love between the couple may have been considered an ideal, it was not necessary and, in fact, the wishes of the couple would be overruled by the interests of the family. Love between the couple was neither necessary to maintain a marriage nor sufficient to produce one. Love really had nothing to do with marriage--it was all about two families, clans, or tribes forming or maintaining relationships.Now, where in all of this do you see a tradition that the homophobic right is trying to preserve? I see not movement, even among the goofy right, to dismantle industrial capitalism in favor of subsistance farming. I also see no movement among even the lunatic "traditionalists" to give rights to the extended family unit to force the younger members of the family into marriages.Instead, we see the moonbat conservatives talk about marriage being a commitment between "a man and woman who love each other" when that was never what traditional marriage was about. The closest they come to traditional concepts of marriage is the rather superficial view that families are to raise children without recognizing that that is no longer what families are for, that this is irrelevant to gay marriage, and that families no longer do (nor can) "raise children" according to the traditional definition of "raising children".Somehow, during the last couple of hundred years, the definition of marriage has changed into a completely, utterly, totally different institution. What we call "marriage" today has nothing to do with "marriage" during Feudal times, or even during Victorian times, nor did their notions of "marriage" have anything to do with our modern concept.The definition of marriage has changed -- there is no longer anything "traditional" about. All the traditional notions of marriage have already been drained out of it.Now marriage is "a commitment between a couple who love each other." That is a complete change from the older definition of marriage. All anyone is trying to do now is make a minor, an insignificant, a very, very small adjustment as to what we mean by a "couple". Compared to the changes already made from the previous "tradition", extending "marriage" to same-sex couples is nothing.Edited by Chiroptera, : Correct typos. It would be nice if anyone could edit anyone else's posts to correct typos. In fact, it would be really, really cool if Dan Carroll could correct Hoot Mon's post to make them read better.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

1) Sheep do not have the intellectual capacity to enter into the legally binding contract that constitutes marriage. Furthermore, sheep are not capable of meeting the legal obligations of marriage, to wit:2) Sheep cannot mount a legal challenge if the parents of the deceased human partner decide to take and raise the children for themselves, nor is a sheep capable of raising human children according to accepted standards if she could mount such a challenge; and3) Sheep cannot make important legal and medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse.This is pretty much why you cannot marry comatose people, corpses, young children, and sailboats either. I thought crashfrog, Dan Carroll, and Jaderis already explained all this to you. Are you going to ignore this post as well?Edited by Chiroptera, : Another typo.Edited by Chiroptera, : Damn, I thought I already corrected that typo!

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

Sure, I agree. This whole argument has convinced me that marriage is, fundamentally, a religious institution, and the civil state should not in any way be entangled in such religious institutions.The word marriage should be expunged from the law books and replaced with civil union or similar language. Furthermore, there should no longer be either the requirement nor the option of having the civil union solemnized by a religious authority; the civil union becomes valid when and only when the "Certificate of Civil Union" -- not "Marriage Liscense" -- is signed and appropriate oaths taken in the presence of the legally authorized state official responsible to oversee the signing.And, if the couple feels they need an additional "solemnizing ceremony", they can go on their own to find a religious (or other) authority who will recognize their union. But this would be legally unnecessary: the union would be valid the moment they signed the Certificate in the presence of the state official.But in the meantime, same-sex couples are barred from entering into the legally binding contractual relationship, with its obligations and privileges, that is open to different-sex couples. What's more, there is no movement whatsoever to remove the word marriage from the law books, so we have to do what we can in the meantime to allow everyone the same right to designate that one, special person of their choosing to be the one who has certain rights on, privileges, and obligations to the other. And attempts to allow same-sex couples the same legal protections and obligations as marriage but under a different term are barred from doing so by the very same people who are against gay marriages.This "protection of marriage" has nothing to do with protecting "traditional marriage". This has everything to do with attempting to marginalize "untraditional" behavior.Added by edit:
I should also add that it would be problematic to have two different civilly recognized unions side-by-side, namely marriage and civil union. Despite the good intentions of some of the "separate-but-equal" folks, having two separate institutions will make it easy to make and maintain significant differences in the two so that they would not be equal in fact. In fact, I believe that in most jurisdictions that have civil union, it does have significant differences from marriage. By having just one recognized institution, it will make it harder to maintain an unequal difference based on who the couples are.Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.Edited by Chiroptera, : Clarification in third paragraph.Edited by Chiroptera, : Ha ha ha. "Separate-gut-equal." Ha ha.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

It may be that I have misread your post. Jaderis was describing how a couple could consummate a marriage other than by penis-vagina intercourse. Are you simply adding the possibility of a couple, of any combination of sexes, using a sheep? If so, that would add more methods of consummation beyond heterosexual penis-vagina sex.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

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It's changing the meaning of marriage to preserve the future of marriage.

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I thought you just agreed with me that the meaning of marriage has already drastically change, and the gay marriage would be comparatively insignificant?

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

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What wrong with: "You two guys. You two girls. You can go ahead and get civilly united"?

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What is wrong with it is that "seperate but equal" is rarely equal. What was wrong with separate schools for whites and for blacks? Well, one of the things wrong was that black schools were crummy.It is the same as that would happen with civil unions vs. marriage. Eventually, someone will decide that people who are only civilly united don't need, say, the alimony rights that someone in a "real" marriage would have. Someone might decide that "real" marriage needs to be strengthened, making divorce harder than it would be to dissolve a civil union for another.So there is the real prossibility that gays will get stuck with a social institution that still does not give them the same rights and obligations as a heterosexual couple would enjoy. I will even say that it is probable that inequalities will creep in.Only by giving gay couples the exact same options as heterosexual couples can you maintain protections for the equality of gays.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

Which is a fine proposal. If you want to work toward that, fine, I'll sign the petition myself.But that is not on the radar here. No one is suggesting such a thing in this country, and there is no organized movement to implement such a thing. It will take much, much time to get such a proposal organized as a movement much less fight against the ultra-traditionalists who will insist that the state continue to entangle itself in religious institutions.In the meantime, right now, as we speak, homosexual couples do not have the same rights to join in the same legally binding contractual relationship that heterosexual couples can. Until that far off promised day arrives, when we will finally have achieved our secular utopia and workers' paradise and Jesus comes back and gives all the good boys and girls icecream, we need to do something right now to maintain and protect the rights of all adults to enter into a mutually consensual, legally binding contractual relationship on an equal basis.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely