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Xbox Live Now Allows Gender Expression
Last year we discussed news that an Xbox Live gamer was banned for identifying herself as a lesbian on her profile. Microsoft said at the time that nothing sexual in nature could appear in Gamertags or profiles. Now, they seem to have reconsidered their stance, and they've updated their Code of Conduct accordingly. Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten wrote:
"[The update] will allow our members to more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in Gamertags and profiles. Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community. This update also comes hand-in-hand with increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of these terms."
...transgender lesbian, and let Microsoft try to figure out what that means. They'd probably have to google it!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"That decision is like, SO GAY!"
Gay rights are the civil rights struggle of our generation. When you have two consenting adults living and loving each other and then telling them they cannot get life insurance on each other to cover their mutual home in case of tragety is bigotry. This "marriage is between a man and a woman" bit is exactly the same as "coloreds don't drink from the white fountain." I don't even happen to be gay and I can still clearly see this.
Shh.
More chances to have religious and political flame wars with 13 year olds. What could go wrong?
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Yeah right. Try "Feedback from our lawyers".
Even though protection is still wholly inadequate at the federal level; microsoft does business in a number of states where anti-gay discrimination is very illegal and very actionable. I don't believe for a second that they've had a sudden change of heart in the direction of equality and fairness. More likely, legal and PR informed the decision makers that they were about to be on the losing end of some pretty hefty legal action and bad press.
Imagine all the people...
It's a great change, but I'll be curious to see how many LGBT users actually opt to specify such in their profiles. Knowing the user population of Xbox Live, it's pretty reasonable to assume that such users would be subjecting themselves to severe denigration by other users on the service. Likewise, I fully expect LGBT users who identify themselves and who receive such responses from other users to cry foul at Microsoft for not doing enough. That isn't to say Microsoft is doing enough to police Xbox Live (the service is a festering cesspool of bigots and homophobes), but I don't feel as though there are many more policing options open to Microsoft on the service, and I don't see this move making good business sense. More importantly, I see the new freedoms of expression to be lightly used at best for the previously mentioned reasons, and it's most likely it'll be used by trolls and bigots in an effect to mock LBGT users, effecting the opposite of the intended result, and stymieing users' desire to express themselves on the service in the process.
What's with the urge to tell people that you're homosexual? I don't go around telling people that I am heterosexual and usually find it inappropriate when somebody tells me their sexual orientation. What do I care? When I make a move, shoot me down when you are not interested because you're homosexual or when you're just not interested. When we work or play, I don't need to know.
Nah, all of these policies are caused by lawyers and fearmongering. I don't think any Microsoft exec cares how you call yourself on Xbox live, as long as you pay your yearly fees. However, Lawyers probably said that "inappropriate" words in the Gamertag could result in a lawsuit - which is why they were forbidden in the first place.
Bigender, being a subset of Transgender.
The information isn't really for you, it is for other homosexuals.
semantics are everything!
Don't tell me you're gay, or straight, or white, or black, or a hairdresser or a hobbit fetishist. I don't care. Either pull out the BFG and start fragging some bad guys, or stick your head in the way of my shots.
You may choose to play first-person shooters exclusively, but not all gamers agree. I don't have an Xbox 360 console yet (I want one for XNA, but I'm waiting for hardware reliability issues to be solved; are they?) and therefore know little about its available games, but I'm certain that at least a couple games revolve around socializing, much like Nintendo's Animal Crossing 3 for Wii.
I fail to see the need for this and I also fail to understand the need of certain people to announce their sexual orientation to the world. You're a lesbian. That's fine, but I don't care and I don't need this particular piece of information. I can't believe that you're looking for potential partners on XBL, and if you are, you need to examine your methods. The only possible reason I can see for this is to state your orientation for the express purpose of having others mock and ridicule you so you can then complain and make a bid deal out of it.
Some people are gay. Who cares?
Microsoft is based in Seattle. We tend to be quite liberal and supportive of civil rights out here. Hell, I had two jobs with two lesbian managers in a row -- in IT! How often does that happen?
Microsoft learned about this the hard way in 2005: Originally opposed to a gay rights bill in Washington state, they quickly changed position.
Said Balmer at the time:
I read that as "our employees [probably smart, talented, and many quite senior in the company] threw a fucking fit over our ignorance."
True to their word, in 2009 Microsoft donated $100k to support partnership rights in Washington.
I agree with other commenters that this is a civil rights issue, and seriously doubt Microsoft will screw the pooch on gay rights ever again.
I got enough crap in my own life to worry about.
Sorry, we don't care that you've "got enough crap in your own life". You're now banned from Slashdot for saying something that isn't approved of, and that no one cares about.
Don't go whining about it - there are more important things to worry about than a Slashdot account, right?
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[...] it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community [...]
How come? Did gay people avoid joining because they couldn't state that they were gay?
I hate when people compare the trials of someone claiming to be 'gay' to the trials of the black populace. Not even in the same ballpark. A white or Asian gay male won't have NEARLY as many obstacles (both perceived and real) on the way to success in the United States and abroad as a gay OR straight black male.
Guess why.
There's always some asshole on this site who likes to compare some topic (usually ANYTHING) to race issues, or being called the n-word.
Do us all a favor and please stop comparing apples to fucking Land Cruisers.
Cloning will offer a way for people who don't have the compatible equipment reproduce. That is not far off. My indignation comes mainly because of injustice in treatment. Marriage brings a whole host of benefits to a couple mainly in terms of how they can financially manage their mutual lives. Denying these benefits to people who love each other just as deeply may not benefit society but it sure as hell wrongs those individuals. Can't claim each others income together when applying for the mortage? I'll admit I'm inexperienced in the details of what gets denied but the fact remains: I was raised that we are all equals and I will rail against "traditions" that make some less equal than others. Society is defined by individuals not the other way around.
Shh.
Hopefully, Microsoft reinstates thoses that were banned.
Lesbian and gay are not genders. They might imply one, but they aren't genders themselves.
Twinstiq, game news
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Pandora's closet has been OPENED
more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation
Race, nationality and sexual orientation are totally covered by the GNAA. So will they be allowed to express themselves freely on XBox live?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I can join a game on-line with my PC and have whatever name I like. I can tell people that I am a male (or female) on the game server and not have Nazis ban me! Also, my on-line games will likely still work five years from now, when the X360 on-line features will be disabled.
Long live the PC and on-line PC games, where Servers can be run by the community and not placed in the control of people who have an interest in forcing us to buy the latest game!
Whereas, the reasons I hear in opposition of same-sex marriage are simple: traditional marriage is intended to incentivize childbearing, which is how we perpetuate our species, a practice without which our society will inevitably terminate
If this is our intent, we could gather a lot of extra taxes from those people who are married but unable or unwilling to conceive. Why should they get the benefit when they have no intention or are unable to fulfill the requirements of the incentive?
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Can't claim each others income together when applying for the mortage?
I was under the impression you could apply for a mortgage jointly, regardless of marital status. I base this solely on the fact that when I was applying for my mortgage, they knew of my girlfriend (and that we were not married) and asked if I was applying jointly or singly.
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How deep do you think the roots against gay marriage go into Christian values? I believe they do go quite far and therefore assert freedom from religion.
Shh.
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What I see is that you have given sufficient thought to come up with a justification of why those people were assholes but you, holding very similar views, are actually a rather enlightened fellow. This doesn't change anything of the reality of the situation; they're both the same shit.
Historically ancient origins of marriage as being related to reproduction do not change the fact that it is currently, for many people, an important part of human interactions, and denying it to those people on the basis of how things used to be is a shitty thing to do (not the mention the various legal issues that can pop up with not being married). A lot of things currently differ in purpose from their original ones, deal with it.
They can call it a kumquat if they so please, but that won't make it one.
And they used to say the exact same thing about marriage with regard to race (which you somehow assert this is completely different from). The argument is utter bullshit either way. Much of humanity has realized that "you are free to marry anyone--as long as they're of the same race" is a retarded thing to say, and much of it is starting to realize that replacing "race" with "sex" makes it still a retarded thing to say.
I damn well can say that, because they are flimsy rationalizations for arbitrary hatred. Ever wonder why these people who claim gay marriage is BAD and WRONG because marriage is supposed to be about reproduction never make the same complaints about marriages where one or both of the partners incapable of reproduction? It's because they're a bunch of moralistic asshats who are just trying to hide their true motives, and failing.
No, they all boil down to the same thing arguments against gay marriage tend to boil down to: "If we let them be treated like us, the fabric of society will unravel!"
Really? All the ones I've heard are more along the lines of "These people are people and, as such, deserve the rights of people." Aren't strawmen so much easier to attack, though? You certainly seem to think so.
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They do it there for different reasons. I'm talking about here. It is religious here, someones imaginary man in the sky is being foisted on gays.
Shh.
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Paging girlintraining, paging girlintraining... Where are you, man?
This is like the only time we can't wait to read your comments and you're not here. Meh.
It's certainly the case in the UK (where civil unions are legal anyway, mind you). This discussion is about the USA but I would be pretty surprised if it wasn't the case there also. Banks care about your income. If you are half of a couple both earning, that's relevant regardless of the genders involved. Banks don't lend out of a social duty, they lend because they want to make money back off you. If something makes you a better bet, they'll be considering that.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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Marriage is loaded with religion. As getting black people into white schools took the government to establish I believe getting gays equal treatment will also need government to initiate the break through bigotry. Since "marriage" is so contentious, what is wrong with civil unions? Gay people don't have to step into that horrid "church" to get their love recognized and get the benefits other groups of two people loving each other get. Do you support civil unions? If you don't can you argue from the other side and even if you don't believe it list reasons why civil unions should be?
Shh.
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The love for each other should be given preference. The man in the sky is much more difficult for me to experience but I have experienced love. Why is it only justice for some? Why is there justice, it is all just chemicals spreading semi-randomly. Let's get rid of all these chemically inspired soups and start with dumping the constitution. The only opinion that matters is the presidents and how well he does with keeping the GDP up. After all, those things can be measured.
Shh.
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"Government should get out of marriage" is a perfectly understandable position, but I'm having trouble with the "let alone be more involved" part - I see where you're coming from, but this seems to imply that government being involved in straight marriage only is better than government being involved in same-sex marriage as well. As long as the government is involved in marriage, why should same-sex couples be excluded? They pay taxes too. If the big, bad government is going to decide who gets married, they should at least be impartial about it.
Having sex with an unconsenting rock.
Two consenting adults is very different.
PS: same goes for marriage.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Agreed. Abolish marriage as a legal contract. Allow civil unions to define legal pairings, and let individual churches choose whether or not to recognize certain "marriages". Everybody wins... ...that is, everybody except those that want to force their hangups on everyone else. I say 'fuck 'em'
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
It's always a little disturbing when someone defends the pointless large-scale infringement of the rights of others and tries to pass it off as "rational discourse".
Yes, you plainly state it, a bit, in your post which largely consists of defending the stances of people who are quite vehemently opposed to gay marriage.
None of the arguments you raised are valid, and the question is as simple and obvious as the question of miscegenation laws.
You know, there's this concept in reading called "context", with which the meanings of things change in relation to their surroundings. You seem to not be particularly familiar with it. See, what you do is you look at the particular part of the post I am replying to, in this case being this:
Now, you see how this bit makes no mention of having children? In fact, if you apply more of this "context" magic and go back to the original post and view this quote in its original "context", you find that furthermore, this, in that "context", is provided as a separate, distinct point of view from the "gay marriage shouldn't be allowed because marriage exists to promote couples having children" stance. So, bringing up the subject of capability for having children is what's known as a "non sequitur" (another scary new concept, oh my!), which is Latin for "if your response isn't relevant to what you're responding to you look really, really stupid", and makes you, you guessed it, retarded.
"You so sillay!" isn't a proper rebuttal.
You are conflating affirmative action with anti-discrimination laws. The latter isn't "beneficent racism", or even "racism" of any kind. Furthermore, constitutions are bodies of laws themselves, so saying "we don't need laws against this, we have a constitution" doesn't make any sense.
Your posts have had you claiming that social institutions can't change, that because people arguing against gay marriage have presented poor arguments as post-hoc rationalizations of their stances, they're not really arbitrary and unfounded, gross mischaracterization of the arguments of people arguing for rights for gays as merely being "we like them", gross mischaracterization of the people arguing against them as being a bunch of perfectly rational folks with perfectly rational stances not at all derived from morality, comparing gay rights advocates to racists (seriously?), reduction of the entirety of the gay rights movement to marriage, multiple logical fallacies in your reply here alone, and more. And I am not up to the standards of this fine debate because I said "shit".
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There are advantages to being married: government supplied ones. Equality under government is something to be desired. So if the gays can't get the advantages, take them away from straights? Poetic justice but would probably lead to more than a few deaths.
Shh.
Finally, I can blast the shit out of a Rush Limbaugh avatar.
Table-ized A.I.
Saying: "you might re-apply for admittance into the world of adult conversation." doesn't help your own membership in said mythical organization. You are trying to pick these issues apart with intellect. This is doomed to fail, the issues are emotional in nature. This topic gets more results out of an emotional quotient than an intellectual one. Still messy as hell.
Shh.
If I am allowed to marry any woman I choose, and my gay friend is allowed to marry any woman he chooses, how are we unequal?
If I am allowed to marry any woman I choose, but my female friend isn't allowed to marry any woman she chooses, how are we equal?
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No, that's not what he's getting at at all, though he probably thinks it is. If it really didn't matter, then it's a meaningless attribute; therefore, he should have no preference one way or the other. Clearly he does (certain handles he doesn't want to hear). Given that you have to have a screen name in order to make services like this work, then why shouldn't people be able to name themselves something meaningful to them? They already have to choose a name, and choose well enough that it's unique.
It's not as if people are actively in a multiplayer match, then randomly decide -- while taking fire -- to stop playing, and redesign their handle. No, that happens before the battle is even joined; by the time you're in a match with someone, their handle is already immutable. "Shut up and play" sounds good, but is meaningless in this context. He gives the lie to his own statement: If all he cares about is playing the game, why should it matter whether the guy kicking his ass is named "GayInDallas" as opposed to "StormPanzer"?
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I have responded by pointing out that your main argument, that "gay marriage shouldn't be allowed because marriage exists to promote reproduction" hinges on the notion that marriage cannot and has not changed over the many millennia of human society, which is quite demonstrably false, by for example the growing support for it in many countries, and even the legalization of it in some. You can claim that I'm just saying you're "obviously wrong" all you want, but it still doesn't make it true. You, on the other hand, have outright ignored many of my points, passing them off as just "irrational anger".
Again, claiming that I haven't doesn't change the fact that I have.
*sigh* Yes, it is relevant to a central point of the debate. However, the reply was not directed at that, and the point quoted was made clear to be a distinct and different stance. Taking something that replies to some point of an argument and treating it as thought it were in response to a different point of the argument, even if the latter point is the main point, is still taking it out of context, and thus your reply still is a complete non sequitur.
Right, "you're full of shit" isn't a proper rebuttal, which is why it was not used as one. The rest of that paragraph providing counter examples to the claims of the quoted text, however, is a proper rebuttal. The "you're full of shit" is just a non-functional flourish used to convey my contempt for your defense of the restriction of rights of others because of the insane morals of some, and most especially, for how thoroughly shoddy said defense is.
Your personal views are a couple of sentences sandwiched between the four paragraphs of defending the position of lunatics, and your conclusion about how "gay rights" isn't equivalent to other civil rights movements by stating things false about those other civil rights movements and reducing all of the gay rights movement to gay marriage. Gee, I wonder why I'd think your post is about how "gay rights" is nonsense and the people who oppose it are a bunch of fine, intelligent folks, when it so obviously isn't?
You are not a retard because you disagree with me, you are a retard because your arguments are full of holes, and when these wholes are pointed out, your respond with logical fallacies, taking things out of context, ignoring my points, and whining about how I used bad words. "Adult conversation" doesn't mean you just use big words, you have to actually have a solid argument underlying those big words.
Agreed. Abolish marriage as a legal contract. Allow civil unions to define legal pairings, and let individual churches choose whether or not to recognize certain "marriages". Everybody wins... ...that is, everybody except those that want to force their hangups on everyone else. I say 'fuck 'em'
Mod parent up!
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traditional marriage is intended to incentivize childbearing
I don't buy it. If somebody wanted to reduce child-bearing, then encouraging people to limit themselves to a single sexual partner for the rest of their lives would be a nice way to go about it.
You may not see the need but I'm beginning to side more with Virak than yourself.
Shh.
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I think the change probably has more to do with the integration into the windows 7 phone enviroment and all the various social networking aspects of it.
So you would be against a man marrying, say, a woman who'd had ovarian cancer at some point in her life and is no longer able to have children? Would you be for dissolving the marriages of men who have had vasectomies? Surely those relationships are every bit as useless as a marriage between two dudes!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And you base this on what? Microsoft's historical poor treatment of the GLBT community? Oh, right, they're on the Human Rights Campaign's Best Places to Work list.
Just because Microsoft does some legally, socially, and ethically questionable things doesn't mean that everything they do is questionable. Given that MS has been a leader in supporting GLBT rights within their own workplace, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they just screwed this one up, and want to make it right.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
You do so by being insulting, by holding the arguments of others to a higher standard than the arguments you make for your own position, and by attacking the form of arguments rather than their substance.
I agree - that Alaren guy really should take a different approach if he wants to be taken seriously.
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Again, you ignore my points and pass them off as "demagoguery", you act as though I have ignored the focus of your post, which was obviously about the tangentially related little comment at the end and not the paragraphs and paragraphs before it, and you play up how so very mature and rational you are (in between the jabs, of course). Your replies to me have mostly consisted of picking apart the form of my posts, instead of the content, and not once have you responded to an actual point of mine with a valid rebuttal. All I have gotten is logical fallacies, complaints about how you don't feel I'm sufficiently polite and "adult" to converse with you, derailment of the topic, and so on. The best I've gotten is you displaying a very faulty knowledge of various laws, though at least it was an attempt at a reply.
And yet you feel entitled to take a holier-than-thou position, acting as though you have been kindly putting up with the foolishness of a pitiable child who is lashing out in anger at his obvious superiors. My original reply may have been abrasive, but at least it made points and backed them up; your replies since have been eloquent but devoid of anything substantive. You are good at speaking but not so much at the thinking, evidently.
So perhaps we should start again. Are you capable of actually responding to the meat of my posts, instead of the skin? Are you capable of responding to arguments with something more than logical fallacies? Are you capable of not being such a smug prick? I'm guessing the answer to all of these is "no", so I shall bow out of this 'debate', and return to my far more fruitful conversation with this lovely brick wall over here.
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Not only US states, but have a guess how well banning gay people from being open would fare in Europe. Heck if I'm not mistaken there's EU directives that require states to implement legal protections from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Power-of-attorney. Inheritance. Post-divorce child custody. These are examples of legal issues that are entangled with the legal union of two citizens (whether or not it is called "marriage"), and that cannot be arbitrated by private entities. Any notion that the government can pull out entirely from the recognition of such unions cannot be taken seriously until practical solutions can be found for all of those issues (and probably several others that I haven't thought of).
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Just saying.
Of course, I haven't bothered to read any of the linked to pages. :P
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-
You see, you think you won. But you have to live in your own mind :D That is the greatest revenge for him!
Shh.
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Virak: Give up! You're being trolled!
"This is why you have no credibility. This is why you sound more like (your ideological opponents) the fire-and-brimstone preachers than like a rational human being. This is bigotry in its purest form: the demonization of your opponents as fundamentally, irredeemably defective."
Yeah! Ad hominem SUCKS! In fact...
"This would be getting tiresome if you weren't so obviously coming unglued at the notion that someone could possibly disagree with you. It's almost endearing--like Gizmo wearing a Rambo bandanna."
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I own the original xbox you insensitive clod!
(too soon?)
unlikely, MS didn't just block gays. Xbox Live rules said you could not post your orientation regardless of whether you are straight or gay or some other mixture. The service is aimed at children of all ages and I am actually suprised they have allowed this, ones gender or sexual orientation is completely irrelevant when playing games.
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http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/next-gender-gaming
I am against intolerance with regards to personal choices such as, sexual orientation, as you call it.
The people of the world are jabbering about this constantly -- without much forward progress.
Maybe everyone should be allowed to take a break from it.
Are sexual and religion affiliations really conducive to playing Halo, or other games?
I think it would be tiresome -- like bumper sticker spam.
I think the correct choice would be to disallow gamer tags that would appear in game but allow profile so state personal information.
Can anyone teach me to play Halo really good? Then all I need is a really good gamer tag.
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Just because it's "between consenting adults" doesn't mean it isn't hurting society, and just because two people of the same gender want to mess around with each other's gonads on a continuing basis doesn't mean society has to call that a marriage. Find your own word for that kind of abomination; this word is taken. Nobody has a "fundamental right" to dictate to society what their actions and relationship should be called, or to force down peoples' throat a completely new use of a word. It's almost like if kleptomaniacs were to go around demanding that their actions be deemed a "purchase." "Kleptomania is part of who I am; who are you to deny me the dignity of calling this a purchase? Only bigots will say that a purchase necessarily implies that the price of the goods was paid."
Gender matters to marriage. Why are homosexuals so intent on changing language to fit their needs rather than being willing to call these civil unions and get the same benefits?** The reason is the same reason people worked to control language in 1984: to try to control people's thoughts. Until everyone is forced to say that homosexual "marriages" are just as meritorious as real marriages, homosexuals will be pushing for any other opinion to be labeled as "hate speech" and outlawed- they've already have some success at that (c.f. the Åke Green case). And when they manage to bludgeon language to the point where it doesn't reflect any of the distinctions at issue, they'll have made a large step towards achieving their agenda.
You'll note that most of those who fought for real civil rights are ticked off at the homosexual lobby's ridiculous comparison to their struggle, with the result that blacks faced ridicule and violence from gays after they voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8 in California.
**Isn't it already asking quite a bit for them to get the same subsidies and benefits the government grants to marriages? These benefits aren't there because of a bias against people who feel homosexual attraction, they're there (and in many cases have been there for centuries) because strong marriages and the nuclear family are the basis of a healthy society and so society has an interest in subsidizing them; society has, in my opinion, no such interest in subsidizing civil unions. But in any case, the question of the role of civil unions is one it makes sense to debate as a society, while the attempt to redefine marriage in the courts is an attempt to subvert the process of that debate and ultimately also subvert the processes of democracy.
Gay couples frequently have children. They adopt, use sperm donors, use egg donors and surrogates. Not unlike many straight couples.
Straight couples frequently decide not to have children. They often still chose to get married. Many (most?) of the rights that a marriage conveys have nothing to do with children.
I agree that marriage is about building a family. I love my partner, and we've reached the point where the term "boyfriend" doesn't describe what we are to each other. We've become family, even if the family is only two people. I want to formalize that transition the same way my parents did, the same way my brother did.
If it makes you feel any better we both work full time jobs and would probably end up paying increased taxes if we do succeed in getting married.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
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All you have done is solidify your evil in my mind. Too afraid gays will get what bigots enjoy, always dancing about with words? Your heart is dead if you can't see the issue. Have fun leading your soulless life.
Shh.
There are several aspects of marriage to consider. The first is to promote structures which are deemed good for raising children. Since many heterosexual families don't have children either, it would make sense to limit whatever benefits are used for this to only those with children.
Then there is the urban planning and environmental aspect, which is that single people living alone still usually like to have a reasonable sized lounge, kitchen, dining room and so on, for entertaining, and their house will still need at least one bathroom and utility room, a single garage, and so on. All this takes up space, and so contributes to urban sprawl and in-fill, both of which are detrimental to society as a whole (ISTR that in the 1990s, the number of houses in my city grew much faster than the number of adults living there did, because people were marrying later and divorcing more often, so the number of people in each household got smaller (on average).) It would obviously make sense to encourage people to live together, but who the people are and why they want to be together is irrelevant.
Finally we have the question of things like ones default heir, their next of kin for emergency medical decisions and so on. The obvious solution to that problem would be to make the parent of the same sex as the person the default, then allow people to assign the position of next of kin to any adult once they come of age. For things like hospital visitation, the obvious solution is to put a list of people in each person's shared medical file with their drug intolerances and other information.
Finally, we have things like insurance policies. Since it doesn't make any difference to the insurance company if the beneficiary of your life insurance is your wife, lover, child, or some random person, or even how many people you want paid, or anything but the the likelihood of you dying (as you're basically placing a recurring bet that you will die this year), in a sane world marriage should be irrelevant to getting life insurance.
Medical insurance is just as simple, unless it is employer provided, but the general messiness of that entire system means that his is just a small part of the reasons against such a system.
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There is way too much bullshit in your post for me to sift through every lie and logical fallacy at this time of night, so I'll just add this:
A gay person chooses their sexuality
All current scientific evidence says otherwise. If you think that said science is somehow invalid, then you should provide your own evidence to the contrary if you expect to be taken seriously.
Possible legal entanglements aside, I think Microsoft has handled this admirably. They started out on the conservative side of the equation and let their customers dictate their future decisions. After re-evaluating the circumstances they have allowed certain things into their online profiles while maintaining a serious no tolerance attitude towards misuse of certain terms. This is as balanced an approach as I've seen, and even if the legality of the issues was a prominent factor in the decision, I like that large corporations such as Microsoft are not waiting for litigation before changing internal policy. This indicates a major shift in how a business handles things internally. A large corporation like Microsoft leads just because of its market dominance and size. Where they go, others follow. This is ultimately good news. Let's not spoil the good things a company with past transgressions does. Instead let's be vocal about our appreciation of their decision.
How's life in the closet?
Yep, that is exactly the same impression I got.
Pompous sophistry is "cordial and coherent"? Hmm, no, I think the mods are right. The harder you try to sound unemotional and rational, the more ignorant you sound.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I'm not gay, but I'm an atheist. In America, that's probably "worse" than being gay.
I travel around the country a lot on business, and there are some places where I am literally afraid to mention the fact that I'm an atheist (especially when confronted daily by evangelists and such asking if Jesus is my special friend) for fear of being chased by an angry mob wishing me bodily harm or to rid me of demons or whatever. There are only two places I feel comfortable admitting to being an atheist: (semi-)anonymously on the internet, and at my local Unitarian Universalist church, where I grew up and still occasionally attend (maybe 3-4 times a year).
I can totally understand the "coming out is for them, not for you" concept. I wish more people in this country were more open with their lack of faith. I wish *I* had the courage to be more open about it and to mention it when religious topics came up in discussion, instead of pretending to be their fellow Christian in hopes that the topic will be dropped quickly.