Well... I would suppose the majority of people on both sides of the argument are merely sheep following someone else's lead.
But out of those who've actually thought about why they oppose gay marriage, the reasoning will boil down to one of two things:
- Homosexuality is morally wrong and shouldn't be supported by law. - Calling gay unions "marriages" will cheapen the meaning of the word "marriage".
The first group is, I think, smaller than the second; while I understand it, I can't say "it's morally wrong" is sufficient basis for "it should not be supported by law".
The second group is, of course, where I fall.
Again, I'm only talking about people who have actually tried to reason out why they support whichever side they support. It's counter-productive to factor in sheeple;)
I'll want a passage that restricts all forms of homosexuality, not just certain types of sexual practices.
Wow. So you're saying anything not explicitly prohibited is permitted?
That totally misses the point of Christ's teachings - obey the spirit of the law. You're merely trying to obey the letter of the law because it suits your purposes.
If you say that NO RELIGION can practice gay marriage, no matter what their beliefs, you are limiting my religious freedom and infringing on my rights.
I haven't said no religion may practice gay marriage. I've said the word "marriage" should not be applied to gay couples in any legal context. I fully support civil unions for gay couples - and since you refuse to try to show me rights you claim are lost by gays in that situation, I see no reason to say anything else.
In other words, there aren't any lost legal rights, and your refusal to point out even one example is merely evidence of that. The burden of proof is on you.
You have no right to limit my freedom of religion, get it? And you have no right to say what is and what is not a legitimate religion, says so in the Constitution.
My religion teaches that homosexual marriage will damage the fundamental building blocks of society; as a result of that teaching, I cannot in good conscience vote for it. Who are you to limit my freedom of religion?
Further, if freedom of religion is so important to you, why aren't you out there defending polygamists who are jailed for merely practicing their religion?
I would not be opposed to banishing the word "marriage" from all legal contexts, and restricting all couples to "civil unions", whether or not they're heterosexual. That would solve everyone's complaints, because it would leave people free to use the word "marriage" however they see fit without any legal ramifications.
I'll admit that I've never actually heard it put quite that way, so I'm curious if I'm following you correctly. If so, it's very interesting and I'm going to have to think on it.
That is essentially what I'm saying, yes.
My argument is that while I have no problem allowing gay couples the same legal rights and privileges as a heterosexual married couple, I simply do not want the word "marriage" applied to such unions, because to me (and the majority of Christians in the country) it would cheapen its meaning.
Personally I would not mind if the government abandoned all use of the word "marriage" in legal documents, and applied "civil union" to all couples, heterosexual or not. This would allow churches to continue using "marriage" for their own ceremonies (many churches perform their own ceremony separate from the legally binding one anyway) while ensuring that all couples have the same rights.
However, I don't see that as a likely occurrence, so IMO the next best option is to fix up civil unions without modifying the definition of "marriage".
Oh don't pull that "freedom of religion" BS on me.
What about those religions which practice polygamy, and are jailed for it, even when none of the women are underage? Why aren't you defending their freedom of religion?
What about religions which regularly use intimidation and social threats to keep people from leaving? Surely you don't think it's perfectly ok for them to do that, since it's their religion?
"Freedom of religion" should not mean "license to impose your views on others".
Changing the definition of "marriage" to include homosexual unions is nothing more than you imposing your views on me. Why should you have the right to do that, especially since no legal rights are lost or gained either way?
What happens when you cross the state line? Oh, I'm sorry, we don't recognize your 'union'. How is that equal to any 'marriage'?
First: That's not a legal right. Second: It only works for marriages because states already have reciprocal recognition agreements regarding marriages. Third: The fix is not to force a new definition of marriage on everyone. The fix is to add civil unions to states' reciprocal recognition agreements.
Married couples can divorce anywhere. Civil unions? Not a chance.
First: It's only an issue because civil unions aren't always recognized across state lines. Amending the state reciprocal recognition agreements will fix that. Second: Are you seriously complaining that it's too hard to dissolve a civil union? I thought they wanted to marry so they could commit to eachother?
Doing so with 'marriage' will grant that person immediate citizenship. Not so with a civil union.
First: That's not a legal right. Second: The person can simply go through the normal citizenship process. (I don't think marriage to a citizen should automatically make a person a citizen, so I could make that argument as well.)
Taxes? Forget it. The federal government doesn't recognize civil unions. You can't file jointly.
First: Joint tax filing is not a legal right. Second: They can usually file state taxes jointly. Third: Again, the solution is not to redefine marriage, but to add a "civil union" joint filing status to the federal tax code.
There are also over a thousand benefits (yes, that's 1,000+) granted to married couples. Unions in the few states that allow them grant SOME of those, but not all. Not a single state in the union grants all of those protections.
Assuming your number is correct, how many of those benefits are legal rights, as opposed to, say, tax benefits for having children? Can you show me any of those benefits which are actually relevant to a majority of homosexual civil unions? (For example, child tax deductions are completely irrelevant for the vast majority of homosexual couples.)
(Remember: gay-marriage supporters like yourself complain that gays are losing rights. Tax benefits are not a right, they're merely benefits. If that is your chief complaint, fine, I don't have a problem with you complaining about benefits, but don't call them "rights" when they're not.)
Do you seriously thing these civil unions as available today are in any way equivalent to a marriage?
No, of course not; but I've already mentioned the solution: amend state reciprocal recognition agreements to include civil unions. That will solve most of your complaints, and would be far easier for the majority of the country to stomach than redefining something so important to them.
They can visit their partners in the hospital.
One hospital's indiscretion should not reflect on the country as a whole. Or should I regale you with stories about people who are discriminated against in the South just because they're Mormon?
My point is, an anecdote does not give you license to claim there's some rampant mistreatment of $MINORITY going on.
They can inherit.
So can partners in civil unions. Not sure where you're getting that. But even if they couldn't the solution would be to change that.
But even if that weren't an option for some contrived reason, it's literally a trivial matter to write a will giving your possessions anyone you want in the event of your death.
They can adopt.
So can gay couples. Or are you referring to specific adoption agencies who won't give kids to gay couples, because they think gay couples can't provide an adequate child-rearing environment? If that's the case, you need to a
By your logic, Martin Luther had no right to change things.
On the contrary; Martin Luther essentially accused the Catholic Church of deliberately misinterpreting or ignoring various passages of scripture. That's exactly what I'm doing - Christians who support homosexuality are blatantly ignoring the teachings of the book they claim to hold sacred.
I'm not defining religion. I'm defining hypocrisy.
Your argument boils down to 'this is the way it has always been, and therefore this is the way it should always be.' You do see the problem with that line of reasoning, don't you?
That's not my line of reasoning at all; my reasoning is "this is the way it has always been, and since no rights are lost, there's no point in changing it to satisfy the whims of a minority group in the country."
Show me rights that are lost, and I'll change my stance.
Granting gay people equal footing with straight people in the marriage arena has no ill effects on society, or individuals.
Studies are divided whether gay marriage has an ill effect on society. Specifically, some studies have shown that the child-rearing environment provided by gay couples is less healthy for children than that provided by heterosexual couples. Similarly, some studies have shown that children raised by gay couples have a far higher tendency to be gay themselves; if homosexuality were merely a genetic disposition, this would not be the case, showing that there is in fact a significant environmental factor.
I'm not going to source that, because I'm at work, and I shouldn't be doing this anyway;) My point is, it's more than a little misleading to claim that there are definitively no ill effects, when that hasn't been shown at all.
The rights of actual people is always more important than the rights of some subset of religious institutions.
The issue here is not one of rights, it's one of semantics. Legally speaking, there is little difference between a civil union and a marriage, and as far as I'm aware, none of those differences confer extra rights on either group. It is perhaps easier to legally dissolve a civil union than a marriage, but that's hardly relevant.
Conceivably a difference could come from the Defense of Marriage Act, which stipulates that for all federal legal purposes, "marriage" refers exclusively to unions between one man and one woman. Even so, nobody has shown a legal right lost because of this.
But even if there were any rights lost, it would be far simpler to pass a law mandating that civil unions receive those same rights than it would be to force the majority of the country to change their definition of the word "marriage".
Why is it ok for a minority of the country to impose their definition on the majority, but it's not ok for the majority to preserve their definition despite what the minority wants, especially when no rights are lost?
"Doctrine" is merely the teachings contained in the Bible. "Interpretation" is another beast entirely.
One must read scripture in the context in which it was given; the vast majority of misunderstandings come from failure to do so.
After so much time, it is occasionally difficult to know what the actual doctrine is suppose to be. Fortunately, the Bible itself clearly gives us two methods to know for sure:
- James 1:5 tells us if we lack wisdom, we should ask God, who gives to all men liberally (i.e. he will answer freely)
- We are told to beware of false prophets. Logically, that means we should seek out true prophets (otherwise we would have been told to beware of all prophets). Based on Amos 3:7 we can assume prophets know what's what, once we've found them;) And of course, we know true prophets from false ones by the fruits of their labors.
Wow. You're not even trying to understand, are you?
The New Testament is pretty explicitly clear about the idea that Christ came to fulfill the Law of Moses and replace it with a higher law - e.g. it replaces "an eye for an eye" with "do unto others as you would have others do to you".
Spiritually speaking, yes, the Israelites were children in Old Testament times. When that changed, Christ showed up to teach them a better way of doing things.
I don't have to show you anything. There are 40+ states that demonstrate that fact rather plainly where these folks can't even have a civil union as they are treated like second class citizens.
Then those states need to change - but that doesn't mean you don't need to show how civil unions are inferior.
If you're going to claim "civil unions provide fewer legal rights than marriages", you're going to have to substantiate that claim, you can't hide behind "well a large portion of the country doesn't even allow gay civil unions".
You're willing to inflict real emotional damage on people over a definition of a word because you don't want someone else using it?
To turn your argument around, gay marriage supporters are willing to inflict real emotional damage on people over the definition of the word marriage, so why should they be surprised when their opposition feels the same way?
You would prefer they accept a lesser yet same definition that is 'no different' except in name?
The words "different" and "lesser" do not mean the same thing, despite how much you try to make it seem that way.
You may as well complain that women have fewer legal rights because we make a legal distinction between "male" and "female". Yes, we use different words to describe the two groups of people, but that doesn't make either group less than the other.
The same applies in the gay marriage debate.
It's very different for people on the other end of that Greater Than > sign.
You're the one applying the > sign. I have consistently argued that civil unions are equivalent to marriages; you're the one who claims they're not, yet you refuse to show how they're not equivalent!
I've been to a Christian church that accepts gays and supports gay marriage.
Religion is meaningless if you change it every time it tells you to do something you don't feel like doing (or to avoid something you really want to do). That's all they've done.
It's hypocritical to profess to follow a particular set of religious teachings if you're blatantly ignoring the parts of those teaching which are inconvenient for you.
It isn't a redefinition of the word marriage, that is only your opinion.
Historically the word "marriage" has not included homosexual couples... therefore it's a redefinition. I think that's about as clear as can be.
If you aren't against gay civil unions, why does the terminology matter so much to you?
Marriage has a special meaning for me. Yes, that meaning is religious, and yes, changing the definition of "marriage" would cheapen its meaning to me.
I realize this is a semantic disagreement. That's sort of my point. But most people involved in the gay marriage debate are arguing about "rights", when in fact to my knowledge nobody has ever demonstrated a legal right that can be obtained by heterosexual married couples that cannot be obtained by homosexual couples in a civil union. Marriage itself is not a legal right, no matter how you try to dress it up as such.
A law was passed with the only purpose of taking away one of their rights.
Marriage is not a right. It's a legal status. Just to clarify.
except in this case the marriages are separate but unequal.
If civil unions and marriage are unequal, why do people consistently fail to show any rights that heterosexual married couples can obtain that cannot be obtained by gay couples in a civil union?
The label seems at least as important as any legal rights to these people.
That's exactly the issue.
I merely oppose the use of the word "marriage" to describe homosexual relationships. That is all. I support gay civil unions, through which all the same rights can be obtained (at least as far as I'm aware, and nobody has shown me contradictory evidence yet). Yet pro-gay-marriage people hear me say this, and start calling me bigoted.
They want to use the word "marriage" to describe heterosexual couples, and that's all there is to it.
You don't; you can live with whoever you want, have sex with whoever you want, have kids with whoever you want, and so on and so forth.
Nobody is forcing you and your significant other to go get a marriage license - unless you want the government to give you something because of it. And if that's the case, you shouldn't be surprised that the government wants legal documentation of your relationship.
it should have no problem if Gays want to call their union a marriage.
Why do you keep bringing up churches? Forget churches for a moment.
You're implying that somehow these organized religions somehow own the word marriage and can dictate who can and cannot use it.
No; I'm implying that religious people merely want to preserve the existing definition of the word "marriage". Furthermore, the government already dictates who can and cannot use it (you have to obtain a government marriage license to be called "married").
They are looking for the LEGAL benefits of marriage, which only the government can give.
Exactly! They want the very same benefits they can obtain through a civil union. Why do they go further and insist that the definition of the word "marriage" be modified? They don't gain additional rights.
The whole argument that they are fine with 'civil unions' as opposed to 'marriage' is ridiculous as no one owns the word.
Nobody "owns" the word; yet gay-marriage supporters want to impose their definition on the rest of us. Why is it oppressive for a majority to want to preserve an existing definition, but it's not oppressive for a minority to use the legal system to force their definition on the majority, especially when no legal rights are gained by it?
That argument reeks of 'back of the bus' for obvious reasons: "You can have 'marriage lite' and like it."
Until you can show me a legal right that can be obtained via marriage but not civil union, then you're merely complaining about semantics. It's not "marriage lite" if the legal rights are identical.
You may as well complain about the artificial "separate but equal" distinction we make between "male" and "female". Or taken further, you may as well complain that an adult male who surgically alters himself to appear female cannot legally call himself female - sure, he may appear female, but he's not, and it's not really important anyway since he still has exactly the same legal rights.
Similarly, a homosexual couple may function much like a heterosexual couple, but they don't function identically, and as long as they have identical legal rights there's no reason to complain about a semantic difference.
No, most of you DO oppose civil unions. You just want to sound tolerant and enlightened, so you claim that would be okay, until it comes up in the polls, and then most of you vote against it. There is no misunderstanding.
Allow me to clarify; if a religious person who opposes gay marriage bothers to think about why he or she opposes gay marriage, then they will conclude that they do not oppose gay civil unions.
If that is not the case, they are simply following someone else's lead. Call me hypocritical for other people's behavior if you want, but I personally don't oppose gay civil unions, and until you can show me exactly how that oppresses gays, then you're merely arguing about terminology.
You obviously don't want to ban marriage ceremonies by other religions, right? So, if there were a religion that wanted to perform gay marriages, you wouldn't want to restrict that religion, right? I mean, if we went around restricting one religion, what's to stop us from restricting yours?
I think the word "marriage" should mean what it means - a union between a man and a woman. No religion (or non-religion) should be able to change that.
Your whole argument is like trying to get people to vote to change the definition of the word "boy" to include "girl". Sure, boys can act like girls in some circumstances, and vice versa, but they're not the same. You shouldn't complain when people don't want you to change their definitions of "boy" and "girl" to suit your whims.
Nobody wants to force your church to perform gay marriages.
No... but can you tell me people aren't going to start prosecuting churches who teach "homosexuality is morally wrong" for hate speech?
Before you say "of course not", remember that legally people can be prosecuted for hate speech against blacks, or jews, or gays, if there's reason to believe it encourages action against that group.
You want 'separate but equal,' which we all know is not equal at all.
I have yet to see someone show me a legal right which can be obtained by a heterosexual married couple that cannot be obtained by a homosexual gay couple. If the rights are the same, then it is equal, by definition. If you know of any, please enlighten us.
To reiterate my earlier example, you may as well complain that we make a legal distinction between "male" and "female" - after all, they have the same rights, so we're artificially creating a "separate but equal" situation, right?
Of course not! We refer to them differently because they're fundamentally different.
YOu want to [...] claim the institution of marriage for your religion exclusively.
I don't think you understand the issue. I don't want to reserve marriage for one religion or other. I want to reserve marriage for heterosexual couples, regardless of religion (or lack thereof). Boys and girls are different, even though they have the same legal rights; I'm merely trying to preserve the semantic distinction between the two words. It's not bigoted to do so.
because you are a bigot who wants to impose your religious values onto other religions besides your own and wants to dictate what ceremonies other religions are allowed to perform.
Excuse me... which of us wants to impose a new definition of a word on the other? That's right... you want us to change an existing word to meet your new definition.
This just goes to show - your entire argument is based on nothing more than terminology. That was my original point, and you're just proving it true.
If God is perfect, and God wrote the Old Testament, then the Old Testament must therefore still be in effect, right?
Or was God wrong when He wrote the Old Testament?
Imagine I tell my young children to stay out of my toolbox. Then they get several years older, and I tell them "you can use my toolbox responsibly". By your logic, I've contradicted myself; in reality, I've merely changed the rules because the circumstances have changed. Parents do it all the time - why is it perfectly logical for parents to do it, but it's somehow completely illogical for God to do it?
God often gives commandments specific to a time or place. The Bible - both the Old and New Testaments - should be taken in that light.
Working on Sunday is explicitly forbidden by the Bible
Well no, it's forbidden by the Law of Moses, which was replaced with a higher law when Christ showed up. (It was basically a "letter of the law" vs "spirit of the law" sort of deal.)
Once you understand that, a rather large swath of complaints about the Bible disappear;)
In fact I specifically mentioned the "historic definition of the word marriage". I said nothing about a particular church's ownership of a word.
But you're falling into the very same trap I was describing - you're trying to take the terminology and create an argument out of it, rather than getting past the terminology difference and getting to what people actually want.
If you want to make any progress at all (regardless of what side of the issue you support), you're going to need to understand the other side's point of view - and arguing about terminology is not going to be helpful.
There is no practical difference between "marriage" and "civil union".
True - and yet that's exactly the source of the debate.
People who oppose gay marriage merely oppose the use of the word "marriage" to describe homosexual relationships. (At least, this is the case if they have bothered to actually think about why they have the opinion they do.)
People who support gay marriage hear that and assume we mean "no gay legal relationships", which is not the case at all.
Both sides suck at actually articulating what they mean, and if we could get past that, both sides would be fully satisfied with gay civil unions.
Your post is a perfect example of the problem with this whole debate:
Each side is using different terminology.
People who oppose gay marriage are really only opposing the use of the word "marriage" to describe homosexual relationships; most of us do not oppose gay civil unions. (Unfortunately, most of us are incapable of expressing this without coming across as homosexual haters.)
People who support gay marriage take what they see as hate for homosexuals and assume we're trying to take away rights, which simply isn't the case. They hear "no gay marriage" (which is an inaccurate statement at best) and assume we're saying "no gay legal relationships", which is not the goal at all. Most of these people would be fully satisfied with gay civil unions.
Both sides are guilty of hearing the other side's terminology and misunderstanding it.
Understanding what I just wrote makes your entire post moot, because it removes the source of the misunderstanding - and your post is based entirely on that misunderstanding.
Try to get married five times and the church wouldn't know you had
Then why is the church involved at all? (And what church are you referring to?) I know the Catholic Church and the LDS Church both keep their own records (independent of legal marriage records) to avoid that exact situation.
That is what makes these "defense of marriage" acts so wrong. There is no provable harm in these civil unions
That's the misunderstanding - most religious people who oppose gay marriage do not oppose gay civil unions. Most people who are in favor of gay marriage would really be satisfied by allowing gay civil unions.
This whole stupid debate is nothing more than a gargantuan terminology mismatch. Most religious people couldn't care less if gays can get civil unions (I know I don't), it's just the word "marriage" that they don't think should be applied to such unions. (A gay civil union may resemble a marriage in certain ways, but it isn't a marriage, if you go by the historic definition of "marriage" as it applies to people.) Religious people (and here I'm referring mostly to Christians) put a certain importance behind marriage that is incompatible with homosexuality, and as such they don't want the word to be applied to homosexual couples, but they're not opposed to gay civil unions.
Gay marriage supporters, on the other hand, don't bother understanding that (and when I've tried to explain it, most can't even grasp the difference), so they just assume that their opposition wants to take away rights (which, again, is generally not the case). (Many anti-gay-marriage people have difficulty understanding the true source of the argument, too, I'm not trying to blame gay marriage supporters exclusively.)
That's all it is, and I wish people would understand that.
Slashdot Mirror
Well... I would suppose the majority of people on both sides of the argument are merely sheep following someone else's lead.
But out of those who've actually thought about why they oppose gay marriage, the reasoning will boil down to one of two things:
- Homosexuality is morally wrong and shouldn't be supported by law.
- Calling gay unions "marriages" will cheapen the meaning of the word "marriage".
The first group is, I think, smaller than the second; while I understand it, I can't say "it's morally wrong" is sufficient basis for "it should not be supported by law".
The second group is, of course, where I fall.
Again, I'm only talking about people who have actually tried to reason out why they support whichever side they support. It's counter-productive to factor in sheeple ;)
I'll want a passage that restricts all forms of homosexuality, not just certain types of sexual practices.
Wow. So you're saying anything not explicitly prohibited is permitted?
That totally misses the point of Christ's teachings - obey the spirit of the law. You're merely trying to obey the letter of the law because it suits your purposes.
If you say that NO RELIGION can practice gay marriage, no matter what their beliefs, you are limiting my religious freedom and infringing on my rights.
I haven't said no religion may practice gay marriage. I've said the word "marriage" should not be applied to gay couples in any legal context. I fully support civil unions for gay couples - and since you refuse to try to show me rights you claim are lost by gays in that situation, I see no reason to say anything else.
In other words, there aren't any lost legal rights, and your refusal to point out even one example is merely evidence of that. The burden of proof is on you.
You have no right to limit my freedom of religion, get it? And you have no right to say what is and what is not a legitimate religion, says so in the Constitution.
My religion teaches that homosexual marriage will damage the fundamental building blocks of society; as a result of that teaching, I cannot in good conscience vote for it. Who are you to limit my freedom of religion?
Further, if freedom of religion is so important to you, why aren't you out there defending polygamists who are jailed for merely practicing their religion?
I would not be opposed to banishing the word "marriage" from all legal contexts, and restricting all couples to "civil unions", whether or not they're heterosexual. That would solve everyone's complaints, because it would leave people free to use the word "marriage" however they see fit without any legal ramifications.
I'll admit that I've never actually heard it put quite that way, so I'm curious if I'm following you correctly. If so, it's very interesting and I'm going to have to think on it.
That is essentially what I'm saying, yes.
My argument is that while I have no problem allowing gay couples the same legal rights and privileges as a heterosexual married couple, I simply do not want the word "marriage" applied to such unions, because to me (and the majority of Christians in the country) it would cheapen its meaning.
Personally I would not mind if the government abandoned all use of the word "marriage" in legal documents, and applied "civil union" to all couples, heterosexual or not. This would allow churches to continue using "marriage" for their own ceremonies (many churches perform their own ceremony separate from the legally binding one anyway) while ensuring that all couples have the same rights.
However, I don't see that as a likely occurrence, so IMO the next best option is to fix up civil unions without modifying the definition of "marriage".
Oh don't pull that "freedom of religion" BS on me.
What about those religions which practice polygamy, and are jailed for it, even when none of the women are underage? Why aren't you defending their freedom of religion?
What about religions which regularly use intimidation and social threats to keep people from leaving? Surely you don't think it's perfectly ok for them to do that, since it's their religion?
"Freedom of religion" should not mean "license to impose your views on others".
Changing the definition of "marriage" to include homosexual unions is nothing more than you imposing your views on me. Why should you have the right to do that, especially since no legal rights are lost or gained either way?
What happens when you cross the state line? Oh, I'm sorry, we don't recognize your 'union'. How is that equal to any 'marriage'?
First: That's not a legal right.
Second: It only works for marriages because states already have reciprocal recognition agreements regarding marriages.
Third: The fix is not to force a new definition of marriage on everyone. The fix is to add civil unions to states' reciprocal recognition agreements.
Married couples can divorce anywhere. Civil unions? Not a chance.
First: It's only an issue because civil unions aren't always recognized across state lines. Amending the state reciprocal recognition agreements will fix that.
Second: Are you seriously complaining that it's too hard to dissolve a civil union? I thought they wanted to marry so they could commit to eachother?
Doing so with 'marriage' will grant that person immediate citizenship. Not so with a civil union.
First: That's not a legal right.
Second: The person can simply go through the normal citizenship process. (I don't think marriage to a citizen should automatically make a person a citizen, so I could make that argument as well.)
Taxes? Forget it. The federal government doesn't recognize civil unions. You can't file jointly.
First: Joint tax filing is not a legal right.
Second: They can usually file state taxes jointly.
Third: Again, the solution is not to redefine marriage, but to add a "civil union" joint filing status to the federal tax code.
There are also over a thousand benefits (yes, that's 1,000+) granted to married couples. Unions in the few states that allow them grant SOME of those, but not all. Not a single state in the union grants all of those protections.
Assuming your number is correct, how many of those benefits are legal rights, as opposed to, say, tax benefits for having children? Can you show me any of those benefits which are actually relevant to a majority of homosexual civil unions? (For example, child tax deductions are completely irrelevant for the vast majority of homosexual couples.)
(Remember: gay-marriage supporters like yourself complain that gays are losing rights. Tax benefits are not a right, they're merely benefits. If that is your chief complaint, fine, I don't have a problem with you complaining about benefits, but don't call them "rights" when they're not.)
Do you seriously thing these civil unions as available today are in any way equivalent to a marriage?
No, of course not; but I've already mentioned the solution: amend state reciprocal recognition agreements to include civil unions. That will solve most of your complaints, and would be far easier for the majority of the country to stomach than redefining something so important to them.
They can visit their partners in the hospital.
One hospital's indiscretion should not reflect on the country as a whole. Or should I regale you with stories about people who are discriminated against in the South just because they're Mormon?
My point is, an anecdote does not give you license to claim there's some rampant mistreatment of $MINORITY going on.
They can inherit.
So can partners in civil unions. Not sure where you're getting that. But even if they couldn't the solution would be to change that.
But even if that weren't an option for some contrived reason, it's literally a trivial matter to write a will giving your possessions anyone you want in the event of your death.
They can adopt.
So can gay couples. Or are you referring to specific adoption agencies who won't give kids to gay couples, because they think gay couples can't provide an adequate child-rearing environment? If that's the case, you need to a
By your logic, Martin Luther had no right to change things.
On the contrary; Martin Luther essentially accused the Catholic Church of deliberately misinterpreting or ignoring various passages of scripture. That's exactly what I'm doing - Christians who support homosexuality are blatantly ignoring the teachings of the book they claim to hold sacred.
I'm not defining religion. I'm defining hypocrisy.
Your argument boils down to 'this is the way it has always been, and therefore this is the way it should always be.' You do see the problem with that line of reasoning, don't you?
That's not my line of reasoning at all; my reasoning is "this is the way it has always been, and since no rights are lost, there's no point in changing it to satisfy the whims of a minority group in the country."
Show me rights that are lost, and I'll change my stance.
Granting gay people equal footing with straight people in the marriage arena has no ill effects on society, or individuals.
Studies are divided whether gay marriage has an ill effect on society. Specifically, some studies have shown that the child-rearing environment provided by gay couples is less healthy for children than that provided by heterosexual couples. Similarly, some studies have shown that children raised by gay couples have a far higher tendency to be gay themselves; if homosexuality were merely a genetic disposition, this would not be the case, showing that there is in fact a significant environmental factor.
I'm not going to source that, because I'm at work, and I shouldn't be doing this anyway ;) My point is, it's more than a little misleading to claim that there are definitively no ill effects, when that hasn't been shown at all.
The rights of actual people is always more important than the rights of some subset of religious institutions.
The issue here is not one of rights, it's one of semantics. Legally speaking, there is little difference between a civil union and a marriage, and as far as I'm aware, none of those differences confer extra rights on either group. It is perhaps easier to legally dissolve a civil union than a marriage, but that's hardly relevant.
Conceivably a difference could come from the Defense of Marriage Act, which stipulates that for all federal legal purposes, "marriage" refers exclusively to unions between one man and one woman. Even so, nobody has shown a legal right lost because of this.
But even if there were any rights lost, it would be far simpler to pass a law mandating that civil unions receive those same rights than it would be to force the majority of the country to change their definition of the word "marriage".
Why is it ok for a minority of the country to impose their definition on the majority, but it's not ok for the majority to preserve their definition despite what the minority wants, especially when no rights are lost?
"Doctrine" is merely the teachings contained in the Bible. "Interpretation" is another beast entirely.
One must read scripture in the context in which it was given; the vast majority of misunderstandings come from failure to do so.
After so much time, it is occasionally difficult to know what the actual doctrine is suppose to be. Fortunately, the Bible itself clearly gives us two methods to know for sure:
- James 1:5 tells us if we lack wisdom, we should ask God, who gives to all men liberally (i.e. he will answer freely)
- We are told to beware of false prophets. Logically, that means we should seek out true prophets (otherwise we would have been told to beware of all prophets). Based on Amos 3:7 we can assume prophets know what's what, once we've found them ;) And of course, we know true prophets from false ones by the fruits of their labors.
Anyway this is all woefully off topic...
Wow. You're not even trying to understand, are you?
The New Testament is pretty explicitly clear about the idea that Christ came to fulfill the Law of Moses and replace it with a higher law - e.g. it replaces "an eye for an eye" with "do unto others as you would have others do to you".
Spiritually speaking, yes, the Israelites were children in Old Testament times. When that changed, Christ showed up to teach them a better way of doing things.
I don't have to show you anything. There are 40+ states that demonstrate that fact rather plainly where these folks can't even have a civil union as they are treated like second class citizens.
Then those states need to change - but that doesn't mean you don't need to show how civil unions are inferior.
If you're going to claim "civil unions provide fewer legal rights than marriages", you're going to have to substantiate that claim, you can't hide behind "well a large portion of the country doesn't even allow gay civil unions".
You're willing to inflict real emotional damage on people over a definition of a word because you don't want someone else using it?
To turn your argument around, gay marriage supporters are willing to inflict real emotional damage on people over the definition of the word marriage, so why should they be surprised when their opposition feels the same way?
You would prefer they accept a lesser yet same definition that is 'no different' except in name?
The words "different" and "lesser" do not mean the same thing, despite how much you try to make it seem that way.
You may as well complain that women have fewer legal rights because we make a legal distinction between "male" and "female". Yes, we use different words to describe the two groups of people, but that doesn't make either group less than the other.
The same applies in the gay marriage debate.
It's very different for people on the other end of that Greater Than > sign.
You're the one applying the > sign. I have consistently argued that civil unions are equivalent to marriages; you're the one who claims they're not, yet you refuse to show how they're not equivalent!
The burden of proof here lies on you, not on me.
I've been to a Christian church that accepts gays and supports gay marriage.
Religion is meaningless if you change it every time it tells you to do something you don't feel like doing (or to avoid something you really want to do). That's all they've done.
It's hypocritical to profess to follow a particular set of religious teachings if you're blatantly ignoring the parts of those teaching which are inconvenient for you.
It isn't a redefinition of the word marriage, that is only your opinion.
Historically the word "marriage" has not included homosexual couples... therefore it's a redefinition. I think that's about as clear as can be.
If you aren't against gay civil unions, why does the terminology matter so much to you?
Marriage has a special meaning for me. Yes, that meaning is religious, and yes, changing the definition of "marriage" would cheapen its meaning to me.
I realize this is a semantic disagreement. That's sort of my point. But most people involved in the gay marriage debate are arguing about "rights", when in fact to my knowledge nobody has ever demonstrated a legal right that can be obtained by heterosexual married couples that cannot be obtained by homosexual couples in a civil union. Marriage itself is not a legal right, no matter how you try to dress it up as such.
A law was passed with the only purpose of taking away one of their rights.
Marriage is not a right. It's a legal status. Just to clarify.
except in this case the marriages are separate but unequal.
If civil unions and marriage are unequal, why do people consistently fail to show any rights that heterosexual married couples can obtain that cannot be obtained by gay couples in a civil union?
The label seems at least as important as any legal rights to these people.
That's exactly the issue.
I merely oppose the use of the word "marriage" to describe homosexual relationships. That is all. I support gay civil unions, through which all the same rights can be obtained (at least as far as I'm aware, and nobody has shown me contradictory evidence yet). Yet pro-gay-marriage people hear me say this, and start calling me bigoted.
They want to use the word "marriage" to describe heterosexual couples, and that's all there is to it.
I should not need a license, for instance.
You don't; you can live with whoever you want, have sex with whoever you want, have kids with whoever you want, and so on and so forth.
Nobody is forcing you and your significant other to go get a marriage license - unless you want the government to give you something because of it. And if that's the case, you shouldn't be surprised that the government wants legal documentation of your relationship.
it should have no problem if Gays want to call their union a marriage.
Why do you keep bringing up churches? Forget churches for a moment.
You're implying that somehow these organized religions somehow own the word marriage and can dictate who can and cannot use it.
No; I'm implying that religious people merely want to preserve the existing definition of the word "marriage". Furthermore, the government already dictates who can and cannot use it (you have to obtain a government marriage license to be called "married").
They are looking for the LEGAL benefits of marriage, which only the government can give.
Exactly! They want the very same benefits they can obtain through a civil union. Why do they go further and insist that the definition of the word "marriage" be modified? They don't gain additional rights.
The whole argument that they are fine with 'civil unions' as opposed to 'marriage' is ridiculous as no one owns the word.
Nobody "owns" the word; yet gay-marriage supporters want to impose their definition on the rest of us. Why is it oppressive for a majority to want to preserve an existing definition, but it's not oppressive for a minority to use the legal system to force their definition on the majority, especially when no legal rights are gained by it?
That argument reeks of 'back of the bus' for obvious reasons: "You can have 'marriage lite' and like it."
Until you can show me a legal right that can be obtained via marriage but not civil union, then you're merely complaining about semantics. It's not "marriage lite" if the legal rights are identical.
You may as well complain about the artificial "separate but equal" distinction we make between "male" and "female". Or taken further, you may as well complain that an adult male who surgically alters himself to appear female cannot legally call himself female - sure, he may appear female, but he's not, and it's not really important anyway since he still has exactly the same legal rights.
Similarly, a homosexual couple may function much like a heterosexual couple, but they don't function identically, and as long as they have identical legal rights there's no reason to complain about a semantic difference.
No, most of you DO oppose civil unions. You just want to sound tolerant and enlightened, so you claim that would be okay, until it comes up in the polls, and then most of you vote against it. There is no misunderstanding.
Allow me to clarify; if a religious person who opposes gay marriage bothers to think about why he or she opposes gay marriage, then they will conclude that they do not oppose gay civil unions.
If that is not the case, they are simply following someone else's lead. Call me hypocritical for other people's behavior if you want, but I personally don't oppose gay civil unions, and until you can show me exactly how that oppresses gays, then you're merely arguing about terminology.
You obviously don't want to ban marriage ceremonies by other religions, right? So, if there were a religion that wanted to perform gay marriages, you wouldn't want to restrict that religion, right? I mean, if we went around restricting one religion, what's to stop us from restricting yours?
I think the word "marriage" should mean what it means - a union between a man and a woman. No religion (or non-religion) should be able to change that.
Your whole argument is like trying to get people to vote to change the definition of the word "boy" to include "girl". Sure, boys can act like girls in some circumstances, and vice versa, but they're not the same. You shouldn't complain when people don't want you to change their definitions of "boy" and "girl" to suit your whims.
Nobody wants to force your church to perform gay marriages.
No... but can you tell me people aren't going to start prosecuting churches who teach "homosexuality is morally wrong" for hate speech?
Before you say "of course not", remember that legally people can be prosecuted for hate speech against blacks, or jews, or gays, if there's reason to believe it encourages action against that group.
You want 'separate but equal,' which we all know is not equal at all.
I have yet to see someone show me a legal right which can be obtained by a heterosexual married couple that cannot be obtained by a homosexual gay couple. If the rights are the same, then it is equal, by definition. If you know of any, please enlighten us.
To reiterate my earlier example, you may as well complain that we make a legal distinction between "male" and "female" - after all, they have the same rights, so we're artificially creating a "separate but equal" situation, right?
Of course not! We refer to them differently because they're fundamentally different.
YOu want to [...] claim the institution of marriage for your religion exclusively.
I don't think you understand the issue. I don't want to reserve marriage for one religion or other. I want to reserve marriage for heterosexual couples, regardless of religion (or lack thereof). Boys and girls are different, even though they have the same legal rights; I'm merely trying to preserve the semantic distinction between the two words. It's not bigoted to do so.
because you are a bigot who wants to impose your religious values onto other religions besides your own and wants to dictate what ceremonies other religions are allowed to perform.
Excuse me... which of us wants to impose a new definition of a word on the other? That's right... you want us to change an existing word to meet your new definition.
This just goes to show - your entire argument is based on nothing more than terminology. That was my original point, and you're just proving it true.
If God is perfect, and God wrote the Old Testament, then the Old Testament must therefore still be in effect, right?
Or was God wrong when He wrote the Old Testament?
Imagine I tell my young children to stay out of my toolbox. Then they get several years older, and I tell them "you can use my toolbox responsibly". By your logic, I've contradicted myself; in reality, I've merely changed the rules because the circumstances have changed. Parents do it all the time - why is it perfectly logical for parents to do it, but it's somehow completely illogical for God to do it?
God often gives commandments specific to a time or place. The Bible - both the Old and New Testaments - should be taken in that light.
Working on Sunday is explicitly forbidden by the Bible
Well no, it's forbidden by the Law of Moses, which was replaced with a higher law when Christ showed up. (It was basically a "letter of the law" vs "spirit of the law" sort of deal.)
Once you understand that, a rather large swath of complaints about the Bible disappear ;)
Who said anything about ownership?
In fact I specifically mentioned the "historic definition of the word marriage". I said nothing about a particular church's ownership of a word.
But you're falling into the very same trap I was describing - you're trying to take the terminology and create an argument out of it, rather than getting past the terminology difference and getting to what people actually want.
If you want to make any progress at all (regardless of what side of the issue you support), you're going to need to understand the other side's point of view - and arguing about terminology is not going to be helpful.
What ever happened to moderating based on the quality of argument rather than weather you agree with it?
That takes effort ;)
There is no practical difference between "marriage" and "civil union".
True - and yet that's exactly the source of the debate.
People who oppose gay marriage merely oppose the use of the word "marriage" to describe homosexual relationships. (At least, this is the case if they have bothered to actually think about why they have the opinion they do.)
People who support gay marriage hear that and assume we mean "no gay legal relationships", which is not the case at all.
Both sides suck at actually articulating what they mean, and if we could get past that, both sides would be fully satisfied with gay civil unions.
Your post is a perfect example of the problem with this whole debate:
Each side is using different terminology.
People who oppose gay marriage are really only opposing the use of the word "marriage" to describe homosexual relationships; most of us do not oppose gay civil unions. (Unfortunately, most of us are incapable of expressing this without coming across as homosexual haters.)
People who support gay marriage take what they see as hate for homosexuals and assume we're trying to take away rights, which simply isn't the case. They hear "no gay marriage" (which is an inaccurate statement at best) and assume we're saying "no gay legal relationships", which is not the goal at all. Most of these people would be fully satisfied with gay civil unions.
Both sides are guilty of hearing the other side's terminology and misunderstanding it.
Understanding what I just wrote makes your entire post moot, because it removes the source of the misunderstanding - and your post is based entirely on that misunderstanding.
This entire issue is one of mostly semantics.
I think I'm going to start crying, I'm so happy. You're the first person I've seen who realizes this.
(I just replied here saying much the same thing.)
Try to get married five times and the church wouldn't know you had
Then why is the church involved at all? (And what church are you referring to?) I know the Catholic Church and the LDS Church both keep their own records (independent of legal marriage records) to avoid that exact situation.
That is what makes these "defense of marriage" acts so wrong. There is no provable harm in these civil unions
That's the misunderstanding - most religious people who oppose gay marriage do not oppose gay civil unions. Most people who are in favor of gay marriage would really be satisfied by allowing gay civil unions.
This whole stupid debate is nothing more than a gargantuan terminology mismatch. Most religious people couldn't care less if gays can get civil unions (I know I don't), it's just the word "marriage" that they don't think should be applied to such unions. (A gay civil union may resemble a marriage in certain ways, but it isn't a marriage, if you go by the historic definition of "marriage" as it applies to people.) Religious people (and here I'm referring mostly to Christians) put a certain importance behind marriage that is incompatible with homosexuality, and as such they don't want the word to be applied to homosexual couples, but they're not opposed to gay civil unions.
Gay marriage supporters, on the other hand, don't bother understanding that (and when I've tried to explain it, most can't even grasp the difference), so they just assume that their opposition wants to take away rights (which, again, is generally not the case). (Many anti-gay-marriage people have difficulty understanding the true source of the argument, too, I'm not trying to blame gay marriage supporters exclusively.)
That's all it is, and I wish people would understand that.
Oh wow.
That first sentence originally read "you're asking the same question as this:"
I should have proofread that one more time.