An argument against gay marriage that I've seen is:

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Morality isn't analytical. The basis of morality is the sense "this is wrong", screamed out by some emotion. I think there has even been some empirical testing of this as well. People will first defend their moral intuitions using shallow reasoning, however, the foundation of their belief is usually emotional, a sense that something is wrong.

The only argument I can think of that makes sense is this - if Christians want it to be man woman then fine, do the Jewish thing and get around it with technicalities. Give civil unions a full set of teeth, ie. all the insurance and hospital visitation rights of a marriage, pension funds, 401k's, you name it, make sure that its made clear that its represented in the full dignity that marriage is but, you would still keep the words themselves (what this battle seems to be about) separate and, if civil union sounds sterile or contemptuous - it could be given a name chosen by both halves of the gay community in such a way where they can really make it their own.

The trouble seems partly yes, with the fact that the religious don't want to give up the term marriage because its something they handle as a very vibrant church affair and that fact has significant implications (by intent - the fallout, divorce rate, that's likely not something you could say 'national average' or 'whites do this' - I mean real church goers, not Sunday social club yuppies) - because marriage is a term that reaches deep into their institution and social order, trying to change 'marriage' is like taking a copper wire and scraping an exposed major nerve. Gay couples have been denied the same physical and economic rights - that's social injustice, its f'd up and needs to change, and I think when they push 'marriage' they do so in the term that is our society's current word for esteemed union while civil union is just a hollow and legal thing. However, I think the smartest thing the gay community could do is say "We understand what marriage is to the religious, we'll respect their choice to reserve the word, we'll call it _____(grand and beautiful word that does it justice)___, that way we can complete our quest for civil liberties, equality, and we can do so without overarching your rights to religion".

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 01 Sep 2009, 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sneaky! I purposely deleted that becuase I feared it might be misconstrued as me making an implication that a better arguement should be made, when I was rather implying that they could not come up with a better one because there is really no good arguement. It was written with a smart ass tone which I then afterwards realized certainly would not come across.

Is the religious people's main problem the fact that they want the word "marriage" to be just theirs?

So wouldn't that mean that the only people who are allowed to get married are people who belong to a particular organised religion?

Do you really think the word marriage is the real battle? That seems easy enough to fix. As for the civil unions and all of their teeth, do you think some of resistance might be from insurance companies and corporations who pay into their associates insurance? I have even heard the arguement that it would allow 'anyone' to get married for insurance and tax breaks, but straight people do that too.

It's interesting to get into the issue of how difficult that would be, which I suppose few proponents could argue otherwise, how about deontology (Divine command theory)? would it be that hard to determine a solution to marriage from there?


The easiest argument, which I believe it would be better than "the toaster" argument being in their position would be that God doesn't aprove it, heck! that would be all I would feel the need to argue about, and feeling to be supported by the Diving command theory and theology.

I think the issue of marrying animals can be considered somehow into a proposed argument but objects? in any case, I have read and hear arguments relating homosexuality with pedophilia, at least that argument may seem to do better, argumentative speaking, than animals/objects, then the issue is why the need to argue with the latter if they have done so with the former.

At least if you marry your toaster, it will be guaranteed for at least a year to make you breakfast, and all you have to do it feed it bread... Can't complain... Might find out if I can marry mine

Breakfast - OK. But any attempt at sex should be made with the plug out of the socket.

It is a very legitimate civil rights issue when I think the evidence is overwhelming that gay isn't a choice; there's no incentive, for a very long time there was every negative at the book thrown at people who are - many are gay from their first memory, perhaps not birth but its still enough to say that being gay is a personal trait, not a lifestyle choice - developmental, genetic, whatever. At that point denying rights to equal protections, equal treatment, its senseless.

On the issue of a word though, our culture, our memes, our whole sense of reality, while the physical is what it is - most of our emotions are governed by things we can't way, quantify, or boil down. Words hold a lot more value than most people intuitively posit them quite often. Especially words that have had not only a very specific meaning but that have been raised on a pedestal for thousands of years as a staple, as an institution of society - part of the objection is that its wrecking or bulldozing Notre Dame Cathedral or the Haga Sophia for a blacktop parking lot and a Costco in theoretical terms, its taking something that's a momentary battle - the gay and lesbian battle for equal civil rights - and needing to smash something of such historical grandeur to society, not by necessity to gain their rights, but something that was seemingly taken hostage and laid to waste by a momentary struggle only for lack of better language - that's what I think the core of the problem is. People are more afraid than anything, not of gay marriage even, as much as something that's so deeply woven into the social fabric being tampered with; it wreaks I think to most people (again, the fair minded liberals who voted no on Prop 8 ) of a mass assertion of the law of unintended consequences.

This is also part of what I think a lot of aspies don't easily get, we're used to calling it like we see it, if we see something in the moment we don't like we want to change it, but like a lot of people these days we think only in the here and now, blot out the tides of history in our minds, and forget just how forceful history is on present value of things, even things that seem as amorphous or like they should be no big deal as broadening marriage. Things that even came into motion in 1400 - we see direct effect of today, and 1400 was what, only 24 generations ago? The Palestinian/Israeli situation, the broad based hatred of two peoples - is built on some sophomoric choices by the British in 1920. Setting up a new institution, if the gay community did that, wouldn't be manually overriding or fundamentally changing the old - it would simply create a new institution, which would incorporate its own rules, would be free to define itself and come up with its own language to the liking of the community it supports. Bending and breaking a very ancient social structure, to many, comes with both the subconscious or conscious knowledge that if it turns out to be a terrible idea via the law of unintended consequence, the value or 'marriage' like many other concepts in society go through something like a Darwinian evolution, something that can't be refabricated, something that once broken can't be put back together, ever, in its previously known form.

Is this a joke?

Look at (1) above. Playing golf is not natural. Does that mean we should not play golf?

ruveyn

It's sarcasm.

Actually, there is a condition called Objectum Sexuality, which is allegedly more common amongst people with Asperger's syndrome, that has people (all of the declared ones are women) falling in love with inanimate objects. There are well documented cases of women marrying fairground rides, the Eiffel Tower, and the Berlin Wall. Obviously, these marriages have no legal standing, but since a minority have redefined marriage to mean a union between one human, and an object, what is the moral argument against marriage being legalised between humans and objects? It's actually not as daft a question as you'd think.

http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sun ... 32519.html

In other words, if anybody of any mental condition accomplishes something, the action must be OK?

I wasn't making any moral point, I was simply pointing out the phenomenon.

Objectively, if there is no moral objection to redefining marriage in one way, what is to stop people from redefining it in another way?

The initial premise of this thread was that it would be ridiculous to assume marriage could be redefined to include a "contract" between a human and an object. I was demonstrating that this has already been attempted, at least by some.

Yes, people attempt many ridiculous things on a regular basis. Sometimes it's to make a point (like the gentleman who protested the Kansas Board of Education's attempt to include creationism in classrooms as an "alternative explanation", by insisting that they must give equal weight to his alternative explanation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster); sometimes it's because they have a somewhat skewed take on reality (like Dick Cheney's attempts to clear his reputation vis-a-vis the Iraq war by claiming that his favored policy of torture was too useful, and pointing at terrorist attacks that never happened as his evidence); sometimes it's because they just plain have lost touch with objective reality (such as members of the Flat Earth Society, or the aforementioned person who attempted to marry the Berlin Wall).

Just because someone does something, does not mean that legal definitions must be twisted out of any sort of recognizable shape in order to accommodate that. Marriage is a contract - as such, it can only be entered into by entities capable of giving informed consent and signing a contract. Your toaster is not capable of this, nor is your dog (no matter how "smart" you believe your dog to be), nor is the Eiffel Tower (its size and age notwithstanding).

Ah... but what about it's soul? After all, if someone is an animist, who also happens to be in love with... oh, I don't know, the Golden Gate Bridge, then you're not just looking down your nose at their sexual preference if you don't allow them to marry the bridge... you also are denying them freedom of religion.

How can you prove empirically that the Golden Gate Bridge doesn't have a "soul"? I mean... clearly it doesn't. But an animist could claim religious discrimination and sexual bigotry if they're not allowed to marry their "soul" mate.