oscuria wrote:
1) The "fight" over same-sex marriage is about rights. Hence why I put it there.
Well, it is about legal rights. To say it is just about rights though is to assume all arguments on this matter to be the same. I could argue that gay marriage is utility maximizing too and allows for trades that would not exist without it to exist.
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2) There is discrimination everywhere, from our taxes to those eligible to receive aid, even affirmative action. Again, this absolutely has nothing to do with MARRIAGE which has always been understood to be between a man and a woman. It is a ritual. It is meant to limit who is allowed to marry based on sexuality (and other contributing factors), because it by itself implies a union between a male and a female. What matters love? What even matters children (considering that not all married couples are able to have children)? The only thing marriage is a union between a man and a woman. The government doesn't allow me to marry two women. That is discrimination, is it not? Where's my liberty to freely marry two or more women?
Ok? So? Just because there is discrimination does not mean we should support it for no other reason. This has a lot to do with the legal rights package the government calls marriage. Whether or not it has anything to do with marriage is another argument that I care nothing about. I was not aware that the entire purpose of marriage was sexual discrimination, strangely enough, I thought it was a social bonding package to allow for people to join as a firm, in order to serve each others interests in a long-term arrangement including sexual favors, household division of labor, sharing of income, sometimes production of children. Love matters because love is the modern reason for seeking this social arrangement. Actually oscuria, that argument doesn't work, I also think that polygamy and polygyny could be considered legitimate marital arrangements and heck, the former is rooted in marital tradition as well, so it can hardly be argued that this is some major change to the definition, just a reinstatement of an older definition or a definition belonging to certain cultures. So, the statement does not seem so absurd to me.
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3) The Government has the responsibility to look after the people who may otherwise be too ignorant or foolish to decide on things on their own. That is why we have laws to prevent people to actively do whatever enters their mind. The Supreme Court, whom we all know interpret the Constitution, decided that it doesn't go against Constitution or Law to do the things they've allowed people to do. But how do we know what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when it was written? That would also beg the question of should it matter today? How much should society give up in order to accommodate its citizens? When it is to decide it realizes that another group of people are going to be marginalized. Thus, what is truly meant by EQUALITY? Does it mean that I can do whatever I want, and so should others? Does it mean because they have wealth I should too? Or does it mean we should have equal opportunities in that which is best for and serves society? How would allowing drugs to be freely available be best for citizens? Equally, why should the state be complacent to allow SRT? How does it effectively help in anything and create an atmosphere where the Constitution is followed as intended?
I completely disagree and think that paternalism is stupid and ugly, and dislike the laws that you hold up as examples, instead holding them up as examples of what the government should not do. I am not arguing from the Constitution or Supreme Court, and invoking them is useless, as those organizations are not the summation of society, and can be accepted or rejected as a person's political beliefs as the individual chooses. How about this question: why is society really considered an entity? I see heterogenous individuals, but I don't see a hive called society. I never argued equality, I argued legal rights and not discriminating upon something arbitrary. How would having drugs be freely available be best? Well, it would give citizens more individual choices for running their lives. SRT??? But to answer part of the question, as philosopher Robert Nozick once stated the fundamental question in political philosophy is "whether there should be any state at all”.
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What does marriage have to do with homosexuality? The Courts should understand what marriage is, and what it is not. The idea of, and the possibility for, same-sex marriages is and was a foreign idea until recently.
What does marriage have to do with government? I am not arguing for a courts based understanding, but rather, just straight out for the legality of this legal package.
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4) If homosexuals were to be allowed to create a union, such a union cannot be considered marriage as generally understood. It would have to go by a different name, and most certainly not with the same legalities considering that a heterosexual union is obviously different from a union between homosexuals.
Umm..... well? Ok... I really don't care what they call it. Frankly, the issue from my view is one of a legal package, as I have stated multiple times that the government should not be involved with deciding what a marriage is or isn't.
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5) Everyone is a tyrant if we were to have loose definitions of it.
True but you especially.
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I don't agree with that, neither is it true. The only cultures that prohibit miscegenation are the Yazidi, Parsi, and Israeli (from what I know right now and which has more to do with religion). Historically, colonial states prohibited miscegenation.
Umm.... our cultural background isn't Yazidi, Parsi, or Israeli. So, the argument stands based upon our culture, and yes, specifically the colonial states. Not only that, but honestly, before the colonies, was there really a lot of opportunity for most people to miscegenate? Less of one, so it still generally did not happen.
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There is nothing in the Abrahamic traditions that forbid miscegenation. In Islam it is actually forbidden to discriminate on race. In Judaism, as long as a person is Jewish, it is permissible (Read the bible, there are countless stories of marriages between the Jews and foreign tribes). In the Dharmic religions, miscegenation is not forbidden (although there is a following of caste system). If you look to the east, you are confronted with COUNTLESS different ethnic groups. To say that traditionally people did not marry different races is ignorant to that fact. Look at how diverse Central and South Asia is. Miscegenation certainly was not forbidden, and it was not anything similar to the practices in the Americas (US/Brazil) or the Yazid/Parsi tribes where laws were made to forbid it.
Ok, um... unless there were tons of travellers and settlers, there may have been mixings of ethnic groups, but not racial intermixing given the distance that races could be from each other. I suppose this really would depend upon how one would define race of course, and perhaps there were mixings on the border, but if you have a bunch of settled people, they aren't going to see many different people much less breed with them. But, basically your argument on this is just that miscegenation is traditional in many other places than the US, but gay marriage is not traditional anywhere else? I still do not see why this argument from tradition really matters.
19 May 2008, 3:41 am
