Beards and Gay Marriage

  • Thread starter Thread starter PRmerger
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Stephen168 said:
I was thinking about a guy with a motorcycle who insisted he was driving an automobile. When it is pointed out that it only has two wheels, he responds that “it is steerable, has suspension, transmission, and an engine, WHY are you obsessed with wheels? Automobiles are more than just wheels? Why are you reducing automobiles to wheels?”

It is clear that the motorcyclist is the one reducing automobiles to “just wheels” so that he can attempt to remove it as one of the marks of an automobile.

This leads to the question: why does he insist on calling something an automobile which it clearly is not?
Click to expand...
Love this analogy! 👍
 
Prodigal_Son said:
Catholics believe that there is a real thing in nature: marriage. Whether we call this “marriage” or “gobbledeegook”, the thing exists. If people want to call various other things “marriage”, fine. But they can’t make these other things the same thing as the thing we originally were referring to by the word “marriage”.
Click to expand...
Some times qualifiers are used to I dictate which variation of a words meaning is to be applied. As it relates to marriage some relevant qualifiers are “civil” and “sacramantal.” There are others but are probably less relevant for now.

Most discussions that I see on the word “marriage” being redefined are referring to “Civil Marriage” as used in laws (property inheritance, fifth ammendment rights, visitation rights, and more). But most of the time when I see Catholics presenting an argument against this the defense seems to be about “Sacramental Marriage.” Given that the sacraments are said to be immutable my expectation is that Sacramental marriage is not being harmed when Bill and Ted are able to get a civil marriage contract in another state.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
Some times qualifiers are used to I dictate which variation of a words meaning is to be applied. As it relates to marriage some relevant qualifiers are “civil” and “sacramantal.” There are others but are probably less relevant for now.

Most discussions that I see on the word “marriage” being redefined are referring to “Civil Marriage” as used in laws (property inheritance, fifth ammendment rights, visitation rights, and more). But most of the time when I see Catholics presenting an argument against this the defense seems to be about “Sacramental Marriage.” Given that the sacraments are said to be immutable my expectation is that Sacramental marriage is not being harmed when Bill and Ted are able to get a civil marriage contract in another state.
Click to expand...
I think this post is very much on the right track – and it explains why many faithful Catholics have a hard time opposing gay marriage. You see, to most people, it’s unclear what civil marriage has to do with sacramental marriage. When Bill marries Ted (“say it ain’t so, Keanu”), that doesn’t harm my marriage with my wife.

It is at the very least unclear, however, whether Bill marrying Ted and having little “Neo” will be harmless. Now, surely, it could be better than Bill raising Neo by himself, but some people (like myself) think that children have a right to a mom.

At any rate, most Americans think that the function of government is to “not discriminate” or to “be fair”. I could not disagree more. These people are drinking the Kool-Aid that John Rawls made. In reality, a central role of government is to establish true moral norms into law, to manufacture virtue in the citizenry, and (thus) to make people happy. When you think about it that way, you simply ask the question of what arrangement most effectively promotes virtue. It should be obvious, to a Catholic at least, that a family with a mom and a dad is the answer.

But I would not hold this view if I agreed with Rawls that government ought not promote positive ideas of the good. So, given your premises, I agree with you. But I think one of your premises is flawed.
 
Prodigal_Son said:
“Wine” is not used to refer to white wine in the USA? :confused:
Click to expand...
It can be used this way. One can also use qualifiers to be more specific and exclude other types of wine.
  • White Wine
  • Red Wine
  • Port Wine
  • So on…
 
ThinkingSapien said:
Some times qualifiers are used to I dictate which variation of a words meaning is to be applied. As it relates to marriage some relevant qualifiers are “civil” and “sacramantal.” There are others but are probably less relevant for now.

Most discussions that I see on the word “marriage” being redefined are referring to “Civil Marriage” as used in laws (property inheritance, fifth ammendment rights, visitation rights, and more). But most of the time when I see Catholics presenting an argument against this the defense seems to be about “Sacramental Marriage.” Given that the sacraments are said to be immutable my expectation is that Sacramental marriage is not being harmed when Bill and Ted are able to get a civil marriage contract in another state.
Click to expand...
When I speak of marriage, I mean the general use without qualifiers like civil or sacramental. Marriage as part of human natural since the beginning of time.
 
DrTaffy said:
But they can, and do, create life. Just with outside help.
Click to expand...
impossible. Life is created with a sperm and an egg. I female can be impregnated by the sperm but their SS partner has nothing to do with the creating the life. Can they together raise the life? Yes. Can they create it together. No.
So why is a same sex couple that does procreate less worthy of marriage than a heterosexual couple that does not?
Click to expand...
again, no SSC can create a life.
 
PRmerger said:
What we are opposed to someone saying, “You can’t tell me that I can’t say that this is wine!”

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/cm/cosm...ollection-Instant-Nail-Polish-Remover-mdn.jpg

Or, without the multiple negatives: we folks who believe truth is important want people to say things are what they really are.

We oppose people having the right to proclaim lies.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Wine means wine. It doesn’t mean any liquid. So while nail polish remover is a liquid, it is not wine.
 
At the risk of incurring everyone’s ire, let me propose something:

You guys are talking past each other.

Let’s make a distinction between two senses of the word “word”. First, we have the syllables spoken when the word is spoken: call this the “word matter”. Second, we have the word as a fixed symbol that designates one and only one particular thing: call this the “word form”. (Philosophers call this second sense of “word” a “rigid designator”). See plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/

There is a proposal on the table to include committed partnerships between people of the same sex as “marriages”.

Now clearly the syllables “marr-iage” can be used to indicate partnerships between people of the same sex, just as “gobbledeegook” can be used to indicate rose bushes. There is no problem with using the word matter to mean whatever we want. So, on the surface, posters like PRMerger would seem to be just wrong to say that we could not – as a culture – change the meaning of the word “marriage”.

However, suppose we take “marriage” as a rigid designator of a particular thing. The word form “marriage” is not the type of thing that can change. A language might lack a word matter to indicate this word form (an alien race might not have a word for marriage), but the word form cannot change. And this word form has a history. It simply is not plausible that, when people throughout the ages have talked about “marriage”, they *meant *something that could be entered into by two women. On this view, PRMerger and Stephen168 are exactly right.

But the syllables don’t matter. If the language changes to use the syllabes “marr-iage” to indiscriminately refer to gay or straight partnerships, that will not change what marriage is. Supporters of gay marriage are not trying to do something impossible. (If they were, it would be silly to oppose it). They are trying to use language to affect reality in various ways, to appropriate evocative syllables.

In the end, there is a genuine disagreement being discussed here. But it’s NOT a disagreement about words, so I don’t think we really need to be talking this much about words.
 
Stephen168 said:
When I speak of marriage, I mean the general use without qualifiers like civil or sacramental. Marriage as part of human natural since the beginning of time.
Click to expand...
Some term that as “Natural Marriage” and it sounds like you are saying you are referring to Natural Marriage by default ( ? ).
 
Prodigal_Son said:
…]Now clearly the syllables “marr-iage” can be used to indicate partnerships between people of the same sex, just as “gobbledeegook” can be used to indicate rose bushes. There is no problem with using the word matter to mean whatever we want. So, on the surface, posters like PRMerger would seem to be just wrong to say that we could not – as a culture – change the meaning of the word “marriage”.
Click to expand...
Off topic, but not really. There was a nice article on NPR earlier about the language police (figuratively speaking) and linguistic permissiveness.
"NPR:
“Dilapidated” was frowned upon by some because it comes from a Latin root, “lapis,” meaning stone, so it was thought that you should only refer to a dilapidated building if it was actually made out of stone, and it was somehow improper to talk about a dilapidated wooden structure.

“Balding” was considered improper because it appears to be a participle formed from “bald,” and everybody knows that “bald” is not a verb — at least they thought it wasn’t a verb. Some of the commentators suggested words like “baldish,” which somehow failed to catch on. …
Bad English
NPR
Click to expand...
But linguistics is not your main emphasis here.
Prodigal_Son said:
But the syllables don’t matter. If the language changes to use the syllabes “marr-iage” to indiscriminately refer to gay or straight partnerships, that will not change what marriage is. Supporters of gay marriage are not trying to do something impossible. (If they were, it would be silly to oppose it). They are trying to use language to affect reality in various ways, to appropriate evocative syllables.

In the end, there is a genuine disagreement being discussed here. But it’s NOT a disagreement about words, so I don’t think we really need to be talking this much about words.
Click to expand...
There’s an eastern proverb relevant here. “The finger that points at the moon is not the moon.” That may be a little to esoteric here to make sense. But it expresses a difference between a referrer of an object/concept and the referent which I think is what you are getting at.

So this raises a question. If the state were to step out of having any involvement with marriage and instead issue licenses for something more generic (let’s call it “life partner”) that would give a pair of life partner’s rights such as claims to each other’s property, fifth amendment rights, and tax benefits then would there still be significant objection to it?
 
Stephen168 said:
I’m not sure what you mean “by default”
Click to expand...
Sorry, that’s my Software Engineering/Computer Science nomenclature showing in which “default” refers to what to do, what selection to use, or how something is to be interpreted unless told to do otherwise. Comes close to meaning the same thing as an “assumption.”

Such as “Internet Explorer is the default web browser on Windows” or “The person’s first initial and last name will be their default username unless another is requested.”

I know that’s quite different than the general exoterric meaning of the word that’s associated with with one’s failure to meet obligations. But I hear that use of the word so rarely that I generally interpret/use it it to indicate an assumed selection.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
There’s an eastern proverb relevant here. “The finger that points at the moon is not the moon.” That may be a little to esoteric here to make sense. But it expresses a difference between a referrer of an object/concept and the referent which I think is what you are getting at.
Click to expand...
I like that proverb a lot. Thanks! 🙂
So this raises a question. If the state were to step out of having any involvement with marriage and instead issue licenses for something more generic (let’s call it “life partner”) that would give a pair of life partner’s rights such as claims to each other’s property, fifth amendment rights, and tax benefits then would there still be significant objection to it?
Click to expand...
The objections would not be nearly as strong, I think. (See, for example, that Pope Francis was – as a bishop – willing to consider a compromise of civil unions).

The problem is that gay marriage supporters are trying to appropriate a normative term. Of course, their intentions are often good. But it is this word – this set of syllables – that has a lot of social power. If you can co-opt that power, you can strip your political opponent of the ability to express his point.

Language and power plays. I don’t subscribe to post-structuralism, but the points post-structuralists make about stuff like this is reasonably accurate.
 
Prodigal_Son said:
At the risk of incurring everyone’s ire, let me propose something:

You guys are talking past each other.

Let’s make a distinction between two senses of the word “word”. First, we have the syllables spoken when the word is spoken: call this the “word matter”. Second, we have the word as a fixed symbol that designates one and only one particular thing: call this the “word form”. (Philosophers call this second sense of “word” a “rigid designator”). See plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/

There is a proposal on the table to include committed partnerships between people of the same sex as “marriages”.

Now clearly the syllables “marr-iage” can be used to indicate partnerships between people of the same sex, just as “gobbledeegook” can be used to indicate rose bushes. There is no problem with using the word matter to mean whatever we want. So, on the surface, posters like PRMerger would seem to be just wrong to say that we could not – as a culture – change the meaning of the word “marriage”.

However, suppose we take “marriage” as a rigid designator of a particular thing. The word form “marriage” is not the type of thing that can change. A language might lack a word matter to indicate this word form (an alien race might not have a word for marriage), but the word form cannot change. And this word form has a history. It simply is not plausible that, when people throughout the ages have talked about “marriage”, they *meant *something that could be entered into by two women. On this view, PRMerger and Stephen168 are exactly right.

But the syllables don’t matter. If the language changes to use the syllabes “marr-iage” to indiscriminately refer to gay or straight partnerships, that will not change what marriage is. Supporters of gay marriage are not trying to do something impossible. (If they were, it would be silly to oppose it). They are trying to use language to affect reality in various ways, to appropriate evocative syllables.

In the end, there is a genuine disagreement being discussed here. But it’s NOT a disagreement about words, so I don’t think we really need to be talking this much about words.
Click to expand...
Suppose you substitute the word “circle” for “marriage” above…

then what say you, Prodigal Son?
 
PRmerger said:
Suppose you substitute the word “circle” for “marriage” above…

then what say you, Prodigal Son?
Click to expand...
Of course, the syllables “cir-cle” could be used to refer to anything at all. But if we take “circle” as a rigid designator, then what we mean by that designator could never change.

If I start a dialect where “circle” means “ketchup”, I haven’t done anything wrong or incorrect, though. 🤷
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top