Beards and Gay Marriage

[DrTaffy]

We haven’t forced anyone to live a life of celibacy.

If sex outside of marriage is wrong, and you deny an entire subsection of society the right to marry anyone they might find attractive, the inference is pretty clear.

They can find a suitable partner of the opposite sex any time they want.

That is offensively smug and condescending towards homosexuals. I may as well say that you have complete freedom of religion, as long as that religion is islam.

I think the government has an interest in supporting and defending heterosexual marriages as opposed to homosexual unions.

Noone is suggesting that they should not support heterosexual marriages. You have just failed to provide an objective reason as to why they should not support homosexual ones. Especially why society should support a childless heterosexual marriage and not a homosexual marriage with children.

And why should the resources of a country be used to support " drones. ? "

Because those you are insulting as ‘drones’ contribute just as much to society as you do, and deserve equal support from society.

Where did you dig that up.

A place called ‘reality’ - you should visit, it is nice here!

How come we have never heard of them? And why should we take your word?

I would venture to guess that you have never heard of them because you have never looked. After all, you apparently were unaware of Roman marriage customs. How much do you think you know about marriage customs in the native cultures of Africa or the Americas?

See this post for many references.

You do see that men and women were made for each other don’t you? Think of a world of only men or of only women.

You can interpret “men and women were made for each other” in two different ways. I see no reason to believe that some men were not made for each other and some women were not made for each other.

A world of only celibate priests would be doomed in a way that a world of gay men and women would not be. Do we therefore conclude that celibacy is immoral?

 

[DrTaffy]

This is a classic straw man.

That is a classic evasion. See above.

Are you going to explain what ‘marriage’ you assert to exist “in nature” or not?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Peter,

Just so you know, there are plenty of people with same-sex attraction that don’t think it is a central part of their identity. They may or may not call themselves “gay”, but it isn’t thought of as some deeply important trait. It can be no more or less important than hair color, for example.

I don’t think this can be true even if some individuals, whether they identify as gay or not, may see it this way. Gender appears to be integral to one’s personality, but cannot be determined by what one is attracted to, which was the point of the article. It does matter, but in ways traits like hair colour simply cannot.

 

[DrTaffy]

Human beings socially construct many things, I don’t see how that statement can be followed by “therefore make way for gay marriage”.

Rather it is followed by the dismissal of an argument that relies on marriage being a thing “in nature” rather than a social construct.

Would you like to take up P_S’ assertion that marriage is a thing “in nature” (and what do you mean by that)?

If all marriage is pure social construct, what is it exactly that is being constructed? I would like you to expound on that, what actually does marriage mean?

The social construct is the thing being constructed, if that is what you mean?

I’ve given three different things that are referred to as ‘marriage’, but in each case I would say that the thing being recognised by [society/religion/law] is the human equivalent of a pair-bond in nature. (Possibly involving more than two people, if you insist, although I have always viewed polygamy as multiple two-people marriages rather than one marriage of more than two people)

When two (or more ) people form a pair bond, share a house, wealth, possessions, possibly raise kids together and so on, all sorts of issues arise. For example, when one eventually dies, it would not be nice for death duties to force the other to sell their house and move home at a time when they already have to deal with grief, probate, funeral arrangements and so on. To this end, marriage law acknowledges the pair as effectively a single economic unit, which does not have to pay death duties until both are dead. How is this less applicable to a same sex couple than a heterosexual couple?

You also said “in the past have been referred to a s marriages” what do you mean?

In the literal sense. See my posts above. Other cultures have in the past referred to two men or two women as married.

Good question, The definition is limited because it makes logical and historical sense to define it as the conjugal union.

No, you don’t answer my question, you just repeat the assertion that that is what marriage means, according to you. Why do you want to insist that ‘marriage’ has never been used to refer to same sex couples, when it has? Given that many many people use the word today to refer to same sex couples, and that their meaning is clear and unambiguous, why do some Catholics try to just insist that SS’M’ (as they condescendingly call it) is intrinsically meaningless rather than explaining why they think it is a bad idea?

The government doesn’t recognize your marriage because “aww they love each other and are deeply committed personally to one another”.

Neither does it recognise your marriage because you can put a penis into a vagina.

See, anyone can ridicule the other side.

If we perpetuate the notion that parents are not mother and father, but merely two people raising a child, the government is by default actively involved in assigning who’s the “real mother” and being actively involved in keeping the child away from his/her biological parents.

Extraordinary assertion. Why is the Government forced to do any of this? How is this not the case with heterosexual couples raising children from previous marriages, adoption or surrogacy?

With “gay marriage” comes the idea that biology has no ground in parenthood either, a parent becomes whomever the government decides is a parent or whomever he or she chooses to be, Motherhood and Fatherhood are merely nominal, ungrounded in biology (very messed up).

Nonsense. At most you disassociate ‘marriage’ from ‘biological parenthood’ - but since the two are often not the same even in heterosexual marriage, and since studies show that same sex couples do a very good job of raising kids, what here would justify State discrimination against same sex couples?

I really don’t see why gay couples need the government to tell people that they love each other. It has no logical ground at all.

Why do heterosexual couples need the government to tell people that they love each other, then? Is it possible that this is nothing to do with the reasons for marriage and that you are just being condescending to homosexuals?

You assume “gay marriage” is in fact marriage.

You assume that it is not marriage, as opposed to simply saying that it is a form of marriage of which you disapprove.

You have yet to explain why (at least some) Catholics want to simply dogmatically define it out of existence rather than justifying your opposition.

 

[DrTaffy]

A great article on this question is here:

Odd argument:

So. Arousal is an event. Identity is who we are. Who we are cannot be based on an event, because an event is no guarantee of future events. To go to the park is no guarantee that I always go to parks. It would be moronic to go to a park and, from that point on, begin defining myself as a park-goer, a categorized type of being apart from other beings. So too, it is a little moronic to say, based upon the regular event of sexual arousal, that I am a heterosexual, for no event of arousal, no matter how many times it is repeated, is a guarantee of all future events of arousal.

By the same argument, just because you have always believed in God when you thought about it in the past is no guarantee that you will always believe in God the next time you think about it. So ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’ would also be thrown out as a part of your identity. :ehh:

Arousal may be an event, but an inclination to be aroused by a particular sex (at least the cute ones) can be an enduring trait.

 

[Peter_Plato]

---

So would you suggest a gay person try dating some one of the opposite sex to see if he or she becomes interested? (note: I wonder how the other person would respond to knowing that their date isn’t on an extreme end of the Kinsey scale).

Well no, actually. That would be conceding the point that what one is attracted to is what creates the attraction, which is nonsensical.

It is understanding and coming to terms with the manner in which intention as an aspect of personal identity is arrived at. The genesis of moral agency has to be one’s integral nature not mere response to external circumstances

 

[Linusthe2nd]

If sex outside of marriage is wrong, and you deny an entire subsection of society the right to marry anyone they might find attractive, the inference is pretty clear.

I call it protecting the common good. I also call it maintaining a morally coherent culture for children.

That is offensively smug and condescending towards homosexuals. I may as well say that you have complete freedom of religion, as long as that religion is islam.

There are no absolute rights. You do not have a right to my property. Why? It is called protecting the common good.

Noone is suggesting that they should not support heterosexual marriages. You have just failed to provide an objective reason as to why they should not support homosexual ones. Especially why society should support a childless heterosexual marriage and not a homosexual marriage with children.

Why should I give support to homosexual marriages? How does society benefit from that?
It will only lead to futher erosions. Next will come poly groupings of any number and even withing family relationships. That will not benefit the common good in any way, though it will certainly be a great boon to lawyers…

Because those you are insulting as ‘drones’ contribute just as much to society as you do, and deserve equal support from society.

Not if they are asking spousal benefits and perogatives of any kind.

I would venture to guess that you have never heard of them because you have never looked. After all, you apparently were unaware of Roman marriage customs. How much do you think you know about marriage customs in the native cultures of Africa or the Americas?

Why should I be that interested?

See this post for many references.

I guess that is one of the reason why God sent his Son when he did.

You can interpret “men and women were made for each other” in two different ways. I see no reason to believe that some men were not made for each other and some women were not made for each other.

That isn’t what I was getting at. The fact is that either God or Evolution made men and women for each other. Your reasoning is incoherent. Women are necessary for the good of human survival and men for the same reason. Men are not created for men, and women are not created for women.

A world of only celibate priests would be doomed in a way that a world of gay men and women would not be. Do we therefore conclude that celibacy is immoral?

That red herring has nothing to do with the argument.

Linus2nd

Protect Traditional Marriage ruthinstitute.org/

 

[Prodigal_Son]

That is a classic evasion. See above.

Are you going to explain what ‘marriage’ you assert to exist “in nature” or not?

There’s an equivocation going on here, which I noticed earlier, but forgot to mention. When I say “marriage exists in nature” – or rather “there is a certain thing that has regularly been called ‘marriage’ that exists in nature” – I am not making a historical or biological claim. I am not talking about “nature” in the sense of “natural history”. Some other people in this thread may be, but I am not.

Let me see if I can explain this – and PLEASE honestly tell me whether you understand what I’m saying, even if you disagree that marriage is like this.

OK, so think about the concept of “blueness”. If I were to say that “blueness exists in nature”, I would be saying that there is a certain way things can be which is “blue”, and that all blue things have this property of blueness in common. It is plausible, at least, that blueness would continue to exist as a “way things could be” even if all blue things suddenly stopped existing.

Right?

I think marriage is something like that. There is a certain real relation in nature, whether or not any beings ever participate in that relation: this is the relation we might call “marriage”. (We could also call it “labbadeeboo”, and it would be the same thing.)

Just as certain things are blue, and certain things are not, in just the same way certain relationships are marriages and other relationships are not. These boundaries are not up to us. I can change the word I use to refer to the color blue, but I cannot change the color blue; I cannot change blueness. The standards for correctness are given by the world, not by me.

So when you say that certain cultures have had gay marriages, that is completely irrelevant to the claim I am making. It certainly doesn’t prove that same-sex marriage exists in nature, in the way that I am using the word “nature”. Now if you want the justification for all that I am saying here, that is a VERY long set of premises and arguments. It begins with an attack on the theory that moral rules are created by human beings. Would you agree to the premise that morality exists objectively, independent of human opinions?

 

[PRmerger]

If sex outside of marriage is wrong, and you deny an entire subsection of society the right to marry anyone they might find attractive, the inference is pretty clear.

It is no more forcing anyone to a life of celibacy, than you are when you put boundaries on whom others can marry.

And I assure you that you do put boundaries.

All rational people do.

Unless you are of the position that your wife can marry her sister? Or Hugh Jackman?

If your wife were to tell you that she wants to marry anyone else, you will have to tell her, “My dear, I must deny you that right, since you are already married to me.”

In doing so, are you forcing her to live a life of celibacy?

 

[Stephen168]

Simple question, what is marriage?
ThinkingSapien;12063646:

Good question.

…

In a nutshell: You would rather beg the question than answer it.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

In a nutshell: You would rather beg the question than answer it.

Nope. There’s no universally applicable answer. Nail down a time and place and I can give you a more specific answer.

 

[PRmerger]

Nope. There’s no universally applicable answer. Nail down a time and place and I can give you a more specific answer.

If you can’t offer your definition of marriage, then how can we have a discussion about it?

That would be like saying, “Let’s talk about fjafdj!” and when I say, “Well, what do you mean by fjafdj?” You say, “I can’t define it because there’s no universally applicable answer”.

 

[PRmerger]

If you can’t offer your definition of marriage, then how can we have a discussion about it?

That would be like saying, “Let’s talk about fjafdj!” and when I say, “Well, what do you mean by fjafdj?” You say, “I can’t define it because there’s no universally applicable answer”.

And one has to wonder why there is so much reluctance to answering the question: what is marriage?

by the homosexual marriage apologists.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

If you can’t offer your definition of marriage, then how can we have a discussion about it?

I have definitions (plural). They aren’t specifically mine. As I said before, I’m familiar with what constitutes a civil marriage in various states in the USA. It’s civil marriages whose definitions have been the target of the LGBT rights movement. Since they are regulated at the state level (and not the federal) the rules differ from one state to another. Among what they have in common is a a legal agreement between two people that grants them the rights and obligations under the law to those which have mad such an agreement. This doesn’t amount to much more than what I said in the first part of #529.

Restrict the geography and the time period and I may be able to be more specific. Or if you’d prefer I’ll choose a time and location myself and go from there.

 

[PRmerger]

I have definitions (plural). They aren’t specifically mine. As I said before, I’m familiar with what constitutes a civil marriage in various states in the USA. It’s civil marriages whose definitions have been the target of the LGBT rights movement. Since they are regulated at the state level (and not the federal) the rules differ from one state to another. Among what they have in common is a a legal agreement between two people that grants them the rights and obligations under the law to those which have mad such an agreement. This doesn’t amount to much more than what I said in the first part of #529.

Restrict the geography and the time period and I may be able to be more specific. Or if you’d prefer I’ll choose a time and location myself and go from there.

Why don’t you give a definition of marriage that is applicable to Western society in the 20th and 21st centuries?

 

[Peter_Plato]

I have definitions (plural). They aren’t specifically mine. As I said before, I’m familiar with what constitutes a civil marriage in various states in the USA. It’s civil marriages whose definitions have been the target of the LGBT rights movement. Since they are regulated at the state level (and not the federal) the rules differ from one state to another. Among what they have in common is a a legal agreement between two people that grants them the rights and obligations under the law to those which have mad such an agreement. This doesn’t amount to much more than what I said in the first part of #529.

Restrict the geography and the time period and I may be able to be more specific. Or if you’d prefer I’ll choose a time and location myself and go from there.

Are you “married?”

If so, is your understanding of what your marriage IS dependent on “what constitutes a civil marriage in various states in the USA?”

If so, I instinctively feel some sympathy for your spouse.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I have definitions (plural). They aren’t specifically mine.

If you don’t have a single definition for marriage, then how can you claim that child-adult marriages are wrong? If you don’t make any claim to know what an apple is, how can you reasonably say that some particular apple is a “bad apple”?

 

[frobert]

If you don’t have a single definition for marriage, then how can you claim that child-adult marriages are wrong? If you don’t make any claim to know what an apple is, how can you reasonably say that some particular apple is a “bad apple”?

I think you are confusing civil law with Christian morality. You adhere to a morality wherein certain types of marriage are repugnant to you. Whereas the states’ obligation is to make and interpret laws that interfere as little as possible with private lives while protecting the states interests.

I am not a lawyer, what follow is a lay opinion. The state has a vested interest in families so will likely not consider familiar incest relationships a right that needs protection and will maintain its legal prohibitions against such relationships. In the case of bestiality, the state has laws protecting animals that they will uphold. In the case of polygamy there is nowhere in the US that it is legal. My guess is that the state does not and will not recognize it as a right because there are no rights being denied to would be polygamists that others are enjoying. In other words it is a fairness or discrimination issue, the mere desire to have more than one spouse does not make it a right. In the case of SS marriage, the states consistently found that whole classes of people are/were being denied a right enjoyed by others. The winning issues are based on fairness.

I am not denying that in the future some clever attorneys will not come up with novel arguments that claim fairness and that end up in court to be decided.

“How can you say what apple is bad?” The answer lies in your own powers of reason and morality. Civil laws will of course put limitations on what we perceive to be our rights in that when an individual or group think they have a right that is illegal they are will be legally refrained from acting on it.

 

[PRmerger]

In the case of bestiality, the state has laws protecting animals that they will uphold.

How is a man having sex with an animal harming the animal?

Using that logic,can I say that a man having sex with another man is harming that man?

 

[PRmerger]

In the case of polygamy there is nowhere in the US that it is legal.

This is circular, frobert.

Polygamy is nowhere legal in the US, therefore, in the US it isn’t legal.

:whacky:

You need to answer the question: why do you deny polygamists the right to a legal marriage while protecting the homosexual’s right to a legal marriage?