Beards and Gay Marriage

[LJN21]

How do you arrive at truth? Belief? Reason? something else?

Mine is from my a combination of belief and reason.

The best life I can lead is love God, love my neighbor and do the best I can to imitate God’s goodness. I strive for improvement in all 3.

I respect your belief, but that is what it is a belief. There have been many religious ethnicists who have arrived at diffident conclusions through their reasoning of natural law. I am pressed for time now but will be happy to provide references if you would like.

It seems you hold belief over reason. Belief is for the unobservable. Reason is for the observed. We reason that because sex makes babies, sex is for procreation, We can reason that because people feel bonded to each other when they have sex, sex is for unity. Homosexaul ‘sex’ cannot be procrative, there is no reason that makes that so.

 

[SplendidSt]

To continue with my analogy: there are two ways to stop people from paying inheritance taxes on money they already paid income tax on while earning it. We change the law so everyone benefits like we changed the laws against racial discrimination in the 1960s or we create a legal fiction and call single people married. As I pointed out in my analogy, by creating a legal fiction you don’t seem to care about all the others left having to pay the tax, who still can’t get married. My single mother cannot leave her estate to my single brother and sister because they can’t get a marriage license. We have to create another legal fiction to help them to avoid paying the tax.

People who want to call same sex unions marriage only seem to care about themselves and assume I am the same way, but it isn’t about me, it is about truth and true fairness to everyone.

Notice how in the 1950’s and 60’s, civil right’s leaders didn’t fight for the right to be “white” so that they could finally sit at the diner counter. Using their logic, that would be precisely what the present day proponents of “marriage equality” would of done if they were present in that time.

 

[PRmerger]

Could someone please for the sake of time and sanity present a definition of marriage that is “non discriminatory”? Cause I’m not convinced such a definition exists. Please enlighten me.

Egg-zactly.

EVERYONE (who’s rational) has a definition of marriage that would exclude someone.

So it’s odd that people are objecting to Catholicism for making some sort of boundary on who can marry and who can’t.

 

[PRmerger]

How do you arrive at truth? Belief? Reason? something else?

Mine is from my a combination of belief and reason.

The best life I can lead is love God, love my neighbor and do the best I can to imitate God’s goodness. I strive for improvement in all 3.

The Catholic way is using Faith and Reason.

Pope JPII wrote a magnificent encyclical on this:
vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

It is good stuff!

 

[LJN21]

Could someone please for the sake of time and sanity present a definition of marriage that is “non discriminatory”? Cause I’m not convinced such a definition exists. Please enlighten me.

Egg-zactly.

EVERYONE (who’s rational) has a definition of marriage that would exclude someone.

So it’s odd that people are objecting to Catholicism for making some sort of boundary on who can marry and who can’t.

Marriage: the union of any number of beings that want to love each other in a committed relationship for a period of time until they decide its no longer wanted.

Maybe union is a bad word though because it would discriminate against beings without the ability to… unite.

 

[PRmerger]

I have consistently held a high respect for the Catholic faith even though I do not hold all their claims.

I always wonder when people say that what this actually means. Does this mean that you have created your own religion? One that conforms to your own beliefs?

Or do you change your beliefs to conform to what Christ has declared?

If so, what beliefs have you changed that don’t conform to your own personal beliefs, but you changed them because Christ said it’s true?

An example of my own: if it were up to me, and I created my own belief system, I would not say that divorce and re-marriage is adultery.

But, unfortunately, Christ said that it is.

Thus, I have changed my views to what the Church teaches.

I don’t start a different religion and state, “Well! I don’t like that divorce and re-marriage is adultery! Therefore, I profess that God didn’t really say that!”

Now, I am not claiming that anyone has done that here on this thread. I really don’t know.

But it does seem to follow when someone says that she doesn’t believe everything that the Church teaches.

Can you say you respect other religions in the same way, if so we are in unison.

I can say that I respect any religion that proclaims truth that is consonant with the Truth of Catholicism.

Thus, when the Lutheran church teaches the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, I say

When the Westboro Baptist Church teaches that God hates homosexuals, I say, “Your religion is absolutely wrong.”

 

[ThinkingSapien]

…]Thus far I’ve kept my reply generic because there have been no constraints imposed on the question except for those that PRmerger has provided. * plan to respond to the constrains that she listed in what I hope to be a short period of time but by tonight at latest.*

I’ve missed my self imposed deadline. It seems that I underestimated the demands that I’d encounter on my first weekday back in the USA. I’d prefer to give an abbreviated reply for now rather than none at all.
PRmerger;12068181:

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

That’s still a rather broad range, 114 years so far. I skimmed through the legal definitions and criteria for marriage for the USA in that time period (which is further constrained than “Western Society”). The beginning of this period is marked by Joseph Smith of LDS denouncing polygamy and married women in all states gaining the right to own property in their own name.

It seems that throughout the first part of this hundred+ years the legal definition of marriage was implicitly defined through other statutes and regulations. Though there were explicit bans on marriages between people racially classified as black and white. A marriage license also gave couples the right to purchase contraception and the right to have sex as sex without being married in some areas was illegal. Homosexuality was considered criminal and a sociopathic affliction (see earlier editions of DSM or Supreme Court case Boutilier v. Immigration Service, 1967). Neither of those is the case anymore. Same sex couples in Maryland took notice to an equal rights law and tried but failed to use it to acquire a marriage license. This lead to Maryland being the first state to define marriage as between a man and a woman in 1973 (see 1973 Maryland Family Law, Section 2-201). Three other states did the same in 1975. By 1994 40 of the 50 states amended their laws to outlaw same sex marriages. (side note: some Native American tribes have had some form of same sex binding throughout this time).

 

[PRmerger]

That’s still a rather broad range, 114 years so far.

I don’t see why “a broad range” matters when defining things?

For example, if I asked you to define “certainty”, you certainly wouldn’t ask “For what century, society, geographic region do you mean?”

Instead, you simply would offer your definition, yes?

Why is “marriage” so different and so difficult to define?

 

[PRmerger]

Marriage: the union of any number of beings that want to love each other in a committed relationship for a period of time until they decide its no longer wanted.

Maybe union is a bad word though because it would discriminate against beings without the ability to… unite.

Yes, it is discriminatory.

Can you offer a definition that doesn’t discriminate against beings who wish to be married by are unable to unite?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I don’t see why “a broad range” matters when defining things?

For example, if I asked you to define “certainty”, you certainly wouldn’t ask “For what century, society, geographic region do you mean?”

Instead, you simply would offer your definition, yes?

Depends on the word, the context, and the consistency of it’s use. To invoke some radical examples: How many people of which do you know that use the term “girl” to refer to a young person (irrespective of their sex) or “hospital” to refer to a place of entertainment? Elements of language change over time (see “linguistic drift”).

Why is “marriage” so different and so difficult to define?

see #576.

 

[LJN21]

Yes, it is discriminatory.

Can you offer a definition that doesn’t discriminate against beings who wish to be married by are unable to unite?

Hrmm … How about…

“A promise between any number of beings that want to love each others in a committed relationship as long as the individual’s desire.”

Dang it!..the mute…

“Mutual consent between any number of beings that want to love each other in a committed relationship for as long as the individual’s desire.”

The word committed might be problematic, that sounds like we’re talking about exclusivity, what if I want to have a relationship with someone outside the “marriage” too.

Relationship is also problematic, in implies requiring the ability to have relations, even on the most basic level.

 

[Stephen168]

Could someone please for the sake of time and sanity present a definition of marriage that is “non discriminatory”? Cause I’m not convinced such a definition exists. Please enlighten me.

I would go with Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of Aristotle: An arrangement where children are created, nourished, and educated.

 

[LJN21]

I would go with Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of Aristotle: An arrangement where children are created, nourished, and educated.

That clearly can’t work, it discriminates against anyone that can’t create children and those that just don’t want children!

Besides what do those old long dead people know about modern times! Marriage isn’t about children and their rights but ME and MY rights! [/devils advocate]

Which is ultimately the problem, once you take the care and well being of children out of the equation of marriage… it becomes this nebulos thing about love… or something

 

[PRmerger]

I would go with Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of Aristotle: An arrangement where children are created, nourished, and educated.

Better to say: an arrangement that is ORDERED towards creating, nourishing and educating children.

That would thereby include infertile couples, whose relationship, while not necessarily producing children, would still be ordered towards that end.

 

[PRmerger]

Hrmm … How about…

“A promise between any number of beings that want to love each others in a committed relationship as long as the individual’s desire.”

Dang it!..the mute…

“Mutual consent between any number of beings that want to love each other in a committed relationship for as long as the individual’s desire.”

So that would include a father and adult son?
2 spinster sisters?
College roommates?
Fraternity?
Sorority?
Family reunion living together in a beach house for a month?
Cousins, one living in Taipei and the other in Seattle?

 

[LJN21]

So that would include a father and adult son?
2 spinster sisters?
College roommates?
Fraternity?
Sorority?
Family reunion living together in a beach house for a month?
Cousins, one living in Taipei and the other in Seattle?

Don’t judge me!

 

[frobert]

Before I continue, the Supreme Court ruled on the basis that she was married in the state of New York, the rest of the majority decision was a rambling irrational mess.

An analogy is comparison between two things for the purpose of explanation or clarification. In my analogy I showed how there are laws on the books which treat people different. In my analogy, I use race in the 1950’s to marital status today.

As you see the “minorities” “being passed over” are all single people.

People who want to call same sex unions marriage only seem to care about themselves and assume I am the same way, but it isn’t about me, it is about truth and true fairness to everyone.

A most interesting analysis of single people and people who want to call same sex unions marriage. I would not want to change a word of it.

 

[Stephen168]

Better to say: an arrangement that is ORDERED towards creating, nourishing and educating children.

That would thereby include infertile couples, whose relationship, while not necessarily producing children, would still be ordered towards that end.

When talking with non-philosopher types, I would use the word ‘purpose.’ an arrangement that’s purpose is creating, nourishing and educating children.

 

[LJN21]

When talking with non-philosopher types, I would use the word ‘purpose.’ an arrangement that’s purpose is creating, nourishing and educating children.

The quibble, I think is, if that is the Purpose… then why can the infertile get married since they can’t have kids? They can not fulfill the purpose.

Which is why “ordered toward” seems to make more sense.

Edit: I guess you could argue that to mean adopting or whatever fills that niche. even though, the action that has to be rightly ordered is intercorse and not necessarily the overall goal of the union. Thats a hard one to get across sometimes.

 

[frobert]

It seems you hold belief over reason. Belief is for the unobservable. Reason is for the observed. We reason that because sex makes babies, sex is for procreation, We can reason that because people feel bonded to each other when they have sex, sex is for unity. Homosexaul ‘sex’ cannot be procrative, there is no reason that makes that so.

Sometimes one takes precedence over the other. I have no quibbles about how you reason, my point is that others have reasoned otherwise. This where our attachments are usually the determining factor and the fact that some are unable to grasp. I.e how dare you believe something different than what I believe? Or your reasoning lacks merit. I am not attacking your belief system or reasoning ability, just pointing that others have different beliefs and start their reasoning with different assumptions.