So true. What a comparison!
You don’t read very carefully, do you? She was responding to inocente, not to me.
This has nothing to do with the law nor with the debate over gay marriage in the court room (whatever the answer might be). I honestly feel that strong Catholics make worse parents (all else being equal) than atheist parents, but I would never suggest that the law should prohibit them from being married on those grounds. We don’t make laws that permit behavior only in the “ideal” or “best.” There are plenty of categories of parents that are not “best,” but we would never consider denying them the right to marry nor to raise children on those less-than-ideal grounds.
Once again, Larkin, Off-Topic.
That’s because the only situation in which parents can be chosen by others is in adoption. And you best believe that parents who are less than ideal have historically not been chosen by adoption agencies, even long before gay couples were among those asking to be chosen. If you were considered an unfit environment for the child, you were off the list or lower on the list. And unfit could be something as non-controversial as slightly less income than the “ideal” couple, or a lifestyle considered provocative on fairly modest grounds, such as a couple who traveled a lot or spoke several languages, that sort of thing.
There is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage, implicit or explicit. And spare me the citation of Loving, which reaffirmed (not affirmed for the first time but reaffirmed) the right to heterosexual interracial marriage which had been unconstitutionally and arbitrarily removed before the Court reinstated that heterosexual freedom. I have read legal critiques of Loving, and that interpreation of mine is upheld by those critiques.
For some reason adoption by same-sex couples had been legal in Spain for donkey’s years, long before same-sex unions were legalized.
I first read you as promoting promiscuity by wanting to do away with all unions on the grounds they discriminate against single people.
, but think you miss a point.No, it was ON-TOPIC – the argument was that the inferior example of a homosexual set of parents is a reason to deny marriage to them. This was clearly and fully implied. I countered it with the direct claim that in law we do not deny rights on grounds of inferiority. And then I gave an example that I thought would be recognizable to this forum: Catholic parents.
I am discussing gay marriage. Are you discussing gay adoption? That is a different set of laws, because it is a business practice.
Yes, that is true. But not relevant to gay marriage argument. Unless you are suggesting that for the same reasons that some heteros are denied adoptions we should also deny heteros the ability to marry. Are you claiming this? My sense is that you would like only to hold this argument against gay marriage.
No one said that there was. There is no “right” to any kind of marriage written anywhere. We make laws that go beyond “rights.” Our Constitution requires that laws be just.
Nice dismissal. FYI, Loving WILL be discussed in every case about gay marriage whether you would like to dismiss it beforehand or not.
I don’t see any reason why YOU should be deciding for other groups what they can or should seek in the legal arena. It is rather presumptuous of you.
The State should do away with ALL benefits to married persons. I agree. They are unjust.
True. The same superior rights that hetero couples presently enjoy, and should be forced to give up.
The underlying reason for state recognition of heterosexual couples is the ability of heterosexual couples to procreate. It is meaningless, from a societal standpoint, to recognize a pairing of homosexuals, since they have no intrinsic ability to procreate. It is impossible for them to have the same right…unless you are in a Monty Python movie, fighting for Stan’s right to have a baby, even though he has no womb.I first read you as promoting promiscuity by wanting to do away with all unions on the grounds they discriminate against single people.
OK, I assume you can’t be arguing for that
A heterosexual couple can stand before their family and friends and vow their love for each other, and then have their union recognized by the state. Homosexuals want the same right. Obviously they can’t do this before God in some religions, but a civil ceremony is still meaningful. The case is that precluding them is iniquitous and denies them dignity within society.
That’s a very simple argument of the kind that sways hearts and minds. You need an equally simple counter-argument.
No one denies “them” dignity, any more than denying it to people who believe in multiple marriages or underage marriages are denied “their” dignity when society fails to enshrine their proclivities.
No, the example you chose was religion. Religion has nothing to do with marital status, from a legal point of view. Nor is this any argument related to gay marriage. Nor has any legal argument been provided to Courts that links religion (a sect, or even a lack of religion) to gay marriage as being “inferior” to heterosexual marriage. It is your (faulty) interpretation that this is an argument about inferiority; whereas it is an argument in fact about an illegitimate reclassification, based on a hijacking of the purpose of marriage from the State’s point of view. If the legitimacy of marriage were based on some projected litmus test of parenting, then anyone could join in the qualifications test: a great teacher, a great coach; a great family friend or friends.
No. I’m telling you that the concept of ‘inferior’ parents (a subject you brought up) only becomes an issue in the case of adoption, because only then is a third party involved to make a formal judgment about what kind of a family unit, of those family units available at that time, will provide the best choice for that child at the moment… Despite the blind and hilarious idealization of gays as supposedly perfect parents, gays are just a flawed as straights. Human beings make imperfect parents, some more imperfect than others, and that imperfection is not related to their sexual orientation. However, the completeness of the family unit is very much linked to the propriety of parenting. By definition, a gay couple is incomplete.
Actually you said it, in your paragraph with the O/T religion tangent.
Not my dismissal. The dismissal of legal experts, and since I’ve been trained to read legal arguments, I understand those arguments.
I only dismiss it because legal experts correctly dismiss it. So it will continue to be appropriately dismissed as long as it inappropriately applied, out of convenience to the gay lobby.
Except that (again) legal experts agree with me.
Contract law regarding partnerships is not dependent on sexual relationships, nor should it be. There’s no “presumption” involved.One area of agreement.
I have no problem, as you see, with an equalizing legal platform, but I have a huge problem with terminology, becaues of the family unit aspects. This is related only to official terminology. As I’ve said on other threads, people will call their loved ones whatever they want to call them. This has been true for centuries. One cannot control, nor should the State try to control, be interested in controlling, what people call their relationships. There have been many cohabitating couples of both orientations, who decades earlier – and today – have called themselves married, or have called the lover the spouse. And before there were any legal efforts to formalize arrangements, such couples often held informal ceremonies, or more formal religious ceremonies of some sort with an approving institution. This shouldn’t be the concern of the State when people want to do this.
Which is what most of us on CAF have always suspected as the subtext of gay “marriage.” The true purpose of the movement has nothing to with legal “rights,” which is of course why Unions, or Registered Domestic Partnerships (which have the exact same tax advantages in some States, for example) is an insufficient gesture for gays. This has everything to do with social acceptance, except that the Constitution does not guarantee social acceptance, and the State is not in the business of engineering social acceptance.
You’ve given another reason why the opposition to legalizing same-sex union failed in Spain. Many heterosexuals just don’t accept that procreation is the only or prime reason, and arguing otherwise can then backfire by making them more, not less, sympathetic to legalization.
Yes
calling it a perversion doesn’t make it so. Any half-adequate lawyer or politician would find it very easy to bury an opponent who tried to use that argument. Unless everyone agrees on exactly what is a perversion, it sounds like it’s dressing up a prejudice.“intellectually invalid”? How so? In the United States, there was a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists that was changed by nonscientific vote in 1973. That was intellectually invalid. What is also intellectually invalid is hearts and minds propaganda. The people of the United States voted down gay marriage, and twice in California. The people here fully understand the situation. The United States is not Spain.
I’ve not visited the States for a while and so don’t know the feeling on the ground, I’m just going by the statistics in the OP, which indicates there is now some support amongst the people.
Except, of course, that we’re not making legal arguments here. This is a Catholic site and it’s perfectly proper to talk about morality here, even though a society dominated by secular relativistism, doesn’t want to give it any validity.Yes
The opposition to legalization in Spain tried all kinds of arguments without adequately exploring the possible adversarial counter-arguments. The result was that in some cases they increased sympathy for the very cause they were against. Again, sorry, just telling it like it is.
If an act is immoral, but is supported by the populace does not make it moral. The nature of reality is not determined by the consensus, although Kant might claim otherwise.
I could care less what worked or didn’t work in Spain. We aren’t Spain. If the Spanish are unable to accept reality, that is their problem.You’ve given another reason why the opposition to legalizing same-sex union failed in Spain. Many heterosexuals just don’t accept that procreation is the only or prime reason, and arguing otherwise can then backfire by making them more, not less, sympathetic to legalization.
Sorry and all that, I’m just telling you what didn’t work here.
No. It is primarily for property and inheritance purposes.
It is a much more Catholic country than this one, that is for sure.