How do supporters of so-called "same-sex marriage" define marriage?

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Stephen168 said:
you skipped post #9
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OK. I’ll give your questions numbers to make it easier to address them.
Stephen168 said:
I was waiting for more definitions. So far I just have questions:
  1. Why can’t a 14 year old be an adult either de facto or de jure?
  2. Do we get to question the source of a de jure definition?
  3. Why would society demand de jure recognition of a love relationship?
  4. How would these definitions defer from a parent-child relationship?
  5. What would limit the contract to two adults either de facto or de jure?
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  1. One can, and in the past the Church has allowed 14 year olds to marry. It’s merely cultural and has no bearing on the issue of heterosexual/homosexual relationships.
  2. Sure.
  3. Society doesn’t. Many heterosexual people live together out of wedlock and society doesn’t seem terribly concerned about that. It’s the people who are getting married or seeking marriage who demand societal recognition for emotional reasons and sometimes for financial or other legal reasons.
  4. Marriage is a contract entered into with full consent by both parties (children have no choice in being born or in who their parents are) and includes a sexual component.
  5. Are you defining “adult” as “eighteen years of age” or “has gone through puberty” (which would include some nine year olds, etc).
 
Actually this question gets to the very root of the whole mess.

For the last 70 years, western culture has adopted a dumbed down definition of marriage that has gone something like this:

“Marriage is the joining together of a man and woman who love each other deeply and powerfully and pledge to perpetuate that feeling of love for the rest of their lives and celebrate it publicly with family, friends and the larger human community.”

I call this ‘Disney Marriage’. It’s a Hollywood creation and most christians have failed to recognize that this is NOT the traditional definition of marriage. Having failed to spot the first phony, they are unable to rationally defend it against charges that it arbitrarily restricts this institution to just a man and a woman.

The REAL traditional definition of marriage goes more like this:
“Marriage is the joining together of a man and woman in a bond of self-giving, self-sacrificing, lifelong love so profound that by its very nature, the relationship is ordered towards bringing forth and nurturing new, joyous life and serving as the basic foundation of a flourishing society.”

See the difference? It’s not just about the gushy feeling, it is about how the complementary nature of the man and woman combine in an atmosphere of self-sacrificial love such that miracles routinely occur - chief among them, new life. THIS is why government is involved in marriage in the first place! What dope would have ever first promoted the idea that government should regulate how people feel? The Disneyized version is a shallow, castrated version of marriage. It was created and popularized between the 20’s and 60’s. The REAL definition of marriage is why governments ever got involved: they once recognized that the nuclear family produced healthy, educated, virtuous citizens that contributed to society instead of dragging it down and wanted to promote that, subsidize it, protect and generally do whatever they could to encourage it so as to have a healthy population.

The fact that two men or two women have a physically sterile relationship is NOT mere meaningless physical coincidence. There is more to humanity than meets the eye. What is manifested physically generally has implications that go deeper. Today’s materialists scoff at such a notion, but are at a loss to explain the clear and vast statistical correlations between the outcomes of children raised in a traditional family and those raised in ‘modern families.’
 
SaintPatrick333 said:
That’s one of the guns they stick too yet if you mention that using their own logic one can justify adult-child relationships or incest relationships then you are “sick” and that’s “disgusting”. Why? They all are wrong and fall way short of the law of marriage so who are the progressives to “deny” pedophiles out there if they find willing underage kids (if its consensual than who cares right?) But their hypocrisy and double standards won’t allow them to accept that. Those are all still wrong and sick but homosexual relationships are ok because it’s two adults who love each other. Ignore the fact that that kind of relationship falls into the same depravity as my other suggestions. We’ll just pretend that never happened.
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Children don’t have the mental capacity to actually give consent. Same thing with animals. As for incest I don’t really see anything wrong with it other than the negative effect it could have on the kids, which could be prevented.
 
Stephen168 said:
I was waiting for more definitions. So far I just have questions:
Why can’t a 14 year old be an adult either de facto or de jure?
Do we get to question the source of a de jure definition?
Why would society demand de jure recognition of a love relationship?
How would these definitions defer from a parent-child relationship?
What would limit the contract to two adults either de facto or de jure?
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My aunt was married when she was 15 back in the 60’s to a man in his 20’s. They are still married and there is nothing creepy about their marriage. But a 9 or 10 year old can’t consent. Times have changed as well. A 15 year old back in the 60’s is a bit different than a 15 year old today I would imagine.
 
Stephen168 said:
Supporters of same-sex marriage want to include same sex couples which would change the definition mankind had used since day one. Yet, they also what to exclude other people from marriage. We are just curious what this new definition would be that would rationally include same sex marriages but which would exclude pedophilia, polygamy, or incest. I would assume that is why you missed post #9; or provide your own definition.
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Pedophilia involves one party that cannot consent (a child). Polygamy almost always leads to inequality and abuse among the wives. Incest can lead to genetic defects. Gay marriage has none of these problems.
 
livingwordunity said:
For supporters of so-called “same-sex marriage”, how do you define marriage? Please give me a straight answer.
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Marriage is a contract that basically confers a great deal of rights and social advantages on the couple in question. For example, married couples have rights to see one another in the hospital, inherit the others’ property first, and all sorts of little benefits. Individuals could secure these benefits by signing lots of smaller contracts, but it’s just more convenient to have one big contract called “marriage” that covers all of these things.

Typically, nowadays, a couple that enters into such a contract is in love (or at least believes themselves to be in love).
 
People would have once defined voter as a white male. However, things changed for the better. This idea that definitions are really important and should not be changed amazes me. Especially since marriage as we know it has changed countless times, when it comes to the age at which it can happen, laws against divorce, laws against adultery, and so on. Changing the definition of marriage certaintly isn’t an argument against same-sex marriage.
 
interestedman said:
My aunt was married when she was 15 back in the 60’s to a man in his 20’s. They are still married and there is nothing creepy about their marriage. But a 9 or 10 year old can’t consent. Times have changed as well. A 15 year old back in the 60’s is a bit different than a 15 year old today I would imagine.
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My aunt and uncle were married when they were 15 and 16 back in the 50’s. They were married until they died and there was nothing creepy about their marriage. But a 9 or 10 year old haven’t reached puberty yet. Times have not changed. A 15 year old back in the 50’s had the same chance of reaching puberty as a 15 year old today I would imagine.
Can you answer the other questions?
 
NonServiam said:
Marriage is a contract that basically confers a great deal of rights and social advantages on the couple in question.

Typically, nowadays, a couple that enters into such a contract is in love (or at least believes themselves to be in love).
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Keeping with the subject of the thread: Is this your definition of marriage?
 
manualman said:
For the last 70 years, western culture has adopted a dumbed down definition of marriage that has gone something like this:

“Marriage is the joining together of a man and woman who love each other deeply and powerfully and pledge to perpetuate that feeling of love for the rest of their lives and celebrate it publicly with family, friends and the larger human community.”

I call this ‘Disney Marriage’. It’s a Hollywood creation and most christians have failed to recognize that this is NOT the traditional definition of marriage. Having failed to spot the first phony, they are unable to rationally defend it against charges that it arbitrarily restricts this institution to just a man and a woman.

The REAL traditional definition of marriage goes more like this:
“Marriage is the joining together of a man and woman in a bond of self-giving, self-sacrificing, lifelong love so profound that by its very nature, the relationship is ordered towards bringing forth and nurturing new, joyous life and serving as the basic foundation of a flourishing society.”
’
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I think this is true, and I would just add that it IS possible to give a reasonable if somewhat arbitrary definition of marriage that allows for same-sex couples and excludes things like pedophilia. The point is *not *that same-sex supporters are unable to give a definition of marriage; the point is that only the Catholic understanding of marriage grasps its soul. Every other definition is incomplete.

Christians don’t do themselves any favors, in my opinion, by bandying about arguments about how same-sex marriage will lead to legal bestiality and pedophilia, even should that ultimately turn out to be true. I think what we need to do instead of tearing down other people’s ideas of marriage is understand and emphasize what we believe marriage to be, not just societally but spiritually. It’s not that a same-sex couple cannot make a lifelong commitment and be faithful to that commitment (believe me, I know instances of such). But this relationship is incomplete, there are essential aspects missing. Catholics know what the full relationship is meant to be, and that knowledge is what we need to give the world.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Stephen168 said:
Are you saying that women or taller than men?
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I don’t understand the question.

I know girls who developed breasts and began menstruation when they were nine years old. Is that clear enough for you?
 
interestedman said:
2 people that love and care for each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together.
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So that definition would include incest, and it also would include pedophiles. But it would exclude polygamists. Why do you limit your definition to only 2 people? What if there are 3 or more people that “love and care for each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together”? By the way, I’m not for any other definition marriage except one man and one woman. I’m merely exposing the hypocrisy in your definition of marriage.
 
Stephen168 said:
I know a girl that is 6’4". Are women on average taller than men on average?
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It’s irrelevant. If adulthood is defined as occurring at puberty, then at least some girls are adults at the age of nine. Whether it’s common or average doesn’t matter. If you want to define adulthood as the average age at which people arrive at puberty, fine, but that definition already has an element of arbitrariness and will also result in some people being marriageable adults before puberty. 🤷

None of this really has anything to do with same sex marriage though.
 
Hokomai said:
Two adults (which does not include the14 year old girls allowed to marry under canon law if local laws allow it)…
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Student09 said:
It’s irrelevant. If adulthood is defined as occurring at puberty, then at least some girls are adults at the age of nine. Whether it’s common or average doesn’t matter. If you want to define adulthood as the average age at which people arrive at puberty, fine, but that definition has an element of arbitrariness and will also result in some people being marriageable adults before puberty. 🤷

None of this really has anything to do with same sex marriage though.
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Yes, it does seem arbitrary to give the minimum age for marriage for mankind.
The Church said 14. Hokomai says no way. You seem to like 9.
 
Student09 said:
Christians don’t do themselves any favors, in my opinion, by bandying about arguments about how same-sex marriage will lead to legal bestiality and pedophilia, even should that ultimately turn out to be true.
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I’m not sure if I agree yet. The very reason that we are having a ‘same sex marriage’ argument today is that christians failed to recognize and defeat the 20’s-60’s redefinition of marriage that took procreation out of the identity of the relationship.

In 1960, people would have utterly mocked you for saying that if you rationalize a contraceptive mentality (marriage divorced from procreation in identity), you will eventually lose any rational basis to oppose two gay men from ‘marrying.’ Nobody would have believed it. But here we are.

I will agree that I don’t see any direct path between ‘gay marriage’ and pedophilia or bestiality. But I really do think that once this is normalized, polygamy will be next. The signs are all there, and based on today’s Disneyized marriage definition, the restriction of it being between merely two people is just as arbitrary as the restriction that it be between one man and one woman.
 
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