Unrestricted "marriage" for everyone and everything- why not?

[sw85]

This slippery slope argument is fast becoming the oldest, most perfunctory response in the book by people who are militantly against same-sex marriage. It’s exactly what people said when they legalized interracial marriage.

Yes I know you say that they are two completely different situations, but they’re not. The same arguments were made back then that they are now, one of which was that if you allowed it, people would marry _________(s). Of course, since you disavow that viewpoint but espouse this one about same-sex marriage, you’re going to claim that they’re different.

The truth is, legal situations like this are handled by our legal system, not on a whim like you’re claiming. This one is no exception. I don’t know what fantasy world you’re living in, but allowing same-sex marriage would, in fact, NOT also allow people to marry what ever _____(s) they want. If someone wants to try and make a legal case for any of those types of marriage and sue the government, they can certainly do that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with this particular case. Making such a claim as an argument against same-sex marriage is really just avoiding making a real argument.

Folks, this is exactly evidence of what I’m talking about. Notice that the above is conspicuously absent an argument. It’s just an accusation of racism. Get it? If you oppose gay “marriage,” you’re as bad as a Klansman.

Once again, no one is saying that if gay “marriage” is made the law of the land, it will immediately result in bestiality. What is being said is that if we accept the logic of gay “marriage” advocates, they destroy all basis for objection to bestiality. Get it?

By the way, judging by your username (indicating you were born in '89), I suspect you weren’t alive when interracial marriage was an issue. I wasn’t, either, but then I don’t claim to know much about it. I’ve never heard the claim before that people suggested that interracial marriage would lead to perversion. But let’s suppose you’re right and that claim was, in fact, made. Since perversion did in fact quickly result, isn’t that evidence that those people were right and that slippery slope arguments have some merit?

In other words, surely you realize that the prophetic warnings of people subsequently vindicated by actual events on the ground are evidence that we’re right and your “move along, nothing to see here attitude” is at best badly misguided?

Civil marriage has been a contract as long as the state has regulated it. It is a contract by definition. The government could create something else that is not a contract, regulate it, and call it marriage as well. This third type of marriage might not require humans or consent. But it would be distinct from civil marriage because civil marriage is a contract.
I am trying to be very clear on this- what supporters of gay marriage want is a legal contract identical to the legal contract given to straight couples whom the government considers married. Whether to call it a marriage, a civil union, or George is up for debate. It is the contracts that we want. But changing the availability of marriage contracts could not result in civil marriage to animals because contracts with animals are not legal, due to issues of consent.

You realize you’ve literally just ratified every single thing I’ve said, right?

 

[peduzzi89]

This thread isn’t claiming that if we expand the paramaters of state recognized marriages to include SS couples then we will eventually expand it to include all sorts of inanimate objects etc. But moreso it is asking what reason there is to accept the one and reject the other.

I actually have a very similar complaint with those who advocate for expanding the legal contract, though I don’t go quite as far as the OP because I think it is possible to give a reason for one without necessarily including the other. Essentially, I cannot for the life of me understand why people who wish to extend the legal contract of marriage to SS couples are not also out there militantly protesting to expand it to non-romantically involved friends and siblings. I am being perfectly sincere here.

It is in no way shape or form the governments place to dictate romantic relationships. That is my starting principle and it is one that I think just about anyone would agree with if they think about it honestly for a while. That just is not something the government should be involved in, it is a private relationship between two people in which the govt has absolutely no buissness.

So, assuming this, how can we understand the special construct of a “legal marriage”? There are only two reasons I can see for the govt to be involved in a marriage-like relationship. 1 for the encouragement of the production and careful raising of future citizens. 2 for regulating the ownership of property when the shared life among people come to an end (ie via divorce or death etc).

If we accept the first criteria as the reason for the govt to be involved in this construct which we will call legal marriage then there it doesn’t make any sense to try to include those who are physically incapable of bearing children in this legal construct. (and yes, I am willing to include those who are sterile in this category)

If we do not accept the first but do accept the second criteria then there is absolutely no reason to exclude siblings or non-romantically involved friends from it. If it is a construct simply for the sake of regulating the ownership of property of those who have been living a shared life then on what grounds can you possibly exclude good friends who decide that they will always be there for each other and to share their life together in a purely platonic way? Or say, two siblings who have almost no one else left and so who wish to live together to help each other out as they get older?

The only reason one can argue for including SS marriages in the legal construct of marriage is if you believe that the government has the authority and the duty to decide who may and may not enter into a romantic relationship. And that is a freaking scary line of thought. There is no way in heck that any government ought to be allowed that sort of authority. Whether or not I were to agree with SS relationships I could never, ever agree with those who wish to extend the legal construct of marriage to include SS relationships without also extending it to include anyone who wishes to share a life together whether or not they are romanitcally involved, I do not like the idea of giving the government power over such things, even implicitly. :nope:

I actually agree on your criteria for why the government is interested in issuing civil contacts to married people. That’s exactly the argument I make all the time FOR SS marries. The thing about that is, the government doesn’t specify that the production and raising of those citizens HAS to have been the biological byproduct of those two people. It allows for adoption, surrogacy, etc. So by those very criteria, same-sex couples who are owning property together, committing to each other for life for the good of each other and the children they are raising, and otherwise contributing to society on paper should be allowed to get married because they are the same in every way other than their genders.

 

[peduzzi89]

Folks, this is exactly evidence of what I’m talking about. Notice that the above is conspicuously absent an argument. It’s just an accusation of racism. Get it? If you oppose gay “marriage,” you’re as bad as a Klansman.

That’s because the original post on this thread made a very specific claim to which I was responding. It did not say, give me your entire argument for why same-sex marriage should be legalized. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an argument

Once again, no one is saying that if gay “marriage” is made the law of the land, it will immediately result in bestiality. What is being said is that if we accept the logic of gay “marriage” advocates, they destroy all basis for objection to bestiality. Get it?

This statement is based upon your assumption that the logic of gay marriage advocates can be summed up as: if you love it/them, you should be able to marry it/them. It’s an oversimplification that I believe is the true avoidance of an argument here.

By the way, judging by your username (indicating you were born in '89), I suspect you weren’t alive when interracial marriage was an issue. I wasn’t, either, but then I don’t claim to know much about it. I’ve never heard the claim before that people suggested that interracial marriage would lead to perversion. But let’s suppose you’re right and that claim was, in fact, made. Since perversion did in fact quickly result, isn’t that evidence that those people were right and that slippery slope arguments have some merit?

The fact that I wasn’t alive then is irrelevant to my knowledge of the subject. If that were the case, nobody would be an expert on the Bible. Get it?
Show me evidence that a perversion didn’t exist before interracial marriage, but then did all of a sudden once it was legalized AND because it was legalized, then that statement will have merit.

In other words, surely you realize that the prophetic warnings of people subsequently vindicated by actual events on the ground are evidence that we’re right and your “move along, nothing to see here attitude” is at best badly misguided?

I’m not sure what you mean by my having a “move along, nothing to see here” attitude. Could you perhaps restate this in a different way?

 

[thewanderer]

I actually agree on your criteria for why the government is interested in issuing civil contacts to married people. That’s exactly the argument I make all the time FOR SS marries. The thing about that is, the government doesn’t specify that the production and raising of those citizens HAS to have been the biological byproduct of those two people. It allows for adoption, surrogacy, etc. So by those very criteria, same-sex couples who are owning property together, committing to each other for life for the good of each other and the children they are raising, and otherwise contributing to society on paper should be allowed to get married because they are the same in every way other than their genders.

Haha, so we take that point in different directions then.

See, the thing is that adoption is a whole different construct already that has nothing to do with marriage specifically. You don’t have to be married to adopt. So unless you want to make marriage a requirement for adoption I don’t see how saying that SS couples can adopt helps.

hmm, I’m not sure that I am being very clear. Let me try again. The point I was trying to make was actually specific to the procreation of children. Now, you are free to agree or disagree with whether or not that should be something that the government is concerned about, but if you disagree that leaves you only with option number 2 on my list in which there is absolutely no reason to exclude non-romantically involved people from legal marriage, unless, of course, you are trying to give the government control over romantic relationships which I think would be an absolutely terrifying thing to do.

Basically, the way I see it is that if you want to argue for SS couples to be included in marriage because they can adopt kids then you would have to also argue for those who are not romantically involved to be able to marry as well since they also are just as capable of raising children. Why would you discriminate against a brother and sister who have realized that they want to share their lives together in platonic way and also decide that they want to help out orphans by adopting kids? What possible reason could you have for excluding them from marriage? Would that not be just as discriminatory as excluding SS couples from marriage?

Either you leave the legal construct of marriage as being between one man and one woman or you exten it to include any group of people who wish to share their lives together whether romanitcally or not. There is no reason to extend it only to romanitcally involved SS couples except to give the government the power to control romantic relationships. And as I have said that is just not ok.

 

[peduzzi89]

Haha, so we take that point in different directions then.

See, the thing is that adoption is a whole different construct already that has nothing to do with marriage specifically. You don’t have to be married to adopt. So unless you want to make marriage a requirement for adoption I don’t see how saying that SS couples can adopt helps.

hmm, I’m not sure that I am being very clear. Let me try again. The point I was trying to make was actually specific to the procreation of children. Now, you are free to agree or disagree with whether or not that should be something that the government is concerned about, but if you disagree that leaves you only with option number 2 on my list in which there is absolutely no reason to exclude non-romantically involved people from legal marriage, unless, of course, you are trying to give the government control over romantic relationships which I think would be an absolutely terrifying thing to do.

Basically, the way I see it is that if you want to argue for SS couples to be included in marriage because they can adopt kids then you would have to also argue for those who are not romantically involved to be able to marry as well since they also are just as capable of raising children. Why would you discriminate against a brother and sister who have realized that they want to share their lives together in platonic way and also decide that they want to help out orphans by adopting kids? What possible reason could you have for excluding them from marriage? Would that not be just as discriminatory as excluding SS couples from marriage?

Either you leave the legal construct of marriage as being between one man and one woman or you exten it to include any group of people who wish to share their lives together whether romanitcally or not. There is no reason to extend it only to romanitcally involved SS couples except to give the government the power to control romantic relationships. And as I have said that is just not ok.

It’s not that I disagree that the government is concerned with procreation, it’s by fact that they are not. They are interested in the family unit that is created by marriage, which often involves procreation, but not necessarily so. I see your reasoning about extending those rights to any two people who decide to adopt children, but there’s a hole in that argument. The government IS in fact interested in the nature of the relationships involved in marriage - it doesn’t seek to control them, but it recognizes that there is something different about when two people who originally were unrelated decide to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. That relationship is intrinsically different from say, if a brother and sister try to raise children. That rapport between those two people, especially when they decide to raise children, creates a very unique entity, and the government recognizes that such an entity is beneficial to society. What I’m arguing is that loving, committed, same-sex couples who raise children together fall under that same special category along with straight couples, whilst a brother and sister don’t.

 

[thewanderer]

It’s not that I disagree that the government is concerned with procreation, it’s by fact that they are not. They are interested in the family unit that is created by marriage, which often involves procreation, but not necessarily so. I see your reasoning about extending those rights to any two people who decide to adopt children, but there’s a hole in that argument. The government IS in fact interested in the nature of the relationships involved in marriage - it doesn’t seek to control them, but it recognizes that there is something different about when two people who originally were unrelated decide to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. That relationship is intrinsically different from say, if a brother and sister try to raise children. That rapport between those two people, especially when they decide to raise children, creates a very unique entity, and the government recognizes that such an entity is beneficial to society. What I’m arguing is that loving, committed, same-sex couples who raise children together fall under that same special category along with straight couples, whilst a brother and sister don’t.

And that part of the argument is what I fail to see. I truly do not understand why the government should have anything to do with whether or not two people are having sex. I understand that that is putting it rather crudely compared to the way you describe it and I apologize if it seems that I am just ignoring what you are saying. I honestly am not, I just don’t see it. a brother and sister can have just as strong of an emotional connection and just as strong of a commitment to each other as a SS couple, so the distinguishing element between the two cannot be either emotional connection or commitment. The more that I try to understand what it is that seperates the two cases the more I find myself coming back to sex. To me it ends up sounding as though you are saying that people who have sex are more capable of raising kids together in a healthy environment than those who don’t have sex and that is, again, something which just does not make any sense to me. perhaps there is some other distinguishing factor between these two cases that I am missing, but I honestly cannot see anything else which necessarily seperates these two scenarios.

 

[sw85]

That’s because the original post on this thread made a very specific claim to which I was responding. It did not say, give me your entire argument for why same-sex marriage should be legalized. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an argument.

I didn’t ask for your argument for gay “marriage,” nor do I care; I’ve heard all these sophistries before. I am specifically asking you to point out the flaw in the reasoning outlined in the OP and which I have echoed since, namely: if we accept the logic of gay “marriage” advocates that marriage is just an arbitrary social construct with no intrinsic meaning which can be redefined at will, what reason is there to suppose that we can’t also redefine it to include other sorts of perversion?

The closest thing you get to an argument is to say “people said that once before, and they’re RACISTS!” But by your own logic, those people were right!

This statement is based upon your assumption that the logic of gay marriage advocates can be summed up as: if you love it/them, you should be able to marry it/them. It’s an oversimplification that I believe is the true avoidance of an argument here.

No, it isn’t. It’s not based on anything other than what they themselves say, namely, that marriage has no intrinsic meaning, much less one tied to human procreation. If it has no intrinsic procreative meaning then there is no reason to limit it to two people, or to people at all. If there’s a flaw in this extrapolation then surely you can point it out.

Show me evidence that a perversion didn’t exist before interracial marriage, but then did all of a sudden once it was legalized AND because it was legalized, then that statement will have merit.

That’s not what I said. Moreover, that’s not even what you suggested. Here’s what you wrote:

“The same arguments were made back then that they are now, one of which was that if you allowed it, people would marry _________(s).”

Now, I’m not sure what you meant here, but there are two possibilities:

1. You are representing the argument against interracial marriage as “if we allow this, we have to allow other things, too” (where “other things” is represented by the blank and left up to the imagination). In other words, as being “we’re teetering at the brink of a slippery slope.” Or,
2. The blank just represents the N-word. But this possibility seems too stupid even to countenance, since in that case you would be saying “People used to argue against interracial marriage by saying that if you allow it, there will be interracial marriages.” Which is, as I said, a pretty dumb and also irrelevant argument for obvious reasons.

So I’ll assume that interpretation 1 is the correct one.

Now if you are in fact right, and opponents of interracial marriage said that the slope was slippery, then they are right, because we are now discussing gay “marriage” which, at the time, was inconceivable. If the slope was slippery then, it’s slippery today. And if the logic of gay “marriage” advocates is as broad as I’m saying it is, and it is, there’s no reason to suppose it won’t be brought to bear against other sexual prohibitions, as well.

And if there is a reason to suppose the slope isn’t slippery, then surely you can tell us what it is. “Racists thought so, too!” doesn’t tell us anything if the racists were actually right about that. Even stopped clocks are right twice a day. Racists no doubt think the sky is blue, should we repent of that belief, as well?

 

[RiverTam51]

You realize you’ve literally just ratified every single thing I’ve said, right?

I am not being circular. I am separating definitions.
There is religious marriage, and civil marriage. The first is not regulated by the government. The second is currently defined as a certain type of contract between two people. For simplicity, let is call the first marriage1 and the second marriage2. The government has always defined marriage as marriage2. What gay marriage advocates want is the ability to make the marriage2 contract. Not just some form that says “married.” We want the contract, along with the rights and priviliges that go along with it.
Yes, the government could redefine marriage so that it is not a contract. But this would be distinct from marriage2, which is a contract. We can call this new, non-contractual marriage marriage3. The government could give some sort of official recognition to people marrying their animals. But this would just be recognition, not a change in legal interactions, so it would be marriage3.
Yes, the government could one day decide to give recognition to human-animal couples. But this would not be a marriage-contract. If the government were to do so, it would have to radically alter its definition of what constitutes legal marriage. We want marriage2, which already exists, to be extended to gays. This does not make the distinct concept of marriage3 any more likely.

 

[fix]

The difference here is that civil marriage is a contract. Taking an animal’s wool does not require the animal to sign a contract. Creating a legal bond between two people regarding property, the raising of children, etc. does.
If an animal or a basoon were capable of comprehending the meaning of such a contract, it could give consent. But to all indications, they cannot. Because contracts must have full consent by all concerned parties in order to be legally binding, an animal cannot become legally married.

Definitions of consent have changed and can easily change again. The same goes for a contract. Again, the idea we can kill animals but not marry them simply because of “consent” cannot stand up to the logic that claims two men can “marry”.

 

[DeaconPaulY]

Just an observation- it’s interesting that homosexuals want to be able to freely “marry” each other, but get indignant when these “marriages” are spoken of in the general vicinity of talk of multiple-party “marriages,” or brother “marrying” sister, or someone “marrying” a pet or livestock, or someone “marrying” their imaginary friend, or? It’s as if once homosexuals are allowed into the house of matrimony they want to slam and lock the door on all of the other good folks who want to get “married” after their own fashion too. Why should they care if uncle Bob and his of-age niece get “married,” or some cat lady wants to “marry” all 36 of her feline companions. It doesn’t harm or cheapen the homosexual “marriage…” does it? I mean, how could it?

I’m coming around to the point of view that anyone who wants to “marry” any other person or persons, any other being or inanimate object, even his or her own self, should be allowed to do so. In a world gone mad, what does it matter? There will still only be one*** marriage ***recognized by God.

While it would be tempting to let the faithful go to heaven and let the rest of the world go to hell, that attitude does not support either the concept of standing up for the truth which we are obligated to do nor our obligation to fulfill the Great Commission. We are called to evangelize the world and that includes standing up for the Sacrament of Marriage and all that is implied therein. One fault certainly leads to another and all that Pope Paul VI predicted would happen if we let in birth control, certainly has come to pass. we need to stand up for the truth and to fight this age of disobedience with all our might before even one more soul is lost.

 

[Patti_RCIA]

It also denies the truth of how our bodies are made. No human is born with a body that is built for homosexual activity. Every human, including people with SSA, has a body that is heterosexually oriented. To agree with same-sex “marriage” one has to deny human biology.

False. I do not deny that my body is evolved such that it can create offspring with the opposite gender. But my mind is inclined to use my body differently. This does not require a denial of biology.
I choose to use my feet to help me drive a car to work, rather than walk all the way. My feet evolved for me to use them to walk. But I am inclined to use them for a different, yet similar, purpose. It is not a denial of biology to use my feet to control the gas and brakes, it is simply a choice to use them in a different way than what they evolved for.
What I do deny is that the legal contract of marriage must be defined in the same way as the Catholic definition of marriage. I believe that there is more to marriage than the procreative act, as do people across many religions. Agreeing with civil gay marriage does not require denial of biology. It requires a different belief in how the state ought to regulate marriage contracts.

Humans have never created “offspring” a-sexually, to say that our bodies have evolved to do so is ridiculous. Your analogy of different uses for your feet is in a confused attempt to say that because you can and do use your feet for things other than walking that using your sexuality for something other than its expressed biological use is OK, and it’s not. A better example may be saying that my hands are meant for working, but my same hands could strangle a man in his sleep. One is morally acceptable, the other is quite obviously not.

Marriage is the primordial sacrament, which is why the Catholic Church recognizes valid marriages within other religions and even within secular society. You implied that the Catholic Church doesn’t believe there is more to marriage than the procreative act, which could be no further from the truth. The Church requires all married Catholics to embrace life in all forms; some can not have children of their own, but that doesn’t limit them to how they can help within the Church community, the community at large, or by being spiritual mothers and fathers of others.

 

[sw85]

I am not being circular. I am separating definitions.
There is religious marriage, and civil marriage. The first is not regulated by the government. The second is currently defined as a certain type of contract between two people. For simplicity, let is call the first marriage1 and the second marriage2. The government has always defined marriage as marriage2. What gay marriage advocates want is the ability to make the marriage2 contract. Not just some form that says “married.” We want the contract, along with the rights and priviliges that go along with it.
Yes, the government could redefine marriage so that it is not a contract. But this would be distinct from marriage2, which is a contract. We can call this new, non-contractual marriage marriage3. The government could give some sort of official recognition to people marrying their animals. But this would just be recognition, not a change in legal interactions, so it would be marriage3.
Yes, the government could one day decide to give recognition to human-animal couples. But this would not be a marriage-contract. If the government were to do so, it would have to radically alter its definition of what constitutes legal marriage. We want marriage2, which already exists, to be extended to gays. This does not make the distinct concept of marriage3 any more likely.

I suspect you have no idea what Catholics believe or why they believe it, if you think “Ahh, but the inevitable state-sanctioned bestiality wouldn’t be precisely the same sort of thing in every exact way, so it’s OK” is a terribly interesting or compelling argument to me.

 

[Ethan88]

if we accept the logic of gay “marriage” advocates that marriage is just an arbitrary social construct with no intrinsic meaning which can be redefined at will, what reason is there to suppose that we can’t also redefine it to include other sorts of perversion?

If we allow women to vote, as opposed to only white men, can you just imagine all the things that would go wrong. Kids, squirrels, and murderers alike would want to “vote”, imagine our society if murderers decided what our country will be like.

No, it isn’t. It’s not based on anything other than what they themselves say, namely, that marriage has no intrinsic meaning, much less one tied to human procreation. If it has no intrinsic procreative meaning then there is no reason to limit it to two people, or to people at all. If there’s a flaw in this extrapolation then surely you can point it out.

100% agree, marriage is about procreation, which is why we as Catholics support marriages between brothers and sisters (like Abraham and his half-sister sister), or polygamous marriages because they accentuate the propagation of the species.

Oh wait.

 

[fix]

I would just like to point out that it really isn’t fair to put homosexual marriage and bestiality right next to each other and say they are practically the same thing, or that its the next logical step in that line of thinking. Homosexuals aren’t insane off the wall wingnuts trying to marry their televisions. They are rational thinking feeling human beings that care deeply for their respective partners, and trivializing that to reenforce our point about same sex marriage is a way of thinking that is never actually going to solve problems.

Minimizing the terrible aberration that is faux marriage really does not help anyone involved. Only in very recent times would any rational person think such a pairing would in any way be reasonable regardless of the intentions of those involved. To be clear, it is not only the individuals and society, but children that are harmed. The logic used to claim such things are acceptable will absolutely lead to further deviations. There is no logical reason it will stop there.

These people aren’t just trying to pursue some political agenda, or fuel their secret conspiracy to destroy marriage or religion, they fall in love and want to spend their lives with the people they care about. Added to that is the fact that the way our legal and medical systems work, they are at a severe disadvantage in trying to live with their partners, from tax purposes to visiting them in hospitals. When you commit yourself to someone and can’t be let in to visit their hospital room on their death bed because you cannot be considered family without marriage, why shouldn’t they be upset? Its a complicated issue, and pretending otherwise is only going to make things worse.

Sorry, but this is pure propaganda.

As Catholics, we are not, should not, approach these things from such a political perspective, and with so much animosity. We are called to be a people of mercy and empathy. Of course we don’t support same sex marriage, and this is an imminent issue, btu these people are our brothers and sisters and the Church NEEDS to do a better job of understanding where they are coming from, and working with them in the fullness of love and charity to lead them to God.

The Church does understand them. The problem too many refuse to understand what the Church actually teaches.

 

[fix]

If we allow women to vote, as opposed to only white men, can you just imagine all the things that would go wrong. Kids, squirrels, and murderers alike would want to “vote”, imagine our society if murderers decided what our country will be like.

Uh huh. So a father marrying his son is fine. Got it.

100% agree, marriage is about procreation, which is why we as Catholics support marriages between brothers and sisters (like Abraham and his half-sister sister), or polygamous marriages because they accentuate the propagation of the species.

Oh wait.

You may want to read a little theology before making such sarcastic remarks. Wait, that would not play into the moral relativsim of those that want faux marriage.

 

[Ethan88]

Minimizing the terrible aberration that is faux marriage really does not help anyone involved. Only in very recent times would any rational person think such a pairing would in any way be reasonable regardless of the intentions of those involved. To be clear, it is not only the individuals and society, but children that are harmed. The logic used to claim such things are acceptable will absolutely lead to further deviations. There is no logical reason it will stop there.

A faux marriage in the eyes of whom? I live in the United States, a democracy (not to be confused with a theocracy). In our society, we have people of different beliefs and since marriage did not originate in the Catholic church (or Christianity for that matter), I think it’s fair to assume that the term is not owned by anyone.

Uh huh. So a father marrying his son is fine. Got it.

Did I say that? Read it again, print it out if you have to, take it to the library…perhaps you will see I was either supporting incestuous relationships, or showing the (il)logic in the previous poster’s logic.

You may want to read a little theology before making such sarcastic remarks. Wait, that would not play into the moral relativsim of those that want faux marriage.

I’m afraid you’re going to have read a little bit more on theology, as Abraham did indeed marry his half-sister Sarah. Unless, of course, we’re reading different Bibles?

 

[sw85]

If we allow women to vote, as opposed to only white men, can you just imagine all the things that would go wrong. Kids, squirrels, and murderers alike would want to “vote”, imagine our society if murderers decided what our country will be like.

There is nothing intrinsic to the *logic *of female suffrage that would necessitate such nonsense. There is something very intrinsic to the logic of the arguments advanced in favor of gay “marriage.”

Once again, those proponents tend to argue that marriage is an arbitrary social construct that can be redefined to accommodate gays. But if this is so, there is no reason to believe it cannot be redefined for any other reason. If this is false, it should be relatively easy to point out how, without resorting to obviously bogus analogies.

100% agree, marriage is about procreation, which is why we as Catholics support marriages between brothers and sisters (like Abraham and his half-sister sister), or polygamous marriages because they accentuate the propagation of the species.

Oh wait.

Good heavens. Please do some basic theological homework. It is painful even to read such silliness.

 

[Ethan88]

There is nothing intrinsic to the *logic *of female suffrage that would necessitate such nonsense. There is something very intrinsic to the logic of the arguments advanced in favor of gay “marriage.”

The word “intrinsic” refers to something that is belonging naturally, marriage is not a natural construct (that is, “caused by nature”, it’s simply a human byproduct of it), and a term we give to certain relationships (which has changed thousands of times). Sex is natural, procreation is natural, marriage is a social construct.

Once again, those proponents tend to argue that marriage is an arbitrary social construct that can be redefined to accommodate gays. But if this is so, there is no reason to believe it cannot be redefined for any other reason. If this is false, it should be relatively easy to point out how, without resorting to obviously bogus analogies.

If marriage is between a man and a woman for the purpose of propagation, then what is wrong with polygamy? What is wrong with a 52 year old male “procreating” with a 14 year old post-pubescent girl? What is wrong with a mother marrying her son, or father marrying his daughter?

Good heavens. Please do some basic theological homework. It is painful even to read such silliness.

When you don’t have to argument, insult the person’s “understanding”.

 

[fix]

A faux marriage in the eyes of whom?

Rational people. Non moral relativists.

I live in the United States, a democracy (not to be confused with a theocracy). In our society, we have people of different beliefs and since marriage did not originate in the Catholic church (or Christianity for that matter), I think it’s fair to assume that the term is not owned by anyone.

If it is not “owned” then anything goes? It is plastic? In reality marriage is objectively defined not simply reworded to suit one’s private definition.

Did I say that? Read it again, print it out if you have to, take it to the library…perhaps you will see I was either supporting incestuous relationships, or showing the (il)logic in the previous poster’s logic.

You are implying that whether you realize it or not. Equating voting among women and others to behavior is unreasonable.

I’m afraid you’re going to have read a little bit more on theology, as Abraham did indeed marry his half-sister Sarah. Unless, of course, we’re reading different Bibles?

Yes, and you think that aberrations mean anything goes? I suggest starting with the old Catholic Encyclopedia and the entry on natural law precepts.

 

[Ethan88]

Rational people. Non moral relativists.

Just as Jesus would say! Imagine had Jesus responded to doubting Thomas this way!

If it is not “owned” then anything goes? It is plastic? In reality marriage is objectively defined not simply reworded to suit one’s private definition.

Correct, anything goes as defined by society. Same with the word “god”. Your last sentence makes no sense, as marriage has already been redefined…you don’t support polygamy or children marriages, do you?

You are implying that whether you realize it or not. Equating voting among women and others to behavior is unreasonable.

The sarcasm was to illustrate the illogical argument he presented. Did you even print it out like I told you?

Yes, and you think that aberrations mean anything goes?

Not necessarily, for instance I believe infant baptisms are aberrations.