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Trivial in what way? There are no major physical and mental differences between the two genders? And I said gender, not gender role.

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Marriage does have meaning to people. And to most people it's "Joe and Jane", not "Charles and Harry."

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Here's what befuddles me: It's already legal for any person to marry anyone or anything they want. No one would be prosecuted for marrying a toaster, homosexual loved one, or anything.

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And most people support giving homosexuals civil unions, so they can have the same benefits as married heterosexuals. So, homosexuals can marry and have marriage's legal benefits. Why is this not enough? Why must society be forced to accept their relationships/marriages as entirely the same as heterosexuals ones?

Redemption

Jul 21 2011, 07:25 PM

_Saladin_

Jul 21 2011, 03:32 PM

DragonLegend

Jul 20 2011, 07:04 PM

_Saladin_

Jul 20 2011, 03:39 PM

DragonLegend

Jul 20 2011, 04:19 AM

Incog

Jul 19 2011, 06:46 PM

DragonLegend

Jul 19 2011, 05:31 PM

gs

Jul 19 2011, 03:20 PM

or maybe the odds of retarded babies

The chances for abnormalities exist for everyone, and increase significantly as women age. Should older women be banned from having children? What about people with diabetes or other hereditary diseases?

Except that incest will make abnormal children.

A mother/daughter couple can't make children, and neither can father/son, brother/brother, sister/sister, etc. couples.

And what about people with hereditary diseases, such as diabetes? Should they be banned from having sex?

As you can see, there's no good reason to legally disallow incest, from a liberty perspective. Legality ≠ morality. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's moral or legitimate.

There is a good reason to ban incest. It's the same reason student teacher relationships are banned and minor-adult relationships are banned. There is no reasonable claim that the son or daughter can give consent. The parent is an authority figure just like the teacher, even more so actually. In fact, anyone in your family can be considered an authority figure. Familial pressure is incredibly strong. Family members are incapable of giving consent to each other for this reason.

That is entirely your opinion. Adults are capable of making their own sexual decisions and don't need the government to tell them who they can or can't bang.

What? That is not just my opinion, I already compared it with analogous laws. People in a position of direct authority over you have incredible influence and can make you do things simply because of the pressure of their power. How is this opinion? Unless you're trying to tell me that your parents don't have power over you.

_Saladin_

Jul 21 2011, 03:34 PM

DragonLegend

Jul 20 2011, 06:23 PM

_Saladin_

Jul 20 2011, 03:33 PM

DragonLegend

Jul 20 2011, 04:03 AM

_Saladin_

Jul 19 2011, 06:45 PM

So? Does that mean gay marriage shouldn't be allowed? You subtly keep dodging my point that just because people have a definition of marriage, doesn't mean that gay marriage shouldn't be legal and called marriage.

I didn't dodge it. I've said repeatedly that unless something is an actual function of the government, it should be left to the people to decide whether to do it or not. Most people think marriage is between a man and a woman. Society, not the government, says what marriage is.

The government has already allowed people to get married even though it's not their function to do so.

Yes... because they have the consent of the majority of the people.

So it's ok for them to do things that isn't their function as long as most people agree? What kind of logic is that?

Hyperactive Jam

Jul 21 2011, 09:50 PM

Trivial in the way that they are not significant when it comes to judging a person.

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The word has a lot more connotation than that, and about aspects that are actually important. Joe and Jane can think that Charles and Harry don't have a 'real' marriage and their church can not recognize it. They can also mind their own business because it doesn't affect them. I suppose petty people will be offended by petty things.

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Uh, no you can't legally marry a toaster, the government is not going to recognize a marriage to a toaster.

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Exactly, they're married so call it marriage.

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If the government decided that all marriages would now be referred to as civil unions then heterosexual couples would be upset. I mean everyone is going to say they are married, who the hell is going to say that Charles and Harry are civilly-unionized? Charles doesn't want to say that he has a 'civil union' with Harry, that's commie talk.

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Parents most certainly don't have that kind of power over their children. What sane, adult person would say yes if their parents asked them to have sex with them?

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I said necessary function. What I'm saying is that if people want to give their government new powers (e.g., power to recognize certain relationships and grant certain benefits to those couples), that's fine. Marriage recognition isn't a right.

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I've said repeatedly that unless something is an actual function of the government

_Saladin_

Jul 22 2011, 02:42 PM

Parents have access to their children from when they're born, not when they're sane adults. It's a meaningless question you ask anyway, because even if most people say no, that doesn't mean that the pressure isn't there. What if they pressure them into doing it or they'll kick them out of the house? Or by grounding them? Or by denying them public schooling? Etc. etc. They have too much power over their children.

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First of all, you didn't say necessary.

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Second of all, even if you did, it doesn't matter. You can't just arbitrarily discriminate against some people because the majority of the population feels like being a dick. If the majority of the population wanted to give heterosexuals the right to be called lordships by the government whenever they're addressed, but not gays, would that be ok? No, it would be totally childish, immature, and discriminatory, but because this has already been going on in the case of marriage, people often don't see that they're analogous.

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We're talking about adults here. Incest =/= pedophilia.

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It's not discrimination, since marriage is nearly universally considered a union between a man and a woman. Saying it's discriminatory not to recognize gay marriage is like saying it's discriminatory not to recognize Microsoft as a small business. There are certain requirements if you want to join those groups. When most people decide to drop the heterosexuality requirement, homosexual marriage will be recognized. See New York.

_Saladin_

Jul 22 2011, 11:54 PM

I already addressed that in the post. " It's a meaningless question you ask anyway, because even if most people say no, that doesn't mean that the pressure isn't there"

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It is discrimination, just because it's popular, doesn't mean it's not discrimination. Can't you see that your argument is an argumentum ad popullum fallacy?

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There's pressure when it comes to almost every sexual (or any) decision. We're not mindless animals. We can calculate the advantages and disadvantages of our decisions. People are capable of making their own decisions. What you support here is a nanny state that interferes in the most personal decisions of its people. This could apply to anything, not just sex. Do you support banning parents from asking their children to drive their siblings to school? After all, driving is risky, and parents can 'pressure' their children, so a mother asking her adult son to drive a certain person somewhere and threatening not to include them in their will or some such should be illegal, correct?

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We're not talking about facts. If 70% of people believed the Earth was made of chocolate, for instance, that wouldn't make it true. If the overwhelming majority of society considers marriage a union between a man and a woman, however, and this has been the case for countless, countless years, then it does mean that marriage, in that society, is between a man and a woman. How can it be discrimination against married gays if there's no such thing as gay marriage? The concept is absurd to most people. To use another analogy, it's like saying falsely claiming you served in Afghanistan and have a Medal of Honor should be legal, because word meaning is subjective and even though "I have a Medal of Honor and "I was in the US military and fought in Afghanistan" mean exactly that to 99.9% of people, %0.1 believe they both mean "I hugged a bunny yesterday." Words have meaning, and until that meaning is changed, they're going to continue meaning what they currently mean.

Big Richard

Jul 23 2011, 05:06 PM

extremely religious

_Saladin_

Jul 23 2011, 12:26 PM

That's not the same thing. Incest happening and the government recognizing it are two totally separate things. Just because they wouldn't recognize incest as marriage doesn't mean that incest would become illegal.

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It's discriminatory because having a marriage institution for some couples and a civil union for others carries a negative connotation that they're not like us because of their orientation. That is pure discrimination. If you travel back a few years, marriage was between a white man and a white woman. We would be debating whether blacks should be allowed to get married and you would be using the same argument. Now we know it's wrong not to allow blacks to get married, regardless of "the definition" back then. This is just discrimination disguised as a semantics argument.

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To use another analogy, it's like saying falsely claiming you served in Afghanistan and have a Medal of Honor should be legal, because word meaning is subjective and even though "I have a Medal of Honor and "I was in the US military and fought in Afghanistan" mean exactly that to 99.9% of people, %0.1 believe they both mean "I hugged a bunny yesterday." Words have meaning, and until that meaning is changed, they're going to continue meaning what they currently mean.

Big Richard

Jul 23 2011, 05:06 PM

I don't know about you but only homophobes or extremely religious people define marriage as man and woman, I'm fairly sure most people define marriage as a bond between two people which they never specify

DragonLegend

Aug 1 2011, 09:40 PM

Big Richard

Jul 23 2011, 05:06 PM

I don't know about you but only homophobes or extremely religious people define marriage as man and woman, I'm fairly sure most people define marriage as a bond between two people which they never specify

I wonder where you get your information. I'm fairly sure most Americans define marriage as between a man and a woman.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/july_2006/traditional_views_of_marriage_tops_in_voters_minds

Note that this is about people's personal definition of marriage, not public (government) recognition of gay marriage.

Big Richard

Aug 2 2011, 06:47 AM

DragonLegend

Aug 1 2011, 09:40 PM

Big Richard

Jul 23 2011, 05:06 PM

I don't know about you but only homophobes or extremely religious people define marriage as man and woman, I'm fairly sure most people define marriage as a bond between two people which they never specify

I wonder where you get your information. I'm fairly sure most Americans define marriage as between a man and a woman.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/july_2006/traditional_views_of_marriage_tops_in_voters_minds

Note that this is about people's personal definition of marriage, not public (government) recognition of gay marriage.

I didn't know we were only talking about the US. also, the US has a christian majority and like all retarded religions it tells sheep whats right and wrong instead of letting people think logically and reasonably so the majority opinion in the US on issues which are influenced by religion mean very little to me so w/e.