Nope, can’t really think of any. By that point, though, marriage may return to just being something religious/personal to the people involved, and the government wouldnt be involved in it (and could find other ways to incentivize reproduction).
Precisely, so it’s not so much that you support gay marriage as such, but ultimately, the dissolution of marriage as any kind of public institution.
Duly noted.
And as a footnote, marriage wouldn’t “return” to some previous utopia where it was merely an arrangement of private relationships - no such place.[/quote]
There is a difference between public institutions and institutions that are sanctioned by the government.
So no, he does not want to end marriage as a public institution and he could not if he wanted too.
On to deliberately twisting your words:
Public institution is a juristic person in the United States which is controlled by the state.
Nope, can’t really think of any. By that point, though, marriage may return to just being something religious/personal to the people involved, and the government wouldnt be involved in it (and could find other ways to incentivize reproduction).
Precisely, so it’s not so much that you support gay marriage as such, but ultimately, the dissolution of marriage as any kind of public institution.
Duly noted.
And as a footnote, marriage wouldn’t “return” to some previous utopia where it was merely an arrangement of private relationships - no such place.[/quote]
Is there a difference between government institution and public institution, in your statement up there?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
And as a footnote, marriage wouldn’t “return” to some previous utopia where it was merely an arrangement of private relationships - no such place.[/quote]
Is there a difference between government institution and public institution, in your statement up there?[/quote]
Not particularly - by “public institution”, I mean one that is recognized in a given jurisdiction - typically, a state - for a set aside for a certain benefits package, public endorsement, etc.
As in, an institution that a people exalt and set aside from others, and the mechanism they do that is through recognizing a privileged status in the law of the land.
As opposed to, an institution the people may think is great, but gets no special privilege in law.
By that point, though, marriage may return to just being something religious/personal to the people involved, and the government wouldnt be involved in it…
There is no “return” to some purer form of marriage where the state wasn’t involved - it is a therapeutic fiction he is using to try and support his point, which I contend was wrong.
There may be no return to a utopia, but I contend that there will be less of an issue surrounding “non-standard” marriages.[/quote]
Wait - you mean that if you legitimize “non-standard” marriages through public policy changes, there will be less of an issue surrounding “non-standard” marriages?
Remove the government and allow marriage to be a social contract. What’s so hard to understand about that?
This way every one is free to recognize their own view of marriage.[/quote]
No, I get it just fine - and that would effectively end the institution of marriage, and all of the benefits it generates, which is why I don’t support your radical proposal.
The government should allow polygamous marriage, however, that leaves open potentially messy legal situations (such as, if one member of the marriage goes into a coma and the remaining two disagree about what should be done, stuff like that). So, in those cases, agreements would have to be made in advance (hence the process may be a bit more complicated, but pragmatically so).
But for the government to disallow it because some people judge the type of relationship as wrong? Bigotry, yes. For the government to disallow it because some people think it will bring about doomsday with its evil and cause our social structure to disintegrate? Bigotry, yes.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
No, I get it just fine - and that would effectively end the institution of marriage, and all of the benefits it generates, which is why I don’t support your radical proposal.[/quote]
Benefits? You mean children? People will always want to have sex my friend.
Benefits? You mean children? People will always want to have sex my friend.[/quote]
Marriage encourages not just having children, of course, but having children and providing for them in the best way. Also, it encourages the civilizing of men - marriage serves to put a brake on men going out and siring lots of children when he should be caring for his children at home. Marriage also helps mitigate the dangers of sexual jealousy and all of the entailing bad effects, which occurs as a human condition we can’t avoid.
Marriage does lots of things we think useful in Western civilization - and all you have come up with yet another juvenile desire to “rip up the blueprints” of a social institution on the silly notion of change-for-the-sake-of-change.
You haven’t made much of an argument to change a social institution that deserves the presumption of validity, given all of its natural and historical benefits - at best, you have petty radicalism that wants to “relativize” all human relationships as equal for the sole reason that someone, somewhere will have his/her feelings hurt because their relationships aren’t “appreciated” to the degree traditional marriage is.
The destruction of marriage isn’t worth amateurish experiments to re-engineer society to “perfection”.
Remove the government and allow marriage to be a social contract. What’s so hard to understand about that?
This way every one is free to recognize their own view of marriage.
No, I get it just fine - and that would effectively end the institution of marriage, and all of the benefits it generates, which is why I don’t support your radical proposal.[/quote]
How would it end marriage? Religious marriage would be something altogether different.
So make all governmental benefits for people who RAISE children. Any idiot can stick their penis in a vagina and jiggle around a bit.
Are you suggesting that every de-facto relationship involves cheating? That’s a laugh.
My (exaggerated) suggestion is because people seem to think they can lay claim to the word “marriage”.[/quote]
Read my post. There are more to “benefits” than government handouts - which I made mention of.
Moreover, we don’t want to just extend benefits and incentives to people who just “raise children” - we want to extend benefits and incentives to people who “raise children the right way”, that is, in a way that incentivizes the creators of said child to stick together to provide for that child.
And, since you can’t be bothered to learn any ethic outside of “if it feels good, do it - wheeeee!”, marriage serves to put important social guardrails on behavior we don’t like through…wait for it…Scorn and Shame. We don’t men going around impregnating everything that moves and doing little to nothing to take care of the children he has fathered, even if the relationships that produced said child were consensual. Acts outside of marriage were treated as Shameful in order to disincentivize such behavior - because, as a society, we don’t want it for what should be obvious reasons, but maybe I shouldn’t assume you know more than you do.
I know, I know - to the young, starry-eyed Jacobin, such antiquated ideas as someone actually expressing disdain for the choices of another person is borderline unholy, but moral opprobriums of this nature have helped “man the defenses” of civilization against the worst excesses of Human Nature since before the age of iPod. I say we keep manning them, and leave your silly experiments for the sake of experiments aside.
[quote]Marriage does lots of things we think useful in Western civilization - and all you have come up with yet another juvenile desire to “rip up the blueprints” of a social institution on the silly notion of change-for-the-sake-of-change.
You haven’t made much of an argument to change a social institution that deserves the presumption of validity, given all of its natural and historical benefits - at best, you have petty radicalism that wants to “relativize” all human relationships as equal for the sole reason that someone, somewhere will have his/her feelings hurt because their relationships aren’t “appreciated” to the degree traditional marriage is.
The destruction of marriage isn’t worth amateurish experiments to re-engineer society to “perfection”.[/quote]
Yep.
Most on the pro-gay marriage side of the argument, when it boils down to it, really just have a problem with the Judeo-Christian definition of marriage we’ve had in Western civilization for centuries. It’s the “Judeo-Christian” extraction that bothers them, if they were to be honest. Of course, without that extraction, there would be no Western civilization, which is what they want, it seems. What Judeo-Christophobes!