Adsyv, I got to say, I am having allot of problem trying to figure out just what your argument is. Most of your responses are very short and are in forms of questions. So it forces me to write rather long responses to cover as many angles as possible.
Back in post #36 there was talk about how we should call objects or animals by their proper tittles. I agree with this – a dog should be called by its proper title. Yet if we see an animal that is in every way like a dog, accept one that we have never seen before, it would be easier to call it a “dog” rather then create a new title for it. Later we can calcify it as a new breed.
Let’s say that a person is watching a program on TV where two trained monkeys go though a marriage ceremony. The next day at work the person tells his coworkers about the strange even he saw on TV. He doesn’t need to make up a new word to describe the event. The person will tell his coworkers that he saw two monkeys get “married”. And the people will understand that even though he used the word “married”; the monkeys are not actually legally married, that one will not receive the other’s bananas if it dies and that the government wont take a percentage of those bananas.
What this shows is that “marriage” was never a word that was specifically used to describe the marriage between a man and a woman. It can be used to describe similar events between different species, objects or whatever. Yet depending on the context of it’s use the meaning is altered.
In my post #44 I described how the concept of marriage between a man and a woman is pretty much the same as that of two people of the same sex, the primary difference being the sexual orientation of the couples. People will still clarify this last point, just like people will eventually clarify that a guy’s wife is Chinese or that a woman’s husband is in a wheel chair. But all these couples capture the primary image of marriage.
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As long as some one is willing to perform a ceremony we will call it marriage. Whether it’s two white people, a man and three women, a woman and a dog or a plant and a rock we can have marriage ceremonies for all of them. Yet it is the government that determines whether these ceremonies are legal unions. There are rights and recognition that come with legal marriage.
At the moment, the proposed laws state that same-sex couples do not have the right to legally marry in a church but they have the right to a civil union. Another words, the government says that there is nothing constitutionally wrong with a same-sex couple being legally united. Yet judges that churches do not have the right to practice a legal marriage ceremony with same-sex couples.
If nothing wrong is found with the concept of a same-sex legal union, then there should be absolutely no reason to not allow same-sex legal marriage. It is not the governments place to decide which religion is right and wrong.
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Quote:
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One of the main criticisms leveled at homosexual marriage is that it does not promote 'healthy' (for want of a better word) family life.
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I assume by this you mean having children. Yet children are not a necessary part of marriage and that legal aspects of this issue can be addressed separately. Such an issue comes up with mentally handicapped people who are allowed to marry yet their ability to raise children is questionable.
In the end, the major hurdle that children of same-sex couples experience is external rather then internal. Same-sex couples have been proven to be equally capable of raising children, yet they cannot control the bigotry that their children have to face in the world.
Thus the problem doesn’t lie with the same-sex couple but with social disabilities of our society. This is problem that we can address separately from same-sex marriage.
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Finally,
Polygamy, people marrying dogs, their siblings or mentally handicapped people being married are NOT part of the same issue. The government must determine the legality of each one a case-by-case basis. Please stop bringing absolutely irrelevant issues to this debate.
There is what these arguments equal too:
Statement: "People of all races have the right to be married"
Argument: "So should rocks and plants be married?"
Doest work.