Quote:
Originally Posted by cellophanedeity
I can't remember the name of the philosopher or the thought experiment, but it goes like this:
You have no idea who you are. You could be of any race, religion, social standing, talent group, or sexual orientation. You are in charge of doling out rights and liberties to certain groups of people. After you choose the placement of rights and liberties, you will be thrown into the system and you could land anywhere. For instance, you could be a white heterosexual Christian upperclass male, or you could be a black queer lowerclass female Jew.
Based upon this, would it not make sense to give equal rights to everyone? If you just so happened to turn out gay (lets accept that gayness is something that exists and happens to people whether they want it or not, just for the sake of the thought experiment!) would you not want to be able to have equal rights as everyone else? Would you not want to get married?
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That's an amazing experiment, and so true. I continually want to hit people that live in the bible belt upside the head with the very book the excersize belief in.
As for a personal stance, either gay marriage should be perfectly allowed, or marriage should me nothing more than a function of the church, with no legal component whatsoever. Reduce everything to common-law marriage and allow those that truly believe in the sanctity of marriage to undertake it at their own leisure.
But since the latter of those options will never happen, we have to hold out for the former. Even if it takes far, far longer than it should.