Should Gay Marriage be a Universial Right?

The purpose of Marriage has changed though, for thousands of years people used marriage for property/alliances/improving ones social status/marrying up the class ladder. Marrying for love is only a recent trend in the west.

Not sure what your point is on using quotes around the word humans and what telos has to do with the price of cheese.

Dutch Lesbian

@whale: Er, people still do that. And perhaps they're wiser than us weird people who have to get married by forming an irrational attachment that just causes us anguish when passion fades and divorce comes.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

Sure, I don't see why not.

I'm getting really sick of Rottweiler's argument from lactation. You can buy breast milk on the Internet, you know!

As for universal rights, I don't think straight marriage is one, let alone gay marriage. However, I don't have a problem with letting gays marry and raise kids.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

But my point was that the purpose of marriage is malleable Maybe they are wiser but it shouldn't infringe on my right to marry a woman for love. Also, gay couples shouldn't have their rights infringed either

Dutch Lesbian

Well from what I hear they're holding a consultation in March to discuss it but I'm becoming more optimistic about it. It'd be great that when I do find the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with that by then I can ask him to marry me instead of to civil partnership me

Whether it should be a universal right or not I'll be happy just so long as it exists as a right the same as hetero marriage. I don't care really what other reasons people have for marriage; finance, child rearing, whatever. I intend to make it a symbol of my commitment to the person I love and have that be seen legally as equal to anyone else's relationship.

As for the ban on church ceremonies, I think that a church shouldn't be forced to hold a same-sex ceremony if they object to it, but certain groups like the Quakers and the Unitarians have expressed a willingness to host same-sex marriages and they should be able to if they wish.

edited 17th Sep '11 4:30:09 PM by PiccoloNo92

@feo: You're assuming that technology determines right and wrong.

@whale: How do I know these rights are real? I can't detect them with any of my five senses.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

Could you explain that better please? Because that doesn't make any sense to me.

edited 17th Sep '11 4:37:36 PM by whaleofyournightmare

Dutch Lesbian

^^

I'd rather give orphans a good home with a gay couple than an orphanage. You keep talking about a secure and stable family of parents that stick together, well a family with two gay parents is much more stable than a god damned orphanage.

I was strictly talking about in the US, since that was the issue we were discussing. People of all religions in the US get married, it isn't a Christian thing by any stretch.

Actually, the issue isn't US-Specific though. I was talking about like a United Nations Human Right

Dutch Lesbian

@whale: I'm setting religion aside and being empirical and scientific-minded. When someone tells me that there are things called rights that every human has, why should I be more credulous than when someone else tells me about souls? Can I detect these rights empirically? If not, how do I know they're not a culture-bound superstition that I can expect a more scientific age to abandon?

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

^

How about you respect other people who don't think like you and just let them have their foolish fun?

You won't be getting married I suppose, if that's your opinion on it, so it need not concern you.

edited 17th Sep '11 4:50:07 PM by Barkey

A universal right? No.

Please.

Is it by itself a universal right? No.

HOWEVER.

I do believe that freedom requires the ability to not be bound to arbitrary laws and sanctions. This IS a right. This is where gay marriage fits in. Think marriage is primary about procreation? Don't allow childless couples to remain married (and as one of those, SCREW YOU) Think child upbringing requires both a mother and a father? Remove children from single-parent households. Those things are still unconscionable, we know they're wrong, but still, at the very least they're not arbitrary.

Banning same-sex marriage IS by and large arbitrary.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Rottweiler, at this point I have no idea what you're arguing off of. Sure, I'd agree that marriage isn't a right, but the concept of rights doesn't seem so different from the platonic forms you've argued off of before.

As for "technology determining right and wrong," I argue based off of consequences, and technology can and does change the consequences of actions . . .

Christ, you're using the Slippery Slope Fallacy again, aren't you?

edited 17th Sep '11 5:40:11 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

All the studies prove homosexuals make just as efficiant (if not better) parents then heterosexual couples. Children are less likely to get a criminal record, are more likely to go to college, and less likely to get involved in drugs. It's already been proven they do one of the most important jobs the institution is supposed to do, and the other 'jobs' are of mostly symbolic expressions of love. Which gays are more then capable of. I don't see any logical reason why not. And I highly fucking doubt I'm suddenly going to turn gay or be forced into a gay marriage or have my kids turn gay by this (not that I would mind that part.)

Ding ding ding! Hit it on the head. Any two people who love each other have the right to live with each other. Marriage is not a right, it is an artificial institution, and we want to look at the consequences of how we frame and use the institution.

Couples fulfill societal functions besides "baby makers". Their needs in these other functions are not served by the same things society can do to help them be "baby makers". Therefore, sexual orientation, like gender, should not be taken into account when encouraging couples to be couples because they are relevant factors.

If you want to reward baby makers, then that's served by stuff like generous maternity leave laws. If you want to reward child raisers, then that's served by policy like tax breaks for parents - and again, include gay parents, since they can also raise kids just fine and sexual orientation is again irrelevant. Either way you cut it, biological heterosexuality just isn't so gosh darned important to the equations society cares about that we have to go out of our way to make it the default to which the institution of marriage must apply, especially when it involves nasty stuff like denying visitation or inheritance rights.

Good point, it does not. Neither does biology.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

@feo: Yes, rights are similar to Forms. So as an idealist, I can believe in them. However, Natural Rights/Law theory is related to teleology, and no one has explained the innate purpose of homosexual marriage. Instead they appeal to Existentialism, denying that purpose even exists.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

^ It's been stated that marriage is a partnership for raising children, and that's the argument I would use.

Let's begin with the simple things: would you argue that a woman married to another woman, but impregnated via a sperm donor, is a worse parent compared to a woman who's married to a man?

edited 17th Sep '11 5:59:21 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

@feo: Well that depends on what she does to the child's father, now doesn't it?

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

^ Am I correct in assuming that your argument contains these two premises?

1): A child needs both a masculine and a feminine role model.

2): A woman cannot be a masculine role model.

If so, I'll argue from there. If not, I don't follow.

Edit: Actually, I think there's a third necessary premise here:

3): No person who does not function as a parent can function as a masculine or feminine role model—no uncles, no grandparents, no family friends . . .

edited 17th Sep '11 6:15:18 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

@feo: 1 is true. 2 may not be, but it has to be asked if a simulacrum is better than the real thing.

Also, the parent-child relationship is DIFFERENT from the avuncular relationship, friendship, etc. We are not interchangeable parts, something that our particular duties make manifest.

I was also thinking about issues like sperm donors being hit for child support. Also issues like how the suitability of homosexual female couples as parents would prove nothing about males, yet they'll implacably demand identical treatment (equality) too.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

I love how "marriage is artificial" is a big deal on page 3 when I said that on page 1.

~shrug~

Seconding Barkey on the "financial benefits are for the kids, not the adults." I think that should apply to straight couples too, though, so...

Also seconding the "homosexuality is the behavioral equivalent to the Uncanny Valley." But "kind of gross" doesn't mean "they should burn in hell."

It mostly just means I'll probably be uncomfortable with getting flirted with by a dude, etc...

edited 17th Sep '11 7:43:39 PM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

No, but hear me out.

lets look at your question

Here is the thing about 'natural' rights, they are not supposed to be temperamental expressions of social values. A natural right can't be granted or given, it has to be something that always existed. The bill of rights doesn't give anyone the right to freedom of speech, rather it there to protect their right to freedom of speech.

Therefore the argument for marriage rights isn't a matter of it should be a right' but rather 'it is a right', a right that is being violated.

So does the present laws violate an individual's personal rights? I not sure that they do.

Should gay couples get the same benefits and privileges as heterosexuals? Of course. Is it a 'human rights violation that they do not? Honestly not really. It's unfair and more then a little discriminatory, but than in it's self is not a violation of human rights.

hashtagsarestupid

@OP: That depends; what do you mean by gay marriage?