LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

Hooray for separate but equal, that's worked out so well in the past.

I get what you're saying (segregation comparisons ahoy), but it never really bothered me because I think marriage is, on the whole, kinda pointless. Sure there are legal benefits such as next of kin rights and inheritance and child custody, but these are all things civil partnerships provide too, without all the religious baggage and historical traditions.

In short, civil partnerships are, in my eyes, marriage done right, and I'd sooner fight for straight civil partnerships than gay marriage.

People who are apathetic to marriage and prefer civil unions are not really the reason why gays can't get married. The kind of people who are preventing gay people from getting married are, by and large, people who explicitly place importance on the sanctity of marriage as a sacred institution. If you are anti marriage but pro civil unions you're basically a neutral entity except insofar as you're willing to excuse immediate, happening-right-now bigotry for the sake of a mostly theoretical broader philosophical premise.

I was just saying if the opposition to gay marriage is the word marriage you might be better off jettisoning it and ignoring them. Sort of:

"Fine! Keep the damn word! I'll just call it something else! t('-'t)"

"like marij"

edited 5th Nov '12 11:49:30 AM by Elfive

Well that's not a difficult question at all. Obviously, they would need enough support to create a constitutional amendment overturning the 16th amendment. Heterosexual marriages are not constitutionally enforced like paying the income tax, hence the reason why we have a candidate that wants to pass an amendment to ban gay marriage in the first place.

Honestly, this is just getting silly at this point.

edited 5th Nov '12 11:51:01 AM by HilarityEnsues

Motion to define marriage as "A union between any two consenting sapient beings"?

This handily also covers aliens, robots and anything else people could reasonably fall in love with.

Seconded.

Thirded.

Let's say that your scenario comes to pass (I'm giving the Paulites enormous benefit of the doubt here). Congress moves to rename "taxes" in all official documents such that they have a distinct term for the funds you are obliged to pay as a citizen or resident of the United States in order to maintain its upkeep. Many would cry that this would be an attempt to mislead the public as to what taxation is - and they would be strangely right. Attempting to define a word in order to will its referent (taxation) out of existence (as the hardcore libertarians would be trying to do) is much like renaming the word taxes to "funmoney" in true doubleplusgood Newspeak fashion in order to sucker people into paying more of them (instead of arguing that we need more tax revenue, which is the intellectually honest way to go about it). It's a Kansas City Shuffle with language.

Now: what deception, what exploitation of heterosexual families, what misleading con will come to pass if we start calling gay monogamous cohabiting unions by the term "marriage"?

edited 5th Nov '12 1:10:00 PM by RadicalTaoist

Sounds good to me.

I can't speak to "exploitation," but every bit as much dishonesty will come to pass. We'd be not a whit less cavalier with the language, and with the existing laws that rely upon that language to have their force. It's every bit the Kansas City Shuffle you object to, though without the concomitant damage to the tax structure. But in my scenario, the effect on governmental revenues is just an unwelcome extra; the real damage is to the rule of law, and to the faith of the American people that they are subject to known, consented-to laws that can't be effectively rewritten through semantic legerdemain. That's true both of the Paulite hypothesis, and of the all-too-real matter at hand.

edited 5th Nov '12 1:15:47 PM by Jhimmibhob

Objection. (Though if the history of Proposition 8 is any indication, a majority of objectors wouldn't change anything, and we're engaging in a highly disingenuous kabuki. But I'm sure that can't be the case!)

What false belief will voters hold because of this "wordplay"? What mistaken action will they make once their actions are coloured by using the same term to describe homosexual unions?

Why the objection?

edited 5th Nov '12 1:30:47 PM by Tarkil

How many countries have to legalize same-sex marriage before you guys give up this "society will collapse" nonsense?

A better question: what similar "wordplay" ISN'T then permissible? What law currently on the books ISN'T vulnerable to subversion, flouting, or complete reversal, depending on the fashionable value a given number of partisans chooses to ascribe to the words that comprise it? What the almighty hell makes you imagine that this semantic lability, so harmless-seeming or beneficial to you in the present case, won't one day come back to bite you w/r/t some legal issue where you actually depend on the stability of the law, and upon words retaining a stable meaning in the face of factional pressures? Believe me, these precedents won't be used only to skirt political & legislative battles that you don't want.

I doubt society will collapse. But that's not exactly raising the bar particularly high. Hell, virtually no real-world political initiative I can imagine would cause society to collapse. Are you all right with all of them getting implemented?

edited 5th Nov '12 1:46:41 PM by Jhimmibhob

I wasn't proposing redefining the word marriage. I was proposing a new word (a homonym, admittedly) that was free of any restrictive prior definitions. This "new marriage" would be put into effect, with all the legal benefits of the old version, which would then be quietly phased out. We could call it something different for clarity, if you prefer.

Marij, perhaps, or Morrage.

I doubt society will collapse.

I find that hard to believe. What with all this talk about "the people will lose faith in the system and lawmakers will be able to do whatever they want, etc."

edited 5th Nov '12 2:04:30 PM by Morgikit

I just realised I should amend my morrage definition to "A union between any consenting sapient beings" because putting a two in there excludes polygamy where all parties agree to it as well as any alien species where multiple partners are either the norm or necessary.

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."
- Richard Feynman

This argument is utterly spurious.

It's clear that changes in word use are not going to change legal definitions until the legislators and judges agree that legal definitions will be changed. There is a clear and obvious difference between the word, and the agreed convention that actually governs how people live. It's obvious what's the actual target here.

No LGBTQ rights activist is planning "subversion, flouting, or complete reversal" of laws by changing the language. The language change is in concert with an open campaign to challenge the law openly, both in the courts and through the ballot box. No one's trying to skirt political or legislative battles - LGBTQ activists are actively declaring their intent to fight them. They want to create a new inclusive common-use term AND change the existing legal term. AND change the legal treatment of LGBTQ individuals and their unions. AND change public opinion and acceptance of non-heterosexual and non-cisgendered individuals.

Shouting your intent at the top of your lungs makes for poor skulduggery. It's pretty good activism though. In 40 years when people are scratching their heads at how long it took to win full marriage equality and protection against discrimination for LGBTQ people, will the change have been "organic" and "bottom-up" enough for you?

Should just have that be human, because otherwise there will be folks out there saying it means they can marry animals, and then the supreme court is going to have to rule on if animals are sapient.

And I draw the line on animal screwing.

The problem with traditionalism is that by and large it's never a good reason to do anything.

This is because it's not a reason at all. You can say "I do it because my predecessors did it" but that doesn't tell us why they did it. If you went back in time and asked them, they may well say the same thing. By and large, the reason this "tradition" started is so divorced from modern times and modern conditions as to be utterly irrelevant to any rational thought process dictating one's actions. It's simply historical baggage.

I was trying to future-proof it. I don't see any reason that any animal intelligent enough to give informed consent should be excluded. The problems inherent in officially recognising which fall into this category is another issue entirely.

edited 5th Nov '12 2:21:04 PM by Elfive

I really hope there isn't an activist group out there fighting for the right to screw monkeys. I really really hope there isn't.

I've heard the "gay marriage will lead to man on dog marriage" argument but now it's going to undermine the stability of our legal system?

This has to be a joke... it's a good one though, I'll grant you that!

Yeah for the record now there are only a few species of animal that could even be artificially made to be able to give consent so I don't see that as an issue. No one's going to organize a petition to get dogs or cats labeled at sapient, and if there was it would be laughed out of court/vetoed immediately. Don't forget that making animals sapient would lead to a whole host of other issues (meat, animal husbandry, pet ownership). So I do hope that was a joke.

I'm pretty sure you could just simplify it to "persons" or something and be done with that.