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Current time: November 6, 2024, 4:45 am
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Define Marriage
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Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists. Index of useful threads and discussions Index of my best videos Quickstart guide to the forum   (April 19, 2015 at 5:50 pm)Mezmo! Wrote: Now that the word marriage has been changed from the legal and sacred union of one man and one woman what DOES it mean? What are the boundaries that distinguish it from other contractual arrangements, social obligations, and familial relationships? One boundary between marriage and other civil contracts is that breach of marriage obligations can be taken to criminal court by the state. You can go to prison for abandonment or failure to support a spouse, just the same as failure to pay child support. We tend to forget this since financial obligations to spouses aren't enforced as vigorously as child support is. A boundary between marriage and other familial relationships is that a marriage can be dissolved while parenthood generally cannot be. I think gay marriage is okay, though gays contemplating a marriage may wish to think about the implications. With marriage, you can't just pair up and split up at your own convenience; you'll need legal permission to divorce which costs a lot of money and you may be financially committed long after love is lost, especially if you're the higher earner.  (April 20, 2015 at 10:26 am)Hatshepsut Wrote: though gays contemplating a marriage may wish to think about the implications. With marriage, you can't just pair up and split up at your own convenience; you'll need legal permission to divorce which costs a lot of money and you may be financially committed long after love is lost, especially if you're the higher earner. Why wouldn't they be thinking about the implications? Gay people aren't just throwing themselves into random impromptu marriages any more than straight people. That's reserved for rich celebrities.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson  (April 20, 2015 at 10:26 am)Hatshepsut Wrote: I think gay marriage is okay, though gays contemplating a marriage may wish to think about the implications. With marriage, you can't just pair up and split up at your own convenience; you'll need legal permission to divorce which costs a lot of money and you may be financially committed long after love is lost, especially if you're the higher earner. Really??? Shouldn't that be your advice to... I don't know... anyone getting married? What does this have to do with gays? RE: Define Marriage
April 20, 2015 at 12:45 pm
(This post was last modified: April 20, 2015 at 12:50 pm by Hatshepsut.)
(April 20, 2015 at 10:31 am)rexbeccarox Wrote: Really??? Shouldn't that be your advice to... I don't know... anyone getting married? What does this have to do with gays? I wouldn't suggest anyone should listen to my advice.  What it has to do with gays is that they are, generally speaking, new to the game. They've always pursued their intimate relationships without marriage, and frankly, there are sometimes advantages to not getting married. U.S. taxes, for instance, when both partners work and earn roughly equal income. 
I hoped to encourage a more philosophical discussion and some have done so. I put forward the traditional (and simplistic) understanding of marriage as presented in recent debates. Anyone can see that common and prescriptive laws were built around a cultural consensus of what necessary conditions, both objective and subjective, that must be present in order for a marriage to be recognized as such.
The implied objectively recognizable conditions of a Western marriage were few. A marriage is limited to two people. The marriage partners must be of opposite sex biologically. The marriage partners cannot be blood relatives. In contrast to this, the subjective preconditions vary by culture, but in post-Enlightenment Western society some tacit conditions have applied. The marriage must be consensual. Slave-Master marriages would not be legitimate, nor would marriages between with the insane, insensate, nor those before the age of consent. As I see it, state laws were put in place not to establish the objective preconditions for marriage. These objective facts were just part of what it meant to be married. Instead state laws were meant to clarify when subjective preconditions, like age of consent, were met. The problem I see with the current process of redefining marriage is that it brings into question all the objective preconditions. Biological sex, which is objective, has been replaced with gender, a self-selected identity. Thus there is no reason that prevents doing the same with number of partners and blood relatives. What happens, or rather what do you think should happen, when marriage equality is requested for second and third wives. Can any number of people legitimately claim marital status? Is there a compelling state interest for not extending marriage equality to blood relatives? Etc.
I don't give a crap who gets married to whom, as long as they're consenting adults. Eight people can marry each other... I don't give a crap. It affects me in no way, shape, or form.
Chad, why do you care so much who gets married? How does it affect you? |
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