Illinois to become 15th state to recognize marriage equality

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Tradition is ephemeral. We give up traditions all the time. We alter them to suit evolved sensibilities all the time. We establish new ones all the time. Marriage is no exception. The world hasn't ended yet.

Well, give up the tradition of marriage, then. Abolish marriage, or uphold its values. However you do not want to abolish marriage, but instead abolish all of its values. It can't be done.
Its akin to the creation of a stuffed animal. You kill the animal, you remove its internal organs, and you stuff the empty skin with unrelated material. In the end, the animal will look as though it were alive, but it will be nothing but a shell filled with ballast.

I am definitely a liberal. I'm not anti-culture in the slightest, I simply view culture in an honest way: it is fluid.

Indeed. But how you want it to flow is to turn the stream upside down. You want it to flow in the opposite direction.

I am not so petty as to target anything specifically because it is a tradition, but I hold no traditions to be sacred.

Well, I guess you won't have any troubles when someone abolishes the traditions regarding the excessive liberties in your country.

If they are useless, they should be discarded. If they are repressive, they should be eliminated.

I agree. However I do not find the traditions of marriage nor family to be repressive, nor useless. You do, for you see in them a moral highground that opposes things such as fornication, adultery, homosexuality, drug use, drunkardness, laziness and excessive individualism.

The only people who feel repressed by the current notions and traditions of marriage are those who are being told that they do not fit the criteria of marriage. You simply want to lower the moral criteria, or abolish it completely. IT has nothing to do with it being useless.

If they can be expanded to include others when there is absolutely no good reason to exclude others, they should be expanded.

I think marriage has reached the limits of how much more it can be expanded. Further "expansion" will only make it burst. It is like a balloon, filled with air. The traditions make up its frame, and the people who get married, and have children are the air. You simply wish to inject more air, while removing portions of the frame, lowering its maximum capacity. It will burst.

It is going to catch on worldwide sooner or later. Future generations are going to look back and wonder what all the fuss was about, the same way people today wonder what all the fuss was about over those who claimed that interracial marriage would destroy the institution and ruin everything forever. Those people are quaint throwbacks to a more ignorant and hateful period of human history. So are you.

You mean to tell me that this "hateful period" lasted for thousands of years where gays were not allowed to get married. And for as long as marriage existed, gays were not a part of it. Hell, they were not even part of society. Anno GM, I guess will be the new designation on the liberal calendar.

All your opinion, nothing more. And who cares what you think? I don't recall anybody asking you to marry another man.

My opinion? Its not just my opinion mate, its the opinion of the majority of the world, and people want their opinions to be heard, while you liberals are only concerned by making the opinion of the majority, yield to the opinion of the minority.
We have to be told what marriage is by a fringe group of people who never were a part of marriage to begin with? Why is it wrong when we go to defend our rights to keep marriage what it always was?

You wouldn't know what love or equality was if they punched you in the vagina.

Because it doesn't exist.

You know, it's funny how often "moral decay" = tolerance and "family values" = discrimination. It's almost as if intolerant, discriminating arseholes are using those terms as an excuse to push their bigoted opinions on everyone else

Yes, moral decay is to me today this whole "tolerance" bullcrap that goes on today. Tolerate every form of moral decay, while silencing anyone who objects to it with "bigot!".
You people are such hypocrites.

Except, of course, that traditions do change over time. Others are abandoned. Unless you're suggesting that all traditions should be continued, regardless of their nature, the mere fact that something is traditional is insufficient to justify it's continuation. To do otherwise is to invoke special pleading. That is what you have to refute if you wish to keep using tradition as an argument.

This is not "over time", this is "over night". You're trying to inject a radical change that is most certain to deprive the institution of its purpose, in less than 50 years, while marriage has a millenia long history.
And well, if the said thing is a tradition itself, it does. Marriage itself is a tradition, and is bound by traditions.
If you want to remove traditions, remove marriage itself. Instead, you're still acting two-faced, you resent the traditions, but you don't resent marriage itself, which is a tradition that is bound by, and binds other traditions.
As I said, Marx, was in favor of abolishing marriage itself. He at least was an honest man. He hated the traditional family, and traditional society, and he wanted to abolish marriage completely.
You on the other hand, want marriage, but you want marriage to be devoid of everything that makes it "marriage".

But if you're happy to give the same legal rights to homosexual couples as are afforded to heterosexual couples without children, why do you need to give it a different name when it's the same thing?

It's not the same thing, because marriage does not just have a legal position, but also a social position.
But that is what you want. You don't need the legal rights, you need the social acceptance that marriage will give to homosexuals.
But after you destroy its traditions, it won't. A fools errand, I'd say.
Equality? In the eyes of marriage, an unmarried couple, an illegitimate child, is not equal with a married couple and a legitimate child. Come on and abolish these traditions? You can't sanctify homosexuality with a marriage devoid of its moral high-ground.

So why afford it to one "fringe group" and not another? The effects upon those couples are the same.

Because they are not a fringe group. They do not identify as a seperate group within society. They're part of the majority that has the privilage to marry.

Replace the word "homosexuals" with "slaves" and your argument sounds no less bigoted. I have already told you why tradition is not a valid argument, it's just special pleading. "Those traditions can be abandoned, not this one. Why? Because it's tradition!" Can't you see how ridiculous that stance is?

You know, lets do that. And slavery was abolished. Will you be the ones to abolish marriage? Or allow the slaves to own slaves? Because that is what gay marriage sounds like. Equality? Why can't a slave own a slave? In that manner, slaves and non-slaves would be equal in their ability to acquire slaves.
It is you who is ridiculous. Your stance is ridiculous.

That's an assertion, care to back it up? Whilst your at it, explain why homosexuals couples can't have family values. If they were raised in your utopian family unit, they should certainly know what family values are, right? Explain why they can't pass on those values. Actually, before you do that, why don't you explain those values are?

Well, it is as to say that a known traitor can become a nationalist leader.
It is the same as to suggest homosexuals that live out this lifestyle in contrast to their upbringing, can become people who perpetrate the same upbringing. IT is ridiculous.

I did nothing of the sort. There was a hole in your argument, I went for it. I distorted nothing.

You you did distort my words as though I had said anything about it. You cannot use infertile couples to provide your argument with a basis. They simply are not the same.
Unlike the homosexuals, they do not choose their inability to produce children.

I completely agree. Now explain why a homosexual couple can't provide the same. See if you can do it without using the word "tradition", or derivation thereof.

Without tradition, marriage is not marriage, for marriage itself is a human tradition.
Homosexuals cannot provide the same because they cannot procreate, and either the father or the mother figure will be lacking in their "families".

It's a separate, but related issue. Why can't SSM's do the same? Surely it's better for a child to be in a safe, loving family home than an orphanage or foster system?

I'm sure that with the right amount of money, and orphanage can do the same.
As for fostering, I don't know, but adoption should be out of the question. It breeds nothing more than confusion for the child. Yes perhaps the homosexuals can shower the child in toys and other assorted material things. But they cannot provide the child with what is required for a child to exist. A mother and a father. The fact that they have two mothers or two fathers will haunt that child for the rest of his/her life.

Really? I would have thought that the coming technology would be extraordinarily pertinent to the subject. The technology is on it's way, like it or not. Same sex couples will be able to reproduce and there's not much you can do about it. That being the case, I would have thought that someone with such a high regard for family values would want to ensure that those same values are given to those children. Excluding the parents of those children from the very institutions which you claim so vital for values to take root, would strike me as being counter-productive at best.

Same sex couples can only reproduce by the use of surrogacy. A male lacks a womb, and a female lacks the capacity to produce sperm.
Any form of "reproduction" will still be based on the male and female reproductive systems. So its actually doing nothing but to provide them with what they were born already, either a penis, or a womb.
They simply don't want to use those the way they were meant to be used.

Wrong. Relationships come with a set of responsibilities that you should fulfil. The number of failed relationships and dysfunctional families should indicate that this doesn't always happen. This is an issue that needs to be addressed, but it is a separate issue and has bugger all to with sexuality.

Relations without marriage are worthless. Their responsibilities have no ground to stand on, and there is no one to tell you otherwise.
I can cheat on my girlfriend, and can walk away from it without gathering much scorn from society. I can impregnate a girl outside of marriage, and can do practically the same, for I do not really have the responsibility to look after an illegitimate child. I can do most of these things outside of marriage.

Don't be stupid. It was an example to illustrate that you can't hold something as sacred simply because it has been prevalent though out the history of civilisation. I could just as easily have used religion as an example. Or slavery, war, rape or any number of other insalubrious examples.

Well, marriage is the basis of civilisation. So I can, and I have to.

No, it really isn't. If it was, then we wouldn't be facing an overpopulation crisis.

We'll just start a few wars, and it'll just go back to equilibrium.

Trust me, I despise Marx a damn sight more than he despised marriage. I do think families are important. I do think family values are important, but we clearly don't have the same opinion on what those values actually are.

Why despise Marx? He created your form of thought.
If you think families and family values are important, stop defending this gay marriage madness.
Be consistent with your own words. I am consistent with everything I say.