"Jesus would rather kill, not marry, gay people" - Franklin Graham

[Amarok]

And Road kill answers nothing

[Ravenshire]

Are you arguing that equal treatment under the law isn't a right? That marriage isn't a legal institution? That the definitions of words should never change?

I can't keep up any more what with you and Steve shifting the argument every few posts.

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Intentional obtuseness. It's ok Steve. I didn't expect any better from you.

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You've got nothing except the latest definition, that you like the best, that shouldn't be changed even though the language we speak isn't a dead language and definitions change all the time. Talk about building your house on a foundation of sand.

I was responding to your argument,  it making one.  Also your claim that I misrepresented you. So I would ask again how?

Since you obviously didn't get it the first time...

I know you love to misrepresent this argument by conflating equal treatment under the law with treating everyone exactly the same.

What part of that misrepresentation is so fucking hard to figure out?

[RoadRunner79]

I was responding to your argument,  it making one.  Also your claim that I misrepresented you. So I would ask again how?

Since you obviously didn't get it the first time...

I know you love to misrepresent this argument by conflating equal treatment under the law with treating everyone exactly the same.

What part of that misrepresentation is so fucking hard to figure out?

Well if you are saying that we can discriminate, and that not all qualify for this legal institution, then it seems that you don't have an argument.   I was assuming that you where.

[Amarok]

And you keep missing the argument

[Angrboda]

Except for equal treatment under the law. Marriage is a legal institution, Steve. Denying gays marriage is to deny them equal treatment. Keep telling yourself that you're not a bigot. It won't change the facts, but I'm sure it will make you sleep better at night.

Wrong again. Marriage is not a legal institution--in any way. It is easy to see that out of the 10,000 years of existence, the government has imposed a few rules for like the last 5 minutes.

If one wants to incline in that direction, then marriage likely has been nothing more than an exclusivistic bonding between one sexual being and another throughout the course of history. In that case, there likely have been same-sex marriages throughout the course of history, they just haven't been recognized as such by legal or religious authorities. Which raises the question of specifically what you're referring to by 'marriage'. As already observed, you seem to conflate talking about the definition of the word with talking about the institution, depending on what's most convenient at the time. Now you have raised the question of whether you're talking about a formal and officially recognized institution, or an informal one, not involving either religion or government. Given that humans are animals and as a behavior, are inclined to engage in pair bonding, it's reasonable to conclude that same-sex unions, informally, have a longer history than you're acknowledging. As noted in prior discussion, homosexual subcultures have existed for a long time. Are you suggesting that people in such sub-cultures didn't engage in such pair bonding simply because they were homosexual? If so, I'd like to see your argument for that. Otherwise, you're likely simply wrong that heterosexual unions have set any kind of standard, historically. This is especially true when one acknowledges the fact that sanction of homosexual behavior is long standing, and any heterosexual bias in the representation of same-sex unions among officiators of such, whether formal authorities or religion, is likely an artifact of prejudice rather than a reflection of the true state of human behavior. In short, your marriage argument appears to be foundering on the anvil of some very foundational questions.

[Ravenshire]

Since you obviously didn't get it the first time...


What part of that misrepresentation is so fucking hard to figure out?

Well if you are saying that we can discriminate, and that not all qualify for this legal institution, then it seems that you don't have an argument.   I was assuming that you where.

If all do not qualify for said legal institution then that legal institution is illegally discriminatory and needs to change. It has. If that burns your ass, that's no concern of mine. It's bigotry rearing it's ugly face. You can choose to recognize and deal with it, or you can choose to ignore it and make excuses. So far, all you've done is make excuses.

[KevinM1]

You have a definition problem. Bigotry means intolerant of another opinion or belief. You can't come close to connecting the opinion that the definition should not change with intolerance. The amusing thing is that you have been told they are connected so loud and so long that you think they are. They aren't and you can't figure out why not.

You're intolerant of same-sex couples being able to get married.  You're intolerant of homosexual activities, if not homosexual people (although, I've never bought the "hate the sin, not the sinner" claptrap).  And, intolerance isn't just limited to opinions or beliefs, but people.  I know you love that dictionary.com definition (it pops up as my first search result, too), but Merriam-Webster has one that's more complete:

Obstinate or intolerant devotion to one's own opinions and prejudices

Your performance in this thread has been exactly that, demonstrated by your insistence that the definition/institution of marriage should not change, while supplying only appeals to authority and tradition as justification.  I mean, you haven't even acknowledged the fact that marriage in the United States is ultimately just a secular arrangement between couples and the government.  

It's, frankly, an embarrassing display.

[Amarok]

Well if you are saying that we can discriminate, and that not all qualify for this legal institution, then it seems that you don't have an argument.   I was assuming that you where.

If all do not qualify for said legal institution then that legal institution is illegally discriminatory and needs to change. It has. If that burns your ass, that's no concern of mine. It's bigotry rearing it's ugly face. You can choose to recognize and deal with it, or you can choose to ignore it and make excuses. So far, all you've done is make excuses.

Par for the course with him .You should see him try and defend ID .

[Ravenshire]

I'm gonna let dictionary.com complete the destruction of RR's and Steve's "arguments" by definition about marriage.

All emphasis is mine:

Marriage has never had just one meaning. Adjectives commonly used with the word reveal the institution’s diversity, among them traditional, religious, civil, arranged, gay, plural, group, open, heterosexual, common-law, interracial, same-sex, polygamous, and monogamous. And this diversity has been in evidence, if not since the beginning of time, at least since the beginning of marriage itself, roughly some 4000 years ago.
Multiple wives, for example, proliferate in the Bible. King Solomon famously had 700, although most were apparently instruments of political alliance rather than participants in royal romance. (For that, he had 300 concubines.)
Marriage can be sanctioned legally or religiously, and typically confers upon married people a special legal status with particular rights, benefits, and obligations. Access to this special status has changed over time. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage as recently as 1967, while same-sex marriage, which for some time had been banned in many states or ignored in others, was in 2015 ruled a constitutional right for all Americans.
Marriage as the union of one man and one woman is the most common definition of the term in the Western world today—this in spite of the prevalence on the one hand of divorce (enabling people to marry several different partners in sequence), and on the other, of an increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage. And as society becomes more inclusive, it is likely that “equal protection under the law” will be fully applied to same-sex couples.
In crafting definitions for a word that represents an institution that is rapidly evolving, the dictionary may well have to keep adding, changing, and reordering senses, splitting or combining them as the institution changes. Inevitably, those who want to preserve what they cherish as traditional values will resist new definitions, while those who anticipate, welcome, and fight for societal change will be impatient when new definitions do not appear as quickly as they would wish. But we should all remember that while it is not the job of a dictionary to drive social change, it is inevitable that it will reflect such change.

RR, Steve, sorry, but you guys lose. You see, that's the problem with communicating by means of a living language. Definitions change, pronunciations change, spelling changes... Might I suggest you both learn Latin if definitions are such a hot button for you. It's a dead language, so you won't have that to deal with. Of course, you'll be stuck in a modern world with no way to communicate modern ideas, but you both seem to be there already.

[robvalue]

So to sum up:

1) Marriage has a definition that can't change that has changed

2) Marriage is not a religious matter, but it's to do with what God wants (and the Christian God at that)

3) Marriage is not a legal matter either, but involves a legal contract and has just been discussed in the high court

4) The law has to treat people exactly the same, even people who don't exist, and if it doesn't then... bigots just say what the laws are, I guess?

I don't know what it will take to trigger some self-awareness here.