Marriage goes farther back than we currently have records for, but the oldest intent that we know of (at least in European tradition - other cultures have had marriage for a long time too) has essentially been "I'll trade you my daughter for this piece of land."

Hey, you know what, maybe there won't be peace on Earth until all the Jews in Israel die, that's the version of your fellow fundamentalists in the Middle East.

Thank you for conceding the entire issue to me here, by apparently agreeing that pleasure and love are not the primary biological purpose of human reproductive organs.

In any event, I did not immediately reach any inference about what homosexuals can or can't do from the fact that reproductive organs are primarily for reproduction. It was only a first observation in building up an argument, which primarily concerned what marriage is: a life-long relationship in which a man and a woman attempt to reproduce and raise their children together.

Homosexuals can get married, in exactly the same way that any who isn't married can get married. My argument isn't about who can get married. It's about what marriage is.

"I would call their relationship a marriage if they were married to one another." And what do you understand by the term marriage, then, if it could be a term applied to seven chaste women?

So if a man and his divorced grandmother wanted to get married, that would be okay with you? Marriage is nothing but a label attached to a relationship according to the expressed desire of the two people in that relationship? Is that your definition of marriage?

I said that your intuition that two homosexuals raising a child is a family was based on the similarity of that set of relationships to a family with married heterosexual parents. Am I wrong?

I am not talking about any time or place in particular. I am talking about what marriage is.

Since you know more about the topic of marriage than me, you could help me by clarifying what you understand by the term 'marriage,' as I asked above. What is marriage?

And what did that daughter and the man to whom she was traded then proceed to do? I think you're confusing marriage with betrothal or the arrangement of a marriage.

I could give you very sound reasons, that are completely secular-based.
I was a non-believer and a humanist for quite a while, and was against gay marriage during that time.
No reference to any God involved.
However, the opposition does not tolerate debate on this particular tenet of their liberal, secular humanist doctrine.
If you wish, I could debate it in pm.

Coward.

Q.E.D.

Lol.

Someone just called me a coward by typing it on a keyboard.

Oh, the irony.

Yeah, cuz you're a brave heart and I have it all wrong. Here's a suggestion, go say a prayer to your god and ask him that he helps you find your balls and engage in an open debate.

Do it or leave the thread, please.

Edit: I see you'll be cribbing from this thread. Good to know you have those arguments handy.

I never claimed that the primary biological purpose of human reproductive organs was love or pleasure. I just rightly pointed out that your claim 'the use of those organs in sexual activity is primarily for reproduction' was wrong. And I'm not sure how many times I can point out that your last sentence here is also wrong before you understand it: not everybody gets married to reproduce and raise children together, and even if they did, homosexual couples can do that too. There is no homosexual barrier here.

Wikipedia has a fairly good definition:

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found. Such a union, often formalized via a wedding ceremony, may also be called matrimony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage#Definitions

Whatever he wanted.

Nope.

posting them in this thread will do.

I don't care enough to bother checking my PMs, and I'd prefer it be public since I'm already well aware of what the result would likely be, so it'd mostly be for other's benefit.

You never claimed it. You implicitly conceded it by accepting the comparison to the skin's purpose.

Wikipedia is not a legitimate source for settling disputes of this kind, but how about at least listing all of the definitions on the page? Here's just one of the ones given: "a union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners."

It's 2011, why should we still strictly follow old definitions of marriage? Why shouldn't the term evolve over time?

i.e. it begins as a custom in which men trade their daughters for goods and property, evolves over time into a custom which is traditionally used for bearing and raising children, then evolves yet again to become a custom in which people who love each other decide to remain together for an extended period of time.

Basically, I don't see why you feel the need to hold the term "marriage" to such a strict narrow definition.

You just can't.

If you argue against gay-marriage from a religious standpoint, the secular humanists are happy enough to debate you. You are just ignorant, and "ha ha ha."

But when you defeat them on their own ground, using rationalism, common-sense, and their own science and secularist conclusions against them, a kind of awakening happens within them, where they realize that they too, believe in fairy-tales, and they lash out in violence, in order to suppress and silence.

I'm just warning anyone that is against gay marriage not to post on the topic.

"I am against gay marriage" is an "anti-gay" posting, according to the rules of guidelines of 2+2, and you are being "tarped."

If you are against gay marriage, and have rational, logical and secular based reasons for doing so, then please post these reasons?
You have made many statements about being able to prove this that or the next thing, over a number of threads, I have yet to see you do so in any of them

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bigoted

Is being strongly anti-anti-gay marriage bigotry?

I've always found the bigotry label to somewhat self-defeating, much like the "tolerance of everything except intolerance" stance.

If a rationalist's arguments are weak, he/she should readily conceive that they are. But you don't have room for rational arguments in your head and are afraid of being labeled a homophobe. So just excuse yourself and hope that this will eventually be forgotten.

doggg, we're all asking you to present these arguments you speak of. No one here is going to label you a bigot and ban you or whatever you seem to be afraid of. If you have well thought out, rational arguments against gay marriage then they should only serve to change the minds of the people posting in this thread.

Well he's stopped looking through that old locked thread on the issue, so I assume he's given up trying to find the sure-fire arguments he's claiming exist. Maybe he'll just keep referring to them. Maybe we'll keep responding to his just referring to them. Maybe he derives some utility from this state of affairs.

Maybe I need a holiday.

I'm not quite sure what you think concede means, but I would never have argued that the biological purpose of sexual organs was not reproduction. That isn't the problem. The problem is that that is irrelevant.

I don't have a dispute over what I think marriage is. What I posted was the general description from the top of the page.

There's a reason why you're losing ground so quickly here. It isn't because you just don't understand what exactly is going on. It's because your position is wrong.

Fortunately for gay people, this scenario just doesn't seem to ever happen.

Do you have any concerns with practices such as arranged marriages? This fits within a social contract theory of marriage.