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Originally Posted by CompleteDegen
You presume you can legislate your biological preferences on the rest of us. Such arrogance astounds and disgusts me.
I have proposed no legislation. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm also not sure what a "biological preference" is. I know about biological facts, e.g., that reproductive organs are for reproduction.
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No one has to agree with what your definition marriage is. Nearly every argument you've made is one big Appeal to Tradition fallacy.
I'm only appealing to history insofar as it serves to illuminate the very meaning of the word "marriage" as a relationship between a man and a woman who commit to each other for life in order to attempt to reproduce and raise any children they have. If you don't think the work "marriage" has a meaning having anything to do with its history, then why care about whether the label is applied to homosexual relationships?
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The fact remains that marriage is recognized by state and federal law. It affords certain privileges and rights to married couples. Denying the same rights to two people of the same sex of legal, contract signing age, is a blatant violation of the 14th amendment and basic human equality. The Republican party, the primary party against the legalization of gay marriage, is full of people who constantly trumpet small government and individual rights, yet turn around in the same breath and use the power of the government to limit rights and behaviors purely because they don't like them, for whatever ideological or theological reason.
I don't think I've said anything directly yet to the issue of law, apart from an offhand reference to the fact that lack of consummation is grounds for annulment. But I haven't made any argument about what the relationship of the state to marriage should be. I've only argued about what marriage is. You seem to agree that marriage is something that exists even apart from the recognition of a given state, since you say that states "recognize" marriages.
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This government was secularized for a reason and other governments followed suit, because it has been the best way to preserve and guarantee individual rights. It's time we start living up to be the bastion of freedom that we constantly claim we are.
This is a little too broad of a statement to give much specific response to, but you do notice that I have made absolutely no arguments on any religious grounds whatsoever? I mentioned that I was Catholic, in order to qualify the claim that I've never, to my recollection, said anything derogatory to or about any homosexual person; the qualification I made was that I know that some people will think that just expressing what the Catholic Church holds on these issues is derogatory. But at no point have I appealed to the authority of the Church or to any religious reason for my insistence that marriage between two people of the same sex contradicts the meaning of marriage.