I love the references to how people could be owned by rational secular arguments on this issue but yet he won't make them 'just because'. We get it, you are a bigot.

I originally said that it's obvious that the biological purpose of reproductive organs is reproduction, and that therefore the primary purpose of their use (i.e., sexual activity) is reproduction. You quoted the whole thing and only said this:

Now explain to me how you can concede that the organ is biologically ordered towards reproduction and deny that the primary purpose of the sexual act is reproduction. That's non-sensical. It's like saying that a tool like a hammer is for hammering nails, but that it doesn't imply that the primary purpose of the use of a hammer is to hammer nails.

Maybe you're confused about what I meant by "primary." I didn't mean "what the average contemporary hedonist has in mind when he has sex."

You linked to the definitions section. Here's my guess as to what happened. You went to the Wiki page looking for a definition to support your argument. You thought "the Definitions section will have what I want" and so you clicked on that link. You found out that the Definitions section mostly contained definitions referring to marriage as being between men and women, and so you went back to the top of the page and used the "description" written up by a random Wiki contributor instead of the cited definitions from works of anthropology. You then copied the link to the Wiki, not noticing you'd left the #definitions tag in. Am I substantively correct in my account of what you did?

You don't get to be both a competitor and a play-caller in a dispute like this. I don't think any rational observer would say that I've "lost ground" with someone who continues to obfuscate.

I have ethical concerns with it, yes. I would never claim that I was okay with every conceivable form of marriage. For instance, I think consent ought to be required. What was posted was simply the definition of marriage as per his request.

Ra_Z_Boy: I would still like to hear your arguments against pederasty. I'm just curious what sorts of premises and reasoning you'll use to attack the practice.

I wholeheartedly agree and hereby propose that we implement a fertility test before all marriages so that infertile people cannot get married!! How dare such selfishness be allowed to exist!

I also propose a timeline for fertile couples, say 5 years, by which they must be pregnant, otherwise the marriage is invalidated. Who's with me?!?!one

quod erat demonstrandum

That's ok, the Constitution made up your mind for you, so you can feel just fine about not legislating your religious beliefs on the rest of us.

I bring this up because in societies in which arranged marriages are practiced, (unless I'm mistaken) there are NO gay marriages. Does that make that society bigoted? (We can set aside the issue of forced marriages. I do think that arranged marriages can be practiced in a "healthy" manner.)

If you would formulate an argument by which you proceeded from the premise that the biological purpose of the sexual act is reproduction to the conclusion that therefore infertile people should not be allowed to marry, then we could analyze your argument and see whether it works. Please do us this service, for the sake of our conversation.

You presume you can legislate your biological preferences on the rest of us. Such arrogance astounds and disgusts me.

No one has to agree with what your definition marriage is. Nearly every argument you've made is one big Appeal to Tradition fallacy.

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.

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.

That's the argument you already made. I'm agreeing with you.

It was not "simply the definition of marriage." It was what you found on Wikipedia to support your point of view, after you couldn't find anything to support that point of view in the #definitions section.

I don't recall making that argument. Or maybe I'm just confused about what I said. Would you please spell out the argument for me? How do you get from the claim that the sexual act is primarily ordered to reproduction to the claim that infertile people shouldn't be allowed to marry?

this:
to this:
that about sums it up

Erm no.

You claimed you would be called a bigot if you gave rational, secular arguments against homosexual marriage. I am calling you one because you refuse to do this! Why else would you say there exists rational, logical, secular arguments that support strongly the opposition to gay marriage and yet keep them from us? Because there aren't any, you are talking out of your ass and are an anti-gay bigot.

BTirish, do you think marriage has any other reason, other than for reproduction? That is the sense that I am getting from your posts, so its logical to conclude that if marriage is only for reproduction, then people who cant reproduce should not get married.

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.

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?

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.

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.

No old or infertile people too then BTirish? What about hermaphrodites? What about those who lost their genitalia in a horrific accident?

Have you taken any courses in reasoning or argumentation? It will be obvious to any observer that you have not given a argument.

I also should be fair, and say that I haven't given a complete argument, just a very short summary of the elements of an argument, to see what premises people were willing to agree with.

The people who are against homosexual marriage because the primary reason for marriage is procreation should also be against post menopausal women getting married. But i have a feeling they arent fighting for laws against old women getting married.

We should really just end government involvement in relationships and it would solve the problem.

I've been to a gay wedding in a Catholic Church

It's very simple: the primary purpose is the most commonly used one. And that isn't reproduction.

No it isn't. Most people primarily use a hammer for the purpose of hammering nails. This is not true of sex and reproduction.

Then you should have stated it differently. The 'primary purpose' of something is the purpose that is used most frequently.

Actually I linked to that because of the 'History of Marriage by Culture' section (right below the definitions section), which I was browsing when discussing the history of marriage with Splendour (I was trying to find the date when the Catholic Church first began sanctioning marriage) and must have accidentally copied that address when I clicked over to that tab. I haven't read the definitions section of the page. I simply copied the general description from the top as it did a fairly good job of describing the term. So no, your account is not correct, but that's quite the imagination you have.

No obfuscation necessary, the lost ground is simply referring to the apparentness of your position becoming less and less defensible in this thread.

I really expected something more from the "it isn't bigoted" people. Instead we got "you're bigoted for being against my bigotry".

If you claim that marriage should be between a man and a woman because the primary reason for marriage is procreation, then it stands to reason that you will also be against any marriage of a heterosexual couple where one or both parties are unable to procreate.

I didn't think I had to spell it out for you.

If you are not also against any marriage where the couple can't physically create children, then your argument does not stand up to reason and you must find a new one.

Yes, though the discussion of arranged marriages being 'rights' does get a bit hazy, mostly because of the difficulty in determining whether or not those being arranged to marry actually want to do so. In a society in which everybody wanted an arranged marriage and was open about his or her sexuality, disallowing gay arranged marriages would be bigotry.