But there is no "something else" for wide swaths of religious viewpoints. I keep telling you that two of the same thing is different from two different things. That is *THE* thing. The argument is grounded in history and stretches across every single culture.

And the things that you're talking about are IN ADDITION TO marriage. At least for Mormons, you're still married even if you don't do the temple ceremony. That ceremony seals something else. I'm less sure about the Catholic view, but I'm moderately confident that the Catholic church acknowledges marriages that weren't performed by them.

Sex is part of marriage. But two people who have sex are not necessarily married. Love and commitment are part of a marriage, but you can have love and commitment without marriage as well.

The hardest part for you to accept, and you almost certainly *won't* accept it (given your protestations up to this point), is that the definition of marriage you want to define is in an unresolvable conflict with other people's views. You can pretend to make whatever arguments you want to make yourself feel better, like telling them it's about love and commitment, but it doesn't work.

I fail to see how your example of discrimination by an individual is relevant when we are talking about discrimination perpetrated by governments and civil/human rights. No one claimed one has a right to be treated equally/not discriminated against by other citizens in all contexts.

No, they can't. For example, if they happen to employ a gay married man as a janitor, they have to acknowledge that marriage exists because it carries legal implications. They must legally acknowledge something that isn't.

Because in this country, religious freedoms are protected as a special class. This is why the government goes out of their way for Jews to make things accessible on days that their religion. This is why the the government takes special care whenever it handles a Koran. This is why in the US, the problem is different from what has happened in other countries. There is a different *TYPE* of consideration that comes into play.

And this is why long-term involvement of government in marriage is ultimately problematic.

Because you were talking about human rights, not civil rights.

Gays are going to discriminate in their behaviors towards me because I'm straight. This is not a human rights issue even though I'm being discriminated against.

It's certainly a civil rights issue when a GOVERNMENT makes laws to discriminate. But that's no longer a human rights issue because even married people don't have rights to legal privileges. (It would not be a human rights violation if countries decided that it will not issue marriage certificates anymore, and not provide legal anything to support marriages.) It just happens that they do.

Of course there is more to it than just "between a man and a woman". There are lots of relationships between a man and a woman that are not marriage. Don't be daft. It is a "something between a man and a woman" and if you are going to hammer it down precisely you need to elaborate on the something. Various theological treaties describe it as a covenant under God or that it is ordained by God or something like this. So just as someone who holds such a definition can find it in conflict with the man and a woman part, they can in theory ALSO find other types of marriages in conflict with the covenant under God part. In practice this has actually occurred in the past with, say, the Catholic opposition to mixed Catholic/NonCatholic marriages which violated holy nature of the union.

Now the marriage that I personally have was not ordained by God, had no mention of God, and could not in any sense be called a covenant under God. But it is between a man and a woman. So while it passes that part, it is not at all clear that it passes the other part of the definition. However, for the most part our society has accepted this broader concept of legal government marriages that have no theological relation...the religious aspects are all stuff you add on to the side.


It is shocking how after all this time you remain so profoundly ignorant of my views. I have never denied - in fact I have explicitly stated it - that the definition of marriage some people hold is in conflict with a gays being able to marry.

Of course, I think this view is incredibly stupid, about as stupid as a view that says "my definition of marriage is something only between a man and a woman of the same race". But I absolutely do not deny that people have this stupid definition and that this stupid definition is indeed in conflict! My goodness. Have you honestly been labouring under the impression I don't accept this?

I don't know whether a legal contract that confers civil rights to people necessarily has a moral component.

You keep confusing this. The right is not that legal privileges have to be formed, it is that IF such privileges are formed that they cannot be discriminatory. And this broader principle that governments can't pass discriminatory laws is codified in various specific ways in human rights documents in modern societies.

Personally, I think that your fellow Christians are not so ridiculous that they cannot understand and grow to accept this exact distinction that the legal contract we call marriage is not dependent on their religious views.

There's another angle on this from the legal concept side, which is that even if THEY believe something is a marriage, it does not mean that it actually is. Specifically, marriage *CAN* be defined as a legal contract AND be confined by legal action. So it doesn't even matter what they think, because they're asking for government to give them something. What matters is how the government has defined the terms of the conversation.

This is yet another reason why I think you'll have trouble in the US that you didn't see in other countries.

There certainly are many that can. Again, you're thinking about the wrong population. The people you are thinking about are the ones you're not going to get no matter what.

The problem with your general approach is that you lump many people who might be sympathetic to your position in with those people that you hate so much, which then turns them away from you since you don't give any impression of actually wanting to work with them towards a solution.

This goes back to basically the starting point of this conversation, which is that you're presenting yourself in manner that you're going to force this down everyone's throat.

Laws are necessarily discriminatory. The whole point of laws is that they draw distinctions.

That seems to be answering a slightly different question to the one I asked.

Sure. Just as if religious people believe something is a marriage, it does not mean that it actually is. So yes, what matters is how a majority of society defines the terms of the conversation (that government does it is just an admittedly imperfect proxy of the societal views). Absolutely marriage can be defined as a legal contract and when thought on these grounds - not some deep religious ones - it is impossible to justify why these legal contracts should discriminate. But I hardly see how this helps you.

I also don't see how what you just said has anything to do with making the case for American exceptionalism on this issue.

Wat. Where do you get this stuff from that is directly opposed to my actual views? I fully acknowledge there are different groups of views out there which is why I have repeatedly said I don't hate the idea of civil unions for gays, straight marriages in places where it is tactically going to take a long time. And further, I don't hate even the worst of the homophobes. I hope to change their views over time, of course, but I don't hate them.

Amazing that people actually can see the status quo as the LGBT people stuffing something down the throats of the religious people when it is exactly opposite with the religious people causing the harm on the LGBT people!

Of course, every government action isn't going to be liked by everybody and I disagree with many things the government does. But if advocating for the government to do something is immediately cast as "forcing this down everyone's throat" then I can't advocate for anything and neither can you.

Good. Now enters history and cross-cultural observation that points to the fact that marriage is between a man and a woman. Even polygamy conforms to this idea. Societal views support the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman through votes and legal definitions.

Again, you're trapped in a mindset that does not allow you to be wrong. You can arbitrarily screw history and make it up to be whatever you want it to be in order to support your position.

Marriage *IS* between a man and a woman by historical measures, by cultural conventions, AND by the support of societal views. And so it's defined on these grounds. You don't like that definition, so you make up some other definition and tell everyone that they have to accept it.

Indeed. Which is precisely why these documents don't just give the general principle, as I mentioned, but explicitly enumerate a list of ways that are NOT allowed and are going to be considered human rights violations. So, for instance, it is not enumerated that a government cannot pass laws that discriminate based on income which is why we can have progressive taxation. But it is enumerated that a government cannot pass laws based on racial discrimination*.

(*as a minor point, in the Canadian charter there are several qualifications that allow for things like racial discrimination to make up for past injustices or to help a group that is suffering a clear relative harm. I am not familiar enough to say if this is true in other places. )

Of course not... but they must obviously hate homosexuals.

You're in your own little happy rhetorical bubble again.

I'm almost certain that you're going to reject, but there's a very real understanding of the situation that the gay community is asking for something NEW. That the acknowledgement of marriage as being between two men or two women is NEW. This is DIFFERENT. So pretending like NOT changing is forcing something is incorrect.

You realize that it a fallacy to say that because history was a certain way that it ought to continue a certain way right? As in, just because slavery was widely considered to acceptable doesn't make it right. I have never denied wide spread discrimination against gays in history or across cultures today. I am painfully aware that the discrimination exists. But that doesn't mean it is right. That doesn't mean it is justified. That doesn't mean we should tolerate it continuing.


Thankfully, all the evidence seems to be that this is changing with a consistently steady increase in acceptance of the alternate definition that legal marriage is fine between homosexuals. It has already flipped in many jurisdictions surely will flip in more as time goes on. We won't change the historic legacy in our life times, but we can change the societal views.

This is exactly what the status quo does, it says hey look we have our definition if you don't like it tough beans we are going to restrict your legal options anyways so you better just accept it.

You're correct. But now you in a completely different argument. You had JUST made the argument that this is about what society defines things to be. And now you're rejecting that position.

You can't argue all sides of the argument at the same time. Pick a starting point and stick with it.

Oh come on, so the only way we can say that somebody is forcing something on another is if it is NEW thing? If slavery exists for centuries they are not being forced, the only forcing occurs when people end slavery? This is getting inane. Clearly the religious community is forcing their views on the homosexuals. That it is a long running status quo that has occurred for centuries doesn't make it any less forcing.

Yes, I have fully acknowledged that today society (just barely) prefers no gay marriage over gay marriage. But I don't base any argument off of this. THis is just a fact I want to change. And it is changing with views steadily increasing. There is also a bit of a political lag time between a changing social view and actual implementation and in a lot of places this is where we are at.

You are the one that keeps bringing up the history as if it is at all relevant.

I knew you wouldn't accept it up front, so I'm not surprised that you're protesting. On the other hand, I think that the protestation you're making is terribad.

Slavery is a forced action. You are compelling someone to DO something.

Gay marriage is not a forced action. Nobody is compelling gays to act in a certain way.

This is getting stupid. You just said that society makes the definition.

And then when when I tell you how society defines it, you want to reject it. You can't be on both sides of this fence at the same time.

I love your attempts to wiggle.

First you protest that they are not forcing anything because it was a status quo and it isn't a change. Now you protest that they are not forcing anything because they are restricting an action opposed to mandating an action. Now slavery destroys your first protestation but since you have busted out this new caveat let me change the example to black suffrage. Nobody is compelling black people to act in any way so clearly banning black suffrage is not a forced action. Grow up.

You recognize there is a difference between a descriptive and a normative statement right? Yes I recognize the descriptive fact of how history views gay marriage and its current legal status...just as a recognize the descriptive fact of its increasingly acceptability in polling. However I don't deduce something from this. I dont' make a normative claim based on it.

My normative claim (that we should stop harmful discrimination against gays) is ENTIRELY SEPARATE from the descriptive claim (that currently we have harmful discrimination against gays.