Hooray for Morally Justified Bigotry!

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Cartollomew
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Hooray for Morally Justified Bigotry!

Post by Cartollomew » 09 Dec 2011, 14:30

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/la ... -marriage/

She was good at tennis, so we're listening to her views on an unrelated topic.

I have a beef with people who believe that we should maintain the "traditional definition" of marriage.

My beef is not with their belief, it's with what they think that belief is based on. When you say "traditional marriage", what does that mean exactly?

Does it mean that the woman becomes the man's property?
Does it mean that the woman's family has to pay a dowry to help offset the cost of the man having to maintain her?
Does it mean that, should the marriage fail to produce children it is null and void?

Let's go back even further - as I understand it, the Old Testament definition of marriage is that it's a sacred relationship between a man and each of his many wives.

How fucking traditional do you want to get? Because if your traditional view of marriage only stretches back about a hundred years or so, then you should come clean and just fucking say that - instead of suggesting that the present form of heterosexual marriage has been somehow preserved, unchanged, from the moment that God produced 2 genetically related humans circa 6000 years ago.

For the love of God, does Court have any idea how she sounds?

"The fact that the homosexual cry is, 'We can't help it as we were born this way', as the cause behind their own personal choice is cause for concern," she said. "Every action begins with a thought. There is a choice to be made."
Really? You guys are still beating the "it's a choice", drum? Tell me, heterosexual people, could you ever conceive of being sexually attracted to people of the same sex? No?
Then there's a fundamental difference between you and someone who does. This isn't a case of, "it's wrong, therefore it's tempting" - this is just not tempting to people who aren't gay, which possibly suggests that the element of choice doesn't really come into it.

Unless you pull a Catholic Church and say that, yes, they are born that way, God made them that way, but they can't ever have sex. In which case, fuck you too. That's still ridiculous.

We really need to move on from this as a people.
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Philondra
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Re: Hooray for Morally Justified Bigotry!

Post by Philondra » 09 Dec 2011, 15:49

Well, my stance on this issue is well known and there's really no need to rehash it here, but this is my favorite article on the subject of "traditional marriage".

http://archielevine.blogspot.com/2008/1 ... ition.html

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midi
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Re: Hooray for Morally Justified Bigotry!

Post by midi » 09 Dec 2011, 16:17

Good read Phil.
One of the most beautiful weddings I ever attended was between a young Jewish fellow and his Catholic fiancé, whose mother was born in France. The ceremony was performed by both a rabbi and a priest with intertwining vows in English, Latin, Hebrew and French. A perfect expression of the union of their two families, yet one which would have been unthinkable just a generation before.
This is pretty much how my sister had her second wedding where they had the traditional western wedding as well as a traditions Malaysian one (pretty sure malaysian... yes I suck). Was an awesome day and I liked the non-western one because my Sister had to serve me tea :mrgreen:
Marriage is what we each make of it. And that's the way it always should be.
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Cartollomew
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Re: Hooray for Morally Justified Bigotry!

Post by Cartollomew » 09 Dec 2011, 18:17

A few people in the 3 year old comment thread (that's a comment thread from 3 years ago, not a thread with comments from three-year-olds, although I'm not so sure about some of them) rightly point out that he strays sometimes onto the ceremony and not what constitutes the marriage per se.

Which is a fine point in its own right, but the ceremony has significance in that it formalises the subsequent marriage itself - in other words, without the ceremony, or at least some kind of official act, we don't consider the people married. Or do we? Certainly, the people crying "God's will" wouldn't look upon two unmarried Christians living together as husband and wife as being married - not because the life they live is necessarily any less a marriage than one where a couple have had the ceremony, but for the simple lack of that exact ceremony.

In Australia at least, a couple is considered to be in a de facto partnership (for the purposes of social services/tax/census/family court) if they've lived together for a certain time - whether that couple is straight or gay - provided there's a sexual nature to the relationship. In other words, the state recognises those people as married.

Somewhere along the line, the "God's will" people lost the argument about divorce - there are explicit statements in the Gospels about how it ain't allowed - and apparently gave up on fighting it. I'd like to know why, and why it's suddenly more important for them to fight same sex marriage (which is decidedly more ambiguous, especially since it would be a secular institution) when ready access to divorce is apparently not a big deal for them.

Perhaps they aren't hypocrites. Perhaps they're just short sighted and lazy. Either way, they shouldn't be influencing public policy on a non-religious issue.
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Re: Hooray for Morally Justified Bigotry!

Post by Philondra » 09 Dec 2011, 20:46

The reason why the religion argument bothers me is because we're not talking about a religious issue. We're talking about a secular, logistical issue, for matters such as hospital visitation rights, taxes, government benefits, and spousal visas (this last one's a major factor in my life). No one is forcing a specific religion to accept gay marriage, and I agree that each church should be free to decide what unions it chooses to perform or recognize.

But I don't want someone else's God to tell me who is part of my family and who isn't.

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