Because it is repugnant to manufacture or maintain barriers to other people’s happiness when that happiness makes no material impact on your own well being?
If God truly detests it, then they’ll get what’s coming to them in the afterlife anyway (along with all those sinners who wear clothing of linen mixed with wool, and bacon-eaters).
Not sure if anyone had brought up the SCOTUScare point by Scalia… what the court has done is expanded the eligibility of major tax incentives to a wide range of people that otherwise would not qualify. Me personally I think gays should have the right to those tax benefits under " domestic partnerships" but _marriage should be a religious distinction between a man and a woman. This opens the door for crazy ideas… What about polygomous or incestual relationships. Why can’t I marry my dog?
You can’t sign a contract with a dog. And marriage’s structure is two parties engage in a contract, not three or ten. I don’t see it getting much more broad from here. Don’t confuse religious marriage with the legal definition. Is the Justice of the Peace conducting a marriage a religious event?
If you believed that moronic slippery slope logic then what you just said is that either 1) you’re ok with people eventually entering into domestic partnerships as currently defined with dogs and family members or 2) that somehow by calling it marriage people will magically lose all cognitive abilities. Both are equally illogical stances. The slippery slope argument exists solely for people without any reasonable point to make about the actual matter at hand.
Also, are you saying that all the non-religious people who are married should no longer qualify under your “religious distinction” or are you just imposing religion on their union? Because it seems like you just casually inserted religion into legislature as if separation of church and state is not a part of our country’s fundamental DNA.
Lastly, incest isn’t allowed due to the genetic impacts btw, marrying cousins used to be common in the U.S. a century ago and gay marriage doesn’t change that.
If merely being repugnant is a reason to be passionate about an issue, then you answered his question, gay marriage opponents find the idea of gay marriage repugnant. Something does not need to affect you directly for you to have an opinion on it.
Interesting issue. Should gay cousins be able to marry now?
marrying cousins is still very much alive in parts of the world now
Touché! My emotional outburst lead me straight into your logic trap. 
Still, I think there’s a difference when we are restricting other people’s ability to do things that they want vs widening the things that they can do, when neither has a substantial impact on my own life.
When we are restricting freedoms, we need a good answer for “why?”, whereas when we are widening freedoms, widening people’s freedoms the main question is “why not?” When I see other peoples’ freedoms being restricted without a compelling “why” other than “some people think it’s kinda wierd”, or “their God says it’s bad” there is a greater chance that this kind of restriction will later be placed on some other thing I that actually does affect me. So there’s a fight about reducing the level of arbitrary constraints on people.
Perhaps this is the sort of thing that doesn’t lend itself well to full logical argumentation, and perhaps this is why people get so passionate about it. Or maybe it’s the idea that religion and prejudice should not be the primary determinants of the political agenda (outside of economic issues, where religion and predjudice don’t appear to be dominant). I don’t know. But if I wake up one day and discover I’m gay, I’d like the ability to get gay married and pay gay married tax rates, even if I can’t actually imagine ever being gay.
Well, this gay marriage thing is about redefining family economic units; it’s not about freedom to be gay or “love”, because that was already legal. Reproductive purposes are clearly not important to the gay marriage definition, so it’s still a bit unfair now to restrict the definition of family units as people who want to have sex with each other.
Let’s say you live with your two siblings in a house, and you have adopted two kids, who you are all raising together. That family unit is just as legitimate as one composed of two dudes. So in this case, you should still be able to choose one (or more) of your household members as a “spouse” with full marital economic benefits.
I see that aspect. Men are upset that they used to have to choose a woman to be with in order to get the economic benefits of marriage, and now they discover that they could have done it by being with a man. It’s like all that effort was wasted.
The main argument for marriage being uniquely a man and woman is “it’s the way it’s always been done” (so let’s make email illegal on the same basis?), or “marriage is for the creation of a stable family unit to support procreation” (so let’s make it illegal for sterile or post-menopausal women to be married)?
I guess it gets down to what constitutes a family, and who can be part of that family. But family is also important when people get old and die. It affects who can receive care, and how stuff gets transferred or inherited. To some extent, these can be mitigated by proper contracting, but certain things like how residences and pensions are inherited are specific to marriage partners.
Ohai does raise an interesting point. If someone thinks that the point of getting married for is just for economic benefits, then presumably, two high-earning, heterosexual men can get married for legal and financial reasons, and then each can have their own mistresses, since they don’t really want to bang each other. That sounds like what our buddy itera’s been looking for all this while… extra tax flexibility with no real commitments.
This isn’t about redefining economic units, only somebody with a purely utilitarian worldview would think that. If it was just a utilitarian belief, then they would have pushed for “civil unions”. This is about inclusion of gays into a broader social institution that others have access to, rolling back what is seen as a religious, heteronormative, and patriarchal construct in order to normalize equality for gays in all aspects of life.
To be clear, I’m not saying the argument against gay marriage is strong, just questioning the fervent passion behind the issue. (On which I’m ambivalent)
I think what you noted about advancing freedoms is true in the context of the US. If you can support your case by couching your language with rhetoric about advancing individual freedom, it tends to be pretty strong, and puts the burden of proof on the other side.
I think my sense of repugnance was driven by the freedom based argument (restricting freedoms without a compelling “why” seems repugnant to me, and tradition and religion don’t strike me as sufficient reasons in the modern world). It just took me some extra digging into my thinking to find out what was driving it.
I agree that marriage for economic benefits isn’t what the passion is about, and probably would have pushed the “it’s identity, not economics” line if the discussion had gone a different direction.
To be honest, I’m not exactly sure why civil union and domestic partnership isn’t an acceptable solution for much of the gay community, as long as there is no ability to make a legal distinction between that and traditional marriage. However, they seem passionate about it, and I can’t see any real reason why one has to draw the line between civil unions and marriages, so I figure there’s something there that they care about very much and it doesn’t really make a difference to me.
For the anti-gay marriage side, I suspect part of what’s driving it are conservative parents that are worried that their children might be gay, and therefore not fit their vision of how the world should work (and possibly about whether they will have grandchildren). The legalization of gay marriage simply makes it easier for that to happen, and they don’t like it. I can see why - if you grow up in a very conservative environment - that might seem threatening, but children ultimately become adults and have the right to make their own choices.
There is a wiki on cousins marrying. It has a grid of which states make what illegal with your cousin. It’s not universally illegal in USA. Some are even legal if you get sterilized lol
As i learned this suit was originally brought because two partners wanted to marry because one was dying and wanted to pass his estate tax free to his partner. So now that marriage is an undeniable right between two people, can thus lead to gaming of the estate tax, eg by marrying a son, daughter, granddaughter, etc?
Yeah I heard about this, totally don’t care.
The only good thing is that perhaps Americans will shut up about this now? Somehow doubt it…
Why is it that gay advocates always assume that those who oppose making gays a protected class (which brings with it all sorts of limits to the freedoms of others) is based in fear of being gay. That’s infantile to say the least.
I’m opposed to it for several reasons. The more obvious is that it dilutes the meaning of marriage so that it’s now meaningless (something that invites scaredy cat arguments). Of course, the meaning of marriage has been on the decline for half a century to where gay marriage really represents a symptom rather than a cause of the decline.
The less obvious reasons involve the slippery slope of the law. If the Supreme Court is to have any consistency, polygamy, for example will have to be legalized once someone decides to sue. The Court did not make this ruling based on equal protection, but of personal freedoms.
And, of course, as we have seen with bakers and candlestick makers, the freedoms of anybody who disagrees with the gestapo will continue to be curtailed. So much for the “personal freedoms” argument.
Donald Trump has been vociferously opposed to it, saying that it undermines “traditional marriage”.
He should be an expert on “traditional marriage”. After all, he’s been married three times.
A friend of mine sent me this link saying this is why this is the exact consequence of gay marriage and which is why they opposed it in the first place. Sit down before you read it, it’s pretty awful IMO.
I can’t even tell what the underlying argument is but following some of the haphazard sourcing, it’s a major peice of propoganda from the Right. Take a look at the comments…
And it will result in zero babies!
Good on SCOTUS.