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Samildanach

Avatar: 143751 Tue May 19 21:18:21 -0400 2009
11

Level 34 Hacker

“43 4f 44 45 20 4d 41 53 54 45 52”

Shii Posted:

I’m bumuming by “many people” you mean yourself, and that’s fine. Just for the record, I was an anthropology major for two years, so I’m not as woefully un-schooled in this topic as you think.

I’m also fairly sure that most would agree with me that marriage started with religious language and drifted to the secular side rather than the opposite way around.

Wow, your bumumptions are arrogant and condescending. By many people, he means “many people.” I know quite a few who had civil ceremonies, I know one couple who were ****ed they even had to have a justice of the peace say the words, after they’d already signed all the dogreat timesents with witnesses.

To move on, though, since marriage was an arrangement between the parents of a bride and groom to exchange land and bind their families together even longer than it has been what you want to be, can I say that only arranged, loveless marriages should qualify for the name?

Since marriage isn’t solely a Western European phenomenon, more or less a solely “Christian” one, could you perhaps recognize that “Christians” don’t have a monopoly on it? And could you respond to my point about narrowing the definition of who gets to be married? Because plenty of the people who want to keep marriage between a man and a woman will also tell you that a lot of people who claim to be Christian aren’t really Christian.

The only people who consider marriage “religious at its heart” are people who do so out of their personal religious belief. Erroneous beliefs, IMO, since marriage predates Christianity. In the US, your religious beliefs don’t get to define legislation on another person’s life.

No one is forcing a Christian church to have a marriage ceremony for a gay couple; no one is forcing a church to recognize gay marriage. That’s where religious freedom ends: The government can and should define marriage in a way that acknowledges human rights and equality, and preferably maintains governmental power at a reasonable, understood level. Gay marriage is the most conservative way to proceed. We know what marriage is, and we have a lengthy history of legal precedents about it. Creating something new just so that “Christians” can be comfortable/smug knowing that they’re the only ones who get to “marry” is not a reasonable solution for a secular nation.

And lets not pretend for a moment that renaming the the legal half something else will mollify “Christians”. There have been protests in California because the legal dogreat timesents for marriage didn’t say “BRIDE” and “GROOM” on them, but rather “1st Party” and “2nd Party”. Y’know, like a legally binding contract. In essence, the same people who oppose gay marriage now will be ****ed that marriage is still being diluted somehow, and gay couples STILL won’t get to tell their families they’re getting “married.”

No matter what else, the power of language to discriminate cannot be overlooked. To get back to your reply to me: Of course it’s semantics. Semantics matter.

Saying “Mom, mom! Bobby just asked me to civilly unionize him!” will never be as satisfying as “Bobby and I are getting married!” It will always be lesser than the former, and it will always be a more awkward thing to say – and by your approach, gay couples would have to say it, and straight couples wouldn’t.

Words have power. We didn’t need a new word for letting people of two different races marry in this country, and we don’t need a new word for letting people of the same physical sex marry in this country. It’s not fair to the couple, and it won’t satisfy the objectors anyway.

Samildanach edited this message on 06/02/2009 9:47PM
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