dis gun be gud
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No, because the Nazis actually compelled people to do what they wanted in various ways. It wouldn’t matter if “marriage” meant the government hands you a plate of dog feces. People literally have the right to do it, and no obligation to.
If your point of reference is whatever everyone else tells you to think, there’s not much room for debate.
Well, sort of. For example they denied the right to reproduce to “undesirables”. There’s a good example of an actual right: something that is an integral part of your being, that will express itself naturally without intervention from the State or Society, and which you can be deprived of only by force.
I suppose you could argue that pair-bonding is an “integral part” of the human experience. However, that is NOT what is being taken away in the SSM debate. Nobody is depriving anyone, by force, of their natural inclination to pair-bond with the human(s) of their choice. In fact nothing is being taken away. You could mount a reasonable argument that married couples have been subjected to subtle social pressure to conform to a relationship structure that is of dubious benefit to the couple. The Nazis were just a lot more overt about it, pressuring “Aryans” to out-reproduce others.
On the contrary: if we can’t agree for a definition of what we’re debating, THEN there’s no room for debate.
Right can be moral (it is good to allow people to do xyz) or legal (the state should assist people in doing xyz and prevent anything that would impede people in doing xyz).
On a legal standpoint same-sex marriage is a right in 25 countries. Adding to that that most countries base their law on the golden rule that everybody should be treated equal and have the same rights, the fact that homosexuals have the right to marriage is evident.
Usually I’d agree with you in this sort of discussions. But man, that was such a weird post.
I don’t want to get banned again, so please let’s not go down that road.
Oh sure. Sometimes I just like being contrary. I’m deliberately going for the reductio ad absurdum approach because marriage is one of those things that’s so embedded in society that I don’t think anyone thinks about what it means, at all. I actually couldn’t care less what pieces of rubberstamped paper homosexual couples would like to frame on their mantelpiece; since I’m not gay, it doesn’t affect me in the slightest. It just irritates me that sheeple are so very sheep-like.
Oh quite contraire. If you believe in equal rights for all, as I do, you probably have thought about and accept all the implications and follow up consequences and what some might be considered hot topics like adoption. But accept that is fundamentally what it means to believe in equal rights for all. Either you believe in this concept or you don’t.
Obviously if you’re spending that much time on a thread related to the topic it does bug you.
About the raison d’être of marriage, it’s mainly a contract that facilitates the communal life of two people and the possibility for them to bear and care for offspring. In this perspective, there’s again no reason for it to be restricted to heterosexual couples, which goes against the fundamental right of people to be treated equally.
Like I said, I don’t. It’s sloppy thinking that causes all sorts of problems - see, for example, all the nonsense about trans rights.
They denied all kinds of rights to people. I’m not sure of your definition of a right here though. Reproducing is a physical capability of humans. What makes it a right? It has to be something we can do physically?
That’s not the point. I think you’re confusing the ideas of objective rights and legal rights. I’m not interested in the former. Governments in fact have made marriage available as a legal right.
That has no bearing on the legal situation.
Right, and the force of government would be brought to bear in various ways on those unwilling to comply. It wasn’t subtle social pressure. At least that’s my immediate recollection, I’m pretty sure they did, even with compelling reproduction outside marriage.
I’m not sure if I agree on calling it marriage, since that term has been always used for the union of a man and a woman, which in normal circumstances it’s something (potentially) very different from the union of a man and a man, or a woman and another.
However I do believe that they should have the right to formalize their union in a way that gives them similar (if not equal) rights than the ones acquired in a regular marriage.
It may (and it does) sound backwards but the Human species rely way more on heterosexual couples than on homosexual ones. Sounds old people’s saying but it’s still true.
Again, I still see that those who decide to have a life in common and want to acquire certain compromises should also be protected against certain problems (casualties and inheritances for example) as normal couples are.
Anyway, just my opinion.
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I think you are conflating two things. The whole debate about trans, is unrelated.
Should two people be allowed to marry? 2 men, 2 women, a man and a women. a man who identifies as a woman and a woman that identifies as a man. I don’t care, why would I ? Yes, 2 people are allowed to marry. End of story. Why is it more complicated than that? Please, you explain where the confusion or ambiguity comes in, since you raised the question.
I suppose you could argue that even reproduction isn’t a “right”. If you’re a useless parent, or seriously retarded, or a known child-abuser, should the State prevent you from reproducing? If you can’t reproduce naturally, is it the State’s obligation to provide you with a child (by whatever means)? People skate over these difficult questions by using words like “rights” because they can then avoid talking about them. Or thinking about them.
I don’t think I’m confusing them; I’m trying to draw a clear line between them. Or at least arguing about where that line might be. I’m also suggesting the term “legal right” is a misnomer in this case, because the word “right” implies benefits. Marriage (as a legal institution) does not, on the whole, involve many benefits, and those that do appear to exist - for example freedom of movement across borders with your partner - are mostly a reflection of flaws in other parts the legal system.
In other words, the perceived “rights” associated with marriage actually arise from routine denial of other things that might lay equal claim to being “rights”.
No, but that’s the other thread. This one is about the nature of “rights”.
Purely a matter of degree.
Here’s the other side of the coin: in Vietnam (and no doubt other countries) you can be arrested for sharing a room with a person of the opposite sex if you don’t have a marriage certificate. It’s not implausible to imagine a future government making homosexual marriage compulsory on a similar basis, so they can keep a register of homosexuals. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened, would it?
Again, probably the point is that the concept of marriage is the union of a man and a woman, so it’s stupid (in some people’s minds) to discuss about whether or not to marry someone of the same sex is a right.
I think that that’s precisely why single sex marriage has found so much opposition from more traditional people.
Just an example to illustrate this. Can @tempogain and @Toe_Save live together? sure. Can they have sex? sure. Can they formalize their union? sure. Can they get some social benefits for being together? probably. Should everybody call this marriage? well… @tempogain and @Toe_Save, a marriage? hmmmm…
Defining what a marriage is, or by omission what it is not, is a form of circular reasoning.
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I dunno–is mixed-race marriage a “right”?
Do you think traditional heterosexual marriage is a right? They deserve to be on the same plane.
If the gays want to be as miserable as the rest of the people, then let em be.
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No. It’s simply a social/legal formality that’s come to be accepted as part of the fabric of life. Other laws (some of which involve “rights”) have been constructed around it, purely on the basis that marriage was there first.