fucking prop 8

[chenGOD]

i'm 10000% fine with calling them 'civil unions.'

 

why?

 

 

 

for the reasons given in the article, among other things. actually this is the usual conservative position

 

We cannot say that "gay marriages are wrong" because we cannot demonstrably prove that people

suffer from them.

 

we can't yet, sure. the point of the conservative argument against gay marriage is that when you tamper with basically the oldest human institution, it's going to have adverse effects. again, let me point everyone toward this article:

 

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html

 

 

 

So I'm still waiting to hear why PBN thinks the author is correct even though he's had personal experience that argues otherwise.

 

everyone seems to have missed the point of what i was saying; the point is that despite the many happy civil partnerships between gay people, calling this 'marriage' and mainstreaming it is not necessarily a good idea

 

No, you said "this article is pretty convincing". It was an article giving some bullshit reasons why gay marriages won't work. It's not "mainstreaming it" to allow gays to marry. Millions of people aren't going to suddenly become gay because they're getting married, and her argument is ridiculous. If marriage is an institution, it's not going to disappear (the analogies she draws are false because welfare and income taxes were not institutions to begin with, rather they were experiments).

It's fine if you don't agree with gays getting married. Just don't try and couch it in some jargon and then deride others who don't agree with you as being "relativists". I actually did refute some of the points in the article and you did nothing to back up your argument other than throw out the ad hominem of moral relativism.

[encey]

if you remove humanity from the equation you see that many of the things we identify as negative are nothing more than changes, neither good nor bad, and that many of the things we define as positive have negative effects for other creatures/objects/whatever long after we've already left this reality. let's take the example of two galaxies colliding in space. it's an incredibly destructive event, it smashes planets apart and is an all around chaotic occurrence - in a way, we can equate this to our own perception of murder. but is it wrong? how can anyone posit that a change is a positive change or a negative change? it's like saying that wind is morally wrong because it causes erosion in rocks.

But the case we're thinking about has precisely not removed humanity from the equation. We're not talking about an event you can describe in terms of the interaction of merely physical objects; we're talking about actions done by people, for reasons. Of course we don't say that the pencil falling after I drop it is 'right' or 'wrong,' morally speaking, but we do make such judgments about the things people do intentionally. So the analogy you're trying to draw between physical events and intentional action doesn't hold; that is, you are unwarranted in inferring from the fact that physical events lack moral value to the claim that intentional actions lack moral value.

[awepittance]

the article you posted was an interesting read but i kind of laughed at this splitting hairs the author attempts to do at the end

 

o, a lot of readers are saying that I'm wrong about marriage always being between a man and a woman, citing polygamy. I have been told this is a "basic factual error."

 

No, it's not. Polygamous societies do not (at least in any society I have ever heard about) have group marriages. Men with more than one wife have multiple marriages with multiple women, not a single marriage with several wives. In fact, they generally take pains to separate the women, preferably in different houses. Whether or not you allow men to contract for more than one marriage (and for all sorts of reasons, this seems to me to be a bad idea unless you're in an era of permanent war), each marriage remains the union of a man and a woman.

 

this author is really good at 'mental gymnastics'

 

yet, she actually has a point.

 

so a man 'individually' married to multiple wives still allows this article's writer to use their own definition of marriage to support their own conclusions. The only point i gathered from this last statement is the writer of the article cares more about desperately defending ones statements with semantic arguments rather than substantive ones.

 

the tone of this person's blog is very much a type of forced 'moderate' thinking like purposefully formulating your opinion in the exact middle of what is perceived as a polarized 2 sided debate. I can't help but think he/she lets this overriding factor of trying to come off as un opinionated or centrist is coloring the way he writes articles.

 

to counter PBN's assertion that gay marriage can disrupt traditional society in a negative way, aren't there plenty of nations in the world who have had legal gay marriage for quite some time? If there are concrete 'negative' effects of these nations legalizing gay marriage i'd like to hear what they are.

[takeshi]

how the positions of the majority of Californians are more sophisticated than simple bigotry.

 

for many, it isn't more sophisticated than that, but it doesn't really affect the argument

 

 

 

Also, when you write things like "anyone who isn't a white european male automatically gains some sort of magical insight into truth --- hence the contemporary obsession with, among other things, the gnostic gospels or native american spirituality" what I get from this is that you equate the opinions or insight that a group of people, other than white males with european ancestry, could bring to the American conversation as almost a passing fad, like pet rocks or fucking Pokemon.

 

they absolutely can; i mean, seriously, come on ... i was a buddhist for three years, i'm not exactly on board with the white european male thing. the point is that multicultural postmodern types DEVALUE everything in the west and OVERVALUE everything else

 

See, my problem with that is that I know too much about about the struggles of "non-white people" in this country, to have their voices be counted and heard along with their white brethren, to dismiss it as a passing fad. And anyone ascribing magical powers to me because I'm different than them gets as much credence from me as anyone that thinks I'm less than human because I'm different than them. Also, other than being a bit of an oversimplification, it seems to me a lot of the group of people you have problems with seem to be of the age where they're constantly searching for their true self and possibly flirting with different viewpoints. Is it possible some of those students that you teach or watmm^tm members you don't agree with could be, like you were, struggling with multiple points of view until they find what fits them?

[Guest catsonearth]

if you remove humanity from the equation you see that many of the things we identify as negative are nothing more than changes, neither good nor bad, and that many of the things we define as positive have negative effects for other creatures/objects/whatever long after we've already left this reality. let's take the example of two galaxies colliding in space. it's an incredibly destructive event, it smashes planets apart and is an all around chaotic occurrence - in a way, we can equate this to our own perception of murder. but is it wrong? how can anyone posit that a change is a positive change or a negative change? it's like saying that wind is morally wrong because it causes erosion in rocks.

But the case we're thinking about has precisely not removed humanity from the equation. We're not talking about an event you can describe in terms of the interaction of merely physical objects; we're talking about actions done by people, for reasons. Of course we don't say that the pencil falling after I drop it is 'right' or 'wrong,' morally speaking, but we do make such judgments about the things people do intentionally. So the analogy you're trying to draw between physical events and intentional action doesn't hold; that is, you are unwarranted in inferring from the fact that physical events lack moral value to the claim that intentional actions lack moral value.

 

i understand, but the whole argument here is whether or not moral value exists independent of the human mind. we have no choice but to look at things other than human action as a way to determine that.

 

whether the analogy is perfect or not the intent is to show that our entire concept of what morality is is based on the idea that there is a way things should be - a right way and a wrong way and i'm saying there is no right way or wrong way because positive and negative are both categories that we create based on our own reading of the universe. destruction/death is not inherently negative as categorizing it as such is only taking into consideration a small piece of a bigger puzzle. does that mean that it makes no difference if you go around killing people? not at all...murder has consequences in human society, it has ripple effects, it makes people sad, so we try not to do it out of respect, but the fact still remains that all of those things are in our heads. they're feelings we have, not things that float around in the universe regardless of whether we're here or not.

[playbynumbers]

so I don't remember which thread I asked it in, but did you ever say whether all this pissiness was due to a breakup with your gf?

 

 

 

lol, no; actually my gf and i have been a hilarious quasi-relationship limbo for about the past year (long story), but actually it was the nightmares caused by von trier's film, which started this in that other thread.

[playbynumbers]

everyone seems to have missed the point of what i was saying; the point is that despite the many happy civil partnerships between gay people, calling this 'marriage' and mainstreaming it is not necessarily a good idea

 

No, you said "this article is pretty convincing".

 

the article was convincing in describing the importance of keeping the traditional definition of marriage circumscribed in the way that it currently is.

 

 

It was an article giving some bullshit reasons why gay marriages won't work.

 

nope; as he pointed out, gay marriages have as much chance of succeeding as a straight marriage, on a case by case basis.

 

 

 

It's not "mainstreaming it" to allow gays to marry.

 

lol, what else would 'mainstreaming' it mean, exactly? when the majority of a society votes to allow a previously taboo state of affairs ... what else would you call this

 

 

 

Millions of people aren't going to suddenly become gay because they're getting married

 

i don't think even the idiotic defenders of traditional marriage would ever, ever say that. and mcardle certainly wasn't.

 

 

 

If marriage is an institution, it's not going to disappear

 

here i would refer you to the first article. it won't disappear, it will just be radically devalued into a mere contract --- which, like everything else since roughly the 1960s, would break down society even more

 

 

 

It's fine if you don't agree with gays getting married.

 

the gays who already 'married' will become officially married; their lives won't change. it's the institution that will change

 

 

 

Just don't try and couch it in some jargon and then deride others who don't agree with you as being "relativists". I actually did refute some of the points in the article and you did nothing to back up your argument other than throw out the ad hominem of moral relativism.

 

right, i'm couching my bigotry in jargon! what an original argument! and i responded to your 'refutations' before.

 

also accusing someone of moral relativism is just about the opposite of an ad hominem argument, but okay

[playbynumbers]

the tone of this person's blog is very much a type of forced 'moderate' thinking like purposefully formulating your opinion in the exact middle of what is perceived as a polarized 2 sided debate. I can't help but think he/she lets this overriding factor of trying to come off as un opinionated or centrist is coloring the way he writes articles.

 

mcardle is ridiculously opinionated (she currently writes for the atlantic), but in that one post i think she just genuinely felt neutral.

 

 

 

 

to counter PBN's assertion that gay marriage can disrupt traditional society in a negative way, aren't there plenty of nations in the world who have had legal gay marriage for quite some time? If there are concrete 'negative' effects of these nations legalizing gay marriage i'd like to hear what they are.

 

sure, in many countries, civil unions of gay people are treated with the rights etc. of marriage (it may be true that in a couple nations, it's called full-fledged marriage?; i forget). in any event, it would take quite a while for this to actually effect society; and in many of the more 'liberal' countries in europe and south america, birth rates are dropping dangerously low, most children are born out of wedlock, etc., etc.

 

 

 

 

Also, other than being a bit of an oversimplification, it seems to me a lot of the group of people you have problems with seem to be of the age where they're constantly searching for their true self and possibly flirting with different viewpoints. Is it possible some of those students that you teach or watmm^tm members you don't agree with could be, like you were, struggling with multiple points of view until they find what fits them?

 

 

dude, i would love nothing more than guiding a student through his struggle with multiple points of view; this is, in essence, the point of teaching. what i'm talking about are incredibly closed-minded shrill dogmatists, where the dogma is that "my mind is open, everyone is right, we all have our own opinion!", but then their mind actually isn't open, because the prevailing assumption is a particular sort of hard-left liberalism with all the usual hallmarks of this ('spirituality' over religion, pleasure as the highest principle, etc.)

[Guest zaphod]

that "white european male" quote made me grimace. you're not alone there, takeshi.

i'll just attack that, in particular. what exactly do you mean, with examples? are you just talking about the quasi religion and new age philosophy that is often attributed to eastern cultures that many white college students tend to embrace? because the fault certainly then lies with the white college student, not the non white institution. or are you talking about non white writers, activists, etc, working to make their positions and opinions heard? or like the full on kneejerk liberal acceptance of anything "ethnic"? i really need some examples, specific ones, because this quote just bothers me. it sounds like you're some guy who wanders through a bookstore, sees a lot of non white, "ethnic" voices crying out from the bookshelves, and gets angry that he's been made sort of irrelevant due to the larger push and pull of market forces. well, don't worry, goateed white dude will be able to write about his amazing college experience and semester overseas, he isn't going anywhere.

[chenGOD]

everyone seems to have missed the point of what i was saying; the point is that despite the many happy civil partnerships between gay people, calling this 'marriage' and mainstreaming it is not necessarily a good idea

 

No, you said "this article is pretty convincing".

 

the article was convincing in describing the importance of keeping the traditional definition of marriage circumscribed in the way that it currently is.

 

 

It was an article giving some bullshit reasons why gay marriages won't work.

 

nope; as he pointed out, gay marriages have as much chance of succeeding as a straight marriage, on a case by case basis.

 

Alright, so here we go back where we started. The title of the article is: "The worst thing about gay marriage: it isn't going to work." Which I dunno, to me seems to indicate that the author doesn't think gay marriages have as much chance as suceeding as heterosexual marriages. Maybe I'm confused by the "isn't going to work part". I'm not sure. I hear there was an ex-president of the U.S. who helped define "is", maybe this is one of those kinds of definitions of "isn't".

 

 

 

It's not "mainstreaming it" to allow gays to marry.

 

Millions of people aren't going to suddenly become gay because they're getting married

 

lol, what else would 'mainstreaming' it mean, exactly? when the majority of a society votes to allow a previously taboo state of affairs ... what else would you call this

 

i don't think even the idiotic defenders of traditional marriage would ever, ever say that. and mcardle certainly wasn't.

Mainstream is when the majority of the population is doing it. The majority of the population is not going to start throwing gay weddings. You were the one that used the term mainstreaming, not mcardle. The only thing she did was draw bad analogies.

 

 

 

If marriage is an institution, it's not going to disappear

 

here i would refer you to the first article. it won't disappear, it will just be radically devalued into a mere contract --- which, like everything else since roughly the 1960s, would break down society even more

 

Here I refer you to the author of the first article's own 3 marriages, which seem to indicate that he believes in serial polygamy, and doesn't take marriage all that seriously anyways (especially when you take his last paragraph into account; that whole maudlin scene of "men heroically trudging down the aisle"). Seriously though, marriage is a contract. It is a sacred contract between two people who love each other. Because it has the power of institution behind it, it is not going to become devalued (anymore than it has, what's the divorce rate in the States?) because members of the same sex can get married. I would argue that homosexual marriage would strengthen the institution of marriage because more members of society can enter into said contract, which in turn provides more stability to the society as a whole.

 

 

 

It's fine if you don't agree with gays getting married. Just don't try and couch it in some jargon and then deride others who don't agree with you as being "relativists". I actually did refute some of the points in the article and you did nothing to back up your argument other than throw out the ad hominem of moral relativism.

 

the gays who already 'married' will become officially married; their lives won't change. it's the institution that will change

 

right, i'm couching my bigotry in jargon! what an original argument! and i responded to your 'refutations' before.

 

also accusing someone of moral relativism is just about the opposite of an ad hominem argument, but okay

 

I must be blind, because I'm not seeing any responses from you. I think you might want to ask the university for a refund, because when you implied that I was a moral relativist, you were "replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim." Which is lovely definition of argumentum ad hominem.

 

So again, why shouldn't gays be allowed to marry, other than a bunch of conservatives think it's going to ruin other people's future marriages?

 

Sorry about the formatting, it's 2 in the morning, and the quote system here is giving me the heebie jeebies.

[encey]

i understand, but the whole argument here is whether or not moral value exists independent of the human mind. we have no choice but to look at things other than human action as a way to determine that.

 

whether the analogy is perfect or not the intent is to show that our entire concept of what morality is is based on the idea that there is a way things should be - a right way and a wrong way and i'm saying there is no right way or wrong way because positive and negative are both categories that we create based on our own reading of the universe. destruction/death is not inherently negative as categorizing it as such is only taking into consideration a small piece of a bigger puzzle. does that mean that it makes no difference if you go around killing people? not at all...murder has consequences in human society, it has ripple effects, it makes people sad, so we try not to do it out of respect, but the fact still remains that all of those things are in our heads. they're feelings we have, not things that float around in the universe regardless of whether we're here or not.

I'm trying to point out that you are actually bringing up two different questions:

 

(1) Do moral values exist independently of our beliefs about them?

(2) Can we conceive/think about/understand/know about moral values from a standpoint independent of our beliefs and other attitudes (praising, blaming, valuing, desiring, commanding, etc.)?

 

These can have different answers; and here, the analogy to the natural world is apt. So, for instance, consider the molecular structure of water. It exists independently of our beliefs about it. Water either is H2O or it isn't, regardless of whether we believe it's H2O -- so here, the answer to (1) is 'yes.' At the same time, we can only come to know such a fact by doing chemistry, observing the properties of water and theorizing about its underlying structure, which we model and represent using the concepts of atoms, molecules, molecular structure, hydrogen bonding, or whatever. That is the only possible way we could come to know such a fact; we can't just grasp it immediately in thought without doing any kind of empirical inquiry or observation -- so here, the answer to (2) is 'no.'

 

You are suggesting that, in the moral case, just because the answer to (2) is 'no,' the answer to (1) must be 'no'; I'm suggesting that the case of natural science/empirical beliefs gives us a reason to resist your suggestion and opens up room for the possibility that moral facts are, indeed, true or false independently of what we believe about them, even if the way we come to know such facts must make reference to particular beliefs, concepts or theories we have constructed in order to gain access to those facts.

[pcock]

i really want to make a stupid, short, sharp and sweet homophobic comments because you guys have been waffling for about 4 pages solid.

[playbynumbers]

Alright, so here we go back where we started. The title of the article is: "The worst thing about gay marriage: it isn't going to work." Which I dunno, to me seems to indicate that the author doesn't think gay marriages have as much chance as suceeding as heterosexual marriages. Maybe I'm confused by the "isn't going to work part". I'm not sure. I hear there was an ex-president of the U.S. who helped define "is", maybe this is one of those kinds of definitions of "isn't".

 

oh, the title was misleading, for sure. what he means is that as an INSTITUTION, it's not going to actually work; it's a misguided attempt at giving gays 'equality', at the expense of everyone else. each individual marriage, as he mentions, has just about as much chance at succeeding (whethre gay or straight).

 

 

 

 

 

Mainstream is when the majority of the population is doing it. The majority of the population is not going to start throwing gay weddings. You were the one that used the term mainstreaming, not mcardle. The only thing she did was draw bad analogies.

 

sure, mainstreaming isn't a precisely defineable word. to me, in this case, it would be when something is ACCEPTED by the mainstream as not being weird/taboo, etc.

 

not everyone has to like a "mainstream band" for a band to be mainstream, right? the majority of americans don't like U2, but U2 are still mainstream.

 

though this isn't exactly the same definition of the word; anyway, yes

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here I refer you to the author of the first article's own 3 marriages, which seem to indicate that he believes in serial polygamy, and doesn't take marriage all that seriously anyways (especially when you take his last paragraph into account; that whole maudlin scene of "men heroically trudging down the aisle").

 

see, THIS would be an ad hominem; you're attacking some personal trait of this person to cast aspersions on straight marriage generally. that doesn't affect his argument in any way.

 

 

 

Seriously though, marriage is a contract. It is a sacred contract between two people who love each other. Because it has the power of institution behind it, it is not going to become devalued (anymore than it has, what's the divorce rate in the States?) because members of the same sex can get married. I would argue that homosexual marriage would strengthen the institution of marriage because more members of society can enter into said contract, which in turn provides more stability to the society as a whole.

 

you're being very equivocal with the word 'contract'; the point of the article, and the conservative point generally, is that marriage becomes a mere CIVIL, LEGAL contract, not a sacred contract. it essentially becomes a business transaction; we'll agree to stay together as long as we both find pleasure in it. hence the over 50% rate of divorce since the 1950s-1960s; marriage has been devalued, desacralized, and gay marriage will only make this worse.

 

andrew sullivan's chief argument for gay marriage is that it will strengthen the institution, that it actually makes gays more 'culturally conservative', etc.; and for sure, there's a small point to be made there. but here's the thing; gays make up 1% of the american population (10% is falsely based on a misleading kinsey study, though i've heard that it could be up to 3%; anyway, the point still holds), and only a small percentage of this 1% would actually want to get married. so you have something like 0.3-1% of the population getting married ... i'm not sure that the 'societal stability' benefits really outweigh the drawbacks.

 

 

 

 

 

I must be blind, because I'm not seeing any responses from you. I think you might want to ask the university for a refund, because when you implied that I was a moral relativist, you were "replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim." Which is lovely definition of argumentum ad hominem.

 

lol, yeah, i should have added to my earlier post "i'd like to now give a 100% guarantee that you'll look up the definition of ad hominem and try to say that i was still making an ad hominem argument". here's the point; it's not an ad hominem because i was addressing your claim, the claim which logically implied moral relativism. saying "oh, you're being a moral relativist!" isn't like "i'm personally insulting you in an unthinking way!" moral relativism is a position, i think an untenable position, and i was pointing out that your point seemed to amount to that. (though, hilariously, this was so many posts ago that i don't recall precisely which proposition i was thinking about); i wasn't saying "you disagree with me and therefore you're a moral relativist" without actually looking at what you were saying. i was, in fact, looking at what you were saying.

 

 

 

 

So again, why shouldn't gays be allowed to marry, other than a bunch of conservatives think it's going to ruin other people's future marriages?

 

this is the pro-gay marriage argument in a nutshell, sure. and i've been addressing this point for thousands of words in this thread, i'm not going to rehash it all again; except to say, yes, i think that 0.3%-1% of the population PROBABLY shouldn't be angrily demanding that they can call a consentual sexual relationship a "marriage", in name only, simply because they WANT to call it that (there's a term for this in political theory; "the tyranny of the minority"), at the expense of perhaps the oldest human institution, which has a very specific truth and nature, and shouldn't be haphazardly messed with just so people can feel uplifted about being such good civil rights activists, as if this has anything but a passing resemblance to actual meaningful civil rights movements.

[playbynumbers]

are you just talking about the quasi religion and new age philosophy that is often attributed to eastern cultures that many white college students tend to embrace?

 

no, not just that.

 

 

 

 

because the fault certainly then lies with the white college student, not the non white institution.

 

sure, but not exactly. since the 1960s, in american colleges and universities, there has been an extremely left-wing postmodern attack on the "western canon," with the idea that since white imperialism has been oppressing and colonizing so many cultures for so long, we need to free everyone from this tyranny of the dead white men, and spend ALL of our time and energy looking for books and ideas, no matter how idiotic or trivial, from: formerly colonialized people, 'queer' and gay writers, non-western cultures, etc., etc. this is why people read chinua achebe in high school, and why all literary theory is only interested in deconstruction and minority studies and blah blah.

 

now, to be sure; i like chinua achebe. i like v.s. naipaul. hooray for other cultures, and there certainly HAS been too much focus on the western canon. but EXTREMELY often, academics will crassly dismiss all great world literature as being imperialist and phallo-andro-logo-centric. there have been many books written about this tendency, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s when it was first going on; it's not QUITE as bad now. but there are still more classes at harvard on pornography, comic books, queer theory, etc., than on actual philosophy and literature.

 

 

 

 

or are you talking about non white writers, activists, etc, working to make their positions and opinions heard?

 

nothing wrong with that.

 

 

 

or like the full on kneejerk liberal acceptance of anything "ethnic"?

 

that's sort of a part of what i'm talking about, yeah.

 

 

 

i really need some examples, specific ones, because this quote just bothers me.

 

the examples were given above; the white college student rastafarian, the postmodern academic, etc.

 

 

 

it sounds like you're some guy who wanders through a bookstore, sees a lot of non white, "ethnic" voices crying out from the bookshelves, and gets angry that he's been made sort of irrelevant due to the larger push and pull of market forces. well, don't worry, goateed white dude will be able to write about his amazing college experience and semester overseas, he isn't going anywhere.

 

lol! well, as i said, i heart non-white ethnic voices (i read way more eastern poetry than western poetry, i love marquez and borges and danticat and everyone else). my only slight problem would be if a bookstore were to have no section on the classics because they had to make more room for slavoj zizek's latest book on hitchcock and post-colonialism.

[chenGOD]

Umm my POV is not relativistic. I am specifically stating that a culture which allows gays to marry is better than one that doesn't.

I know what an ad hominem is, I copy/pasted that because it was more convenient and written out better than I would have done at 2 in the morning.

 

So just to be sure, the only argument you have against homosexual marriage is that it might threaten the sanctity of the institution of marriage. The same institution which has already been (according to your words) "devalued and desacralized".

Is that pretty much it?

[playbynumbers]

Umm my POV is not relativistic. I am specifically stating that a culture which allows gays to marry is better than one that doesn't.

 

here's the point; on what basis? do you have an ontological/metaphysical or political or revelatory/theological framework that actually supports this? or you just 'feel' that it's right?

 

because if it's just: "well, gay people need, like, freedom! if they want to call a consentual sexual relationship 'marriage,' who am i to say different?", then you have no actual basis on which to argue other than your own emotions (and a peculiar contemporary definition of happiness and freedom) which is a hallmark of --- even if it's not expressed this way --- moral relativism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So just to be sure, the only argument you have against homosexual marriage is that it might threaten the sanctity of the institution of marriage. The same institution which has already been (according to your words) "devalued and desacralized".

Is that pretty much it?

 

not exactly; the sanctity of the institution of marriage will still be upheld in faith communities, that's not precisely my concern (though somewhat). the real concern is what both articles pointed out; a real danger of a slow, wider societal breakdown. just as the divorce rate, the child poverty rate, teen pregnancy rate, and child-out-of-wedlock rate have gone up dramatically due to various clever left-wing ideas enacted from the 1950s to now, this will do the same, only worse.

 

and that's "pretty much" it, yeah. which is actually quite a bit, in comparison to, say, your as-yet unexpressed argument FOR gay marriage. what precisely is so inherently wonderful about gay marriage (versus, say, civil unions) that it needs to be passed? what exactly would change in the lives of gay people, other than gaining certain civil rights that could be achieved very well through civil unions?

[playbynumbers]

Umm my POV is not relativistic. I am specifically stating that a culture which allows gays to marry is better than one that doesn't.

 

here's the point; on what basis? do you have an ontological/metaphysical or political or revelatory/theological framework that actually supports this? or you just 'feel' that it's right?

 

because if it's just: "well, gay people need, like, freedom! if they want to call a consentual sexual relationship 'marriage,' who am i to say different?", then you have no actual basis on which to argue other than your own emotions and opinion (and a peculiar contemporary definition of happiness and freedom) which is a hallmark of --- even if it's not expressed this way --- moral relativism. there is no GROUND, or at least appears to be no ground (to me, thus far), on which you hold this. and i can say that for the majority of people i've talked to who are pro-gay marriage, they certainly have no actual grounds on which to believe it other than a vague fuzzy sense that we all need to be pro-freedom and pro-civil rights, or at least pro- whatever group is claiming the mantle of "victimized minority" this week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So just to be sure, the only argument you have against homosexual marriage is that it might threaten the sanctity of the institution of marriage. The same institution which has already been (according to your words) "devalued and desacralized".

Is that pretty much it?

 

not exactly; the sanctity of the institution of marriage will still be upheld in faith communities, that's not precisely my concern (though somewhat). the real concern is what both articles pointed out; a real danger of a slow, wider societal breakdown. just as the divorce rate, the child poverty rate, teen pregnancy rate, and child-out-of-wedlock rate have gone up dramatically due to various clever left-wing ideas enacted from the 1950s to now, this will do the same, only worse.

 

and that's "pretty much" it, yeah. which is actually quite a bit, in comparison to, say, your as-yet unexpressed argument FOR gay marriage. what precisely is so inherently wonderful about gay marriage (versus, say, civil unions) that it needs to be passed? what exactly would change in the lives of gay people, other than gaining certain civil rights that could be achieved very well through civil unions?

 

 

 

 

sigh, please read the second post; i was editing and watmm tricked me.

 

or better yet, delete the first post.

[Guest grue]

i understand, but the whole argument here is whether or not moral value exists independent of the human mind. we have no choice but to look at things other than human action as a way to determine that.

 

whether the analogy is perfect or not the intent is to show that our entire concept of what morality is is based on the idea that there is a way things should be - a right way and a wrong way and i'm saying there is no right way or wrong way because positive and negative are both categories that we create based on our own reading of the universe. destruction/death is not inherently negative as categorizing it as such is only taking into consideration a small piece of a bigger puzzle. does that mean that it makes no difference if you go around killing people? not at all...murder has consequences in human society, it has ripple effects, it makes people sad, so we try not to do it out of respect, but the fact still remains that all of those things are in our heads. they're feelings we have, not things that float around in the universe regardless of whether we're here or not.

I'm trying to point out that you are actually bringing up two different questions:

 

(1) Do moral values exist independently of our beliefs about them?

(2) Can we conceive/think about/understand/know about moral values from a standpoint independent of our beliefs and other attitudes (praising, blaming, valuing, desiring, commanding, etc.)?

 

These can have different answers; and here, the analogy to the natural world is apt. So, for instance, consider the molecular structure of water. It exists independently of our beliefs about it. Water either is H2O or it isn't, regardless of whether we believe it's H2O -- so here, the answer to (1) is 'yes.' At the same time, we can only come to know such a fact by doing chemistry, observing the properties of water and theorizing about its underlying structure, which we model and represent using the concepts of atoms, molecules, molecular structure, hydrogen bonding, or whatever. That is the only possible way we could come to know such a fact; we can't just grasp it immediately in thought without doing any kind of empirical inquiry or observation -- so here, the answer to (2) is 'no.'

 

You are suggesting that, in the moral case, just because the answer to (2) is 'no,' the answer to (1) must be 'no'; I'm suggesting that the case of natural science/empirical beliefs gives us a reason to resist your suggestion and opens up room for the possibility that moral facts are, indeed, true or false independently of what we believe about them, even if the way we come to know such facts must make reference to particular beliefs, concepts or theories we have constructed in order to gain access to those facts.

 

Excellent post. Let me add an additional complication: it can be the case that the truth of some claim depends on the existence and activities of humans even though that claim is objectively true and not relative to anything. (So, I was being a bit sloppy earlier). For instance, "Most people have ten toes" or "Many North Americans are able to speak English" are examples of claims whose truth depends on the existence, beliefs or activities of people, but they are objectively true -- whether they are true is not relative to anyone's beliefs or whatever. If people didn't exist they would be false, but given that people do exist (and behave in the way the described), then they are true regardless of what anyone believes about them (they would be true even if everyone thought they were false).

 

The moral case might be similar. People need to exist in order for intentional actions -- morally evaluable actions -- to exist, so the existence of value might depend on the existence and activities of rational agents in that sense, but that doesn't show that the truth about morality is relative to anything, in the same way as above. Intentional action as such might have, objectively speaking, a nature which brings with it certain moral values and imperatives. So that is another way in which looking at purely physical events, or a universe totally devoid of intentional action, might not be the best way to discover whether there are objective moral facts.

[playbynumbers]

also let me go ahead and acknowledge that the right-wing republican argument against gay marriage makes the actual conservative argument look very bad. if you were to believe fox news commentators, legalizing gay marriage will lead to hordes of gays sodomizing our children, the complete breakdown of good ol' american values into some sort of mad max dystopia, etc. they say these things for financial reasons (keeping the base riled up) and for bigoted reasons. but there are actual conservative (in the sense of burkean conservatism) reasons to be at least UNEASY about changing the institution of marriage.

[awepittance]

then you have no actual basis on which to argue other than your own emotions and opinion (and a peculiar contemporary definition of happiness and freedom) which is a hallmark of --- even if it's not expressed this way --- moral relativism.

 

 

lol i love how you've continually through out this thread acted as if you do not have an emotional basis for believing what you do about gay marriage. when it's pretty clear from reading all of your posts this far there is some strong emotions brewing inside you on what's negative about gay marriage. nothing wrong with emotion but trying to cover it up with clever reasoning again just comes off as diversionary

 

but there are actual conservative (in the sense of burkean conservatism) reasons to be at least UNEASY about changing the institution of marriage.

 

which reasons from your own perspective (not an article online) is there to be uneasy about gay marriage for you personally? it's been very difficult to get you to express your own opinions without going down the escape hatch of 'moral relativism' arguments in this thread!

[playbynumbers]

lol i love how you've continually through out this thread acted as if you do not have an emotional basis for believing what you do about gay marriage. when it's pretty clear from reading all of your posts this far there is some strong emotions brewing inside you on what's negative about gay marriage. nothing wrong with emotion but trying to cover it up with clever reasoning again just comes off as diversionary

 

i really and truly don't care either way, as i mentioned earlier. to be frank, as long as gay people don't insist on being married in the eastern orthodox church, it's not a real living issue to me. i have strong emotions about many things, but this honestly isn't one of them; i'm way more annoyed by a tangential issue, i.e., the mindset of most people who argue for gay marriage.

 

and again, it wouldn't matter if i hated gays, was gay, etc.; the argument should make sense either way, and i think it does. i've been pointing to those two articles just because that's a shorthand for making a much longer argument that i frankly don't have the time or energy to do on watmm. maybe if i was trying to publish an essay, or something.

 

 

 

 

which reasons from your own perspective (not an article online) is there to be uneasy about gay marriage for you personally? it's been very difficult to get you to express your own opinions without going down the escape hatch of 'moral relativism' arguments in this thread!

 

there is no reason to be uneasy about gay marriage personally. i think the whole concept is a bit theatrical and silly, but have no problem with gay couples or with gay couples wanting to call themselves married, etc. i'm just expressing a general worry about societal effects.

[playbynumbers]

actually one thing that i will agree on; maybe i'm reflexively more sympathetic to the anti-gay marriage argument for two reasons. (1) most of the people arguing for gay marriage are extremely tedious and annoying, and (2) my belief in the sacrament of marriage. there are many arguments that are anti-gay marriage that can be made from nature, society, tradition, conservatism, etc., and i think they're good ones, but i'm probably a bit biased as well. yet as i've said the whole time; i'm not against gay marriage exactly, i'm just uneasy about tinkering with marriage.

[chenGOD]

Kcinsu has already pointed out differences between the rights afforded married couples and the rights afforded couple with the status of civil union. Way back on page one.

I'm not quite sure how the teen-pregnancy rate increasing is the result of "left-wing" ideas, I think the whole "don't teach them about safe sex, but only about abstinence" method of sex ed is the reason for that. In fact the teen pregnancy rate in America is nine times that of the Netherlands (where homosexual marriage is legal).^{1 2} It has been that way for some time. However, that's not really related to the argument, so we'll drop that.

I'd be interested to see how the increased divorce rate is a result of "left-wing" ideas as opposed to women realising that they don't have to stick around with their husbands who have antiquated views on a woman's position (which is certainly the case in South Korea).

 

Why is a society that allows gay marriage better than one that doesn't? Well I'm not going to present a full on diatribe here, but:

1. Equality in society allows for an increase in the stability and productivity of society.

When gays aren't busy worrying about if their rights are the same as heterosexuals, they will able to contribute more to society in terms of work, spending and arts. All of those are beneficial to society as a whole.

2. A society where homosexual marriage is legal is one where the society will work to promote equal treatment for all people, be they women, blacks, homosexuals, Christians, Scientologists etc.

A society where more equality occurs is one where the incidence of hate crime will be reduced, thus allowing the police more time to protect the society from other crimes such as robbery, murder, Jerry Falwell, and so on.

 

The only thing I'm pro- is pro-human. I want humans to propogate and flourish, and the only way I can see that happening is through the promotion of equality for humans. Not the promotion of cultures where things are oppressed (like fundamental muslims or nazis (not trying to invoke godwin's law here...)or right-wing nutjobs) or the promotion of culture where anything goes. Rather the promotion of a framework or a set of laws which leads to understanding and equality for all humans.

 

And I'm not giving any credence to those fox news commentators either, we all know they are nothing more than news-sellers.

[J3FF3R00]

(2) my belief in the sacrament of marriage. there are many arguments that are anti-gay marriage that can be made from nature, society, tradition, conservatism, etc., and i think they're good ones, but i'm probably a bit biased as well. yet as i've said the whole time; i'm not against gay marriage exactly, i'm just uneasy about tinkering with marriage.

 

why?

 

 

[Guest boo]

well, you might feel uneasy about it but as always, the tinkering will continue

 

nothing is sacred!