[HPLovecraft]

Originally Posted by Knalus

I will try.

I should have said: Denying gays the right to marry is wrong, but allowing them isn't much better.

I don't know about most of you, but I find definitions to be important. Marriage has always been between a man and a woman that are not related to each other and who are not married to anyone else. (although in the distant past and/or Saudi Arabia, that last one is iffy).

Marriage is an important thing. Not a flippant thing, nor an iffy thing. I didn't get married because it was no big deal, that if things went south I could always divorce. That's not right. Where I come from, where I grew up, Marriage was a solemn thing. It went beyond politics and ordinary stuff.

So when I see things like this:



I guess I really should get past that. What I believe just isn't relevant anymore. The Institution of Marriage is indeed destroyed. I can understand why everyone should be free to do what they want, but I can also be disappointed in what they do.

Which is why I struggle with this argument. The definition stands as it is. No amount of wishing by anyone will change that meaning. The definition doesn't make homosexuals or their life choices right or wrong. It is merely what the word means. But at the same time, what it means, doesn't mean anything anymore. (I think that by this time it's clear that I'm no writer, and I'm not necessarily the best at putting my point of view across).

So then, are gays who want to marry being persecuted, and denied something that they will consider a powerful and transformative part of their lives? Some of them, yeah. Which is why it would be wrong to deny them this.

But are others just using it as a political statement, a statement about equality and rights and acceptance? Yes. Some of them are. It would be wrong to even further diminish something that still holds some value, merely because people are using it as a political statement. I guess I don't believe that marriage is dead, and that someday people are going to wake up and realize it is a powerful and valuable thing. But they probably won't.

Which brings up the question as to whether or not government should be involved in marriage in the first place. Half of me says no. They don't need to be there, having government get out of the marriage business would solve the problem. Everyone that wants a union can have a union, and no one can have a marriage, and we will all be happy. But the other half of me realizes that there are currently different levels of marriage, such as common law marriage (which I do not consider "real" marriage, just like I do not consider gay marriage "real" marriage), and other larger scale legal issues that revolve around rights, such as what happens when your partner dies? Or ownership issues. And that half of me does not want government to take away marriage, because my wife could end up with the government taking away all of the things that belonged to "me" from her when I die. That thought worries me.

So, in the end, there is no good answer. All the answers are bad ones, most of which really affect me, even if at the same time some don't affect me at all.


But a bigot is a bigot, right? And because I said I didn't agree with gay marriage, well...


By the way, I find it interesting that many of those who quoted me like this:


ignored the rest of the sentence.



It's a him, btw, not that it matters.

I'm just going to address your top two or three paragraphs, because that's a big post (but it's good that you came back and defended your words).

While the institution of marriage has always been cultural, and differing culture-to-culture in differing aspects, why does it need to remain static (in our culture) simply for its own sake? Tradition itself can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing, and tradition for the sake of tradition is never an adequate argument. If we deem this particular tradition as impinging on the rights of a minority group, and I think we can all agree (well, except for maybe mikey), that doing so is a bad thing, we have a reason to either dismiss the tradition, or force it to evolve, unless there is a greater reason to retain it in its current form. If the only defense to retain it in its current form is a religious one based in revelation, or an appeal to tradition fallacy, I don't believe that that is enough.

I also agree that marriage is a solemn, important thing. Not because of the need to have a relationship approved in the eyes of God, but because marriage, to me, is a test of two people's characters. It's a tough thing, and it should be admired and respected when a couple are able to make a go at it. In my opinion, marriage doesn't fail so often because marriage itself is flawed, but because human nature is flawed. It is easier to fail an oath than succeed at it.

That being said, I don't believe the institution of marriage has been destroyed in the modern world, but just that people are now more prone to speak out about the obvious deficiencies of those involved in it and the abuses done in the name of it. Long before today marriage was used as a tool to ally one family to another (and it still is in places like Pakistan). Young women were bartered like goods. Love was not the purpose of marriage, but material gain. That, to me, does not speak well of the perceived health of marriage in the past.

So, to me, marriage is a very solemn thing between two people, a true test of their ability to commit and manage over an entire lifetime, but not something that has had its foundations weakened due to changes in the modern world, but one that's simply had its rickety scaffolding exposed in all its unglory. I don't raise marriage, as an institution, above everything else, as an ideal. It has always been abused, and always will be, sometimes for material gain, sometimes to oppress the rights of others. Instead, what matters in my mind, is what two people, in the privacy of their own lives, make of it.