[Thunderball]

Originally posted by RougeUnderoos+Dec 13 2004, 08:39 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (RougeUnderoos @ Dec 13 2004, 08:39 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

You really don't consider or want debate the thoughts of people you disagree with, do you? You just take little parts of comments people make out of context and ridicule that person. It may surprise you to know you speak for far fewer people than you claim. I'll put my logic up against your logic any day. The rights of a society must take precedence over the rights of the individual. If any changes are to be made to the way a society the society should make that decision, not some minority and not the court.

There has been plenty of debate in this thread.

When someone says "I don't care about their rights and what I believe is the truth whether you like it or not" the time to debate is obviously over.

You can try to put your logic up against mine all you want. You are not using logic when you trot out some religious cliché and declare it an absolute universal truth that everyone should live by.

As for "society should make that decision", I think the horse is out the barn for you on that one. Not so long ago Canadian society voted in another 138 Liberals, 19 NDP and 54 BQ members and everyone and their dog knew the party line on the same-sex marriage issue. You moral-majority is a serious minority.

So what's next? After this passes into law the sitting government, the people and the courts will have decided pretty overwhelmingly to see this change through. Who will you call out next to be the final authority on this? The clergy? Yourself? [/b][/quote]
I think you're trumpetting a decisive victory too soon... last I heard, the Liberal Party was pretty split, even Cabinet ministers are talking about breaking rank...and the vast majority of the 99 strong Conservatives are voting no... it will be very close, and maybe Harper and the boys will be able to shoot it down.

And as for this rhetoric that people opposed to gay marriage are homophobes, bigots, religious or incompetent... wow is all I can say. Last time I checked, I've hung out with gays, not a bigot, on the outs with most of organized religion, and nearly on the Dean's list at the University, and I'm opposed to gay marriage. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't fit your exacting mold.

I think this is nothing but tyranny of the minority... selfish people with enough time and money to ram something through the court and down society's throat with a government in office thats handcuffed by minority status desperate to do something they hope will make everyone feel good about them, forget about their shady past, in order to win the next election.

The real argument, and some of the brighter posters have alluded to it, its the rights of the individual v. the rights of society and tradition. Yes...democracy defends minorities, yes... discrimination of someone because they are gay is protected... Those are all facts. That being said, this is not a slam-dunk case yet... the fact is marriage is technically open to everyone so long as they follow its protocol (ie: marry someone of the opposite sex) and if they do not, they can live in common, legally change their last names, share finances, and live as a couple by every sense of the word, just as many, many heterosexual couples do today rather than marrying. This is not a case of persecution... this is a case of saying, hey... we're not getting our cake and eating it too, so we want so change it. Slavery was persecution (and we knew it in Roman times), women were persecuted (we knew that one for a long time too, so it wasn't an epiphany), Blacks and other minorities including gays were attacked for who they are, and that was wrong and addressed, and that is the spirit of these declarations that some of these posters posted. This is someone whining about semantics.

Discrimination naturally exists in some way, shape or form... earlier in this thread I demonstrated that affirmative action is itself, discriminatory. The real problem is when to draw the line. A lot of people are just like me saying, look, we have to draw a line somewhere because once we go down this road, we can never look back. This will set a precedent that every nutcase down the line can point to, and since we haven't drawn a line on enforcement of discrimination, they'd win.

Think some dude can't marry his horse?? think again... if we fail to allow him this, we will be discriminating him by sexual orientation, which is also protected under the charter, and not specific enough to preclude bestiality... Thats why I'm opposed to gay marriage. Call it the slippery-slope fallacy if it makes you sleep better at night, but as anyone who has examined law knows, every precedent matters, and this one is a doozy to let some very disturbing things pass in the future. The line has to be drawn... if precedence was not valid, I'd say, sure, why not, go nuts, and join the couples in divorce court... I plan to be a lawyer, I'll make a killing off gay divorces if I choose... but there's too much else riding on this, and call me paranoid or whatever, but its there clear as day. Remember, frivolous US lawsuits began with one goof getting lucky in a court. That McDonalds case with the hot coffee is damning every corporation in lawsuits now.