You're equating "for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, so long as we both shall live" with social engineering?
you're the one who's said that i'm not worthy of taking such a vow, that only heterosexuals can make these vows to one another and have it mean anything in the eyes of the law. yes, that is social engineering.
i'm arguing for the expansion of marriage, that's it.
Because "marriage is primarily a license to have children," and the best configuration that has evolved over time is a mother and a father who love each other and their children.
"marriage is primarily a license to have children," is your own formulation, no one else's. lots of married people do not have children, lots of people who have children are not married.
this has nothing to do with the question before us. nothing.
and love is quite a new concept.
It is in fact for the promotion of an ideal society that laws are even brought into being. Don't believe citizens should steal from each other? Codify laws dealing with property rights. Don't believe citizens should murder each other? Codify laws dealing with murder. Ideals are promoted all the time. Are they inherently prejudicial? Or just the ones you don't agree with?
this isn't the promotion of an ideal, nathan. this is where i think you've really confused yourself. why don't we steal? because someone loses property. why don't we murder? because someone loses their life. these are prohibitions against certain behaviors, not endorsements of a specific kind of behavior that we wish to promote our citizens to aspire to.
there are clear consequences to murdering or stealing. that's why they are illegal. you're prohibiting specific kinds of behavior. *that's* what laws do.
My friend Heather was the one who brought it up. Her question was, "if we remove the ability to define marriage, shouldn't anyone be able to do it?" For her the question was rhetorical in one direction -- for me it was rhetorical in another. Either way, she's the one who opened the door.
that sounds like you've really twisted her words.
and, again, i don't care what Heather's position on polygamy is. she's misunderstood the entire question, as i've laid out for your in the previous post.
But does it confer illegitimacy? And shouldn't voters be allowed to decide either way?
when said Auntie Toms are trotted out by those opposed, to quote David Letterman, "something doesn't smell right." you can pay Armstrong Williams lots of money and he'll talk about how he thinks that vouchers are good for African-American kids. that doesn't make it so. and when you, yourself, point to the writer's self-appointed "liberal" status as one of his qualifications for making the point, you, yourself, have undermined his credibility.
again, it's perverse to have to vote to extend civil rights to a group of people. liberal democracies also protect against the tyranny of the majority and seek to secure equal protection under the law of minorities.
you know, the thing that allows you to worship in the way that you so choose -- would you like to have to pray the rosary every morning and worship Mary?
Only in the all or nothing, Absolutist construct you've created. I've never said that, and I don't believe that. As I've said before, there are exceptions to the rule all the time. But does the exceptions eliminate the rule? And should the exceptions be the ones who get to decide?
that's what the judiciary is for. seems to me that having straight white christians in Kansas voting on equal protections for gay people is much like having white southerners in Alabama voting on allowing black students to enter the state university in 1957.
From earlier in the thread:
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Sounds pretty aspirational to me....
sounds like legal rights, not aspirations:
1. people are allowed to get married and divorced, no one shall prohibit them from doing that
2. no one has the right to force another into marriage
3. families should be given protection by the state
i also see nothing that prohibits same-sex marriage. my guess is that it was intentionally written to be so vague so that it could include the inevitability of same-sex marriage.
and, in fact, #3 is a perfect argument for same-sex marriage -- gay people form their own families, always have, don't their kids deserve equal protection? what about the kids?
or are those kids not "ideal"?