Gay Marriage

Look, we're not stupid, your analogy just made no sense. A child has the right to drive once it has achieved the age where it is legally entitled to do so. If they complain that it is an inequality issue when they are too young, you can simply tell them to wait a few years.

Is this what you're saying with gay marriage? That the only reason gay people do not have the right to marry is because they have yet to undergo some naturally-occuring change that will allow them to do so? If that isn't what you are inferring by your analogy, it is either incorrect or very very oblique.

Please do not cheapen this debate by accusing your opposition of being stupid or beneath you.

 

Make up your mind.

 

A 12-year-old IS unequal to an adult, under the law...

I do beg of you, "dumb it down."

A 12-year-old does not have the maturity or experience to enjoy equal rights under the law. Also, they are not expected (nor able) to be responsible over their own life, decisions, etc. They do not have the same rights as an adult, and at the same time, they enjoy protections under the law that adults do not receive.

Does the debate for legal same-sex marriage equal a debate for emancipation of 12-year-olds?

How does this relate?

 

There is no contradiction.

You must be seeing something I am not.

A child can not call the issue an inequality issue because he is equal under the law. He must call it a rights issue because he does not have the right.

A gay can not call the issue an inequality issue because he is equal under the law. He must call it a rights issue because he does not have the right.

 

Is this refering to your concept of agency, which you, and only you, seem to understand?

 

It's not only me.

It's just not you.

 

In that sense ... it would be only you.

 

I can just about see where you're coming from. But the reasons for the two things are different (or at least, I think they are). The child is considered unfit to drive because they are not mature enough to handle the responsibility. Is this what you are saying about gay people? If not, what are you saying? What is the actual difference between a homosexual and a heterosexual that means a homosexual does not have that right?

More to the point, I don't think a child is considered equal under the law. I may be wrong on this.

 

I don't get it either. And you earlier mentioned that no-one has addressed the issue, so I'm guessing we're not alone.

It would be easier, in the long run, if you explained it. If we look it up, we're likely to take it out of context or something.

 

Because a twelve year old does not have the experience enough to be able to control a car, he should not be afforded the privilege to apply for the right to drive.

If the child does get in the car, and as a result, kills someone, that child (or that child’s parent) is charged under the same law as I would be. To argue that we are not equal because a child in his ignorant bliss committed a crime that a reasonable person should not have committed is silly.

We are equal under the law. Regardless of punishment or who will assume responsibility for the child (and of course whether or not this is a just replacement).

 

So, to further extend that analogy, if the gay person is analogous with the child, and the marriage is analogous with the car, who/what is analogous with the person who's been killed?

 

We differ because you are giving credence to ‘why’. I am not. I am saying that they are not afforded the right and they are still equal as persons under the law. If a child injures someone, someone is punished. Like I mentioned, the justness of punishing the parent isn’t in question (though perhaps it should be), and such restrictions have little to do with what ‘is’.

For my definition of what equality is I refer to Two Treatise of Civil Government by (perhaps the greatest but undoubtedly the most influential political philosopher on American societal makeup) John Locke.

 

So basically, you're arguing against gay marriage on the grounds that it isn't legal already? I think what most people who argue in favour of it are saying is that the law should be changed because they consider it unjust. You yourself admit that the parent probably should be punished. I'm sorry if I've misinterpretted this, but if I really can't work out where else you are coming from.

I give credence to why because I feel the law should be amended until it is just. You don't seem to.

 

No not at all. A discussion of whether it is an equality issue or a rights issue is merely window dressing. It bears little relevance to the issue.

And you are absolutely right. It is quite unjust, but so is the system in which we are forced to operate. On an idealistic and utopian level I give homosexual marriages the A-OK. But I don’t live in utopia. I live in a social democracy where rights are awarded on legitimate agency.


You are arguing because you think the law is unjust. I don’t think a law can be just. But I am forced to work within the existing framework in which laws are based on legitimate agency along with many other considerations.

 

Is it worth asking you to define legitimate agency again?

 

http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=606812&postcount=346

 

...but that's ridiculous! Does that really have to happen before anyone would consider changing the law?!

However, if you rephrase the question, and ask gay people whether they want the right to do anything a heterosexual can, they might be more positive.

This is why I don't like democracy.

 

you have to keep in mind that that post does zero justice to the idea. That is about the most general I can get in as short a time as I can.

There is much more to it than that. It takes a lot of reading and a lot of patience to understand, fully, what is assumed by rational (or legitimate) agency.

I am not as quick as you to assume that a changing of the words will yield a different result. Amoung reasonable people, the words don't matter, only the meaning or concept behind the words.

As long as there is one dissenting voice. As long as every possible outcome has been exhausted, there will be no legitimate agency.

Again, it goes back to the idea that there may be too many disastrous effects of implementing gay marriage legislation.

Once we have been brought out of the world of grey and into the real world of black and white will agency be granted. When that happens I will not utter a word of complaint. I will keep my mouth shut because there will be no reason to stand up and protest that shit be thought through.

 

Rest assured SelfControl, gay marriages will be legal across most of the modern world before long.

 

So out of interest: do you personally think there would be "disasterous consequences"?