- DanielCC
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
Please keep it civil fellows.
(For what it's worth I assumed Iwpoe was giving an argument similar to that Francis gave over condoms being perhaps permissible in the case of gay prostitutes with HIV in that a lesser sin is preferable to a greater one.)
Do you want to know what I'm really passionate about? I'm passionate about the fact that we have spent 25 years fighting against gay marriage and essentially failed at every turn and at the same time overseeing a radical increase in secularism. That's to me like a patent political failure.
Here, here, far too much ink has been split over this issue which could have been used increasing public understand of Natural Theology and philosophy's being in the business of ultimate explanations.
Last edited by DanielCC (7/09/2015 3:17 pm)
- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
The evidence doesn't seem to show either serious attempts at monogamy, in the traditional sense, nor even the same regard for marriage amongst homosexuals.
I am not even sure its appeal doesn't have more to do with degrading traditional marriage and ideas of chastity than anything else. I have lost count of activists I have heard imply as much.
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
Jeremy Taylor wrote:
I am not even sure its appeal doesn't have more to do with degrading traditional marriage and ideas of chastity than anything else. I have lost count of activists I have heard imply as much.
That would explain their provocative "pride parades" through Jerusalem, despite the vast majority of the city (I think over 80%) being offended by their shenanigans.
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
Fascinating. I'll give you structured argument, rather than a casual one, when I can sit down on my desk. I have very little passion about this, despite what you might think. I would myself as soon as not have gay marriage, but our society will not be consistent about its laws in that it will allow the vice quite publicly.
Alright ipwoe, and I am sorry if I have indeed been unfair. I intend the following to your assistance, because you say you are going to give me a structured as opposed to a casual argument. However, it is not the structure but the logic I am taking issue with here. To give you some clear examples of what I mean here, I will go beyond my initial objection to your above reply's first premise and continue on to the rest of them:
"I think either we will in doing this construct a institution that will encourage them to lifelong friendship,"
Which can only be true if we can agree that it does in fact constitute a friendship or is in itself inducive to cultivating true friendship. One could make the same point again about imagining that virtue would arise from endorsing hedonism in any way. It wont. All this is like to do is pervert the concept of friendship. We see this already with the "love" equivocation already being made by LGBTQ activists and propaganda.
So, if thus far in normalizing homosexual relations we have the concept of marriage rather becoming twisted in its true meaning and authentic realization, what reason do we have to suspect that the concept of friendship will not suffer a similar fate?
"or they will see that they cannot sustain long term partially erotic relationship and destruct of themselves."
This would be like legalizing drugs and even praising drug use then offering people a staple amount of drugs - not so much to cause immediate ruin and destruction - and thinking that this will reduce or discourage drug use. That would in fact be enabling on a massive scale.
"There is nothing better for repentance than getting exactly what you think that you want and failing."
And here especially I have to question the morality as for me this a prima facie ends justify the means argument (and it could be argued to be the case also in the last argument as well).
Last edited by Timocrates (7/09/2015 4:51 pm)
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
It is hedonism directed at permanence and respectability, which is not an unvirtuous end. It could be properly Epicurean.
Consider carefully bolded statements above. That at best amounts to a parody of virtue and is, arguably, even worse as a consequence.
Only if you think you cannot emerge from out of a worse state into a better. Would you have every man be virtuous before he be virtuous? This is a matter of self-cultivation.
Being in a deficient state can point you to a better one: one learns to shoot by way of shooting badly for a long time.
I think it perfectly comprehensible that homosexual couples see their present situation as not sufficiently serious and want to structure it towards something higher. I've never been in such a relationship, so perhaps this is an inherent impossibility, but I do think it's laudable as an attempt.
This, one, seems a questionable reading of the desires of homosexuals in general, and, two, ignores the effect of such a parody of marriage on society when it gets state sanction.
It is correct that homosexuals wanting to form committed relationships is better than not, even if that commitment is far less than expected of traditional marriage - like sexual fidelity. But that hardly seems the whole of the matter.
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- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
An alcoholic who drinks less in in a deficient but better state- closer to the mean.
What would you do? We will not punish them, and they will not go away or repent of themselves. I think either we will in doing this construct a institution that will encourage them to lifelong friendship, or they will see that they cannot sustain long term partially erotic relationship and destruct of themselves. There is nothing better for repentance than getting exactly what you think that you want and failing.
Should true marriage itself be obscured over the matter of a word, then true marriage is a paltry state indeed and no sacrament at all but rather a joke and delusion. But we know better, so why fret with clearly ineffective rearguard action? Is the church not strong enough to show it's flock the way? Is the truth powerless? Will homosexual marriages fail t astronomical rates and that not alert anyone to a problem? We either know something that's real or we on't, gentlemen.
This might be correct if we are talking simply about homosexual bbehaviour, but we are in fact talking about the state sanctioning such relationships and even equating them to heterosexual unions. As Timocrates points out, it is more like the state dealing out drugs.
You have a point about general secularism, though I do think the issue is something of a barometer for secularism. The family is crucial to a healthy society, and the state creating a travesty of marriage is not unimportant.
- iwpoe
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
I am not even sure its appeal doesn't have more to do with degrading traditional marriage and ideas of chastity than anything else. I have lost count of activists I have heard imply as much.
I've lost count of gay people that I know who support this position who think the exact opposite. Most people I know who support this decision don't have some abstract ideological considerations, because that's simply not how most people who aren't screwed up philosophically in the head like I am think, but rather they supported because either they themselves want to get married in a committed way or because they want people they know to be able to get married in a comitted way and not be shunned for that desire. I don't think that they are lying or arguing with me in bad faith. I'll admit that some activists may be taking advantage of these people and going along with them in bad faith in the hope that somehow they can make society more mutable, I don't think this is what most people actually think they are about.
Now, might they be mistaken about the possibility of this working? Aye, but at this point I think they should see it for themselves. I think it's *possible* that it might be conducive to life-friendship, which I think a good, and better than how many live now. I also think it's possible that the institution simply won't accomplish anything, and will constantly be fraught with failure.
What effect this is supposed to have on actual marriage, is not clear to me. I've heard of this worry articulated my whole life, & I just don't see it. I think the argument better when it is framed from the perspective of public virtue, but the idea that somehow that their shitty marriage is supposed to confuse me about mine really is a head scratcher to me. Proponents of gay marriage always convinced me on that argument, if nothing else. If that isn't the idea, and you all are much more intelligent than the usual people I've talked to about this, I'm open to see it elsewise.
Last edited by iwpoe (7/09/2015 4:00 pm)
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- iwpoe
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
I am not even sure its appeal doesn't have more to do with degrading traditional marriage and ideas of chastity than anything else. I have lost count of activists I have heard imply as much.
That would explain their provocative "pride parades" through Jerusalem, despite the vast majority of the city (I think over 80%) being offended by their shenanigans.
That's the point of pride parades. That aspect of them is generally reprehensible: it would be reprehensible if it consisted entirely of heterosexuals doing the same thing. I never understood how a bacchanal was supposed to help your dignity.
Last edited by iwpoe (7/09/2015 4:58 pm)
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
I've lost count of gay people that I know who support this position who think the exact opposite. Most people I know who support this decision don't have some abstract ideological considerations, because that's simply not how most people who aren't screwed up philosophically in the head like I am think, but rather they supported because either they themselves want to get married in a committed way or because they want people they know to be able to get married in a comitted way and not be shunned for that desire. I don't think that they are lying or arguing with me in bad faith. I'll admit that some activists may be taking advantage of these people and going along with them in bad faith in the hope that somehow they can make society more mutable, I don't think this is what most people actually think they are about.
But the point is surely that homosexuals don't seem to wish to sign up to a lot of the duties and obligations of traditional marriage - like long term fidelity or (semi) permanency. Their idea of commitment is quite different. And, yes, a lot of the activists are quite happy to talk about how they are helping to bring homosexual ideas of commitment and relationships to heterosexuals.
Now, might they be mistaken about the possibility of this working? Aye, but at this point I think they should see it for themselves. I think it's *possible* that it might be conducive to life-friendship, which I think a good, and better than how many live now. I also think it's possible that the institution simply won't accomplish anything, and will constantly be fraught with failure.
But you are talking about the state recognising these relationships, with little difference between them and heterosexual ones, for what seems like meagre gains at best. If the state was just advising homosexuals to be more monogamous, and perhaps even giving them some prompts towards being so, I would agree with you. But we are talking about making their relationships equal, at least in practice if not in name (and it turns out they want even the name as well). I see nothing in what you say about the virtues of commitment to support this.
What effect this is supposed to have on actual marriage, is not clear to me. I've heard of this worry articulated my whole life, & I just don't see it. I think the argument better when it is framed from the perspective of public virtue, but the idea that somehow that their shitty marriage is supposed to confuse me about mine really is a head scratcher to me. Proponents of gay marriage always convinced me on that argument, if nothing else. If that isn't the idea, and you all are much more intelligent than the usual people I've talked to about this, I'm open to see it elsewise.
As a traditional conservative I have, conversely, always thought the point about lack of an effect strange - that you could change the ideas, functions, and roles surrounding such an important social and cultural institution as marriage and expect it to have little or no effect on that institution or how individuals and society see it seems strange to me.
Anyway, more specifically, the arguments and ethos behind homosexual marriage largely are concerned to reduce marriage to a matter of affection alone. This is not the sole foundation, by far, for traditional marriage or to support the obligations and rights of traditional marriage. Now, homosexual marriage has hardly been the sole cause of the change in ideas about heterosexual marriage and sexuality, but it is part of the intellectual drive to reduce marriage to affection, so certainly it will have it effect, though we cannot measure it separately from the general social decline.
Besides, there is simply the principle of the thing: a state that can declare the existence of square circles, or even that squares can be for all intents and purposes circles, seems on a dubious path.
- DanielCC
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Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage
A key issue here is that people do not want to see marriage primarily as an institution within a culture – they want to see it (ideally of course) as a kind of ontological bound between two persons based on romantic love. Of course one might answer ‘well, if that is the case then they shouldn’t care about civil recognition or the lack of’, a perfectly reasonable question to ask. In some cases the response would be because, if Christian, they demand a religious recognition of their marriage, though with the majority I fear it’s just a political drive.
(Sometimes in more cynical moods I think it might be good if marriage granted no additional civic rights – see divorce courts and the like fall apart)
Another thing that troubles me about Natural Law accounts is the extent to which they take an action’s relation to society as a whole, or, to put it in a more alarmist way, the ‘Common Good’, as determining the extent of its impermissibility.