'Bye... and that's what I was trying to do, too.

Moral superiority? No, just critical thinking, and your statements prove my point... Let's just take one for example...

..."Then you completely misunderstand the scope of this decision. Marriage is the fundamental contractual relationship in society - bar NONE. It is through marriage that society perpetuates itself and governs itself...."

> "Bar None"??? Ok, no discussion possible there... your mind's made up and 'don't confuse me with facts...'... circa mid 1960s when I first ran into that homily.

No, society perpetuates itself through people having babies and agreeing on mores that govern their rights and privileges. Marriage is but one legal implementation of agreed-upon mores, but to think that it is the ONLY way that ANY society can survive is ... well... it's own kind of 'moral superiority,' too.

Glad to close the thread. 'Bye!

"And, as you close your argument, it is, as I well know, impossible for me to offer any arguments to you because you will deny them as fallacies, anecdotal, irrational or untrue.... by YOUR definitions."

When you can show me one of my arguments that was based on a fallacy, I will readily concede the point. When you can show me one of my definitions that is off base, I will happily correct it. So far, I am still waiting for such an example.

The issue isn't that I listened to your case. The issue is that you didn't want the feedback I presented after I listened. You don't want to see the logical fallacies inherent in the arguments you presented. You got "tired" of the argument because you wanted it to succeed and found out that there was substantially less merit than you initially believed.

I bear you no ill will. There are many causes being championed in this world and every single one of them deserves a debate and discussion of merit: of choices and consequences. I salute you for being willing to champion such as you believe in. I only ask that you give grace for grace.

"My life is too short to engage in fruitile 'discussions' with people who automatically reject any positions that don't agree with their own."

A parting shot claiming moral superiority? An accusation that somehow you are impartial and that I am not? A claim that your wisdom is so divine that it needs no support or explanation? And you don't see the chutzpah in such a claim?

If your argument was logical and sound, you wouldn't need to resort to anything but logic to make your point. You would readily recognize my inferior logic but seek to enlighten my understanding by pointing it out to me, rather than attempt to denigrate me with backhanded comments such as these.

I am sorry you got "tired" of this discussion, but if you come up with a new development or a different angle, please feel free to bring it up. I believe that any principle of governance that is valid and logical will withstand the test of time, and that if it can not, then it was not a correct principle at all. Until then, I take my leave.

B, you use as much or more hyperbole than I did, yet you don't see or admit it.

No, B, it's not that i'm giving up 'fighting the movement;' you misunderstood my statement completely. It's mere that having these "discussions" with people who think they're using good 'logic' against me just ISN'T FUN ANY MORE. I'm just abandoning the game you're playing. I support gay marriage groups and so does my (female) wife and many of our friends.

I have often mentioned that one of the key issues is EXACTLY that the term 'marriage' has been written into most laws that govern the LEGAL RIGHTS accorded to people who wish to join in a permanent living arrangement with others, and that the problems will resolve when the legal system (if unburdened from religious trappings) rewrites a LOT of current legalese to stop using the term 'marriage' and replace it with some other term. Then it's really game over for you.

And, as you close your argument, it is, as I well know, impossible for me to offer any arguments to you because you will deny them as fallacies, anecdotal, irrational or untrue.... by YOUR definitions.

So, that kind of 'discussion' is, in the end, "fruitile" as a grad student friend of mine once coined... A combination of fruitless and futile.

My life is too short to engage in fruitile 'discussions' with people who automatically reject any positions that don't agree with their own.

And that's what I meant by 'ciao.'
Ciao.

So your best argument is that it just isn't worth the effort to fight this movement?

Using the same logic, society should just give up on the Constitution and devolve into totalitarianism. Women shouldn't attempt to protect themselves from rapists and just accept their helplessness (that one was used by a Colorado politician arguing against concealed carry). People should just accept government corruption as a fact of life. Those arguments fall along the same line as your proposition, yet would you accept any of them? Similarly, I refuse to accept an emotional plea to apathy as a rational argument with any validity whatsoever.

"Monumental Change? Looking at the number of gays wanting to enjoy the legal rights afforded to heteros simply because laws include the term 'marriage' hardly seems like a monumental change. The percentage of most general populations just isn't large enough to justify, imnsho, the use of the term 'monumental.'"

Then you completely misunderstand the scope of this decision. Marriage is the fundamental contractual relationship in society - bar NONE. It is through marriage that society perpetuates itself and governs itself. Altering it is altering the entire makeup and definition of society and its future. That is why the "it doesn't affect you" argument is so patently false. It absolutely affects me, my children, and everyone else. It is absolutely a "monumental" change. If you believe otherwise, you believe a lie.

And once again, I will point out that marriage is not a right - it is a contract. Until you can acknowledge this fact, you will continue to believe another fundamental lie inherent in the whole "gay marriage" argument. Once you acknowledge that this is a matter of contract law, you can then be shown how it directly conflicts with actual rights - specifically the First Amendment and my right to choose to believe how I wish. You see, by using the term "gay marriage", you are trying to force me to acknowledge and accept a contractual relationship that violates the tenets of my belief. And this can not be denied. Court decision after court decision has been about whether or not religious rights trump or are subservient to a contractual agreement. If a contractual agreement is allowed to override an actual right, then the First Amendment is dead and we have all lost our right to association and religion. If you can not see how monumental that is, I can only hang my head in shock.

"What is implicit in the first part of your second paragraph is pretty clear: the conclusion that gay marriage has few or no 'benefits' to society and therefore must be justified in terms of overwhelming positive effects."

Any public policy decision - and in fact every economic decision - is based on a cost/benefit analysis. I have pointed out many of the costs involved, but I have seen you present zero concrete and tangible benefits to outweigh these costs - primarily because most of these arguments are based on false premises. Would you intentionally pay $50000 for a car that got 5 MPG or $5000 for a computer that only had an eight-bit processor when there are cars that cost $25000 that get 40 MPG and computers with 64-bit processors for $1000? I'm certainly not willing to. Now if you can show me that that car is a first-run model A personally signed by Henry Ford or that the computer was a prototype of the first HP calculator, you can demonstrate a good reason to alter my evaluation...

"Letting people who wish to enjoy the rights without harassment or intimidation for their actions sounds to me like a 'nice positive' with little or no downside risk."

Hyperbole based again on the false presumption of a non-existent right. And as pointed out earlier, which party is doing the harassing? It isn't the heterosexuals dragging the homosexuals into court because they won't make a cake for them. It isn't the homosexual church being dragged into court for refusing to open their facilities for a heterosexual ceremony.

"But, again, I also believe that if the discussion were or could be 'rational' in the first place, it would not even be able to occur."

I concurred with you when you pointed out that STD rates were rising amongst heterosexuals, did I not? The problem is that the rest of the arguments you presented are based on fallacies you seem unwilling to admit. As an engineer, you are probably aware that if you switch your J and K on an MMIC, you get the wrong logic states, do you not? So too with fallacious arguments and any decisions based on them! You are backhandedly claiming that I am not being logical, when in fact it is logic that is the worst enemy of your own arguments.

Feel free not to agree with me, but if you have any intellectual honesty, you will admit to yourself what I have pointed out and think about it. It may be that it prompts you to discover rational arguments heretofore unmentioned which support your position but which are based on truths. Please share these with me. It is very easy to get caught up in a debate and pick a side based on one random argument that sounds good at the time. I am no more immune to this any other, which is why I value feedback. Sometimes ;)

May the truth guide you. And may we all be willing to follow.

Actually, that's not what I meant. I meant "the argument is over" because I did not want to participate any longer in the direction the thread was going. I was not claiming a 'win' at all... or conceding a loss.

I could try to make an argument or give examples of the 'cost/benefit' comparison for 'gay marriage,' but in my experience, it's really hard to offer examples when the recipient has any kind of emotional or religious stake in the discussion, since emotion and religion trump any and all arguments or evidence. Been there, done that, wasted lots of oxygen on it.

What the hell... I'll rise to your new bait and reply...

Society benefits from recognizing gay marriage in that so much less energy would be consumed in the fight against it.

Economically, the 'gay marriage marketplace' is, in itself, a potentially lucrative market for many free-market vendors to enjoy, which they can't if so many folks are opposing its existence in the first place.

Monumental Change? Looking at the number of gays wanting to enjoy the legal rights afforded to heteros simply because laws include the term 'marriage' hardly seems like a monumental change. The percentage of most general populations just isn't large enough to justify, imnsho, the use of the term 'monumental.'

What is implicit in the first part of your second paragraph is pretty clear: the conclusion that gay marriage has few or no 'benefits' to society and therefore must be justified in terms of overwhelming positive effects.

Letting people who wish to enjoy the rights without harassment or intimidation for their actions sounds to me like a 'nice positive' with little or no downside risk.

As the cartoon over my desk puts it, "Be the 1st Couple to show that gay marriage has hurt YOUR marriage!... Grand Prize: You and your spouse will be special guests in an upcoming cartoon!"

I have yet to see or hear of any reports of 'tangible damage' to anyone's 'marriage' because gays were allowed to 'marry.' All I hear is 'fear of impact, destruction,' or whatever.

As an engineer, I'd prefer reports of the actual results of such a measurement than a million people reporting 'fear of damage.'

But, again, I also believe that if the discussion were or could be 'rational' in the first place, it would not even be able to occur.

So I'm not claiming victory OR loss... I'm just admitting that the game isn't fun to play any more.

Cheers!

Yes, I actually know what it means. I was intentionally being flippant because the way you use it appeared to say "well, the argument is over and I won."

I would still like to see from your perspective, however, how society benefits from recognizing what some want to call "gay marriage". Your criticisms of other points of human behavior are not without merit, but one can't propose such a monumental change in society by focusing solely on negatives: there must be clearly defined positives to the proposed changes. I am still waiting for those to be enumerated so that we can both have a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis.

The costs are laid out and tally a fairly significant negative on the ledger. If you want your argument to succeed, you have to provide the positives that outweigh the costs in order to justify investment. Simple economic logic.

You wish...

Not in Italian, it doesn't.. :)

Yes, it means I surrender the point because I have no argument. :)

"Funny you should use those examples, as HIV rates have been climbing amongst heterosexuals while dropping among homosexuals."

Doesn't change the fact that homosexual males are still 37x more likely to get HIV, and that's from the CDC. Why are heterosexual rates rising? You have multiple partners, you place yourself at risk that rises with the number of partners. And it also should be no surprise, but most of those infections come from bi-sexuals. Do we see a pattern here? Society portrays the benefits of "free sex" but conveniently forgets to mention the costs of STD's. What makes transmission among homosexual males so much higher is the biology - the intestines are make to absorb. Simple science.

And while you can go on and on about science, the fact remains that it is not a natural process by which you are obtaining these offspring and they can NOT rely on themselves - they must have a donor of the opposite gender. You want to trumpet this as progress? That's like saying that I have to buy a yacht just to go fishing. From an efficiency standpoint, that's just plain ridiculous.

"I could easily ask whether those 'single-parent families' aren't the RESULT of other issues which might be the real root cause of the results described in the 'social studies' to which you allude."

Go do your research. The studies control for those factors.

"Oh, hell, the legal problems bromide is so old it should have gray hair and wrinkles. The gay communities don't give a shit about your right to worship or marry or any such thing... ask them and see how THEY respond, not how your kindred souls agree with you over coffee... They are suing to try to attain the legal rights that people, under current laws, get when they get a 'marriage license' and a 'wedding ceremony.'"

You go back to rights when there are none. Again, no one has the "right" to get married. Marriage is a contractual arrangement that society recognizes because of its value in perpetuating society. You want homosexual unions to attain the same legal status, time to prove that they have the same benefits. All you've done to this point is complain about my arguments, yet you have yet to offer anything that promotes your viewpoint. You want change for change's sake. That's ridiculous from both a societal and logical standpoint. You present why the change improves society - that's how you make your case.

Funny you should use those examples, as HIV rates have been climbing amongst heterosexuals while dropping among homosexuals.

Not to mention that it's kind of silly to say that homosexual couples "can't reproduce." We have close friends with two of the most energetic, bright, talented twins we've ever met.

Science and medicine have trumped the "can't reproduce argument" for decades. Why do you keep using it?

In fact, I have a relative who used an egg donor and her husband's sperm to conceive their second child... since they 'couldn't reproduce naturally,' should they have divorced.

The other layer of that specious 'argument' is that when my wife and I exchanged vows nearly 24 years ago, it was a few years after her hysterectomy. Since WE were getting 'married with NO possibility of creating offspring,' should we have our marriage annulled or should the license not have been granted in the first place???

Please try a few arguments that are better-grounded in contemporary reality, ok?

Oh, and while venereal diseases do spread rapidly among people of all genders and flavors who have sex, they're not quite as life-threatening as they were, say, 50 or 100 years ago, either. Medicine has advanced a lot since those 'good old days.' Heck, you remind me that, before I met my wife, I dated something like 75 women and had intercourse with something like 1/3 of them or more. No VD. Sorry.

One last point... You speak of single-parent families as being the cause of so many problems.

I could easily ask whether those 'single-parent families' aren't the RESULT of other issues which might be the real root cause of the results described in the 'social studies' to which you allude.

Oh, hell, the legal problems bromide is so old it should have gray hair and wrinkles. The gay communities don't give a shit about your right to worship or marry or any such thing... ask them and see how THEY respond, not how your kindred souls agree with you over coffee... They are suing to try to attain the legal rights that people, under current laws, get when they get a 'marriage license' and a 'wedding ceremony.'

I promise you this: the times, they are a-changin' and the laws WILL change, whether you oppose them or not. The Millennials are demonstrating that already. You or I may not live to see the last of such stupid inequality laws fall, but they will, and their demise will NOT herald the end of marriage OR society.

Maybe the end of 'marriage or society AS WE KNOW IT,' but that's changed a lot over the millennia, too. Or haven't you noticed.

Thanks; it's been fun to examine your comments and to ask questions about them.
'Ciao!

Actually, that one is pretty simple when you consider the basic biology. Two men or two women can't produce offspring, ergo society doesn't repopulate itself.

I could also get into the STD rates - most notably HIV - which has a 37x higher infection rate among homosexual males than in heterosexual males. Gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, herpes, etc., spread like crazy among those with multiple sexual partners. And if you want to read something scary, read the effects of these diseases. Most aren't even curable and some cause insanity. Monogamy isn't just for the religious - it's for anyone who doesn't want to contract one of these life-destroying plagues.

You could also get into the social studies which have confirmed multiple times that children are better in school, better adjusted to society, less inclined to end up in jail, etc., when raised by their biological father and mother. That's simple fact. No other arrangement is as successful in preparing the next generation for successful integration into productive society.

Then you have the legal problems that come with all the homosexual agitators, as has been discussed. There is no question that they want to destroy the rights of the religious to worship as they choose and we have evidence of that every day in the court systems.

From what I can see, there are zero beneficent results from society embracing homosexuality at all - let along recognizing homosexual unions. I may have missed something, in which case you are free to enlighten me, however.

Excellent points, B! So why do the religionists keep repeating the phrase/concept that "gay marriage will destroy society"? Or even "... is destroying society"?

Without defining 'destruction' or showing direct cause and effect? That's one difference between science and belief, too.

I don't think you've actually read the laws at all. Civil unions already give you all the legal "rights" (again I point out to you that most of the items you are talking about are contractual in nature) you are talking about - with the possible exclusion of parental rights. That's a whole other ball of wax.

"But so long as religionists fixate on 'marriage' being a religious thing and the 'morality' of gay marriage being a 'sin' and therefore argue against ALLOWING gays to "marry," I find the whole thing to be rife with hypocrisy."

It isn't hypocrisy, it's religious belief and it is no less a valid belief than your belief that homosexuality is normal. They are just diametrically opposed beliefs based primarily on atheism vs theism. And since people have historically NOT been atheistic, law has historically been set up from a theistic standpoint. Considering that according to Wikipedia only 2% of the world's population is atheist, it should be no surprise to anyone that the predominant basis of law is theistic in nature.

I think a better question to ask is this: is the purpose of a change in societal structure a change for the better? If so, ANY proposed law should be examined based on the effects of the change being an improvement to society. To me, herein lies the crux of the entire argument: whether homosexuality furthers the cause of civilization itself. For me, it is THAT question that drives the entire discussion. Answer that question and you have the rationale for altering the law. Fail, and so does the argument.

Thanks, Fred... except for that last (circular) sentence, I completely agree with what you said there!

:)