Cloudy and ambiguous language can be ethically perilous.

Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 5 months ago to Culture
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In deciding whether to legalize same-sex marriage, it is not sufficient to take into account just what individuals want, much as we might empathize with their claims. We must also consider a wide range of factors relevant to the impact on society of doing so - especially the impact on children's rights, in general.

Why Same-Sex Marriage Supporters Call it ‘Marriage Equality’
SOURCE URL: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/why-same-sex-marriage-supporters-call-it-marriage-equality


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  • Posted by $ CBJ 7 years, 5 months ago
    The author herself is an expert in using cloudy and ambiguous language, as in this howler:

    “The same-sex marriage debate is yet one more example of the conflict between, on the one hand, individuals' rights to autonomy and choice, and, on the other, the good of society, both present and future.” Well, that’s certainly clear enough!

    In another article, however, she does correctly identify the underlying issue at the heart of the marriage debate:
    http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articl...

    “And committed same-sex couples have the right to the same financial, legal and inter-personal protections as do committed opposite-sex couples.”

    This is what numerous state and local laws refused to grant to same-sex couples, in the name of religious or cultural values or, as above, the “good of society”. If states had been willing to provide an equivalent path to such protections, even under a name other than “marriage,” the issue likely would not have reached the Supreme Court; and if it had, the Court would likely have ruled differently.
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    • Posted by $ blarman 7 years, 5 months ago
      Believe it or not, but up until the Southern States started trying to prevent interracial marriage, neither local, state nor federal government was involved in regulating marriage. The origin of the marriage license stems from blatant racism and attempts at government control.

      All the other legal arguments you make are a sub-set of government's interference in the first place and the assumption that rights and privileges and recognitions originate with government. What should have happened is that marriage licenses themselves should have been ruled a violation of the Constitution - a separation of Church and State. Then marriages would have remained what they have always been: a thing for religion to worry about.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
      The issue was not the financial or legal...but the effects upon children. They pushed it too far...marriage, from the dawn of time, so to speak, was only for procreation...and rightfully so. We all know, bad or good...children need both a male father and a female mother...

      I think I have discovered that there might be a quantum entanglement, right from inception between mothers and fathers with their children.
      If that turns out to be accurate, it definitely proves our point.
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      • Posted by $ CBJ 7 years, 5 months ago
        The issue was financial and legal. States were denying same-sex couples “the same financial, legal and inter-personal protections” as married heterosexual couples on grounds that had nothing to do with children.

        Quantum entanglement exists between many entities, biological or otherwise, that are related in some way. It cannot be properly employed to derive a moral code that bestows special privileges on persons recognized by the state to be in certain types of relationships.

        And if marriage is “only for procreation”, I guess it should be illegal for couples over 50 years old to get married.
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        • Posted by blackswan 7 years, 5 months ago
          The same sex issue is one of recognizing someone's fantasies, as if they were real. If a man wants to pretend that he's a woman, in spite of the fact that he has a y chromosome, let him knock himself out. But his attempt to twist the law to recognize that fantasy, in the name of "fairness" is nothing more than an attempt to coerce the entire society into recognizing a fantasy as reality. When you're talking about law, you're talking coercion. The same goes for any other type of sexual fantasy.
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          • Posted by $ CBJ 7 years, 5 months ago
            “Society” doesn’t recognize anything, individuals do. And the issues here are clearly individual rights and equal treatment under the law, not the alleged “rights” of “society”. Most of the legal privileges and protections conferred by marriage have nothing to do with anyone’s chromosomes or fantasies. Again, If states had been willing to provide an equivalent path to such protections, even under a name other than “marriage,” the issue likely would not have reached the Supreme Court; and if it had, the Court would likely have ruled differently.
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            • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
              Ah, but big brother...(not sure it's a brother any more), has, along with the radicals and mentally ill, made it difficult to have a discussion.
              Yes, of course, it was a state issue...but all this nonsense has gone way to far...tired of the language being use against us.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
          Originally, yes, the legal and financial was the issue but as I stated, they pushed it too far...It harms children and society as a whole, by example.
          I agree with your last sentence...laughing...that's when things go sour...
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      • Posted by $ jdg 7 years, 5 months ago
        Marriage, in most of history, is primarily a type of economic contract, to enable the upbringing of children and protect them. (Thus the state does have a legitimate interest in "recognizing" such contracts, whether we call it a license or not, but any decision to deny one ought to be for good cause.)

        I have yet to hear any evidence that gays do a worse job at raising children than heterosexuals.

        And there have certainly been other societies in history with gay marriage, or at least arrangements that can be so interpreted. The 300 who lost at Thermopylae, for one.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 5 months ago
          "I have yet to hear any evidence that gays do a worse job at raising children than heterosexuals."
          Yes. And regardless of which groups do better on average, it's not worthwhile to figure it out and then to discriminate by group membership. If gov't is going to get involved in evaluating parents, it should evaluate the factors of merit directly, not by group membership.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
          The article was about the deception and overall we can see through recent history, it's had a toll on marriage and children. I've seen statistics that show children, do better with a female mother and a male dad...no matter how mismatched mom and dad are...they generally do better in life, and after all, that's how things work in our world...why would one reject that, it's the nature of things.
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      • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 5 months ago
        Quantum entanglements, i.e., things continuing in their created states with respect to those in the same creation until change in some interaction, are very fragile and would not affect any relationships between children and their parents. You need to get into some none entangled stuff for the rearing of children and the need for marriage whether civil or church or just "let's consider us as married". At the quantum level, entanglement has no effects at the macro level unless a human gets excited about some experiment. Can the excitement be caused by entanglement and actions with other particles?
        Or is it that non-entangled particles are acting and eventually producing brains, minds, and little ones to care for and the desire to argue about something?
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
          I think that spark at the inception of new life is itself an entanglement that produces brains, hopefully minds...but not sure about something to argue about...that could lead to a quantum divorce...laughing.
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          • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 5 months ago
            Is there really a "spark of inception of a new life" or just a race of sperm to penetrate the ovum and the random shuffling of the genetic material with, of course, a lot of ionic chemical actions going on. If it is a spark, it is the complex charge distributions on the molecules involved.
            Perhaps you are using entanglement to refer to the entangled mess within the ovum while the DNA is intermixed. It is quite a complex process.
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            • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
              Yea...there is a spark and I think, someone posted the discovery on the gulch...I read it separately somewhere else...it's been a while.

              Yes it's electrochemical and in creating an entanglement between sperm/father, egg/mother (yet to be proven and hopefully seen) has nothing to do with DNA, (and hopefully not the mess in the ovum...joking of course).
              Even a plant seed shows a spark of light (electricity) at the start of germination.
              Pretty interesting I'd say.
              I'm sure we'll more about it in the future.
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            • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
              Yea...there is a spark and I think, someone posted the discovery on the gulch...I read it separately somewhere else...it's been a while.

              Yes it's electrochemical and in creating an entanglement between sperm/father, egg/mother (yet to be proven and hopefully seen) has nothing to do with DNA, (and hopefully not the mess in the ovum...joking of course).
              Even a plant seed shows a spark of light (electricity) at the start of germination.
              Pretty interesting I'd say.
              I'm sure we'll more about it in the future.
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              • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 5 months ago
                I missed this when first reported.

                https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

                I do not see that the penetration of an ovum by a sperm will show the visible zinc sparks unless treated by "a membrane impermeant derivative of the zinc fluorophore FluoZin-3" which makes the zink sparks visible, The sparks are a release of zink atoms from the ovum membrane when penetrated by the first sperm and last for many minutes. That could be the mechanism to disable other sperm from penetrating the membrane.
                Thanks for bring that up.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 5 months ago
    First, one must understand that marriage has many laws attached to it covering taxation, inheritance, visitation rights and others depending on the state in which one resides.That is the only reason for the desire to make same sex marriage viable. Marriage, biblically speaking, is strictly between a man and a woman. Why? Mainly to lock in procreation. But in the pursuit of happiness, if same sex marriage makes you happy, then why not? I cannot see where it causes any form of coercion to others, and procreation will take place no matter what. In biblical times, when societies were divided into tribes and clans, procreation was vital. The more people you had, the more powerful you became, which was the main reason that homosexuality was frowned upon and made to be a sin. In many clans, having a child, particularly a boy, was a reason for celebration because he was a potential http://warrior.So to this day, humanity maintains the traditions of primitives. "Lord, what fools these mortals be." If humanity wants to maintain the traditions of marriage, then it would be rational to get rid of the laws pertaining to marriage and continue to treat all people as individuals.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
      But we are really talking about subversion and making it difficult to have a reasonable conversation.
      Confounding our language should offend us, not make us fearful to have a discussion.

      We also should consider the "be what ever you will" anything goes problem...need some reasonable rules to keep things running smoothly...remember the article about how demonocracies fail when they get toooooo demoncrapic?...order breaks down.

      Besides, what do these creatures have against electricity?...remember the N/S thing?
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      • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 5 months ago
        What the article pointed out was connotative value of words. Not what they denote, but what the connote. It has been long recognized that connotations are associated with most words, some more strong than others depending on current usage. In my post, I glossed that over and focused on the actual conflict between the pro and con of same sex marriage. Getting into connotation is a mire of psychological presentation which to do properly would require more time than I'd want to devote to it.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
          It is a head twister...as we have seen, language confounds itself through the changing connotations of each generation...but what was done here and what has become the norm with progressives and radicals is coercion and deception.
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  • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 5 months ago
    Cloudy and ambiguous language-
    used to obscure for a political purpose when the real meaning would be unacceptable.
    So, this kind of talk is unethical as it is intended to mislead.

    When I read AS for the first time I was impressed by Rand's skill at describing how this worked-
    words such as fair and progress are used to cover up the intention which is the reverse of the emotional feel you get at first reading.
    Fair means unfair to favor some group.
    Progress means regression.
    Likewise marriage equality means destroying the concept of marriage and the benefits it brings in order to create social and economic chaos and get people into communes.

    While on this I will mention a law that my state has on the books-
    The Potato Marketing Board, you might think the government wants to help sell potatoes, wrong.
    The Board has the job of setting prices, of restricting production by defining varieties as well as quantities, and police have the power to stop vehicles carrying more than (about) 40 lb of potatoes. The real purpose of course is to protect existing growers and stop newcomers. (Orren Boyle!).
    Some good news- the police have not used that power to set-up road blocks for potato searches, and that law is to be rescinded.
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    • Posted by $ Susanne 7 years, 5 months ago
      Wow... Ayn said Fair meaning unfair, and Progress meaning regression... so because she said that, it follows that Marriage equality (which she didn't speak about) is destroying marriage? And using the potato board as proof?

      So if A=A, and B=B, then X must equal Y, because D=D...

      Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies. What would Plato say??
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      • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 5 months ago
        Potatoes- used not as proof but as an example.

        Our culture (still) values free speech, the right to own property, and the individual v. the herd.
        All the institutions of our culture are under attack by what are called the progressives. They found they could not destroy some, eg. marriage and the universities, so they attack in a different way by distortion.
        Government welfare depts recognize polygamous liaisons as marriage so payments are made. We see claims that mothers, daughters, fathers and sons can marry tho' so far only in groups of two; but there has been at least one instance of a so-called marriage of a person with themselves.

        To recognize individual rights means accepting any freely chosen relation between consenting adults as ok for them. That right does not extend to claiming relationship A is the same as and equal to relationship Not A.
        So Grandma Bruce wants to marry her/his adult grandchildren siblings Brenda and Bert, well let them do what they want, but give it a suitable name, the word marriage has already been taken for something else.

        Equality is not the aim, what they want is to change the language we use to destroy its usefulness in communication.
        (See 1984 as well as Atlas Shrugged).
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
          Yes, Yes, Yes Lucky...your the only one so far that understood the problem the article brings up about how our language is confounded. It's worse than speaking different languages...at least you could make some hand movements and funny faces to get your point across but when I use a word with it's original definition and someone else uses the same word and assigning a made up different meaning...All Communication Breaks Down.
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        • Posted by $ Susanne 7 years, 5 months ago
          Your example still falls flat. Sorry.

          Using your analogy, Atlas should be thrown in the trash because there was no Taggart Transcontinental, nor a Hammond Motors, nor Rearden Steel... Even if they were alternate names for UP, or Packard, or Carnegie (later Bethlehem) Steel because using assumed or made up names, rather than being brilliant, destroyed those industries and the world.

          See how silly that is? I bet you don't. Because nobody likes to have their preconceived notions challenged, and most will fight it tooth and nail, even if they're using false logic as their proof. Hell, when I was still a card carrying pinko socialist Leninist-Marxist scumball (and I was), I used to do just that - no matter what someone said, I had the quick, correct-thinking rebuttal to their statement... and would defend it to the bitter end. Thank whoever I was open minded enough to see truth in front of me when it was shown to me... and be able to change from a false doctrine full of lies meant to skew thoughts to rational objectivism - because the truth always shows itself, not theough propaganda, but through example. A really does equal A.

          I DO know - after doing a lot of research, and actually meeting some of these folk (no, they do not scare me, as they do some people) - that not one straight marriage has been destroyed by 2 same sex (or even 2 transsexual) people from getting married. As far as I know it's still illegal to marry close blood relatives, or your farm livestock, or your shoe.

          But it's not illegal for 2 people whose lifestyle, sexuality, or gender may not please you, to follow the law as it is written and get married, and enjoy the same benefits as anyone else. Just as it's now legal for people of different races to marry (at one time that was illegal because it was "an affront to society" and would cause all the things people accuse same sex marriage of). And I do know that interracial marriage, rather than destroying children, give them a stable home to grow up in, and so far it hasn't created cases of marrying sheep, or children.
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      • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
        Not a fan of plato because he loved the war makers and the law makers until late in life when he finally woke up and realized he'd and they'd be nowhere without the producers and creators.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
      Thanks for that response and example. Wow...all that subversion over potatoes...this crap never stops...been going on since Babylon.
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      • Posted by blackswan 7 years, 5 months ago
        The fact that Hammurabi had to write laws about such abuses, suggests that it predated Babylon.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
          Yes, but it all came to a head in Babylon when the Rulers decided to confound us by using our own various languages against us. Mankind was confused enough at the time.
          With out that crap, can you imagine where mankind might be now if we had developed self introspection a few 1000 years sooner?
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  • Posted by $ blarman 7 years, 5 months ago
    Great article, thanks. I agree that the main goal of progressives is to destroy conventional wisdom by trying to make A = B when A !=B. Their reasoning is that if they can make it similar-enough, that they can get people to disregard the differences and say A = B. The confusion of marriage and homosexuality is one such example. It doesn't matter if you are a proponent of homosexual unions or not - it is disingenuous to equate them to a heterosexual union, which is precisely what this article points out.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
      Bingo!...another great response...see...it is about being allowed to be reasonable, rational and objective...even with a contentious subject...it still comes down to the words we use and what everyone means by those words...liberals naturally dismiss original meanings and progressives use that as a weapon.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 5 months ago
    Part of the issue is regular marriage, and the financial incentives offered it. There really is no reason for this, and it is a large part of the basis for the same-sex marriage argument.

    We should face it though, the "moral majority", now a minority made this an issue with foolish religious reasons for objecting, and that made it inevitable that a small minority was able to make such an issue of this thing, I'd prefer to ignore.
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  • Posted by $ Susanne 7 years, 5 months ago
    Why do we keep bringing up "same sex marriage" on this board? There's something mighty suspicious about how often that (and other non-mainstream topics that have nothing to do with Objectivism) crop up here...

    Ever actually look up how many people's lives were ruined because they had 2 sme sex parents? Not the made up socialist claptrap, but actual facts? Or better, how many straight couples got divorced, killed their spouses, etc, because of who some absolute stranger falls in love with and marries?

    I tend to look at rational fact over what someone tells me I should believe. Especially when it has to do with other people's private lives.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
      Well, in the first place, this article is not all about same sex marriage...it's about how progressives, liberals and radical groups twist our language to get what they want and avoiding the important conversations society needs to have.

      And That falls right into being Objective because they have made it so we can't be...
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      • Posted by $ Susanne 7 years, 5 months ago
        Um... reread your initial opening statement... from about the 4h word through the 8th word you opened this with.

        "In deciding whether to legalize same-sex marriage, it is not sufficient to take into account just what individuals want, much as we might empathize with their claims. We must also consider a wide range of factors relevant to the impact on society of doing so - especially the impact on children's rights, in general.

        Why Same-Sex Marriage Supporters Call it ‘Marriage Equality’ "

        Sorry, Carl. You cannot say A then say it's not about A. To do so is self-contradictory to reality. THAT you can ask Ayn Rand.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
          SSM is just an example, it's one that everyone is familiar with and I did not want to deceive anyone about the content of the article, but it was as a whole about subversion.The paragraph depicts the problem as a result of the language being used against us.

          Lucky and Dean Strikeris are one of the few that understood.
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  • Posted by DeanStriker 7 years, 5 months ago
    I like your title. The cited article is a decent example of that gibberish. Well, flubber my lip!
    Such has rendered clear communication virtually impossible. e.g. what do "liberal" and "conservative" mean anymore? Language has become so muddy!
    "Marriage" would have religious roots. Those came to have effects on tax "laws" which give some edge to the married. That likely has triggered this nonsense we might call a "sexual revolution" today.
    Individuality is lost when our Rulers decree. Why does mankind fall for that?
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 5 months ago
      Thank you "Flubber my lip...hhahah, got a chuckle out of me.
      Language confounded, goes all the way back to Babylon and it was initiated by the Rulers...not the apologist version. However...it's really taken on a real subversive effect upon us, disempowering some severely so we can't, not only be rational and objective, but makes it harder for more than half of society to ascend into conscious disciplined thought and behavior.

      That's what I call...tipping the paradigm upside down...now we scarcely know which way is up.
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