There is not equal right to have many marriages.
You're the only one talking about multiple marriages, because you're the one insisting that your definition of marriage as just two people is the only one. Open your mind to the fact that such is not, and never has been, the case in human history.
You make people dig in their heels even harder instead of trying to make constructive debate. How do you accomplish this? By lying and mischaracterizing what people say. You are driving me further and further away from you as you go on.
I haven't lied yet, or mischaracterized anything; I'm merely showing you the logical meaning of your position.
You are hateful and treasonous to the gay community for being against gay marriage.
I want gays to be able to marry; I do not want gay marriage added to the existing status of a privileged class.
Yeah, not having more rights than other people have must suck to people who really want them.
You're fighting to have more rights than other people, so I suppose you would know.
Unless you believe in equality for all, you don't believe in equality at all.
Again you describe your own position. Your definition of equality reduces people to numbers. If only one spouse means equality, and any other number is unequal, then at least be consistent, and demand that everyone have the same number of kids, too.
I keep pointing them out. And I'm not the only one recognizing them.
If you think the definition of marriage is tyrannical, you don't know the defintion of marriage. Again, it is totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand. That's because the definition doesn't cover eligibility or purpose. Equality does. Equality demands that everyone has equal rights.
I said that your definition of marriage is tyrannical, because you don't want to allow anyone else to have a different definition.
Marriage is a human relationship, a form of human association. That comes under the right of freedom of association, the right to build your life with relationships with others as you see fit. And that means that if you want to define marriage as having two, three, or thirty people, that's your right, and it isn't to be overridden by someone who thinks that equality depends on numbers.
I'm not a number. Pumpkin is not a number. The people I know in three-way relationships aren't numbers, either. We're all human beings, and we have a right to follow wherever love leads us, regardless of whether you approve or not. And that is equality -- not arbitrary assignment of numerical limits, but the freedom to choose your own limits.
The equal right is to marry who you fall in love with and want to have a family with. That doesn't mean you have an equal right to marry as many as you want, because that is unequal to everyone else.
You can't see the contradiction in your statement?
If I fall in love with two people, then my equal right would be to marry both of them and have a family that way. Otherwise, you're saying that my love is not equal to yours, that it has to be chopped off at your numerical limit.
When you say "that doesn't mean you have an equal right to marry as many as you want, because that is unequal to everyone else", you reduce people to numbers once again. Equality doesn't lie in how many you love, but in being allowed to marry or bond with whomever you love. Your way does to those who love more than one exactly what the ReligioPublicans do to gay love: call it dirty or lesser. By your own words, you want to keep some people as second-class citizens.
You still ignore what I actually said. The definition of marriage is a social bond that engenders a familial relationship. That has nothing to do about an argument about the inequality of polygamous marriages to monogamous marriages.
No, I followed what you said. There's nothing in your stated definition of marriage that excludes mff. mmf, mmm, fff, mfmf, or any other set-up.
There is no inequality between mono marriages and poly marriages, except in your mind. In reality, they're all equal because they're all freely chosen by the members.
No. There is no agreement on that.
Again, you won't even acknowledge what your own words say.
Eligibility is not part of any definition. Societies have always arbitrarily decided eligibility and purpose, but the definition of marriage has remained universal.
I have kept the definition simple, because in actuality it is quite simple. The complexity is brought on by societal norms, which unfortunately have been inconsistent throughout the world and throughout history.
You're making eligibility part of the definition; your arguments have made it central: you require that only two people are eligible to marry one another. In fact, by adding gay marriage to the current standard in law, the only thing you are doing is changing the eligibility!
But why should the rest of the world have to live up to, or conform with, the JockBoy standard any more than it has to live up to, or conform to, the Fred Phelps or Rick Warren standard?
Yes. Thank you for acknowledging that. We agree to something after all.
So you agree that your definition doesn't place a limit on number -- but you want to place a limit on number.
Dude, people don't fall in love by numbers, or by the numbers; they fall in love as it happens. I know some threesomes, as does Pumpkin, who all love each other. They could or do provide everything your definition of marriage calls for -- so why do you want to discriminate against them for their variety of love? Why do you want to punish them by saying they have to give up one of the people they love?
I pointed to the definition of marriage as being historical sociological fact and that it is tangential, irrelevant, parenthetic, and not part of the argument we are having in any way, shape, or form. It is a separate issue. I am not using history as part of my arguments because it would be foolish to do so. I've been saying that in post after post after post. Why can't you acknowledge that?
You argued from the basis of what "marriage has always been". That's an appeal to history, which means you did in fact use history as part of your argument -- and were wrong about it, to boot.
My worldview is one of equality. Marriage rights are about equality, and that means you have an equal right to marry as many people as everyone else, one.
And thus you have an equal right to have as many children as everyone else, and have as many friends as everyone else, and so on. But that's not equality in the true sense, it's what they call "equality of outcome", which demands that those with greater talent or greater opportunity sink down to the level of those with less talent or less opportunity -- or in your case, that those with a wider love deny some of it and stick with those who are more limited.
Equality lies in equality of choice, not of result. Equality in marriage means everyone having the right to choose -- and if some choose more than one partner, then that is equality, because it's their choice.
My wants? My desire for this country is equality.
From what you've said, it isn't equality, but conformity.
Not with more people than I do, no you don't.
Well, then since at the moment I only have three actual friends, I have every right to demand that you get rid of all but three of yours -- because you can't have that kind of relationship with more people than I do.
And that is exactly what you're saying: you're insisting that love can only extend to the number you prefer to have, that one person can only be allowed the same number of relationships that the rest have.
The facts of love and desire are irrelevant. In my point of view you are trying to argue that you have more rights than I do. You have the same rights that I do. Marriage to one person.
All you've done is move the goalposts of the tyranny; I want to end the tyranny altogether.
And HenryReardon is right -- you already have equal rights with the ReligioPublicans: you have the same right they do: marriage to one woman.
More non-sequiturs. We are talking about marriages, not blood relations or friendships.
They're all human relationships. You can't just pick one out and be tyrannical in it; you have to extend it to all of them.
The thing about human relationships is that we have a right to choose. What you want to do is limit that choice, and in a way that throws some people's love in the trash. You use the same stinking argument the Yes on 8 people do, that "love and desire are irrelevant", and insist that your definition is what's relevant.
But I won't accept you as a tyrant any more than I will them: love is what's paramount, and choice is next to it. It's hateful when the Yes on 8 people trash on gay couples' love, and it's just as hateful when you trash on my love.
Equality is liberty and fairness.
Equality lies in CHOICE.
Your version of equality denies choice.
Interesting way to skew my arguments. But they are regretably false characterizations, nonetheless.
They're not false at all -- as you proved above when you said "love and desire are irrelevant".
Is that how you see marriage -- with "love and desire... irrelevant"?
I thought the fight for gay marriage was all about love and desire.
