+- SFL Forum (http://www.stufffundieslike.com/forum)
+-- Forum: General (/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Forum: Politics and Current Events (/forumdisplay.php?fid=9)
+--- Thread: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years (/showthread.php?tid=3643)
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - lucrezaborgia - 02-10-2012 01:01 PM
(02-10-2012 12:33 PM)myotch Wrote: Now, while homosexual sex may have happened as long as interracial coupling has happened, homosexuals historically have not married same-sex partners, as a rule, even in places and times where homosexuality was accepted and even encouraged.
Historically, wives (and children!) in Western societies were property and in times of pederasty, women were viewed vastly different depending on what part of society they were a part of. Demosthenes, a Greek politician, allegedly said: "We have hetaerae for pleasure, pallakae to care for our daily body’s needs and gynaekes to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households.”
Let's not kid ourselves about marriage being some sort of sacred institution that has never changed. A lot of our ideas on marriage are taken right out of Greco-Roman playbooks and even then, they had vastly different ideas on marriage than we do today. Later on, Emperor Augustus tried to make marriage a special institution, but his motivation was the falling birth rate of the nobility, not because he honestly believed it to be sacred.
Historically, men were allowed to fuck anyone else they wanted, even in marriage. Most people in the past didn't even have their marriages recognized by the state or church. There was no need to! It wasn't until the Reformation that churches pushed for marriage to be regulated by the state via the church.
Before the Reformation, it wasn't necessary for a priest or anyone to conduct a marriage ceremony other than the couple. Medieval society allowed for couples to marry themselves as long as they said certain words in certain places. In "A Medieval Family: The Pastons of 15th century England" there is a crisis where the daughter of one of the family members marries a servant in secret. A priest investigates but then finds out that since the couple said the certain words that they were married...much to the horror of the family!
Marriage today, with all the rights that it entails onto the couple, are vastly different than what has been historic. Marriage and what it entails changes all the time. It's not some monolithic institution that never changes.
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - myotch - 02-10-2012 01:05 PM
(02-10-2012 03:31 AM)Tooktheredpill Wrote: When did civilization begin, in your opinion?
Opinion doesn't have anything to do with it. I think they have dated earliest cities and cultural innovation at around 10,000 years ago. It may have been earlier, especially if you want to count South American societies.
Quote:What criteria? And how would the interests of the state be undermined by the legalization of gay marriage?
In all states, brother and sister cannot marry. In most states, first cousins can't marry. All states have laws regarding age. All states have anti-polygamy laws.
State interest in regulating marriage is, of course, to determine the ability to consent, the natural safety of the family unit against birth defects, and finally, to maintain the integrity and tradition of the institution of marriage, as we can also see in the case of plural marriage.
What if brother and/or sister are unable to procreate, and each enjoy their incestuous relationship? They still cannot marry.
What if a 14 year old really wants to marry her 18 year old boyfriend? Most state laws determine she is, as of now, unable to consent.
What if one has the ability, means, will, and enough interest of the people of the opposite sex to enter into a plural marriage? Polygamy is still against the law.
Effectively, no one can stop the eager siblings from going at it in the hay loft, no one can stop the 14 year old from having sex or even emotional attachment with her 18 year old boyfriend. And polygamous marriages skirt the law through divorce laws and non-traditional, off-the-books marital agreements.
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - lucrezaborgia - 02-10-2012 01:15 PM
Incest and consent are valid reasons to deny marriage. Poly I'm not so sure...but what does that have to do with homosexuals? Is this a stealth slippery slope argument? Our government has the ability to make changes to existing laws. Should all law changes be based on tradition?
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - lucrezaborgia - 02-10-2012 01:24 PM
(02-10-2012 12:18 PM)JLL Wrote: As for cousins marrying, I don't know. Hopefully we learned something from the Habsburgs! All that intermarrying didn't work out too well for them.
The problem wasn't mainly cousins marrying with the Hapsburg family and BTW, it was only the Spanish branch that had this issue.
![[Image: 777px-Carlos_segundo80.png]](http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e164/lucrezaborgia/777px-Carlos_segundo80.png)
The issue here is uncles marrying their nieces...which is wayyyy closer than cousins! First cousins only marrying first cousins over and over leads does lead to a much smaller gene-pool tho which only exacerbated things when uncles married nieces.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2009/04/inbreeding-the-downfall-of-the-spanish-hapsburgs/
Quote:What are you doing here is summing up through all of the distinct paths to common ancestors. You weight this by the number of individuals between the common ancestor and the individual whose inbreeding coefficient you are calculating (note that, for example, some of Charles’ lines up ancestry back up to his common ancestors have different numbers of generations). Finally you have to include in the inbreeding coefficient of that common ancestor.
Let’s play this out for a brother-sister mating. Assuming that the grandparents, of whom there are only two, are unrelated. So FA = 0. Then, it simplifies to:
FI = (0.5)3 X ( 1 ) + (0.5)3 X ( 1 ) = 0.25
In other words, Charles II was moderately more inbred than the average among the offspring from brother-sister matings!
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - myotch - 02-10-2012 01:38 PM
(02-10-2012 08:15 AM)RobMille Wrote: This thread is kind of painful to watch. Stamping your feet about how much you hate gays isn't going to stop the inevitable march of civil rights extended to human beings whether you like it or not. Sadly it probably is slowing it down.
I thought this was a civil conversation. No one is stamping feet, no one is hating.
I'm all for civil rights, too. In many cases, I could be absolutely progressive regarding civil rights.
hating gays <> against gay marriage
Elton John, a *married* homosexual, is not much for gay marriage in America (and he and his partner lives here in the ATL).
Fran Lebowitz (an incredibly entertaining and interesting woman - I could listen to her all day) has stated her personal dislike of gay marriage, considering the institution something that takes away liberty.
I don't think these people are "self-hating gays".
I'm not delivering a bigoted tirade. I'm not even producing a religious argument. I'm simply looking at the issue from two perspectives:
1) What is marriage, and what is the role of marriage in a society?
2) What is the historical perspective of marriage that made it the institution it is today?
If I can add a third:
3) For what societal benefit should society extend the protections and benefits of marriage to homosexuals?
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - myotch - 02-10-2012 01:40 PM
(02-10-2012 01:15 PM)lucrezaborgia Wrote: Incest and consent are valid reasons to deny marriage. Poly I'm not so sure...but what does that have to do with homosexuals? Is this a stealth slippery slope argument? Our government has the ability to make changes to existing laws. Should all law changes be based on tradition?
The question posed had to do with why the state has an interest in regulating marriage (re: criteria) I supplied other issues where the state has valid concerns and interest in regulating who can marry. This is not a slippery slope argument.
Not to many laws are coming forward regarding traditional marriage. It's all pretty much set in stone. Aside from so-called gay marriage, there aren't any changes to marriage laws that I'm aware of. And yeah, they are all pretty much traditional.
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - lucrezaborgia - 02-10-2012 01:42 PM
(02-10-2012 01:38 PM)myotch Wrote: 1) What is marriage, and what is the role of marriage in a society?
2) What is the historical perspective of marriage that made it the institution it is today?
If I can add a third:
3) For what societal benefit should society extend the protections and benefits of marriage to homosexuals?
I think that these questions have all been answered over and over in various threads here. I'm at a complete loss to the power of tradition that you keep holding onto as somehow significant in the debate however.
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - myotch - 02-10-2012 01:52 PM
That is why you lose. Bwahahahaha.
I find the discussion to be a good one. I just don't see a compelling case to retrofit thousands of years of the evolution of the institution of marriage for gays who want to marry.
Engage and compel me! Give me a reason to change my mind. If I am opposed to gay marriage, what is the undeniable logic that should change my mind? It just isn't there.
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - lucrezaborgia - 02-10-2012 01:57 PM
*sigh*
Arguments that fall back on tradition are moribund. There are lots of things that are traditional that we don't subscribe to anymore. Why cherry pick homosexuals as the last bastion of tradition?
RE: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Still looney after all these years - myotch - 02-10-2012 01:59 PM
I don't "cherrypick". I've discussed plenty of situations where consenting adults cannot marry or be recognized by the state as married.