From the first one:



Let's see if anyone can figure out what I felt wrong about these statements, in terms of religious-neutrality.




Reading disclaimers and the sort FTW?


Oh. And this one quote from that article you linked us to gets to me:



Obviously, this lady has never been in the foster care system, adopted, or what have you.

Actually, I feel that her statement there was rather close-minded, and killed the rest of her argument on it's own.

I was about to start picking apart the second article you posted, Dag, but Myrkr's already started! Just to cement it a bit, the entire premise of the argument is that children=marriage, which is itself a distinctly religious view not reinforced in American law. Apparently, in Canada, it's there, but they're the ones who gave homosexuals that right. The author herself really fails to deal with all of the repercussions of that, but she does an awesome job of pointing out that the argument isn't coherent.

Wow... I point out an article and a link, which give arguments NOT based on any religion, and not based on god, and you point out ... what??

You point out that someone uses a quote which happens to use the word 'god" in it, (while the actual purpose of the quote was the word "society"), and you point out that someone who is using non religious arguments, happens to work for a religions organization.

... who cares....?

Also, for the point about biological children, the author goes out of their way to talk about the foster kids in the thing you quoted, and specifically argues why it is sub optimal.

So you rely on ad homonyms, and distortions of an argument to prove your point? Nice try.

Again the point was simple... Non religious arguments against same sex marriage exist and those are the ones used in courts. If you want to argue against any particular claim, feel free to do so, but I won't be be bothered to defend something I've never read.

Actually, I fell that your statement there, and mis-emphasizing the quotes are rather close-minded, and killed the rest of your argument on its own.

Way to be open minded!

And here is an article going over the details about how same sex marriage has harmed marriages in general.

http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200602280810.asp

My wife has told me that I'm too addicted to the forums, so I shall not be responding further on this thread.

(and thats what marriage , from my point of view, is really about)

Well, I was going to pick apart your last large post again, but it seems there's not much point. I'll just leave it with the note that I still disagree with you on the "word-changing" front. It doesn't really matter what they end up doing with it, the mere fact that it is a tool used extensively in politics to get one's way is enough to prove it (to myself, at least). If we go back a bit further, we could examine all of the meaning piled onto the word "red"-- to the point that people said "Better dead than red." (Poor red) If you're going to argue that changing one word for political (it may be moral as well on both sides, but when they get to the government stage you can bet they're political as well) purposes, you should be defending more than just this one word.

I won't disagree with you on your point here, though-- in reality, it comes down to compromises if you want it to survive.

Maybe that's a good thing to keep in mind in this discussion, too.

Here's a challenge, and I tried myself, but I'm afraid my resources are limited.

Let's research the etymology of the word "marriage" and "wedding" and let's see if there was any religious or gender basis of it...

Or racial. Check out divorce, too. Maybe see if "ownership" of the wives ever factored in too.

Ok, for the tl;dr crowd, here's the XaviNotes study guide on what Sweden did, using only quotes from this hostile author:

The most revealing thing about Eskridge's paper is that it goes beyond a mere defense of registered partnerships to offer a full-throated endorsement of Swedish parental cohabitation. Having a Swedish government official as a coauthor emphasizes the point. Eskridge endorses a Swedish system that has effaced virtually every legal distinction between marriage and cohabitation.

Ok, there's your background. Here's author's main point number one:

"Eskridge defends Swedish parental cohabitation by pointing to a study that found Swedish children suffering when raised by a lone parent, but doing better when raised by either married or cohabiting parents. Eskridge neglects to mention that this equivalence between married and cohabiting parents applies only as long as the couples stay together. But cohabiting parents break up at two to three times the rate of married parents, which in the long run means more kids raised by lone parents. This problem of family instability is my main complaint about parental cohabitation. Yet Eskridge doesn't refute the point; he ignores it."

I was not able to find matching statistics in Swedish databases. However, I did find this in The Cost of Being Female on Google Books:

"Accepting the reality of cohabitation, these partnerships count as family units. As a result of this type of calculation, 81% of minors in Sweden live with both parents....In Sweden, 6% of households with children are headed by women alone"

There is a cited source for the statistics, but Google opted not to include that page of the references in the free online version. If comparing the truthfulness of statistics, I'm inclined to believe the one that says where the statistics came from. It's possible that both are true: unmarried couples break up more often unless children are involved. Regardless of how you look at it, Sweden does a better job of keeping parents together than the United States.

Author's main point number two:

"But that's not all. The Swedish out-of-wedlock birthrate continued to rise after passage of registered partnerships in 1994, and there's good reason to view registered partnerships as a contributing factor in that rise. As we saw in "Fanatical Swedish Feminists," Swedish legislation removing the final remaining differences between registered partnerships and marriage (e.g., the right to state-funded artificial insemination), made a point of treating marriage, registered partnerships, and mere cohabitation alike. So instead of highlighting marriage's privileged status as a site for parenthood, partnership legislation is communicating the message that marriage is no different from cohabitation."

It's lol-worthy. Oh noes, they separated religious marriage and civil benefits, and now the non-religious stopped getting married! Isn't that the point?

(divorce) 1377, from O.Fr. divorce, from L. divortium "separation, dissolution of marriage," from divertere "to separate, leave one's husband, turn aside" (see divert). Not distinguished in Eng. from legal separation until mid-19c. Divorcee, from Fr., first recorded 1813. It can be either m. or f.

(marry/marriage) 1297, from O.Fr. marier, from L. maritare "to wed, marry, give in marriage," from maritus "married man, husband," of uncertain origin, perhaps ult. from "provided with a *mari," a young woman, from PIE base *meri- "young wife," akin to *meryo- "young man" (cf. Skt. marya- "young man, suitor"). Said from 1530 of the priest, etc., who performs the rite.

(spouse) c.1200, "a married woman in relation to her husband" (also of men), from O.Fr. spus (fem. spuse), from L. sponsus "bridegroom" (fem. sponsa "bride"), from masc. and fem. pp. of spondere "to bind oneself, promise solemnly," from PIE *spend- "to make an offering, perform a rite" (see spondee). Spouse-breach (c.1225) was an old name for "adultery."

(wife) O.E. wif "woman," from P.Gmc. *wiban (cf. O.S., O.Fris. wif, O.N. vif, Dan., Swed. viv, M.Du., Du. wijf, O.H.G. wib, Ger. Weib), of unknown origin. The modern sense of "female spouse" began as a specialized sense in O.E.; the general sense of "woman" is preserved in midwife, old wives' tale, etc. M.E. sense of "mistress of a household" survives in housewife; and later restricted sense of "tradeswoman of humble rank" in fishwife. Du. wijf now means, in slang, "girl, babe," having softened somewhat from earlier sense of "bitch." Wife-swapping is attested from 1959.

(husband) O.E. husbonda "male head of a household," probably from O.N. husbondi "master of the house," from hus "house" + bondi "householder, dweller, freeholder, peasant," from buandi, prp. of bua "to dwell" The sense of "peasant farmer" (c.1220) is preserved in husbandry (first attested c.1380 in this sense). Beginning c.1290, replaced O.E. wer as "married man," companion of wif, a sad loss for Eng. poetry. The verb "manage thriftily" is 1440, from the noun in the obsolete sense of "steward" (c.1450). Slang shortening hubby first attested 1688.

Not exactly terms with much history of negativity, but they've definitely been redefined often enough.

I'm actually well aware of Stanley Kurtz and his anti-same sex marriage crusade in the National Review (perhaps the ultra right wing journal in the USA). You can of course draw your own conclusions to the Scandinavian study, but I recall at the time he made his arguments, there was some strong disagreement, notably from Andrew Sullivan (a gay conservative intellectual who has written books in support of gay marriage--you may have seen him on Bill Maher this weekend). In fact, the Sullivan-Kurtz feud is rather famous in the blogosphere. In any event, if you are interested, read Slate's rebuttal argument which, in my opinion, does a good job decimating Kurtz's hypothesis.

So if Christians have redefined the words... I don't see what their whole argument is about.

So how'd this end up? From what I can see on-line from the news agencies it appears too close to call...

Well, as there aren't any stories about godless homosexuals dancing in the streets or burnings of said godless homosexuals, I'm guessing noone has a clue yet.

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/resul...allot.measures/

California Proposition 8:
Ban on Gay Marriage
Updated 39 minutes ago

Yes
4,957,124
52%

No
4,600,692
48%

91% of precincts reporting

Results are supposedly still being processed. I'm not enthusiastic.

It's up to 95% of the precincts reporting, still 52-48

Looking at the stuff for AZ102 I find it interesting that the farther away from metropolitan areas and the older a person is, the more likely they were to vote for the measure. Perhaps in a few years, things will change...

Calling Andrew "Trig is not Sarah Palin's child!" Sullivan a conservative is.. basically not an accurate statement.

Andrew Sullivan was a vociferous early supporter of George Bush (later turned on him), has written many articles on conservative philosophy, not to mention books (like Conservative Soul)) on the subject, so I think he is definitely a conservative. That said, he is not especially well liked by many of the Republican party (conservative != Republican) and has came out supporting Obama (see his Top 10 reasons). Just because one has serious problems with Palin (Sullivan demanded all candidates, including Palin, to release her medical records which is behind the Trig issue) and the evangelical-dixiecrat-southern bent of the Republican party doesn't mean one can't hold federalist, limited government, libertarian-leaning philosophies (Sullivan was an Oakeshott scholar after all) whose political heroes are Reagan and Thatcher. If the litmus test of conservativism is Palin worship, you can kiss Noonan, Brookes, Will, Buckley, etc. off as well.

Based on that top 10 list, it sounds more like he is just upset with Republicans, then he is actually supporting conservative ideals.