No one's saying you want to build gas chambers or lynching trees, you just don't want us to sit on the same side of the bus as you, and you want us to wear pink triangles on our sleeves.

Oh man wow, progressives just Godwinn'd the thread. If you can't keep from making irrational comparisons for alarmist reactions you probably shouldn't even bother posting. If you can't see how this issue differs from slavery and mass genocide then you need to wake the hell up.

Ok, I guess no matter what one ties, you just can't stop someone from being a Biggot. And you my friend, are the one being a biggot. (I.e., you are 100% intollerant, of people who have a traditionalist point of view)

Please tell me, At what point in HIstory, what Germany run by a single race? In what point of the German tradition, was it told, that a supreme race should rule all of Germany? Was this part of thier myths of future? The Nazi party certainly thought of themselves as "progressive", creating a new world order, and creating a supreme master race which would rule the world. Please show me which tradition they pulled this idea from. I'm really curious.

But I have to agree with stagmar, if you are going to say that only some traditions are bad, and only the ones that you don't like are bad, and anyone who doen't agree with you is now a racist. (as well as the numerous other labels you choice to place on people who dissagree with your particular politics) I'm just going to have stop talking to you.

Tsk, Godwin's Law has struck again!

It's more like they are being compared to the slavers and Nazis, rather than the actual action of slavery and mass genocide. And if you can't see the similarities in the situation, you need to wake the hell up.

It's also borderline hilarious that you can call us progressives with a negative connotation.

Define:Progressive
# favoring or promoting progress; "progressive schools"
# favoring or promoting reform (often by government action)
# (of taxes) adjusted so that the rate increases as the amount of income increases
# gradually advancing in extent
# liberal: a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties

Define:Progress
# advancement: gradual improvement or growth or development; "advancement of knowledge"; "great progress in the arts"
# develop in a positive way; "He progressed well in school"; "My plants are coming along"; "Plans are shaping up"
# advance: move forward, also in the metaphorical sense; "Time marches on"
# the act of moving forward (as toward a goal)
# build up: form or accumulate steadily; "Resistance to the manager's plan built up quickly"; "Pressure is building up at the Indian-Pakistani border"
# a movement forward; "he listened for the progress of the troops"

I had no idea what that meant until I just looked it up. That's great actually. I guess people just like to jump to the most extreme example they can think of.

And when I say progressives are always right, I'm referring to major turning points in history, such as slavery. I call the Nazis traditionalists because that's how they formed their argument: They said Germany is being polluted by Jewish people, everyone different than us, etc. They made alliances with people who did not like change, aka traditionalists.

I don't mean something trivial like, "Stop using paper, it's traditional!"

And it's lame of you to make me make that distinction.

You never learned about communism?

In this case, "progressive" is just another way of saying "deconstructive"

How is that trivial?



If you wanted to be a progressive, and be on the right side of history, you should really stop using paper right now! Save the rainforest!

Clearly the one and only issue (not the main issue, the only issue) with the blacks was slavery, and with the nazis was the mass genocide. Amirite?

Why, certainly there couldn't have been ANYTHING else taken from the african american history than, "Don't enslave people!" and from nazi germany than, "Don't commit genocide."

Certainly not.



Which is to say, that you're all saying that if nazi germany hadn't killed jews, simply relegated them to second class citizens, and if americans hadn't enslaved blacks, simply made them 3/5s of a person (I forget the exact ratio)... That it'd be okay? Or is it just too cliche nowadays to take a cue from history... Except if it's a tradition?

Taking the slippery slope of Nazis and slavery does your argument no better than the slippery slope the other side takes with bestiality, incest and polygamy. The best parallel are anti-miscegenation laws that prevented interracial marriages (something my parents had to navigate!). Indeed, the exact same arguments for anti-miscegenation laws are being made against same-sex marriages. Not familiar with the subject? Here's a starter.

Thanks, I admit I am not the smoothest of arguers, I'll give that a read.


@Myndaen: Yes, you're exactly right. That's what I was leaning towards when I said it was more about the slavers than slavery.

Edit: And one other thing...when I mentioned earlier about how future people would look back on us. I can just imagine a 100 or 200 years from now, a gay or lesbian couple in high school learning American history the same way we do, learning about -this- time period the same way we learn about the civil rights movements and women's rights movements. I can imagine them doing the same thing we do: Rolling their eyes and talking about how ridiculous it all was. About how their glad -that- side won, and not the other. How they can't believe it was ever considered wrong, immoral, or illegal for them to be together or want to get married. And it's sad, to me, that with all of history behind us, we can't make that distinction today and fix things before they break completely and have to be repaired from the ground up.

I do think it's different than slavery and mass genocide, but I really don't see how keeping same sex couples from getting married is any different than back in the day (in several states, not just in the south) when mixed race couples couldn't get married.

And I also think there comes a time when some traditions become outdated as society progresses and the traditions do nothing but hold people back and get in the way. When that happens, clinging to them is just harmful. And suggesting that someone saying that some traditions are pointless is like saying people ought to stop having kids and let the human race go extinct because having kids is traditional is just as bad, IMO, as saying that all traditionalists are Nazis.

Both are just as silly as the other.

I think that the 'traditional' view of marriage is outdated and archaic. I think that families can come in many different shapes, sizes, colors and creeds and I think they're all just as good as the other. Saying that the only family worthy of being recognized by the government as proper is the one with the man and woman married with their 2.5 kids and so on is just narrow-minded. I think that if you're against gay marriage, you shouldn't marry a gay person, but no one should be able to tell any two people that they can't marry the person they love or that the family they are in is 'wrong.'

I'm hopeful that, just like the laws prohibiting mixed race marriages fell away as society progressed, eventually gays and lesbians will be able to marry whoever they like and have the same rights and privileges that I as a straight person have.

Sorry, but its not the "exact same arguments".

You can't "accidently" have a child in a same sex union, you can with interacial couples.

The arguments I'm referring to is calling the unions unnatural, against god's will, and that such unions destroy society's foundations.

EDIT: Anyway, I'll recant and rephrase as "almost the exact same arguments".

Let me just make this clear.

After looking into the issue, I've decided that whatever the state and government does regarding marriage, isn't going to matter one way or another. That is, there are always going to be fringe cases, where the laws don't fit what people do, and there are always going to be groups of people who need more access to more government benefits. And there are always going to people who look at people who got married by the government as elopers and not members of thier community etc, or are going to consider state marriage not "real marriage." And at this point whatever the government does regarding marriage, is not going to hurt or help people who want relationships and societal accpetance, nor will it hurt or help children or the governments responcibility for them.

All I really care about in this discussion, is that the "progressives" (what a terribly deceptive name for a world view) recognize and realize, that just because people differ on a politicl issue, it does not make them bad people. (or whatever dissmissive label you wish to place upon them) And its clear to me at this point, that no ammount of conversation or reading, will ever convince a "progressive" that people who are anti same sex marriage, arn't comming from a position of intollerance or biggotry or phobia.

After the crazy socialist actions of the U.S. government this past week, I'm even further convinced that legal and governmental purists are going to have a lot of purely hypothetical discussions for the comming centuries.

I bet you that in a few years, there is going to be an HBO show about two siblings who love eachother dearly and live together, and then 15 years from then, there will be legal rights for siblings who want to be viewed as a couple. (however if that HBO show never airs, then the law will never be debated) This has nothing to do with a slippery slope argument, btw. And I think people who think that polygamy or same family marriages, or animal marriages are wrong and terrible, will find themselves in the chair of the traditionlists in years to come. (As long as HBO creates the TV show about them)

Right but for people like me, none of those arguments hold water, but other arguments against SSM do.

Meaning, someone might argue that we should have SSM because some gay men are really women anways, and having a gay father would be no different than having a mother, and a gay couple always has a "manly" partner and a "womanly" partner. But I don't think you would associate with that argument, even if you agreed with the final decision.

I'm sure there are lots of people who come at it from the place you're describing Daganev. I really do. However, I also am sure there's lots of people who ARE bigots, who are intolerant, who are phobic. Lots of those people use the same argument as folks like you, who are genuinely only concerned that 'tradition' is recognized, because they know that argument sounds more reasonable, logical and is more influential than the ranting and raving about obscenity and hellfire.

So saying that 'people who are anti same sex marriage, aren't coming from a position of intolerance or bigotry or phobia' isn't entirely right. So, if you change that to 'not all people who are...,' I'd say mission accomplished. Though I already knew that.

But regardless, whether it springs from a bigoted place or a "traditional" place it doesn't change the fact that I think the anti-same sex marriage viewpoint is wrong. Just like I'm sure nothing I'd say would convince you that your own opinions on the matter are wrong.

Daganev, I'm just not understanding:

Why does your being traditional mean that I can't get married? I'm just not clear on how my getting married means that you can no longer hold to your traditions. It's not as if my getting married to a man stops you from getting married to a woman, or your sons, or their sons, or their sons, etc. etc.

You specifically said "owns slaves", thus you made it one of your points. Would you like to refute that or something? You're the one who brought it up. Do you really believe that the world would have went to war had nazi germany just treated them as a subclass of citizens instead of SLAYING THEM EN MASSE? What goes on in your head? We certainly don't go to war because people are treated like second class citizens across the globe, there are plenty of examples.

The thread was fine before people wanted alarmist reactions and shot right to the "comparisons" the lobbyists love to make.

To your latest post, you once again kick the beehive of Christianity. Having a Civil Union wouldn't make you a "Second Class Citizen". If you had quite literally every single benefit of marriage but they had a different word for it and Christians worldwide got off your back, I'd bet that you still wouldn't be happy. People are romanticizing a word that happens to have religious connotations and they can't seem to pick that up. That's what you don't seem to get. You think it's so easy for all these people to just give up everything they believe in for you, why don't you just give up being gay? Because it doesn't work that way, for you, or for them.

I don't get off work for certain Jewish Holidays but the Jewish guy down the hall does. Should I be going berserk and frothing at the mouth because he gets Christian holidays AND Jewish holidays off with pay? Hell no. Tolerance goes both ways and "maybe" the compromise should be rights in exchange for a bloody word. Yes, in some states it won't happen, but for those who would actually pass Civil Unions instead of Marriage, why people won't take it then becomes a crusade for injustice over a word. These people are just as insulted that you tread on holy ground as you are that they don't just give up and give same-sex partners the word marriage. Seriously.

As for Deschain, that wasn't a derogatory form of progressives, I was just saying that the progressive camp was the first to open up Godwin's Law on this thread.

Remind me where I correlated "owning slaves" to anything but backwards traditional values? I have reviewed the entire thread and I don't see anywhere that I made the "owning slaves" comparison as one of my main points justifying why we should be able to get married... Only that owning slaves was a terrible tradition.

I also never said that the world would go to war had nazi germany treated them as a subclass of citizens. I posed the question, would that make the discrimination okay?

You need to stop putting words in my mouth.



I would be perfectly happy to have Civil Unions that afforded me the exact same legal rights as marriages, but hoping to achieve that is far too idealistic. It is far simpler to remove the DoMA and allow us to marry. Heck, I'd even say that sounds likely, as opposed to Civil Unions which would require far more legislative time and effort.

I don't know enough about employment law to understand your company's situation, but I've never heard of that happening.

My my. What a thread! I've ready a fair number of posts, though one thing I wanted to briefly touch upon myself, raised by Desitrus, was marriage vs civil unions.

In some states (not mine!), a civil union is the legal equivalent of a marriage. The only difference is a label.

Many people, rightly or wrongly, look at it as, Estarra pointed out, the racial segregation that came before many of our generations.

In place, however, there are no longer 'coloured' bathrooms, 'coloured' movie theatres, 'coloured' playgrounds or schools, instead there are 'civil union's, which are just as good. The ruling by the California Supreme Court, as I remember it (having read it extensively at the time of its publication, though it's been a few months and things have been a bit hectic for me to remember in precise detail!), was not so much gays should have 'marriage', but that gays and straights should be equal - that is to say, no segregation based upon race, religion OR sexual orientation. A fantastic idea, and I heartily applause it (opposite of my family, who are firm believers that allowing homosexuals to have any form of union will ruin the economy via tax breaks/exemptions, etcetera etcetera, already afforded to heterosexuals).

My personal opinion is that marriage, as some have pointed out, is a religious institution and that all marriages should be simply declared null and void, requiring all couples to undergo the process of civil unions. Doesn't do me much good, of course - not that I've anyone to enter into one with - since my state outlaws civil unions for homosexuals (in fact, if you are a homosexual you are not even allowed to, as a single parent, adopt a child - or even as a gay couple! Then again, oral sex, anal sex and sex with porcupines are explicitly banned by the state!), but at least it's there!

Personally, I'm glad to see California continuing to be within the vanguard of states who are fighting segregation along lines of sexual orientation, or in any other form - in fact, it was the highly republican state supreme court (as I understand their political alignments to be, anyways) that effectively legalized same sex marriage in the state of Cali. Therein, one could even say it is the first state to enter into it bipartisanly! I'm hoping other states will soon follow suit - however, I am sorely doubting that will come in the immediate future, short of a highly democratic national congress sneaking in the equivalent of as pork barrel legislation that legalizes it federally (in a move akin to the passing of the Patriot Act - ehehe).

That said, I'm not too concerned for Californians - last time I checked, the state was still standing and working in some comparable fashion to what they were a year ago. It appears that, contrary to popular belief, gay marriage has NOT brought about the end of the world. Nor has the CERN's kick ass proton-smashing hammer.

Rejoice.